Intense Reflection

Now, after many years of intense reflection upon the proper course of civilisations. I have arrived at the conclusion that, far from having too many sheep. New Zealand has as yet not enough to achieve the full nobility of its purpose. New Zealand is going through a steady process of conversion from a society wracked by the conventional torments of dissidence, individual ambitions, self-seeking goals of talent, higher education and the like, to a society where none of these things will be relevant because none of them will happen. The true New Zealander is only now being bred—he exists in large, docile numbers already, but there are still volatile elements to be eradicated or bred out of the strain.

I would like you to consider what I know of the real New Zealand, the wonderland that lies beyond the tourist trail. When I arrived I was witness to the beginnings of a noble experiment. I saw an infant nation of peoples striving to achieve the impossible—to grow not up, but down, to venture not out, but back in. The womb of New Zealand, some romantics say, is Mother England, but how wrong, how wrong. Mother England. I tell you, is merely a mammary substitute, which will be made do until New Zealanders have perfected a social technology that will allow them to create their own self-lactating, life-sustaining embryo cocoon, a magnificent chrysalis all wool and a mile wide. Into this they will eventually crawl triumphant, thus becoming in fact not merely the chicken before the egg but a chicken that actually arrived, like Topsy, looked around, liked little it say, built itself an egg and somehow contrived to get into it. Upon realisation of this ambition. New Zealand will have given anti-birth, or birth in reverse, to a feat eclipsing the Resurrection. It will be, moreover, the ultimate resurrection. It's a pity that New Zealanders, upon its conclusion, will not be around to hear the world's applause or note its astonishment.

I myself am consumed with nothing more than wholly committed admiration for this enterprise, this utter determination to withdraw. New Zealand has reason to be proud—I ask you to believe it is deliberately embarked on the greatest of evolutions, not a manifestation but a lambifestation, the finest and most incredible exploit, a transformation—and the greatest social experiment in the planet's history since Britain supplied arms to Nigeria.

It is an experiment that seeks to capitalise on the national characteristic of natural sheepishness, and transform the Kiwi into a more fundamental beast whose uniqueness will be his very proliferation. Consider, which creature is held in the highest regard? The lamb of God. Next best, and soon to be even better, is the lamb of God's Own Country. It is the lamb. I suggest, that typifies the quiet New Zealander above all else—the lamb, which has become a short of sacrificial, philosophic proxy for the human actuality. It is at once the New Zealander's religion and symbol, his goal and his soul. When its fleece is shorn, does New Zealand not glory? When none will buy it, do they not despair? When its throat is cut and its entrails made into chippolata sausage skins for the Irish market, do they not rejoice? When its Sunday joint fails to sell in the United Stales, are they not grieved? And when the Japanese object to mutton chops because of a stench similar to the New Zealand, in gangster parlance herds' morning drenching of the pasture, does New Zealand not bridle?

subtly converted to the national idiom, is on the lamb. New Zealanders are also of it, in it, all around it and, economists say, still coming home on its back.

So it is natural the country should emulate it. The credo of sheepishness, the authentic quality of the sheep, is now being Instilled in the people by all instruments of Government, mass organisation, news media and the advertising agencies. New Zealanders are directed, above all, to be the same and want the same as each of their fellows, which is to say they wish for complete anonymity undisturbed by extraneous influences, such as opposition to the Vietnam war and questioning of Mr Muldoon's suitability to play shepherd. A herd instinct, a clever substitute for nationalism, is truly developing. They learn to be suspicious of that which is different, which is to say they wish to be safely nondescript unidentifiable and therefore virtually unassailable. They willingly, in fact, draw a blank. If there can be said to be many shades and hues of thought in the world, New Zealand sets a new example by lusting after one that is not even on the spectrum, the very whiteness of non-existence. They deify this non-shade in the Land of the Long While Shroud. They are directed by commercial television to hunger for non-attributes. They want, be it ever so splendid, to resemble as nearly as possible the pelts of their thicknest, purest Canterbury lambs—all white and palely shimmering.