Territory not to be Treaded Lightly
February 12, 2023
By NZB3
It’s bad enough that our society just at the moment is full of censorship. Rather than an Open Society where all ideas are welcome for consideration and the best win out and are adopted we frequently find conversations constricted to set points of view. It becomes Politically Incorrect or even “violent” to think or to be self-expressed in a way that doesn’t fit the established Group Think. Clearly people with the best ideas would never resort to doing this so it’s a confession of inferiority.
Recent examples include the Broadcasting Standards Authority, Rotorua Lakes Council, and even the Aotearoa New Zealand Archaeology Facebook page.
The BSA was getting so many complaints about the new Aotearoa New Zealand language/culture being inflicted on viewers/listeners up to March 2021 that it shut down this entire category of complaint. The broadcasting complaints system will go on but the Authority have made a political decision about who may or may not access its powers. It has politically disenfranchised a set of Kiwis whose culture and values it disagrees with. Ref. BSA signals end to te reo Māori complaints, RNZ (2021)
More recently, Rotorua’s government have decreed that only citizens who are not “offensive” are allowed to have a voice in their submission process. Again, representatives with strong values and boundaries and ideas of their own could face up to weaker ideas and defeat them. They wouldn’t need to ostracise members of their community from their democratic rights to have a say in the way their community is run. Willingness to use institutions to solve what are people problems is what weak people do. It’s also really bad for any community just as it is for broadcasting standards because it replaces consensus-seeking and peaceful cooperation with an In-Group and and Out-Group. Rather than strength through unity and the exploration of rich ideas from everybody our discourse becomes an incestuous and politically determined echo chamber. Mayor Tania Tapsell, at best, does not understand the hell she is inviting. Ref. Rotorua mayor Tania Tapsell pushes back on submissions saga amid a legal threat, NZ Herald (Feb 2023)
As I said, it’s bad enough that our society just at the moment is full of censorship like this. Worse yet is the subspecies: Self-Censorship. This is where somebody with all the brains and capacity to think and have ideas of their own shrinks himself down of his own free volition. He doesn’t want to upset people. He suspects certain ideas are going to upset the group so he cuts himself off so others will not have to do it to him. This is a particularly nasty kind of self-harm, a trauma response. A man, who should stand up for what he believes in and present the facts and speak the truth has become a frighted little rabbit by his own hand. Maybe that’s why Ash Franklyn of Aotearoa Archaeology picked this image (above, left) for his profile picture?
I needn’t say much about how history and archaeology are two disciplines that will suffer by being reduced to an echo chamber. Who knows how many exciting and interesting ideas, old and new, are banned from professional and social media groups because they don’t fit the political values of the administrators? How many participants never get to join or are kicked out for wrong think by the Tania Tapsells of Broadcasting Standards, History, Archaeology, and everywhere else this narrowing has occurred? Having blown away everyone with differing views the Council or Authority or Admin will then have the gall to say “Well, we haven’t received any complaints!”
Recently, on the Aotearoa New Zealand Archaeology page, an article was shared about cave drawings “1000 years old” of which some featured moas. I wanted to point out that the Ngai Tahu tribe that was claiming control over these made no sense since that tribe wasn’t even in the area 1000 years ago. When I pointed out that moas belonged not to Maori culture but to Moa Hunter Culture my comment was deleted by an administrator.
Next, even more recently, Ash Franklyn posted to the group a story about Maori hakari which were temporary constructions intended to show off to a gathering the power chief/s had to provide hospitality. While others wondered at how Maori traditional carpentry skills could achieve this I pointed out that in 1844 Maoris had access to Victorian carpentry and English carpenters. This is the sort of fact that it’s not OK to mention. It is a prohibited idea and poor Ash became most unsettled. The conversation has since been struck from the record and it’s a wonder I haven’t been ejected from the group.
I think the matching New Zealand History page, since re-branded Aotearoa New Zealand History, kicked me off for making exactly the same remark some months ago. What this means, for example, is the steralisation of ideas. New people, including young people, will rightly suspect that there are no other views or ideas than the ones presented unless they suspect that the forum has selected an unconscious policy of deleting people and thoughts that do not match its political narrative. Several Government history groups have also deleted users and their ideas in the same way.
The lost conversation about the Maori construction goes like this..
NZB3: Victorian engineering. This was the 1840s. The likes of these were used to protest Article 2 of the Treaty and have it struck from the law books.
Ash Franklyn Group expert: That’s an interesting observation!
Just a suggestion, tread carefully on how you go about addressing that topic. The mere hint that group A were incapable of developing a construction technique until group B arrived is territory not to be treaded lightly!
NZB3: To tread carefully on the eggshells of others is to self-censor. History and archaeology is served best by people who are free to be self-expressed not by people locked into a Group Think echo chamber. Let there be a contest of ideas and merit decide. It’s only bad people with bad ideas who shut others out; It’s a confession of weakness. Why would you do their job for them?
Ash Franklyn Group expert: The archeology page is for archeology. Not for anarchist manifestos. I suggest you take anything other than an archeological discussion elsewhere. So far you have presented nothing archeological to compare or consider alongside your statements.
NZB3: You spontaneously offered ethical advice about the merits of walking on egg shells.
I just played the ball where it landed. Happy to.
Ash Franklyn Group expert: It didn’t land in a scientific realm, it landed in the marginal sociological realm. If you have a reasonable discussion that crosses the boundaries try and have at it… until then, you have not. Enjoy your day.
ENDS
Ash started out with well-meaning moral advice: Come into line with the Group Think. This is Territory not to be Treaded Lightly. When I offered my own thoughts about conduct though he quickly condemned me for talking about conduct at all! Especially Anarchist conduct! (Must have done some homework at that point.) He also tried to taboo the discussion he had started by saying it wasn’t an archeological discussion even though he had, hours earlier, started a new post up about a C20th war memorial…
Prior to Ash’s last comment I posted a screen shot of my earlier comment about Moa Hunter Culture being deleted on the grounds that it was “psudo-archeological nonsense, ie. pre-Maori theories..” So, I guess it was this he was responding to in saying “it didn’t land in a scientific realm.”
Yet, the fact is, that Moa Hunter Culture was the mainstream idea only decades ago in every book and museum in the country. The redacting and revisionism of this point of view has apparently become so strong that it cannot even be mentioned now! And, despite Ash’s assurance that a “reasonable discussion” is permitted it turned out that the entire above thread was quickly obliterated. Nothing may be spoken on these matters.
Given the chance, I would have shared this recent photo (right) from the start of the Heaphy Track. Under the heading ‘Moa Hunters Camp’ there is a paragraph about Canterbury archaeologists in 1961 discovering sites of Moa Hunter Culture. It’s a little odd to find a contemporary sign like this in the 2020s in the field or in a museum although it was commonplace up to a generation ago. I guess it’s hard to re-produce an old sign that is proud of the archaeological significance of the area without saying why! The current sign does slip in the words “Maori occupation” but that is the only concession to revisionism.
“A tanged cylindrical point of moa bone was found this month by an archaeological expedition during excavation at the Heaphy river,…The present find is firmly associated with a Moahunter level, and is the first example we have of a formalised head,” Dr. Duff said. The expedition also uncovered four argillite adzes from the Moa-hunter level,..” – Press, (1962,) Papers Past
‘The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.’
We owe so much to the historians and archaeologists of the past and pay them back badly to erase them and their work from history. Can’t even mention their ideas by name now without being obliterated. It would be fine by me if people like Ash are so sure of themselves that they would rebut the ideas of men like Doctor Duff. Instead, they strangle dissenting views before they can even be developed.
It’s the same all over and New Zealand is at risk of nose-diving into a fascist group-think right-think thought ghetto if we don’t pull up very soon. They think dissenting views are a problem yet all the ideas we hold as true today started out life as dissenting views. The greatest teachers tend to have their ideas adopted only after they have been executed and their deaths safely confirmed by the opponents who then cannonise them and take up those ideas as their own.
What can anyone with dissenting views do who wants to participate? An archaeologist or an historian has a cruel choice. Take Ash’s advice and rabbit-out by remaining silent and conformist and you can ‘participate’ to a point and read the news and the views current in the field. Or, you can be self-expressed about your own views and be banned from the platform with everything you’ve ever read or said or written struck from the record.
Thankfully there is Anarkiwi Platform where all ideas are welcome and conversations like the one above can be preserved.
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Note: As I published this post I checked and found that Ash as well as the Aotearoa New Zealand Archaeologist page have blocked my account completely
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