Return of the Primitive – a world of ignorance and superstition

An expanded version of Return of the Primitive

Muriel Newman asked whether I could expand my Return of the Primitive to include more explanation about tikanga. She wanted to use the expanded version as a guest commentary for her weekly NZCPR newsletter, The Radicalisation of Local Government. Gratefully adopting Muriel’s title, Return of the Primitive — a world of ignorance and superstition, the expanded article follows introductory remarks.

I have always been hesitant to enter debate about matters spiritual because everyone is entitled to believe what they will no matter how crazy it is. That must change when the crazies start imposing their absurd ideas on others and incorporating them in laws and policies which affect the whole community and its social and economic fabric. No longer can we stand by and ignore departures from reality. Ideas known to be ridiculous must be exposed for what they are.

My expanded article has a quotation from one-time Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes where he refers to “personification of inanimate nature common to savages and children”. That calls to mind Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where he said “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Corinthians 13:11, English version.)

Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are childish fantasies. Primitive societies explained natural phenomena by what we now know to be similar fantasies. Most had a plethora of gods. Many believed that heroes were the offspring of one or more gods. The Greek hero Achilles was believed to be the son of a human father and a sea nymph. Learned professors say that tikanga came out of the land. The Northland Regional Council accepts that rivers are ancestors, perhaps like Achilles’ Sea nymph mother, and that gods and taniwha play a part in water related matters.

When we grew up, we came to know that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy were human inventions created for children’s enjoyment. When we moved into adulthood, we gave up those childish beliefs, but many of us still continued, as parents, to indulge childish pleasure by the myth of Santa putting presents under the Christmas tree and in the Christmas stocking, and the Tooth Fairy substituting sixpence for the extracted tooth (a practice I imagine is in decline with the departure of sixpences and the general reduction of cash).

We live in an age where our knowledge of the universe is continually expanding through the brilliance of individual thinkers and the discoveries made possible through technological advances such as telescopes sent into space and the computers which enable the data the telescopes receive to be analysed and used to support or disprove scientific theories about the nature and origins of distant stars, galaxies and black holes. That is just one example of the marriage of reason and technology to expand human knowledge.

Yet here in New Zealand there are those who would have us abandon rational comprehension in favour of ancient fairy tales.

Santa Clauss and the Tooth Fairy are harmless entertainments. Making law and public policy based on human personality for inanimate things, godly origins and spooks is evidence of serious psychological disorder — if actually believed, and a combination of cynical political calculation, crude coercion through economic and social pressure, and credulous conformity — if not believed.

Our politicians, bureaucrats, academics, judges, lawyers and others who could speak out, cannot continue to propagate, or to stand by and allow others to propagate myths and fantasies as a platform for laws and policies. If they do, they stand condemned: for taking the country back to a primitive state in defiance of the advances in human knowledge, or — if they just stand by — of a lack of political responsibility or even cowardice.

My expanded article now follows.

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 Raine 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.

Raine 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. My apologies to the professor for my inadvertent addition to his name of an s in an earlier version of this article. Professor Raine’s explanation that modern science is not Western science is applicable to the Northland Regional Council’s reference to “Western world views”.

One can go further. World “views,” any “views” are irrelevant to the development of rules to protect the health of freshwater. Views are modes or manners of looking at or regarding something, opinions or judgments coloured by the feelings or biases of holders. Any rational approach to protection of freshwater requires not “views” but strict reliance on evidence-based fact and rational scientific analysis.

In his Introduction to Return of the Primitive, 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 Raine 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 tikanga 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 in Tikanga is not law 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 political institutions nor the rule of law, and may be read alongside Professor Raine’s descriptions concerning the scientific field.

The attempt to infuse tikanga into the law directly parallels the attempts to infuse te ao Māori (the Māori world) and mātauranga Māori (which broadly includes traditions, values, concepts, philosophies, world views and understandings derived from uniquely Māori cultural points of view) into the areas of resource management and into areas of education other than law. As Professor Raine notes, te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori have a place. But to allow them to supplant the knowledge derived from the scientific discoveries which underpin modern society is impermissible.

As I explained in more detail in Tikanga is not law, the Statement of Tikanga itself demonstrates that tikanga relies on the supernatural. It has “spiritual/vitalist/animist” features of the same nature as those the Northland Regional Council has adopted. It says, for example, that “In some traditions, tikanga merged with that already present,” which seems to be partly explained by an earlier paragraph’s indication that “[it] grew from and is very much embedded in our whenua (land).” The way it has been transmitted through the centuries is consonant with its nature. The Statement says:

35. Knowledge of tikanga is passed down through sources such as: wānanga (institutions of learning), whaikōrero (oratory); karanga (call); waiata (songs); mōteatea (traditional chant or lament); whakapapa recitations (genealogy) whakatauākī (proverbial sayings) and pūrākau (stories). It is also learnt through exposure to its practice in everyday life.

36. The foundational notions of tikanga are widely known. However, some tikanga might be tapu (sacred) and kept confined to certain expert people. For example, certain karakia (ritual incantations) would be only used by a small group of experts who have the appropriate training, expertise and standing.

The spiritual/vitalist/animist features are reminiscent of other ancient traditions. In The Common Law, 1881, US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr in discussing the origins of the common law as rooted in vengeance noted how animals and inanimate objects were the target of vengeance with the owner being simply the vehicle for vengeance against the thing. At one point in his discussion, he says:

All this shows very clearly that the liability of the owner was merely a way of getting at the slave or animal which was the immediate cause of offence. In other words, vengeance on the immediate offender was the object of the Greek and early Roman process, not indemnity from the master or owner. The liability of the owner was simply a liability of the offending thing. In the primitive customs of Greece it was enforced by a judicial process expressly directed against the object, animate or inanimate. The Roman Twelve Tables made the owner, instead of the thing itself, the defendant, but did not in any way change the ground of liability, or affect its limit. The change was simply a device to allow the owner to protect his interest. 

But it may be asked how inanimate objects came to be pursued in this way, if the object of the procedure was to gratify the passion of revenge. Learned men have been ready to find a reason in the personification of inanimate nature common to savages and children, and there is much to confirm this view. Without such a personification, anger towards lifeless things would have been transitory, at most. It is noticeable that the commonest example in the most primitive customs and laws is that of a tree which falls upon a man, or from which he falls and is killed. We can conceive with comparative ease how a tree might have been put on the same footing with animals. It certainly was treated like them, and was delivered to the relatives, or chopped to pieces for the gratification of a real or simulated passion.

Holmes , Oliver Wendell. The Common Law (p. 7). Kindle Edition.

In Holmes’ reference to the personification of inanimate nature common to savages and children a parallel can be seen with tikanga’s springing from the land and the Northland Regional Council’s ascription of human personality to rivers and rain.

I return to the point, that there is a place for the study of such matters. It is also perfectly acceptable for anyone to subscribe to tikanga beliefs, to te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori, if they wish.

The problem arises when people in positions of power seek to force the community to conform with the cultural norms of others, or to substitute primitive notions for the scientific rigour which should inform decision-making in a modern society.

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. I cannot comprehend how any rational person could honestly desire that to occur.