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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 14, No. 10. August 9, 1951

Plebian

Plebian

The New Zealand bourgeois is a fanatic leveller, truly believing in economic as well as political democracy. His programme may be summed up as a fair deal (materially) for everyone. No one must be allowed to have anything that everyone else has not a chance of getting. Consistently he is usually [unclear: ready] to take it easy as soon as he is earning enough for a respectable living (and he means respectable—for that is the first and greatest of virtues). There is little of that appalling hunger for Success that obsesses so many Americans.

The vaunted New Zealand tolerance does not exist; toleration extends only to a set circle of beliefs—what John Smith or his neighbour accept.

In everyday life and its crises the New Zealander is dependable, unhysterical, adaptable, loyal and Honest. With money he is generous and readily contributes to a "good cause." He is hospitable to visitors, because he is anxious to show off the near-perfection of the New Zealand way of life.

Our reading is wide but uncritical, and fills our brains with a hodgepodge of half-digested inconsistencies. Conversation is limited to shop talk, personalities, sport and cliches. The only subjects in which we pretend or aspire to any critical knowledge, apart from personal fields of technical competence, are sport and politics. Otherwise, opinions are taken ready-made from the daily or weekly Press.

The New Zealander is a strong upholder of home life, but as he has no semblance of an idea of what such life can be, it makes him habitually bored and frustrated. He is loyal to his wife, but unless he has been married only recently, is not likely to be in love with her. His references to wives in general are uncomplimentary. Woman is a domestic animal, whose interests should be purely in and of the home if some other emotional outlet is necessary, let it be sought in magazine slop and the more sugary films. Women themselves are often ready to accept this idea of their sphere; most marriages are, accordingly, an intellectual vacuum.

Public acknowledgment of married love is commonly felt to be somewhat indecent. The public display of affection by others causes acute embarrassment to respectable people and is to be sedulously avoided.

New Zealanders are fond of children and their attitude towards them is ostentatiously sentimental, even slobbery. There is, however, little of that sickening adulation of dogs which is so repulsive a feature of English life.