The on-going and recent scandals (Judith Collins & Oravida, Maurice Williamson & Donghua Lui, John Key & Dirty Politics....) in New Zealand that have swirled around the neo-liberal National Party government of Key, supported by the discredited political parties of ACT and United Futures, with a combined total of 18000 nation wide, and the Maori Party did not prevent their re-election in the September election. The result is still being analysed and the fall-out worried over by those on the Left of the political spectrum. However, I think that this article in The Guardian best explains why, despite the National Party offering no visible policy direction for New Zealand except for a "steady as she goes...don't rock the boat" campaign which, late in the campaign, held out the possibility of tax cuts in 2017 the electorate cast their Party vote for National.
The description of the personality that dominates the Neo-Liberal society is an exact description of those, like Key, Joyce, Collins, and Bennett, who are now stitching up deals with the "support parties" like ACT and United Futures to consolidate the striping of the State we have seen since 2008.
Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us
An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities
'We are forever
told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever
before, but the freedom to choose outside the success narrative is
limited.' Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
We tend to perceive our identities as stable and largely separate
from outside forces. But over decades of research and therapeutic
practice, I have become convinced that economic change is having a
profound effect not only on our values but also on our personalities.
Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have
taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become
normative. If you’re reading this sceptically, I put this simple
statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain personality
traits and penalises others.
There are certain ideal characteristics needed to make a career
today. The first is articulateness, the aim being to win over as many
people as possible. Contact can be superficial, but since this applies
to most human interaction nowadays, this won’t really be noticed.
It’s important to be able to talk up your own capacities as much as
you can – you know a lot of people, you’ve got plenty of experience
under your belt and you recently completed a major project. Later,
people will find out that this was mostly hot air, but the fact that
they were initially fooled is down to another personality trait: you can
lie convincingly and feel little guilt. That’s why you never take
responsibility for your own behaviour.
On top of all this, you are flexible and impulsive, always on the
lookout for new stimuli and challenges. In practice, this leads to risky
behaviour, but never mind, it won’t be you who has to pick up the
pieces. The source of inspiration for this list? The psychopathy
checklist by Robert Hare, the best-known specialist on psychopathy today.
This description is, of course, a caricature taken to extremes. (Hardly, sounds exactly like those at the head of the NZ National Party.)
Nevertheless, the financial crisis illustrated at a macro-social level
(for example, in the conflicts between eurozone countries) what a
neoliberal meritocracy does to people. Solidarity becomes an expensive
luxury and makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation
always being to extract more profit from the situation than your
competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does emotional
commitment to the enterprise or organisation.
Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature
of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting
their frustration on the weak – in psychology it’s known as displaced
aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance
anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other.
Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a
growing dependence on external, often shifting, norms. This results in
what the sociologist Richard Sennett
has aptly described as the “infantilisation of the workers”. Adults
display childish outbursts of temper and are jealous about trivialities
(“She got a new office chair and I didn’t”), tell white lies, resort to
deceit, delight in the downfall of others and cherish petty feelings of
revenge. This is the consequence of a system that prevents people from
thinking independently and that fails to treat employees as adults.
More important, though, is the serious damage to people’s
self-respect. Self-respect largely depends on the recognition that we
receive from the other, as thinkers from Hegel to Lacan have
shown. Sennett comes to a similar conclusion when he sees the main
question for employees these days as being “Who needs me?” For a growing
group of people, the answer is: no one.
Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just
try hard enough, all the while reinforcing privilege and putting
increasing pressure on its overstretched and exhausted citizens. An
increasing number of people fail, feeling humiliated, guilty and
ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of
our lives than ever before, but the freedom to choose outside the
success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those who fail are deemed to
be losers or scroungers, taking advantage of our social security system.
A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends
on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely
with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom
as possible to achieve this goal. For those who believe in the fairytale
of unrestricted choice, self-government and self-management are the
pre-eminent political messages, especially if they appear to promise
freedom. Along with the idea of the perfectible individual, the freedom
we perceive ourselves as having in the west is the greatest untruth of
this day and age.
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman
neatly summarised the paradox of our era as: “Never have we been so
free. Never have we felt so powerless.” We are indeed freer than before,
in the sense that we can criticise religion, take advantage of the new
laissez-faire attitude to sex and support any political movement we
like. We can do all these things because they no longer have any
significance – freedom of this kind is prompted by indifference. Yet, on
the other hand, our daily lives have become a constant battle against a
bureaucracy that would make Kafka weak at the knees. There are
regulations about everything, from the salt content of bread to urban
poultry-keeping.
Our presumed freedom is tied to one central condition: we must be
successful – that is, “make” something of ourselves. You don’t need to
look far for examples. A highly skilled individual who puts parenting
before their career comes in for criticism. A person with a good job who
turns down a promotion to invest more time in other things is seen as
crazy – unless those other things ensure success. A young woman who
wants to become a primary school teacher is told by her parents that she
should start off by getting a master’s degree in economics – a primary
school teacher, whatever can she be thinking of?
There are constant laments about the so-called loss of norms and
values in our culture. Yet our norms and values make up an integral and
essential part of our identity. So they cannot be lost, only changed.
And that is precisely what has happened: a changed economy reflects
changed ethics and brings about changed identity. The current economic
system is bringing out the worst in us.
This link to Robert Reich on Facebook, WhatsApp and the economy is instructive when we look for solutions to the unemployment created under neo-liberal economic policies and austerity based decisions.
As 2014 dawns we should all recollect that it is an election year and the chance for New Zealanders to exercise their right to vote and to decide the future for their children and for future generations.
As the 2013 local body elections demonstrated the big problem facing the nation is voter apathy ( an issue that is evident in Cameron's Tory governed UK) as voters come to believe that even if they vote against the incumbent the conservatives will get back in.
One only has to scan the headlines of the NZ newspapers to see how this message is reiterated until it has sunk into the subconscious thinking of voters. From opinionista pieces advocating further tax cuts, arguing that there are too many divides in the opposition to be credible governments compared to the over-whelming arrogance of the neo-liberal, asset selling Key led National-Act Government, that asset sales are of great economic benefit to NZ voters, to puff pieces promising greater futures based on the "aspirational" purchasing power of the privileged 1% we are being "stroked" into accepting the belief that since the advent of the Key-English New Zealand has never had it so good and that Key, a creation of the PR company, Crosby-Textor, can walk on water.
However, these opinionista pieces don't always stand up to detailed scrutiny. John Armstrong's call for Key to continue his tax cuts for the wealthy policies is demonstrably irresponsible , the argument that Key is the font of all accurate knowledge of economics, world affairs and ethics and is, therefore, able to walk, with his entire family and security guards in tow, all the way to his home in Hawaii ignores his constantinability to accuratelyrecallmuchof hispast or demonstrate knowledge of his or his cabinet's portfolios and should cause New Zealand voters pause to reflect on consequences of either not voting because "the opinionistas tell me that Key will win so why bother?" or carefully examining the policy directions being offered by Labour, by the Greens, by NZ First and, as a last resort, by the National-Act parties and then heading for the polling booths and voting for a return to responsibleeconomic management, a return to ethical and responsible government and a return to
The NZ voter under a Key led and owned National-Act govt.
government for and by the people which means a NO vote for those who would asset strip the country, introduce failed education policies in order to pander to a soliltary, discredited political party and generally mismanage the economy to such an extent that poverty, food bank queues and inequality have increased along with public debt.
The answer to the intial question posed.
I, for one, agree with the young woman in this photograph for it answers the question posed in the initial photograph of this blog.
