
To what degree has or does New Zealand change? Not in the superficial things, but more so in national character, attitudes, and the way we engage with present-day issues.
One of the conclusions American historian and Fulbright scholar Robin M. Winks came to in his anthropologically driven analysis of New Zealand in 1952 was that the New Zealander lacks initiative, and that meant New Zealand faced both a critical housing shortage and a power shortage, “both of which could have been avoided by foresight.” We are, he concluded “a land of beauty without vision” and “where there is no vision the people perish.”
Winks set out his impressions of New Zealand, gathered during a year of anthropological and historical research on the Hau-Hau and Ringatu movements, in These New Zealanders (1954). It’s a book I argue is worth a read, especially as New Zealand tends to exist in a cycle of ongoing presentism, unsure of much of its past – or what happened or didn’t happen; and especially, unaware of how others viewed us. Reading it, I am struck by just how much his observations and comments made in 1952 hold true today – which in turn raises the question, are we in a doom-loop of repetition of national and cultural failings? And if so, what could we do?
His starting point is that, more than most, the New Zealander does not like to be criticised. That is, in answer to questions about the country, we demand the “yes” of endorsement while bristling at the “but…” of critique. Winks emphasises that a nation is people, and the people are both New Zealand’s strength – and weakness.
Our cities are all individually distinctive yet also old in appearance, which is a polite way of saying often rundown and lacking care. This means in 1952 Hamilton is described as “the modern city in New Zealand in appearance” – so perhaps some things have changed! The cities are full of small shops, slow pedestrians, old buildings and poorly lit streets. New Zealand cities “go to sleep at 11.00pm at the latest” and our shops “begin their slumbers at 5.30” – because the customer must fit the requirements of the store or service provider. So, while we might have pleasant service, it is slow, limited – and poor.
New Zealand “lacks good roads, good hotels, good petrol stations, good motels, good travel guides and good road maps”, while our trains are slow and uncomfortable. You also can’t make a spontaneous trip in New Zealand, everything must be planned and booked in advance, while our roads are poor, too narrow, with too many bottlenecks and with signposting only useful for the local, while our cars both old and expensive. Our homes, then as too often now, lack central heating which means they are much colder than would be expected “even though the temperatures are not low”; while our student hostels in our universities “present an unrelieved aspect of drabness”, being “one of the most appalling aspects of New Zealand university life.”
The New Zealander is shorter and thinner than the American (which may still hold – as we are now just behind the USA in OECD obesity rankings) seemingly not having eaten enough over the past ten years and stunted in growth by too much smoking. We also have very bad teeth, due to our diet. We are badly dressed and poorly shod (with shoes that need a clean), conservative in dress – yet our clothes are expensive, with the New Zealand male in particular giving “little attention to how he dresses, the cut or neatness of his clothes, their cleanliness or press”. Males also tend to regard personal grooming and cleanliness as effeminate. Is it, Winks wonders, sloppiness or a lack of vanity? New Zealand women are unsophisticated dressers, and young women have bad haircuts and poorly kept hair while looking like they slept in their dress last night; a legacy, Winks suggests, of having to wear horrible school uniforms that repress individuality and self-pride. However, New Zealand adult women do come to take care of their appearance in a way the New Zealand adult male does not.
The one dramatic and very positive change from the 1950s would seem to be that while then New Zealand food “often seems uneatable” we have now approached a situation where (when we can afford it) New Zealand food is of a much-improved standard and variety to the 1950s fare of mutton and cabbage, unseasoned food, tasteless vegetables and dismal excuses for a salad.
Winks makes some important observations on our drinking – and its causes and outcomes – that would seem to hold for 2024 as well. If in America “drinking is a social art”, in New Zealand it should be considered “either sport or work”. We have a large number of drunks in public, in a culture not knowing how to drink either beer or wine.
Perhaps his most telling comment identifies a crucial element of New Zealand society that still holds true today:
“New Zealanders tend to drink to down themselves, not for that last little pleasure before the evening is past. To the psychologist, the high drinking rate is a reflection on the same tendency the high suicide rate shows – that the New Zealander is wrapped up in himself, turned inward, an introvert who exerts aggression against himself rather than aggression against others.”
Another central critique addresses our education system. Winks states that to the American mind “something drastic happens to New Zealand youth between the completion of their high school education and the commencement of their university education”? Why? Because while our schools are “far superior to American high schools” and in education of our children New Zealand is “a progressive, efficient nation” – somehow “New Zealand university colleges produce inferior products.” One reason suggested is that while university education is expected in America to get a good job, it is not here. So, if Americans aim “to get the most efficient performance out of mind and body” in university education and work, New Zealanders do not. The result is a distinct gap in productivity: “Americans, when seen at work or study, seem to be working no harder than New Zealanders… yet they get twice as much done”. This is the result on of our inability and unwillingness to focus both body and mind on the task with the right attitude. Is this, we could ask in 2024, the root cause of our long-standing and noted issues with national productivity?
This gap between high-school and university means “high school brilliance” too often turns into “university mediocrity” – across the population.
Once at university, the New Zealand student specializes far too early, which means our students – and graduates – tend to be focused on one thing but ignorant of most things; we may be efficient in a technical sense but are also “an absolute bore”. In short, we lack education “on other phases of the society” in which we live. The focus on specialization results in our lack of diverse knowledge and information. Therefore New Zealand students are fact gatherers, but not interested in ideas; preferring “the encyclopaedic” style of knowledge more than the abstract type which “requires some degree of thought”. The result is that our students demand, and are given, facts – which are “a skeleton without meat”. This isn’t helped by the noted shortness of both our academic year and academic day, with little study undertaken in the evening.
The result is that “the average New Zealander is a better educated person than the average American, while the American who is university trained is a far better educated man [sic] than the New Zealander with a university education.” We could ask, has anything changed?
In the early 1950s, New Zealanders both read and knew a lot more of their local history [that is, about New Zealand] than Americans did about America. However, our newspapers are poor, failing to report enough news, becoming “a hindrance rather than a help to finding the truth”, due in part to the great cautiousness of our reporting, coupled with our lack of international news – or interest in it.
Winks does admire much about New Zealand and he ended his year here married to a New Zealander, while later endowing Fulbright New Zealand with The Robin W. and Avril Flockton Winks Award, which still runs today.
But I’d argue, it’s instructive for us today to hear what he considers problematic and consider how much of that still holds true. For as he notes, while he might love the nation and people of New Zealand, he can’t respect us. Why?
“…I cannot respect the New Zealander for his desire to be ‘protected’ from cradle to grave, for his sloppy and inefficient work, for his pseudo-intellectuality in his universities, for his slobbering and sickening drinking habits, for his preoccupation with himself, the races and insular New Zealand. I do not accept his concept of permanent property and temporary life, his fundamentalist approach to moral problems, or his constant awareness of the ache in his back. I do not respect him for his inability to accept criticism when he asked for it, for his constant demand to have his ego built up by visitors from other lands. I do not respect him when he says that if the foreigner does not like the country he can go back to where he came from. I dislike his provincialism, narrow-mindedness, self-pity and self-praise, and his certainty – even though he’s never tested it– that he lives in the finest country on earth and that life couldn’t be better. I dislike his inability to recognize the facts around him; that he does have a minor race problem; that there is poverty in his nation – the poverty of a lack of spiritual roots. And I cannot admire him for his hypocrisy – his courtesy when he does not feel courteous, his criticism of the products of other lands and his use of the same products, his promises to do something that never gets done. I admire him greatly for his economic honesty, but I sometimes question his mental honesty – whom is he trying to fool, to reassure with his band-beating and hire-tooting”?”
Given this, how was the book received? It’s worth noting it did go into a second printing in 1955.
The Press (January 15, 1955) stated that it “will provoke some of us, particularly those who are not prone to self-criticism, to fury; but those (who we may hope are a majority) who read the book dispassionately will find it on the whole a temperate, searching analysis of the country, its institutions, and its people.” While it also observed of his statement of what he can’t respect, that “Though these are harsh and unflattering words, they are at least the words of a candid friend. It should do New Zealanders no harm and, indeed, much good to see themselves through the eyes of intelligent and observant others, and then, perhaps, embark on a rigorous course of self-analysis, from which all might benefit.”
So, our question 72 years on, is how much of this critique applies today – and if so, why? Are these issues observed such that they are too deeply embedded in our national culture and character to change? To my mind, many of these critiques apply equally to 2024, to greater or lesser degree and it is unclear what, if anything can be done to change them. Because for this occur we would have to want to change who we are and how we are – and that requires a degree of self-reflection, honesty and self-assessment we tend to shy away from.