Tapu Misa: How we vote depends on how we see the world

A friend of mine, a retired Pakeha gentleman in his 60s, wants me to do my bit to keep another Pakeha gentleman in his 60s out of government. My friend is under the illusion that I can influence people with this column. (I wish.) It's not personal. It's just that he thinks Don Brash's appeal to greed and racism is bad for New Zealand.

I gave up on the dark art of persuasion some time ago. Apart from the fact that I'm not very good at it - I can't get some of my own family to agree with me - it has become clear to me that you can't convince people of anything until they're ready to believe it, no matter how rational your argument. As American wit Dorothy Parker once famously told some horticultural society: you can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.

And when it comes to elections, it's hearts, not minds, that win the day. Most people, no matter how much campaign material they try to digest, base their decisions on emotions and broad strokes. This makes sense. Who else, apart from annoying girly swots like Helen Clark, can remember the policy details of every party? Certainly not Don, who, despite his much-vaunted intellect, struggles to remember the details of his own party's policies.

This election is not about anything as boring as the economy, stupid, because if it were, Labour would be getting a pat for unemployment at record lows and economic management that has remained steady if a little too conservative for those of us who want to see more help for the poorest families and more spending on public schools.

It's about emotions - who we like and don't like - and broad strokes. Tax cuts, driven by a middle class that feels disadvantaged by so-called Maori privilege; and morality, driven by religious conservatives who believe the country is rushing into moral decay.

And the fact that this is more perception than reality makes it particularly hard to counter. How we vote this weekend will have more to do with our particular view of the world than anything else. And that's far too complex an arrangement to mess with.

I'm reminded of this every time I get feedback on a column. Last week's tax column, for example, drew applause at one end and a fervent wish at the other that I BURN IN HELL. (Dear jyou057, of Auckland: Get help.)

Of course, it makes sense that our view of the world is determined by our position in life. This is why George W. Bush's mother Barbara will never understand why some people were appalled when she said that New Orleans' poor, who were "underprivileged anyway", were better off after Hurricane Katrina than before. Rich people tend not to see the world in the same way as do poor people.

Culture, too, determines our interpretation of the world. There's fascinating new evidence of this from researchers at the University of Michigan, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which shows Asians literally see the world differently from their Western counterparts.

When American students are shown the same photograph as students from China, they pay more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while the Chinese students spend more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene.

Researcher Richard Nisbett told the Associated Press the differences in perception were cultural. "Asians live in a more socially complicated world than we do. They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop; they can't afford it."

Those of us, who belong to a minority rather than the mainstream that National's campaign is pitched at, understand implicitly what it means to have a different world view. But we're not surprised Don and Gerry and co don't get it.

Then again, I don't get the morality argument advanced by the likes of the Exclusive Brethren, either. Like a lot of Christians, fundamentalists and otherwise, they believe that the Godless, anti-family Labour is doing the devil's work, driving the country into a morally bankrupt abyss with its legislative nod to civil unions and prostitution.

I'm not sure why they think National will be any more morally upright and God-fearing, or why they're so sure that Jesus, a champion of social justice, wouldn't regard poverty and injustice as more immoral than gay marriage.

We all have our blind spots.

As for my aforementioned friend, he's convinced Don's blind spot on Maori issues poses the greatest danger for this country. He doesn't care about Don's fudging over the Brethren's brochures. For him Don wandered furthest from the truth when he told New Zealanders in Orewa last year and again a few weeks ago, in carefully coded language, that Maori have it too sweet; that they are unfairly privileged.

Anyone with any knowledge of history and Maori (clearly not Don) knows that's nonsense. How can New Zealanders resent this imaginary Maori privilege when, for example, Treaty settlements for iwi like Ngai Tahu and Tainui amount to less than 10c in the dollar for what the Crown stole?

Labour's answer has been to fire a few shots and then back off, hoping the battle swirls over to some more favourable territory.

Not especially effective. But however confused and uncertain it's been, at least it hasn't been building on a policy of racial prejudice. It's not hard to understand why many Maori Party supporters are disappointed about Labour's less-than-heroic stance on Maori issues over the past six years.

It will be surprising if they don't see a Labour-Greens alliance as the only government combo to be on a wavelength with the new Maori Party MPs.