Return of the primitive

Reversion to a world of ignorance and superstition.

An affected Northland farmer has sent me Te Panonitanga o te Mahere Wai Māori Hukihuki: Kōrerotia mai o whakaaro The draft Freshwater Plan Change: Have your say, issued by the Northland Regional Council. This “draft blueprint for improving freshwater” tells its readers on page 6 that

Te Hurihanga Wai (the water cycle) describes how through whakapapa Māori view freshwater “…as a living being that derives from ngā atua.” 1 The concept that freshwater should be treated as a living being with rights to be healthy and to flourish, and to be respected as an ancestor, underlies tāngata whenua perspectives of water.

The draft Freshwater Plan Change weaves together te ao Māori and western world views so the wellbeing of Te Hurihanga Wai is prioritised, respected and protected. This is fundamental to giving effect to Te Mana me to Mauri o te Wai.

And, on the next page, that “Te Hurihanga Wai The water cycle is an expression of love between the heavens and earth, and each stage is a critical component. The Atua who control these elements are in charge of condensation, evaporation, collection and precipitation.” Atua, according to Williams, Dictionary of the Māori Language, seventh edition, is “God, Demon, supernatural being, ghost.”

By these words and others, the regional council is indicating that its draft freshwater plan has been informed by ideas that freshwater is a living being deriving from the gods, that it should be respected as an ancestor, and that the plan weaves together those views and “western world views” so that the well-being of the water cycle is prioritised, respected and protected.

The results of the consultation were published on or about 27 May 2024: Te Panonitanga o te Mahere Wai Māori Hukihuki The draft Freshwater Plan Change: Consultation Summary Report. Its executive summary includes:

There was strong support for the provisions in the DFWPC relating to the spiritual and genealogical aspects of freshwater, recognising the Māori world view where waterbodies are ancestors, home to taonga species and taniwha [fabulous monster supposed to reside in deep water], with familial connections and water is a living being not a resource. Most expressed a desire to continue discussing how the concept of legal personhood for all freshwater could work and supported greater recognition of the rights of water to be healthy.

These absurdities are multiplied throughout today’s New Zealand. I cannot say “modern” New Zealand because we see here a reversion to the prehistoric. The absurdities bring to mind the title of a collection of Ayn Rand and Peter Schwartz essays (1971 and 1998): Return of the Primitive: the Anti-Industrial Revolution.

Writing about the approach to learning and development that integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Professor John Raines wrote about New Zealand’s early primitives when he said:

As regards STEM subjects, when European colonists arrived in the late 18^th and into the 19th century, Māori scientific/technical knowledge was approximately at the stage of other developing societies at or pre-3,000 BC, acknowledging that the spiritual/vitalist/animist parts of matauranga Māori would have been differentiated from those of other societies by the names for, and qualities ascribed to, flora, fauna and inanimate objects, and also to gods such as Ranginui/sky father. This was a society without the wheel, and without mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, but which had extensive phenomenological understandings of food sources, that fire cooks and can cause burns, that clean water is necessary for life, that some plants have medicinal properties, weather patterns, and navigation by the sun and stars, etc. Such knowledge is of very considerable interest from a historical point of view, clearly desirable to preserve for cultural reasons, but of current relevance to STEM courses only if it complements modern science in a functional way, as unpalatable as that is to those who would include it.

STEM rests heavily on knowledge discovered during the liberal enlightenment from the 17^th century up to today, and modern science (not “Western” science, as many non-Western societies Asia, the Middle and the far East contributed, for example) went through similar earlier processes of knowledge development through observation of nature and phenomenological discovery, as did matauranga Māori. It then developed through new discovery to the present day.

Raines is an Emeritus Professor of Engineering and has formerly held positions as Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at AUT, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Albany and International) at Massey University, and Pro Vice Chancellor (Enterprise and International) at University of Canterbury. He has had a long-term involvement in NZ’s innovation system and chaired the Government’s Powering Innovation Review in 2011.

In his Introduction to Return of the Primitive (1998), Peter Schwartz noted that:

Primitive, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means: “Of or belonging to the first age, period or stage; pertaining to early times…” With respect to human development, primitivism is a pre-rational stage. It is a stage in which man lives in fearful awe of a universe he cannot understand. The primitive man does not grasp the law of causality. He does not comprehend the fact that the world is governed by natural laws and that nature can be ruled by any man who discovers those laws. To a primitive, there is only a mysterious supernatural. Sunshine, darkness, rainfall, drought, the clap of thunder, the hooting of a spotted owl—all are inexplicable, portentous, and sacrosanct to him. To this non-conceptual mentality, man is metaphysically subordinate to nature, which is never to be commanded, only meekly obeyed.

This is the world that the Northland Regional Council would return us to. It is the world that Professor Raines sees the University of Auckland returning us to. It is the world that countless councils, other governmental bodies, some political parties and others would return us to.

It is the world to which some of our judges and the New Zealand Council of Legal Education would have us return, when they pretend that tikanga Māori is a legal system. Anyone who reads the description of what it is can see that tikanga’s underpinnings are part of the pre-rational stage of man’s development when it was not known that the world is governed by natural laws.

The description of tikanga, explaining its supernatural dimensions, was seemingly adopted by three out of five Supreme Court Justices when a Statement of Tikanga was appended to the Court’s decision allowing Peter Ellis’ appeal to the Supreme Court against his conviction to continue notwithstanding his death prior to the commencement of the appeal. I have explained here that their claim that tikanga is “first law” cannot be sustained because tikanga is not “law.” That explanation contains a passage from a work by Francis Fukuyama, explaining the development of political institutions and the rule of law from the pre-existing tribal societies which had neither and may be read alongside Professor Raines’ descriptions concerning the scientific field.

It has taken centuries for humanity to struggle and claw its way out of a swamp of ignorance and superstition to gain an understanding of the world, of the universe in which we live, and to use that understanding to create better lives for all. Yet, there are those who act as if they wish humanity to reverse course and return to a world of ignorance and superstition, to travel along a pathway to ignorance as I have heard it described. I cannot comprehend how any rational person could honestly desire that to occur.