Jim Hopkins writes that our memories go into cliche mode when politicians mention the digging of large holes.
When Gerry Brownlee suggested it would be good to "have a conversation", it's fair to assume he was hoping there would be some genuine dialogue - a good-natured, level-headed, calm, collected, sane and sensible chat.
It's also fair to assume he was hoping most of us, having weighed up his
mineral options, would gleefully burst into approving song, perhaps employing the melody of that old standard, The Battle Hymn of the Republic ...
Mine ayes hath seen the glory
Of the coming of the pit
We don't want a lot here, Gerry
But we'll tolerate a bit ... etc, etc.
Alas, Mr Brownlee, it was never going to happen. We were never going to have a conversation.
That's not how these things work. Being reasonable gets you nowhere. In the stampede for headlines, the sane and sensible are trampled underfoot while those who behave like naughty children on a plane - howling and wailing and screaming and shrieking - go straight to the top of the bulletin.
As they have. No sooner had Mr B said the magic word than the shouting started. And the howling and the wailing and the ranting and the raving - and quite a lot of "slamming" too.
Ahhhh, what a wonderful word "slam" is; beefs up a headline something fierce, don't y'know. Critics slam proposal; Magazine slams plans; Mayor slams door; Brownlee slams slammers.
He can't, of course. Gerry can't "slam" anyone. He wants a "conversation" so he must always be measured.
Happily, for those amongst us with a taste for bloodsports, no such obligation applies to those who won't have a (gold) bar of mining.
They can get stuck in, openly casting aspersions on anyone who happens to disagree with them. And many old campaigners now are. But this time, alongside the usual consortium of bearded Waihopians threatening to chain themselves to an endangered snail should extraction seem imminent, there are some other more unlikely advocates of pristinity, including the Mayor of Auckland City and the Member for Auckland Central.
Both Banksy and Nikki have joined the Nimby camp, although they may prefer it were spelt "Nimbi" - Not in my Barrier Island. Or should that be Nombi - Not on my Barrier Island?
Either way, Nimbi or Nombi, they don't dig it, and have lined up alongside those who insist that digging's fine for those dodgy diggers over the ditch but we are made of ferner stuff. Nature is our frond.
We'd rather be poor and pristine
We'd rather be clean and green
For poverty is noble
But mining is obscene
Let all Earth's riches stay undug
Preserve the snail and weta
And fingers crossed, with treasure spurned
We'll just hope things get better.
Thanks to the extinguished poet laureate, Sir Jam Hipkins (honour pending) for a contribution which, arguably, goes to the heart of the matter.
Crudely paraphrased, the nub of Mr Brownlee's argument is: how poor do we want to be? And if we don't want to be as poor as we are, or even poorer, as it would appears we soon will be, what are we willing to do about it?
In theory, we should be able to have a reasonable natter about that matter. Sadly, the way our brains work makes it unlikely that will occur.
It turns out that we're always looking forward through a rear-vision mirror. Researchers at Auckland University have been looking into all this brain activity stuff and what they've found is that the bit of our grey matter that lights up when we're asked to imagine what may happen next is the same part in which all our memories are stored.
So the future is always retrospective - or, more precisely, our view of it is always retrospective. Ask someone what will happen if they fall in love again and old wounds throb anew.
Suggest a conversation about managed mining and recalled devastations trip up our optimism. In matters both public and private, yesterday's disillusions become tomorrow's expectations.
There's been much retrospective forecasting this week. Pictures of vast, open-cast mines, belching machines scarring the earth and pristine wildernesses that may be mined mingle with our other mining memories to create what is, almost certainly, a false picture of what may happen next.
Modern mining is better than our imagining of it. Or it can be if we insist.
It is possible to consider costs and benefits with some confidence that wilderness destruction isn't an inevitable consequence. Blimey, we've got 82 mines on conservation land now. Perhaps we could handle a few more - if we knew how they'd look and work.
Nimbi's easy. Better to imagine the kind of mining we would tolerate in order to raise living standards - assuming we'd tolerate any kind of mining - and then insist it should be that and nothing more.
Would Banksy and Nikki care to start that conversation?
