Gordon McLauchlan: Life isn't all about me

COMMENT

I guess it has something to do with having been raised in the aftermath of the Depression and the war and in the desperate part of the Cold War when Governments even here (such as Sid Holland's) used the fear of communism to adopt draconian, fascist-style legislation in their own interests.

Yes, it is a long time ago but I guess it was for those reasons my generation in its prime spent a lot of time trying to put the world right, worrying about the underdog.

More often than not we were wrong although certainly not on the big issues of Vietnam and apartheid - but at least we looked outside ourselves on behalf of those we saw as the disadvantaged and oppressed. It was a Kiwi and Aussie thing.

It seemed to peter out after 1981.

I thought about this a week ago when TV3 spent several minutes of prime time news encouraging us to wring our hands about a honeymoon couple who were going on a cruise ship and had been offered single beds. The world was reeling from terrorist obscenities in Russia and Iraq but we had to spare time for these tragic victims of petty inconvenience.

I think of it often when I watch or read tear-jerking stories about people who claim they were "abused" in some way and refuse to get over it, wearing their victimhood like a badge of honour.

I think of it when I read letters to this paper from people who want to pretend to themselves and their children that terrorism and suffering are abstract, so complain vituperatively about the publication of pictures of a severely injured child being carried from the Jakarta bombing.

I think of it when I read Fuse, the magazine for tertiary students, and find it is all about me, me, me and me again. You know, my job and my lifestyle. Nothing at all about service to others.

I think of it when I read that the Manukau City Council and central Government can't protect ordinary people from being ripped off by unscrupulous, predatory developers.

We have moved from an age of looking outwards at the woes of others - no matter how wrong-headedly on occasions - to the age of looking inwards at our own small discomforts.

In a way I understand today's obsession with self. We are probably better off in the all-round sense of the word than 99.9 recurring per cent of all the human beings who ever lived. But why are we this lucky?

Because of those who went before us, the generations of people, Pakeha and Maori, who worked desperately for as many of us as possible to have a fair go, to eschew violence as a political solution for anything.

We don't see ourselves as lucky, though, or as carrying an obligation for others because we are spiritually becalmed.

Vincent O'Sullivan's biography of John Mulgan, Long Journey to the Border, reminds me what a wonderfully proud, outward-looking, courageous generation of Kiwis his was with their indignant defence of, and respect for, the welfare of ordinary people.

One afternoon two years ago I was sitting outside in the warm, orangey, autumn sunlight on the campus of Iowa University, talking to a young Israeli novelist. The night before she and a Palestinian poet had argued for hours about their troubled land.

They were the two most beautiful people among the 37 writers in the group. Of Iranian descent, she could smite you with her big black eyes, flawless fawn skin and cautious smile. He was tall, slender and graceful, with an edgy quickness of movement. At the end of their discussion, they agreed on a kind of mutual despair that in the politics of violence nothing could save them.

As we sat together the next day, we watched dozens of smiling, confident, expensively dressed young men and women students from affluent Midwestern families, changing classes, walking across a campus that could have been designed as a set for a Hollywood musical.

Suddenly she waved her arms and said: "Look at them. Not a real care in the world. Just a few imagined ones. Why should they worry about what's happening in the nasty parts of the world. Why should we blame them for not wanting anything to do with it?"

She was right. And yet she was wrong. In the context of the future, the seeds of disaster lie in complacency and indifference.

So what issues would have aroused us to verbal stoush a generation or two ago? There are plenty.

Ahmed Zaoui springs to mind. Twenty months in jail with no charge made or pending. He has no known direct links to terrorism. If he was inclined to subversion he would have no infrastructure here. Could he build one if he was given bail, had to live where directed, had to report every few days and was under the supervision of the SIS?

Does it matter? Yes, not only for itself but for what it may precede if the authorities gain confidence from our indifference or our fear.

The Pope thinks we have too much fun on Sundays on a tide of "unrestrained sectarianism". It's a point of view he is certainly entitled to make in what he sees as the interests of his 400,000-plus followers in this country.

I wouldn't agree with many of the Pope's views on social behaviour but I admire him enormously for his exemplary courage and durability and his engagement with life in the face of such a terrible illness.

So why do the Rationalists and Humanists want him "to keep out of New Zealand's business"? Because they too have dogma they want to protect - just like any other sect.