Understanding New Zealand 3: Who Voted ACT in 2020?

The ACT Party won a mere 13,075 votes in 2017, barely more than the joke parties. But in 2020 it won 219,031 votes. This 16-fold increase radically changed the composition of the ACT voting demographic.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
European	0.74	0.16
Maori	-0.58	-0.51
Pacific Islander	-0.58	-0.23
Asian	-0.20	0.46

The main reason for the massive increase in ACT support from 2017 to 2020 was wealthy, old white people abandoning the National Party, but not abandoning the right wing. The correlation between being of European descent and voting ACT in 2017 was not significant, at 0.17. By 2020 this correlation had leapt to 0.74, which means that ACT now has the whitest supporters of any registered party, even whiter than New Conservatives.

Maoris were heavily disinclined to vote ACT in 2017 as well as 2020, and in 2020 the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and voting ACT was -0.51. This reflects the extent to which ACT policy disfavours the impoverished. Generally speaking, ACT appeals most to wealthy people who don’t want to be taxed.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
Voting Labour same year	-0.12	-0.62
Voting National same year	0.92	0.61
Voting Greens same year	-0.08	0.17
Voting New Zealand First same year	0.18	-0.34
Voting Maori Party same year	-0.64	-0.42
Voting ALCP same year	-0.48	-0.52
Voting The Opportunities Party same year	0.18	0.03
Voting New Conservative/Conservative same year	0.68	0.04

That these new voters came predominantly from National is apparent when one looks at the strength of the correlation between voting National in 2020 and voting ACT in 2020: 0.92. This is much stronger than in 2017, when it was 0.61, or 2014, when it was 0.40. In 2020, ACT voters and National voters were from extremely similar demographics.

In fact, the correlation between voting ACT in 2020 and voting National in 2020 is so strong that the two voting demographics are close to identical. There were also strong correlations between voting ACT in 2020 and voting for the other parties whose demographics are wealthy, old and white (i.e. enfranchised), such as New Conservative (0.68) and Sustainable NZ (0.54).

Unsurprisingly, then, there were strong negative correlations between voting ACT and voting for the young, poor and brown parties, such as the Maori Party (-0.64) Vision NZ (-0.60) and ALCP (-0.48).

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
Aged 20-24	-0.51	0.18*
Aged 25-29	-0.44	0.18*
Aged 30-34	-0.34	0.36**
Aged 35-39	-0.22	0.36**
Aged 40-44	0.15	0.36**
Aged 45-49	0.58	0.36**
Aged 50-54	0.73	0.17***
Aged 55-59	0.78	0.17***
Aged 60-64	0.79	0.17***
Aged 65-69	0.77	0.11****
Aged 70-74	0.76	0.11****
Aged 75-79	0.74	0.11****
Aged 80-84	0.68	0.11****
Aged 85+	0.63	0.11****

The ACT Party also got much older in 2020. In 2014, the correlation between median age and voting ACT was 0.02. By 2017, it had increased to 0.26. By 2020, it had increased to 0.54 – stronger than the correlation between median age and voting National that year.

Most notably, the correlation between voting ACT in 2017 and being aged 65+ was 0.11, but the correlations between voting ACT in 2020 and belonging to any age bracket above 65 were all at least 0.63. The ACT demographic of today is much, much older than the demographic of even a few years back. Whether this reflects a permanent shift or just a temporary change in sentiments remains to be seen.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
No qualifications	-0.12	-0.73
Level 1 certificate	0.20	-0.59
Level 2 certificate	0.05	-0.50
Level 3 certificate	-0.66	0.25*
Level 4 certificate	0.09	0.25*
Level 5 diploma	0.02	0.50**
Level 6 diploma	0.79	0.50**
Bachelor’s degree	0.03	0.70
Honours degree	0.16	0.58
Master’s degree	0.03	0.65
Doctorate	0.11	0.51

The easy assumption up until now was that the ACT Party appealed to a younger, more educated and more liberal demographic than National. This assumption used to be accurate, but by 2020 it no longer was. The ACT Party got so many votes from core National supporters that the two voting blocs are barely distinguishable when it comes to age, race, education or wealth.

By 2020, the average ACT voter was not significantly more likely than the average person to hold a university degree. This was a massive change from 2017. The correlation between holding a bachelor’s degree and voting ACT collapsed from 2017 (when it was 0.70) to 2020 (when it was 0.03). The correlations for other degrees fell by lesser, but still large, amounts.

In 2017 it was highly unlikely that a person with no NZQA qualifications would vote ACT – the correlation between the two was -0.73. But by 2020 that correlation had come in to -0.12. 2017’s ACT was heavily disproportionately supported by educated people. 2020’s ACT was much closer to broadly representative of the various education levels.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
Living in an urban electorate	-0.23	0.37

One of the main reasons for the increase in ACT support from 2017 to 2020 was their support of firearms rights. Many of the new ACT voters were rural firearms enthusiasts. This is evident from the fact that the correlation between living in an urban electorate and voting ACT switched from a significantly positive correlation in 2017 (0.37) to a borderline significantly negative correlation of -0.23 in 2020.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020
Working in agriculture, forestry or fishing	0.43
Working in mining	0.20
Working in manufacturing	-0.15
Working in electricity, gas, water and waste services	-0.10
Working in construction	0.11
Working in wholesale trade	-0.05
Working in retail trade	0.03
Working in accommodation and food services	-0.08
Working in transport, postal and warehousing	-0.58
Working in information media and telecommunications	-0.21
Working in financial and insurance services	-0.04
Working in rental, hiring and real estate services	0.47
Working in professional, scientific and technical services	0.06
Working in administrative and support services	-0.65
Working in public administration and safety	-0.22
Working in education and training	-0.15
Working in healthcare and social assistance	-0.07
Working in arts and recreation services	0.01

Fitting with the high level of rural support for ACT are the significant positive correlations of 0.39 between voting ACT in 2020 and voting Outdoors NZ Party in 2020, and of 0.43 between voting ACT in 2020 and working in agriculture, forestry or fishing. There were also positive correlations, if not significant ones, between voting ACT in 2020 and working in mining or construction.

The most striking correlation here is the one of -0.65 between voting ACT in 2020 and working in administration and support services. This might surprise many, because ACT voters are so urbanised that one could expect heavy representation in industries that are typically urban, such as any office work.

The explanation is that ACT appeals mostly to those willing to take financial risks and to gamble, and so they tend to choose more entreprenurial industries. The choice of administration and support services is usually made by those who like to play it safe.

It is striking that such a strongly historically urban party as ACT might get more support from rural electorates in 2020 than urban ones. This speaks to the sense of betrayal that the right-leaning firearms community felt about National supporting restrictive firearms legislation. Almost all of these new, rural ACT voters will have been National voters in the previous election.

In several ways, the correlations between belonging to certain demographic categories and voting either ACT or National in 2020 are identical. Voting for either party had a correlation of 0.17 with casting a special vote for Yes in the euthanasia referendum, one of 0.58 with being aged 45-49 years old, one of -0.60 with voting for Vision NZ in 2020, and one of 0.68 with voting for the New Conservative Party in 2020.

Although the two parties have many shared sentiments, they have slight differences in some other ways.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017	Voting National 2020
Median income	0.20	0.61	0.23
Mean income	0.23	n/a	0.24
Median age	0.54	0.26	0.42
Mean age	0.53	n/a	0.39

Measured by income, the average ACT voter in 2020 was about as wealthy as the average National voter in 2020. This was a sharp movement towards the middle for the average ACT voter. In 2017, the correlation between voting ACT and median income was 0.61. By 2020 it had fallen so far that it was no longer significant.

The median age of an ACT voter, by contrast, increased sharply between 2017 and 2020. In 2017 the correlation between median age and voting ACT was barely significant, at 0.26. By 2020 this correlation was much stronger, at 0.54. In fact, this correlation was so strong by 2020 that it was stronger than the one between median age and voting National.

If National is an old person’s party, that’s now even more true of ACT. This marks a striking change from the young professional image that ACT usually projects.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
New Zealand-born	-0.01	-0.56

In stark contrast to earlier years, when it was possible to write of ACT that they had the lowest proportion of New Zealand-born voters of any party, the correlation between voting ACT in 2020 and being New Zealand-born was -0.01. This is because the vast majority of their new voters were elderly and rural, and those demographics tend to be New Zealand-born.

These Kiwis did not come to favour ACT for nationalist reasons, however. Most of their sentiments were driven by anger over the incompetence of both Labour and National, who both supported heavy restrictions on firearms rights in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shooting. In the wake of these restrictions, ACT gained heavily from the perception of being a libertarian party.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting National 2020	Voting ACT 2017
Employed full-time	0.01	0.04	0.22
Employed part-time	0.50	0.27	0.07
Unemployed	-0.84	-0.82	-0.42

One notable difference between National and ACT voters is that the former are less likely to be employed part-time. The correlation between voting National in 2020 and being employed part-time was 0.27 – for voting ACT in 2020 it was 0.50. This speaks to the degree to which the ACT voters of 2020 value community engagement – in stark contrast to earlier years.

This also reflects the fact that ACT voters were much older in 2020 than in 2017, as older people frequently cut down from full-time to part-time work in their 50s and 60s rather than become unemployed or retired. So if a demographic has a strong positive correlation with working part-time, that demographic is probably full of the sort of person who volunteers for the Rotary Club or similar institutions.

However, the essential aspirationism of the average ACT voter is as strong as ever. The correlation between voting ACT in 2020 and being unemployed was -0.84, one of the strongest negative correlations in this study. ACT voters are definitely not the sit-on-the-couch type, even less than National voters are.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting National 2020	Voting ACT 2017
Work as manager	0.81	0.78	0.39
Work as professional	0.00	0.09	0.53
Work as technician or trades worker	0.08	0.05	-0.43
Work as community or personal service worker	-0.46	-0.61	-0.44
Work as clerical or administrative worker	-0.23	-0.01	0.05
Work as sales worker	-0.38	-0.18	0.06
Work as machinery operator or driver	-0.43	-0.43	-0.71
Work as labourer	-0.14	-0.29	-0.60

In 2017, ACT appealed roughly equally to managers and professionals. The correlation between working as either and voting ACT that year was significant but not particularly strong. By 2020, there was no longer any significant correlation between voting ACT and working as a professional. The correlation between voting ACT and working as a manager, on the other hand, become one of the most strongly positive correlations of any ACT supporter: 0.81.

The changes in ACT support from 2017 to 2020 reflect that much of their new support came from the sort of person who would be most interested in firearms rights. Occupations such as technician or trades worker, machinery operator or driver and labourer are typical among the firearms enthusiast community, and the correlations between all three and voting ACT became much less negative between 2017 and 2020.

Congruent with the perception that ACT voters tend to lack empathy, few ACT voters work as community or personal service workers. The correlation between working in this occupation and voting ACT in 2020 was -0.46. Votes from this demographic tend to go to the Labour Party.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting ACT 2017
No religion	0.37	0.07
Buddhism	-0.12	0.55
Christianity not further defined	-0.03	-0.12
Hinduism	-0.36	0.12
Islam	-0.39	0.10
Judaism	0.14	0.71
Maori religions	-0.49	-0.47
Spiritualism and New Age	0.05	-0.22

There was also a religious component to the pattern of ACT votes.

The correlation between having no religion and voting ACT in 2020 (0.37) was notably stronger than the correlation between having no religion and voting National in 2020 (0.16). ACT voters are less likely to be Hindus or Muslims by a similar margin. This speaks to how National has always pandered to Establishment religious sentiments whereas ACT has not.

In 2017, when ACT was a much smaller party, its voters were much more likely to be educated. This explains the strong correlations between voting ACT that year and being a Buddhist (0.55) or being a Jew (0.71), as those are two of the best-educated demographics in the country. By 2020, being a Buddhist or a Jew was much less likely to predict support for ACT.

Realistically, any party that moves from the fringe to significant electoral success will move towards the centre in most demographic measures. This is evident in many ways if one compares ACT voters in 2017 to ACT voters in 2020.

Variable	Voting ACT 2020	Voting National 2020	Voting Greens 2020
Being male	0.07	-0.02	-0.16

The correlations between voting ACT or Green in 2020 and being male are not particularly strong, at 0.07 and -0.16 respectively. But given the sizes of the demographics in question here, the differences are noticable. It’s not enough to say that ACT is for men and the Greens are for women, but future elections could easily entrench this division as the alternative continues to win votes from the Establishment.

In summary, from 2017 to 2020 ACT transformed. In 2017 they were a fringe party for high-income, low-empathy voters. By 2020 they had become a mainstream movement with the potential of challenging National as the de facto leader of the right wing. This was mostly due to a massive influx of old, white, rural voters.

The Four-Fold Rule that ACT appeals mostly to young men, in contrast to National’s appeal to old men and the Greens’ appeal to young women, mostly didn’t apply in 2020. The ACT Party muscled in on some of National’s traditional territory, winning many votes from older people.

The question for 2023 is whether ACT can achieve what parties in the alternative right dream of everywhere: to win enough young men to take power. It’s unlikely that ACT will win many voters from the non-voter demographic, as those tend to be poor and non-aspirational. But if ACT continues to win votes from National, ACT could become the larger of the two, and thereby the official default right-wing party.

This article is an excerpt from the upcoming 3rd Edition of Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan and published by VJM Publishing. Understanding New Zealand is the comprehensive guide to the demographics and voting patterns of the New Zealand people.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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What Is Meditation?

In the most basic sense, meditation could be said to be attending to what is actually happening for you here and now. There are many methods, techniques, schools and goals. The one thing I would like to emphasise is that meditating ‘for’ something is completely different to meditation in its proper sense. The main question is: what do you want out of it? This question, when answered honestly, should reveal important information about where your experience with meditation will lead.

There are many potential outcomes associated with meditation practice. It could be oriented toward health, longevity, stress-reduction, or it could be to experience blissful or altered states. It is important to note that when we are really interested in paying attention to what is, i.e. Truth, there is no outcome or goal associated with it. If you do want to meditate for some of the reasons specified above, there is really no problem with that, have away at it. All I want to make clear is that meditation is not a prescription for an outcome of how we or anyone else thinks things should be.

Over the past twenty years or so there has been a global shift toward mindfulness, which is really a kind of prescribed meditation practice. It holds onto limitation, and in fact issues from limitation – which isn’t to say that it is wrong, only that it is limited. It is encouraged by big business and educational institutions among others and touted as a way to boost inner health and overall productivity.

The reason it must be anchored in limitation is that groups with special interests such as maintaining productivity and satisfaction levels have an agenda.

Mindfulness has indeed been shown in the literature to have measurable benefits upon human well-being. A corporation or institution can achieve much by way of letting out the leash, however it simply cannot afford to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Progressive religions are also generally comfortable with mindfulness, just so long as it doesn’t push you over into questioning the main tenets of their ideology, in which case the leash is very firmly brought back in.

Corporations are happy to implement measures of mindfulness in the same capacity as they promote regular hand-washing, loud-shirt Wednesdays and sneezing into your elbow. Mindfulness is a prescribed form of limited meditative awareness that promotes mental and physical well-being. It makes for a more well-behaved, cohesive team environment, and staff are less apt to flip out and require stress leave.

Please recognise that you are not being blessed with the keys to the kingdom in this scenario.

At the end of the day, the ultimate interest is minimising loss and maximising profit. If you are the CEO of a multinational corporation, your investors and share-holders aren’t going to be terribly sympathetic to you waking up one morning having discovered that you are unconditionally connected with the source of all life and that your deepest being is as timeless, immortal spirit that feels no need to define itself through achieving material goals.

Meditation by contrast does not have a capped limit placed upon it. In fact, if there is any goal or outcome attached to it, you can say it isn’t really meditation in the true sense.

About twenty or so years ago, a group of Buddhist monks were visiting New Zealand. They visited a cathedral and remarked that it was a very holy place. They noted that there was a small chapel off to the side which was clearly labelled ‘Meditation Room’. Naturally, they asked if they could be permitted to use the room for – you guessed it – meditation.

The clergy responded kindly that no, they may not use the room because they didn’t think the kind of meditation that they were planning to do in the chapel would be appropriately Christian in nature. From that point on, the name ‘Meditation Room’ was abruptly changed to the name ‘Contemplation Room’, underscoring with wonderful irony the requirement of established authorities and institutions to maintain limitation, and therefore control.

This story perfectly encapsulates the issue surrounding meditation being held as something in abeyance to something else; some other hierarchy of values. True meditation cannot be this, because there can’t be a fixed itinerary on where you are being taken, otherwise it is not really meditation, it is something else.

So, the question arises, should we meditate? I find people struggle with this question, because it really can’t be prescribed. I personally don’t meditate, but that is because it would be redundant for me to set aside time to engage in awareness when I am committed to that every waking moment. The more interesting question would be, are you curious as to the fact that in spite of all the odds, you just happen to exist? Are you curious that perhaps one of the least possible things in the universe is directly observable within you and as you? If not, there isn’t much reason to advise someone to meditate. You may as well be asking them to join you in going to a movie they have no interest in seeing.

I’m not saying that having no interest in meditation is necessarily a terrible thing. It is admittedly a mystery to me why someone would not have their interest piqued by something that seems so profoundly fascinating as the existence of a universal force which is eternally self-aware, but there are reasons for everything. A simple life with no questions may be just as precious or pleasant to participate in as one filled with inquiry or reflection.

I can’t see why the lives of trees and plants shouldn’t be a perfectly valid form of existence, it’s just that the realm of the vegetable doesn’t share any overlap with my current interests and lifestyle.

As humans, the orientation of the intellect and the judging, perceiving mind is such a powerful and often heavy burden to bear. Meditation can certainly be said to provide perspective on the realm of the mind without turning itself inside out and trying ever unsuccessfully to come at itself from a non-intellectual angle. When minds engage in self-examination and analysis, all kinds of twists, ties, and knots are possible.

That is often what the majority of neurosis is, simply thought wrapping around itself again and again until there is an unbroken knot that results in an anxiety loop.

Meditation offers the promise of space and relief from this kind of insanity. Rather than reformulating new solutions within the structure of the known, it opens the doorway to the possibility of reviewing all of our mental content from a broader phenomenological space in which the contents of our inner lives seem relatively small by comparison.

Whilst meditation can provide the space for the entire spectrum of states possible within the human mind, it needs to be understood that so long as your notion of meditation is fixed upon seeking to experience certain states, it will ultimately fail, even if you get very good at it. This isn’t to do with me being pessimistic about your abilities, but concerns a feature of reality itself, specifically the law of impermanence.

No state lasts forever, so at some point or another it needs to be faced that what we are doing in meditation is not ultimately about attaining states or even insights. These will all come and go. Ultimately, meditation in its purest form is coming into a real relationship with what is true and changeless, that within which all states come to pass, including all those states associated with birth and death.

This is why meditation draws your attention to what is happening directly here and now, because 99% of people will miss the significance of it every time. It really does no justice to truth for me to attempt to describe that which you may come into if you persist – I may as well be trying to describe a sunset in binary code.

I once took it on a heuristic basis that there was more to the world than what was immediately tangible and visible. My curiosity could not be swayed.

A man in the foothills of the Himalayas once said that the best thing that ever happened to him was to have his legs shattered by an avalanche forcing him to live in poverty and solitude, because this allowed him to come into contact with who he truly was. I couldn’t let go of the impetus to understand what inner force could prove that important to a human life. The possibility captivated my attention that something could be so important that it could even be worth losing everything familiar in order to touch upon. Having now looked into this matter satisfactorily, I now hold this to be self-evidently true.

Rather than ask you to believe it, I invite you to consider the possibility that maybe there is as yet undiscovered depths to you that defy description. Awareness is the doorway to understanding the depths of your true nature, and meditation is the opportunity to embrace the awareness of that which is always here, right now.

Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles from 2021 from Amazon as a Kindle ebook or paperback. Compilations of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Reclamation

The current opportunity we find ourselves faced with is the chance to
reclaim that which is true from amidst the vast wasteland of that which
has hitherto been claimed as true in falsehood. All of it – all the
rubbish and the refuse of centuries that has weighed us down. If not now,
when? Is there really going to be some better time, or a better
opportunity somewhere down the line to reclaim who we truly are
from amongst the ashes?

You might sense that there is a kind of timer within you. Perhaps you
sense that you are nearing the end of a great cycle that can no longer
be sustained. Or, you may simply feel saturated with the mental and
emotional litter of the world and know intuitively that this dimension
in its present perceived state has taken you about as far as it can
take anyone.

No one is winning any ideological wars, and even those
who seemed to have were either usurped or soon may be. Where does it end?
Are you still awaiting an external conclusion that would end this charade?
Maybe the timer is already going off for you, and the very real sense
that there must be something meaningful beyond all of this cyclical,
fleeting and ultimately dissatisfactory realm is making itself known
to you at very visceral level. The arising of inner questions such as
‘what is the point?’ Or ‘where is all of this leading to?’ are such
markers of reaching a phase in which you signal your readiness for
change to the universe.

This change is reclamation.

It is far less important to apply some kind of conceptual overlay or
philosophical modelling to your existence than it is to broach some
very serious inner questions.

So why has everything we have tried, personally and collectively,
yielded such unimpressive results? How can it be that our human
endeavours have put men on the moon and robotic rovers on far distant
planets, but we haven’t solved simple problems of basic human suffering?
Why do we still drive ourselves and each other to death and madness
in the name of a quick buck, or a belief system? How is it that instead
of having a clear understanding of who we are, we reinvent all of
these absurd modalities of self-identification over and over again?

Me, the one who adheres to this political system. Me, the one who
has been shaped by my circumstances into a victor (or a victim). Me,
the one who got it all right, me, the one who got it all wrong. Me,
the one who has just the right answers at the right time. Me, the one
who has mastered the ability to reason with myself and others. Have
you entertained the possibility that this is all just a story, mere
narrative pressed into the service of self-torture or as an exercise
of egoic masturbation? The conquests, the victories, the shortcomings,
the failures.

What if the reason your world looks like trash is
because you thought white was black and black was white?

Do the people who love you give you something you don’t have? Do the
people who dislike you threaten to take something from you that is real?
Are you caught in ‘your’ story? If the story belongs to someone,
who is this one to whom the story belongs? Are you a character in your
own personal movie, novel or fairy tale?

These questions are all very worth your time, particularly if you don’t
have any clarity around what is real. The test for whether you don’t
have a clear understanding of what is real is already known to you – it
is whether you are still actively searching for something. Really, anything. Material, spiritual, intellectual – it makes no difference. It is the religion of ‘the next big thing’, that which is always coming, but never arrives.

This is goal-driven, seeking behaviour, even if you never go outside of yourself (introverted ‘spiritual’ types are some of the most notorious and imperturbable seekers). If you are, that implies forward momentum into the world, an attempt to manipulate it toward your own ends. The whole project of ego has been an expeditionary foray into the false, with the hope of bringing back something that so glitters that it will make us gods.

Alright, so what has been tried before? What hasn’t?

What has been tried before is: everything under the Sun. Don’t you think
if there was some miraculous solution that would save us one person in
history would have somehow found it and made it work? Remember those
people who were so certain they had the answer that they gave every atom
of their entire life in service to it, and it even changed whole countries,
political systems, saved some people killed others? Even that level
of extreme devotion must meet death, because it is up against the
universe itself.

So what exactly is it that hasn’t been tried that would
terminate our restless seeking? Is the answer to that collective or
personal? Both? We also know that simply giving up in frustrated cynicism
isn’t the solution either, because how often has that been tried to no
effect?

People don’t see just how simple and straightforward it is to let go of
all of this. People fail to see how such a simple factor as their agreement
could command such a range of effects. Stories within stories of
victimhood and blame, resentment, judgment. These are all chains we
happily wear while we pace around our cages. We are so eagerly invested
in this crap that we even volunteer to check that what is keeping us
caged and chained is in good working order. The locks are well oiled,
the bars are secure so that no one will be making it in or out. We make
for very well-behaved and cooperative animals in a very bad zoo.
Even the rebels and dissidents are all a welcome part of this infernal
machine, because every role contributes something by way of rendering
the meaning of a collective narrative, from the saints and sages to
the corporate elite.

If it was all doom and gloom, we likely would have come out of the
collective illusion by now. The difficulty is that we have found ourselves
in a set of conditions in which our restraints and limitations are the known
and familiar, and as uncomfortable and restrictive as they may sometimes
be, they provide us with a miserable sense of comfort, security and
reassurance. In other words, the comforts of the known offer protection
against the presumed horrors of the unknown.

Being fitted with collar and chain, being broken is the perennial solution the world offers against that which is claimed to be evil in advance of any serious inquiry.

Let’s go back to what hasn’t been tried before. The thing that hasn’t
been tried before is the thing you probably haven’t ever even thought
about attempting. Stopping. Seeing what is actually here contrasted
with what the world has offered you as temptation to keep up a mindless
forward momentum. Have you tried stopping for one real moment? Does
your body know what it feels like to do anything other than run toward
the next day, the next moment, the next imaginary milestone? You’ve
actually been so afraid of even looking at it that you built an
entire human lifetime, including the complex structures of a human
personality to avoid facing it.

Don’t settle for being comfortable in the familiar. It isn’t what you think
it is! Don’t settle for being reassured, for having security. Remember this
is what has been tried before, this is the old reliable that keeps
spouting more and more crap year after year. The world has offered
you a phoney promise of comfort to secure your tacit agreement to not
look, to not go snooping behind the curtain. Comfortable is
self-reinforcing. This is the same phenomenological expression in effect as
nepotism or cronyism – keeping the devil you know in power to
guarantee more of the same.

In a very real sense, to discover that which is new to you means to
effectively guarantee that you will be shaken, disturbed – maybe even
wiped out.

If you are utterly fed up with the bullshit of this world, and you
will know it, you will arrive at a sense of determination which,
if you touch upon it, will provide you with the tenacity and wherewithal
to push beyond the known limitations of comfort and security in each
new moment. You will know what that entails when you need to know,
because you will be fed from the source of that from which all truth
springs.

Dissatisfaction with the false feeds hunger for the truth. At some point,
more variegated or refined falsity will cease to appease you. How
many times can you be lied to before you are willing to question where
your allegiance should lie? How much bullshit (from yourself or others)
would you be willing to put up with in order to defend your tenuous stake
in the ground?

The name of this game is reclamation. Reclaiming the truth of who you
are from the tentacles of the false world in which it has so long been
wilfully trapped. What is at stake is your inner transformation, the
thing that has been waiting to happen for time immemorial.

What happens when the small things that used to bother you don’t do so
anymore? That notion may even provoke a fear response in you. But then
what about the big things? You might not even know who you are anymore,
or who you thought you could be. Your entire perceived world could
change, even turn inside out. That could actually be the psychological
end of your world as you know it. Does that sound frightening? Who or
what is it that is frightened? Is it you (as in the real you) or ‘you’
from the perspective of the configuration in which the way things were?

Could you concede that in the face of reality? Would you be prepared to
give up everything you thought you knew, including all of your arguments
and conclusions, weak or strong, in order to clear the table for truth?
The entirety of the known in your life up to now may be a casualty in the
process. Would that be so utterly terrible? How would you really, finally
know unless you let it happen? And I don’t mean as some single unchanging
conclusion, but as a life ongoing lived at the very edge of mystery?

Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.

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Why Are Gang Members Platformed While VJM Publishing Is Cancelled?

Those who follow the NZ media scene may have noticed something unexpected: gang members getting platformed while VJM Publishing gets deplatformed. Why would murderers and rapists be given a voice in the mainstream media, while a non-criminal speaker of multiple languages with a postgraduate science degree is denied one? This essay explains.

Most consumers of media assume that the purpose of the mainstream media is to inform the masses. This is incorrect. This belief is naive, almost childish. The reality is that the purpose of the mainstream media is to shape public opinion. To that end, they platform people who help shape the desired narratives and they deplatform people who don’t.

Whose desired narratives? As explained in Clown World Chronicles, the current rulers of the world are known as globohomo, an alliance of international banking and finance interests (on the right) and globalist Commies and cultural Marxists (on the left). The globohomo alliance (a.k.a. the Globohomo Gayplex) wants the same thing as every other tyrannical, authoritarian ruler throughout history: submission.

This explains why gang members, like the Black Power boss pictured above, are platformed in the mainstream media.

As anyone familiar with gang members will know, they almost always prey on vulnerable people. This means the poor, the sick, the elderly or the young. Very seldom do they inconvenience middle-class people and never would they touch a member of the ruling class.

As such, gang members aren’t a threat to the people who own the mainstream media. To the contrary. Gang members spread fear and terror in the communities who would otherwise be most likely to come together to oppose Establishment oppression – the working classes and the disadvantaged. Those very same revolutionary elements that threaten tyrants everywhere are weakened by the presence of criminals.

As Ted Kaczynski said, “[the system] needs people who are docile and obedient and don’t make trouble.” The most effective way to create such a populace is fear. Gangs spread fear more effectively than almost anything, and that fear leads to paralysis in the face of authority. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it has to be accepted that gangs are a weapon of the Establishment, and they ultimately do the bidding of the Establishment.

VJM Publishing, by contrast, fights for the vulnerable. Our pages are full of essays and articles that champion the worker, the freethinker and the spiritual sacrament user. We openly state the very last thing things that the Establishment wants to be known: that consciousness survives the death of the physical body and that there’s nothing, fundamentally, to be afraid of.

This makes us an actual threat. The spiritual truths about the nature of reality are the most liberating things of all. Anyone who is truly aware of the immortality of the soul also understands that nothing that the Establishment can threaten us with in this life is truly terrible. Anyone who knows this can laugh off the fear-mongering propaganda that the mainstream media vomits out to keep us submissive.

The fact that we can back up our assertions with facts and evidence makes us a major threat. In fact, VJM Publishing articles are far more likely to reference actual scientific literature than any of the mainstream media. This is because VJM, having earned a postgraduate degree in psychology, actually understands the science, unlike the mainstream media presstitutes who just parrot whatever powerful people say.

Any intelligent and objective person would be more inclined to believe something VJM Publishing wrote than to believe something in the mainstream media. So the very presence of an outfit like VJM Publishing costs the Establishment millions of dollars per year through neutralising their propaganda.

As Josef Goebbels understood, even one single voice counter-signalling mainstream propaganda is enough to make people start asking questions. That’s why authoritarians all throughout history have made sure to control the narrative.

This is why TradeMe was hounded by far-left extremists into refusing to sell Clown World Chronicles on the grounds that it’s racist (while continuing to sell Mein Kampf). Clown World Chronicles is the most accurate criticism of the Western political Establishment ever written by a New Zealander, and that simply could not be permitted by that Establishment and their Antifa lackies.

In summary, gang members are platformed because they spread fear, mistrust, suspicion, hysteria and division, all of which serve the interests of those who own the mainstream media platforms. VJM Publishing’s message of good news, by contrast, directly opposes those interests. As such, we must remain underground while murderers and rapists are given centre stage.

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles from 2021 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). Compilations of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2020, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019, the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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