| How New is Mauri? |
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| Library Archive - Race, Culture, Maori Seats, and the RMA | |
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Ms Hobbs tells us that Maori have known about mauri for a thousand years. We should not be surprised. Virtually every preindustrial society believes that the whole world is occupied by spirits and that these spirits determine what makes the world tick. Tribal leaders remind the hapless victims of floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, disease and other routine events of primitive life that only the priests – and tributes – can protect their people from the playfulness of the gods. Some other member of the pantheon can be blamed if something still goes wrong. Western history describes these beliefs as Pre-Socratic, because philosophers began to move away from these repressive ideas about 2,500 years ago. Socrates paid lip service to the demands of the pantheon of deities of the time while scrutinising all of them. He pondered the idea of the soul. Then Aristotle, who loved to bring order to the world, suggested there was a natural progression from the inanimate rocks, which had no soul, through plants, which probably did, through animals, which might have a glimmering, to humans at the top of the autonomy tree. The debate about the existence of soul, life force, and the human condition, had started and has been a lively one ever since. But by the time Wohler synthesised organic urea from inorganic chemicals in 1828, western civilisation had long abandoned the idea that spirits inhabited all things and should determine how we live and work and play. Wohler’s synthesis broke down the “life force” distinction between organic and inorganic chemicals. However, New Zealand politicians of all hues seem determined to claim another world first by abandoning 2,500 years of systematic thought in favour of primitive superstition. What drives this return to Pre-Socratic animism? Some few Maori on the make may be benefiting from this rebirth of the old time religion – but I don’t believe they drive it. These documents all come from our environmental agencies and are almost certainly authored by Dark Green fundamental animists. They have abandoned Christianity in favour of nature worship. They insist we have no right to log the trees, or mine the minerals; that any resource-use rapes the Earth Mother and is a dark and deadly sin. They don’t want to say such things outright, and risk being sent to the funny farm. So they co-opt the “Maori world view” as a Politically Correct testament to their own religious cause. It took only about 200 years for Christianity to move from being a religion of slaves to being a prerequisite to holding a decent job within the Roman Empire. Things move faster these days, so it may not be long before Green Robed Ones, with bone carvings round their necks, walk among us, determining how and where we live – and die. While some of us paddle about in the shallows, trying to catch the knowledge wave, a tidal wave of green superstition is engulfing us all.
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