Our friend and elder Boyd Wilson writes from home in Aotearoa New Zealand
At Fruitlands, Central Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand, stands the home of my great-grandparents Mary and Cornelius Murphy from the mid-1870s. It’s an isolated rural cottage, and it speaks to me of the enormous post-Covid challenges ahead, and some of the social heritage in our recovery toolbox. Immigrants from Co. Clare and Tipperary, Mary and Cornelius raised eight children here, Cornelius taking whatever work he could find to augment their small-holding yield. Mary served as local midwife. My mother and her mother were both birthed into her hands. Sometimes called the “sod cottage,” the construction seems to have evolved bit by bit using whatever was at hand: sun-dried brick, stone, recycled timber and roofing iron.
Surely I’m not suggesting that this is what mid-21st Century life may typically look like. Of course not!
Yes, many in this blessed little country are already suffering loss of jobs and income resulting from the steps to protect us all from the COVID-19 pandemic, and clearly there’s worse to come in the next few years. Yet I reckon there’s to be opportunity to make it better in key areas. It helps my inherent optimism that our Government acted quickly and decisively when the threat first loomed and that the public, by and large, responded with commendable discipline and common sense even at sacrificial personal cost. Our country’s record of infection, control, deaths, care for the needy and so on is among the world’s best as we move down the Levels toward some semblance of normalcy.
Surely, I hoped, the proliferating rhetoric of “economic recovery” cannot be to either colonial or earlier conditions or to the assumptions seeded in erosion of commons and so on, spread from the West two or more centuries ago, taking more invasive root in the neoliberalism of the last couple of generations? Surely the pause to reflect communally during lockdown must bear fruits of deep, wide justice for all human society and the life on Planet Earth several generations ahead?
So I was dismayed in a recent conversation with bright, critically informed representatives of the two generations younger than mine, to hear them assume that the movement will be inexorably back to individualistic, short-vision, materialism, money being the base reality, driven by greed; the inequality chasm widening further; the health of the planet still treated by the forces of power as distinct from the health of the human species, to be given more priority even if that faith-object “economic GDP growth” is seen to be moving us ever closer to an ecological tipping point.
Yes, my prejudice may as well be bared; I insist stubbornly that everyone, everything, each and the whole, is to be seen in the ultimate economy as of infinite value. I cannot abide dualistic talk of winners/losers, saved/unsaved, deserving/not so. I believe we have vocation, imagination and deep, compassionate wisdom enough to seed grassroots movements toward what may be seen centuries ahead as more sustainable, just, hopeful and happily egalitarian communities. Meanwhile the precursors of widespread vulnerability, adjustments to that frothy mix “The Economy,” are so deep-seated, so long-lasting, that few dare to project them objectively as far into the future as they have taken so long to achieve dominance as much of humankind remains in pandemic crisis or begins to take emergent steps.
I suggest that the long-term issues need to be addressed now, not later, in conversations beginning in and fermenting from local (neighbourhood, rural district) folk who each bring not an agenda but a listening heart. Such a conversation may begin casually between two, growing to no more than say nine individuals, each bringing concern for the future within and beyond the next generation or two, priority for the most vulnerable, questions rather than rehearsed answers.
Diversity – of gender, age, race and ethnicity, faith tradition or none, degree of poverty whether material, of education, of hope – will be vital but with no place for fixed belief in an exclusivist elite. The shape and direction of the local process must not be imposed or mentored “from above.” Nor should it adopt a defined goal. Participants should seek to share deeper understandings of local context – the story of the natural environment, of how the human presence changed through the generations and what it looks like now, of the good news and the bad in the addressing of justice. Actions – small, each perhaps unimpressive alone, even ridiculed – will ensue as the process ferments. Local conversations may connect with others but each should retain its own integrity. Wider resources to be referenced should include excellence in objective journalism (too often, it seems, subsumed by shallow froth and slanted op-ed pieces), the arts, faith narratives without pat institutional dogma, books (Paolo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed was a very long time ago inspiration as I sought the meaning of being community in full context).
All this will be recognized as idealistic. Grassroots reality is always messy. Some local processes will simply peter out. Others may be absorbed into institutions (political, religious) that may seem to at least acquiesce to power sources feeding the underlying, threatening issues. Real life is surely not meant to be tidy! But shared, grassroots passion for deep hope is much more powerful than the powers-that-be can grasp. It’s about gentle subversion, the practice of living generously, vulnerably, in simple dignity in the face of the forces of me-first individualism, dependency on faith that the establishment mysteriously knows best.
I’m far too old to offer a credible prescription even if I had one but will offer a few more (admittedly gratuitous, even trite) principles:
Let’s rebuild foundations of local community where every person, nice or not, rich or poor, is recognized, gifts valued, needs acknowledged. Let’s remember that the Latin roots of the word “community” mean a process not of abstraction but of actual sharing. So local means small. If wider society is to be leavened with hope and justice the process must be from the grassroots up, beginning with partnership, family, closest neighbours. Be sensitive to neighbours who appear to be invisible to, ignored by, the dominant community process.
Let’s acknowledge that the future belongs to the most gifted young generations in all of history.
Let’s know in our bones that a just future requires simpler lifestyles.
Let’s not be miserable; rather, let’s always gratefully celebrate what’s good, beautiful, hopeful, naming the values immeasurable in mere monetary digits.
Let’s balance the wonderful toolbox of digital technology with deep wisdom, a realistic mandate of hope extending at least two generations. We must be informed by science rather than gossip. Yet we must trust in the inherent goodness of people and in true (thus open, searching, deeply centered, earthed) faith.
We inheritors of the game-changing industrial-technological revolution, the taking into elite ownership of what had been common resources and the Enlightenment in Europe, need to listen to the wisdom of more mythic, more grounded, cultures. In Aotearoa New Zealand that obviously begins with Tikanga (the cultural way of) Maori and Pasifika but the listening needs to be global.
Let’s re-think what we mean by money. That doesn’t necessarily mean a lurch away from historic capitalism but away from the “economic growth” mantra of the neoliberalism that fails to value whatever is not measured in, for example, the Gross Domestic Product. Whatever the merits claimed for faith in unfettered, un-earthed, market forces, we must accept that the so-called “trickle-down” effect has resulted in greater inequality not only of material measures but also of hope. Ultimately, this trend can surely end only in disaster for most.
Let’s acknowledge that humankind belongs within the ecology of all life on Earth, but with the special gifts of information, imagination, power and spiritual mandate to care for the whole planet. We must re-learn the deep meaning of land.
In both social justice and ecological healing, priority must be given to the most damaged and marginalized, often the hardest-to-love. (Yes, that may sometimes be via empowering for the greater good people and resources that may not at first be deemed among the poorest of the poor.)
Let’s be patient. Whatever the developments in the last two generations for which we’ve cause to be grateful, the trends now proving non-sustainable are likely to take at least another two generations to correct.
Boyd Wilson is a former agricultural journalist who turned to church ministry in full rural context. He lives in detached, somewhat contemplative retirement in Auckland, New Zealand.
