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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 3

Poet Looks at Pakeha Phobias

Poet Looks at Pakeha Phobias

[The introductory panel, which is headed ‘Fear More than Love’, reads

New Zealanders care more about property than people – they have been taught a mediocre morality of fear instead of a religion of love.

James K. Baxter, guru, social commentator, poet and playwright, makes these comments in explaining why he has opted out of conventional New Zealand society.

In an interview with Times staff reporter Michael King, he criticises what he regards as the ‘unChristian’ values of New Zealand society: thrift, gentility, tidiness, prudishness, suspicion of strangers and the hoarding instinct.

After a year of helping drug-users in Auckland, Jim Baxter is now living in a Maori community at Jerusalem, on the Wanganui River.

He has chosen a life of voluntary poverty and refuses to pay taxes.

A devout Roman Catholic and a flexible anarchist, Baxter believes a cure for the corrupt pattern of New Zealand life can be found in the adoption of a Polynesian model of society.

Here are his thoughts as told to reporter King.]

page 124

As our Victorian grandmothers looked out their kitchen windows at the New Zealand bush, they probably experienced a sense of alienation as great as that of any Maori sweeping up the sludge on a factory floor.

Because our society is almost rigidly matriarchal, their phobias have been passed down to us – thrift, gentility, tidiness, prudishness, suspicion of strangers and the hoarding instinct.

The average Kiwi seems to have a pinched-up, parsimonious approach to life. He may wish to be generous, but he finds it very hard.

The roots probably lie partly in his nursery training. Some psychologists would say it comes from a tremendous influence on cleanliness in the home which teaches that a dirty child is an evil child. This is a form of fetishism which associates physical cleanliness with moral or spiritual poverty. It is initially external, but becomes part of an artificial conscience and provokes excessive attention to tidiness and ritualistic washing.

The phrase ‘well-groomed executive’ describes the pattern – a concentration on the public image, as if being well-groomed makes someone a good executive.

There is a parallel in our attitudes to work. It is very wrong for somebody to take three days off work to visit a sick friend or have a love affair.

The naturally rigid patterns of industry and bureaucracy are reinforced by the Kiwi’s subconscious attitudes. He looks upon a well-organised machine with tremendous favour and feels safe in its presence.

Hoarding of money is also regarded by many as a great virtue.

The Labour movement initially tried to take an egalitarian view, aiming to share resources around and spend them – but it did not have the support of the majority of people.

People in New Zealand have no trust that their neighbours would support them in time of need.

A man who stays at his friend’s house for a week, eating and sleeping there, then does the same at another friend’s house, would be regarded as a bludger by most people. The presence of the friend is regarded as being of lesser importance than the property he may use.

This parallels our sexual morality which tends to be almost wholly a morality of body areas – it also misses the point which is that for many people love is involved.

Alongside these values the Maori has not got a hope.

In the traditional Maori pattern the guest is sacred, the presence of the friend the thing desired, property morality is communal, and the word given to sex is love.

Furthermore cleanliness is not regarded by the Maori as being synonymous with virtue – so a common statement one hears from the uptight pakeha is that these Maoris are lazy, dirty and immoral.

He means simply that their culture is less egocentric and less inhibited.

page 125

When an average New Zealand policeman meets a Maori or Islander who has not yet become a brown pakeha, his reaction is that he is dealing with a very dangerous, inferior and corrupted person. In the next twenty years this could well lead to a situation in our big towns similar to that which now exists between the white and negro populations in the United States.

It is a continual source of amazement and sorrow to me that pakehas who are frequently highly dissatisfied with their own cultures do not turn to Polynesian models and try to live in the same fashion.

Of course the pakeha training, particularly in the commercial field, produces a high degree of emotional stupidity. The man who has worked advertising water heaters or brassieres for ten years has probably turned his brains into sludge – he cannot see people, he can only see objects.

Short of a Polynesian revolution, I can see no way for an individual to change the pattern except by opting out. Each person who opts out and chooses (broadly speaking) a Polynesian model becomes a focus of attention and a possible example to others of social change.

I have found that to practise voluntary poverty in New Zealand is the greatest crime of all in the eyes of the police and those who employ them. It involves a dramatic shift in one’s subconscious style – where before I could walk down the street unmolested, now I cannot. The police assume that I am dangerous because I must be vagrant, or distributing drugs, or involved in some peculiar sexual double-dealing.

I find it depressing.

The suburban householder may be friendly if he or she knows me personally – they see me as an eccentric. The one to whom I am a stranger often seems to feel that I am threatening his way of life – not by coveting his prestige or his property, but by failing to covet it. This would imply that covetousness has become our national way of life.

The response is on the whole more favourable within my own Church. They already have a minority tradition of voluntary poverty in the religious orders. They may consider that I am trying desperately to become a saint – but I feel that the psychological assets of voluntary poverty are so considerable that it is almost the natural thing for one to do.

Of course there are always family problems.

I have them myself, and I am well aware that the man who strenuously wants to move out of his suburban routine and become a hippie may be unable to do it because of genuine responsibility.

Nevertheless there is a paradox. His children frequently grow up and repudiate the home life he has constructed for their sake rather than his own. The tension is always between security and liberty.

But if the pattern of society is such that it becomes almost impossible to be a respectable citizen and practise the primary Christian virtues, the logical answer is to opt out of society. This does not involve condemnation of people page 126 – only condemnation of a barren, fear-ridden pattern.

Most young people who leave home or Church these days seem to be going away because they have been taught a mediocre morality of fear instead of a religion of love.

We would still have the same problem without a Polynesian subculture. But with Maoris and Islanders present, we have the rare and fortunate chance to change our society with the help of good models.

It seems to me much more likely that we will continue to try to exterminate these cultures in favour of our own. ‘Ko te Maori te tuakana; ko te pakeha te teina’ – the Maori is the elder brother, the pakeha the younger brother. If we learned this simple secret we might cease to be timid shopkeepers and become men.

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