The Scandinavians call it Jantelagen, Nietzsche called it slave morality, we call it the Tall Poppy Syndrome, but it all amounts to the same thing – a horizontalisation of social attitude that bitterly refuses to give credit where it’s due; a sneering, snivelling resentment that seeks to rip down anyone who distinguishes themselves for any reason.
Unlike us, the Scandinavians and the Continental Europeans are sophisticated enough to appreciate that this is a phenomenon of their culture and are able to consciously work against it. So too do the British recognise that their tolerance of eccentricity has enabled them to produce the geniuses necessary to remain a world power.
The gormless peasants that make up the bulk of the New Zealand populace are yet to comprehend such a thing, however, and so the lawnmower mows on.
So neglected are we down here in the world’s arsehole, so starved of genuine regard from those of other nations that we have gone blind in the darkness and turned on each other.
We should be ashamed for our Tall Poppy Syndrome. It really makes us look like a nation of cucks.
After all, it’s a classic expression of slave morality. Tall Poppy logic is even more resentful than Christianity.
Resentful Christians tell themselves that “the meek shall inherit the Earth” to make themselves feel better about how easily their massively egotistical selves can be made to feel fear and consequently how easily they can be intimidated away from conflict.
The modern Kiwi tells himself something very similar. His byword is “the mediocre shall inherit the Earth.”
In this environment, the worst insult of all is to be a “try-hard”. This is to commit the sin of putting an effort into something, as opposed to the socially approved method of doing a half-arsed job that soon has to be fixed.
The logic appears to be that if anyone did anything properly, then overall standards would soon rise and soon people would be demanding that we did everything properly. And that’s just a hassle.
Therefore it’s better to half-arse everything so that no-one has to feel bad for being incompetent.
This is how we arrived at the Orange Man animation that the television shows us to try and entice us into giving our consent to be ruled by the political class.
Whichever creative agency that invented the Orange Abortion no doubt would have paid due caution to ensuring that the image intended to represent the New Zealand voter didn’t exclude anyone.
Because if it did, they would have resented the shit out of it. We know this because that’s our culture.
Therefore, the New Zealand voter ends up being represented by an amorphous orange blob – one that stirs precisely zero national sentiment in the viewer.
This feeble absence of passion is the inevitable result of a national morality based on resentment. Nobody gets to have anything interesting or do anything interesting.
We have created a culture so boring that our young people would rather cheat death by smoking random chemicals sprayed on dried plant matter purchased from known criminal gangs than partake in society.
A nation so petty that the Government pissing $400,000,000 up the wall every year on the War on Cannabis goes without censure, but a future Green MP defrauding the same Government out of a few hundred dollars to feed a dependent child twenty years ago sparks a national outrage.
It’s time for a radical revaluation of values in New Zealand.
Indeed!!
“A nation so petty that the Government pissing $400,000,000 up the wall every year on the War on Cannabis goes without censure, but a future Green MP defrauding the same Government out of a few hundred dollars to feed a dependent child twenty years ago sparks a national outrage.”
This article NAILS IT and reminds me so much of school, where I figured I had better stopped excelling so much so I could try fit in and not (trigger other peoples deep and sometimes ethnocentric resentment/hurt peoples’ derm feelings) make everyone else look like such a jack-ass. Such a short article, but so accurate. Like fuckin poetry, man, the meaning springs out at me. I clearly remember seeing successful students in my classes (mostly guys) do the same as me, saw the doubt in their eyes as they chose half-arse over full-potential in fear of alienation, cautious not to insult the unsuccessful with their success. We seemed almost guilty and ashamed of our success.
It sounds so stupid, but at the time it was so real and now I see it with beggars and hood-rat thieves even; they don’t want to get better, they only want to blame everyone else, “blame the immigrants, blame the Pakeha, blame the rich/successful’ or ‘the system'”, so they can suffer in their self-perpetuating failure, high on self-hate, daring not to even try get back up on their feet again, as that would be to sin against their religion of resentment and would cause them to loose their ‘friends’ approval/acceptance (youre one of us, a poor and pitiful under-dog) I know cos I’ve been caught in this abysmal mind-game before and seen it play out in bullies, muggers, thieves and the-worst-kind-of-homeless/beggar/street-rat (the ones not shown on tv, ie, sweet families with cute kids, sleeping in cars and in churches) These types I talk of are criminal losers, lazy selfish drug-addicts who want to watch the world burn and who deserve to be where they are. If a bird doesn’t hunt for food, it will starve. simple as that.
My feelings toward them are indescribably mixed, the old and weak ones are more tolerable only because they’re unable to be a credible threat, but in their eyes and bullshit is the same hatred/resentment toward anyone doing better than them, who they wish to scab off to buy ciggies and booze and spout rubbish like “they dont care about us, bro” ofc they don’t care about us, who the fuck are we to the passer-by? you don’t even care for yourself and you expect the public to wipe your ass for you?
As for the Tall-poppy Syndrome: To see kids do it is sad, to see adults do it is just infuriating. Its so pathetic, past the point of pity, when people hate and disrespect themselves so much that it compels you to also hate and disrespect them. Last year, street-performing on K Rd, I was about to knock this drunk meat-head who was harassing me with my banjolin/patu (small heavy small guitar thing) but thank god I realized that this dude was so far in a bottomless-pit that he was dragging me down with him. I had to breathe and tell myself that putting him out of his misery wasn’t worth getting arrested or worse.
and fuck that orange-blob guy