VJMP Reads: David Seymour’s Own Your Future IX

A Liberal Vision for New Zealand in 2017

This reading carries on from here.

The eighth chapter in Own Your Future is ‘Transport’. Again Seymour opens with another Auckland-based anecdote. One wonders if he’s ever been outside of Auckland except for flights to Wellington. His story is about sitting stuck in traffic, not moving, and realising that Auckland had a traffic problem (the focus on stories like this makes it easy to understand why ACT gets so few votes from outside of Auckland).

Auckland’s traffic woes and the effect that congestion has on economic efficiency is discussed at length. Seymour quips that “Auckland gridlock is the same phenomenon as Russians queuing for bread in the Soviet Union.” Again the obsessional Auckland focus seems strange – why devote so much space to a subject that has no relevance to 60% of the New Zealand population?

The Auckland Council needs another $12 billion, Seymour tells us. Light rail is mentioned in the context of Auckland’s pipe dream to be a world-class city, but his first proposal is for the Government to get out of the way of ride-sharing. Keeping with the ACT them of reducing regulation wherever possible, he suggests that Uber drivers shouldn’t have to get licenced as if they were taxis before they begin operating.

Seymour’s best point here is not so much about Auckland transport but about the fact that Baby Boomer Members of Parliament are not qualified or even suited to understand new technology, such as Uber. Most of them get ferried around by a Parliamentary limousine service, and ride-sharing technology is simply something from another world. ACT’s proposal to streamline the approval of ride-sharing applications seems like a good one here.

Hilariously, Seymour complains about a “prejudice against market forces” in New Zealand, as if we weren’t already such die-hard fans of neoliberalism that we raise the refugee quota in the midst of our worst ever housing crisis, one that has working families living in cars. This is written in the context of the Government getting out of the way of people trying to use ride-sharing services.

Another solution to congestion is electronic tolls in areas that are known to be congested. Seymour doesn’t debate the obvious criticism that such tolls are effectively another tax on road users, preferring to use the example of Singapore. It seems very odd that the supposed proponent of small government wants a system where every road user is tracked by GPS and charged a fee for going into a government-designated congestion zone.

True to his neoliberal roots, Seymour completely omits any mention of how the recent flood of immigrants might have led to increased congestion in Auckland. The New Zealand population increased from 4.2 million to 4.8 million during the term of the Fifth National Government, and most of those moved to Auckland, but Seymour will not mention this because mass immigration serves not only the major money interests to which he is beholden but also pumped up the house prices of his Epsom electorate.

*

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

Writing Bulimia Nervosa

Bulimia nervosa (usually known as bulimia) is a psychiatric condition characterised by intense bouts of over-eating, followed by a “purge” of some kind. The condition is about nine times more common in women than in men, and is believed to affect 1% of young women at any given time. This article looks at how to write engaging and believable characters with bulimia.

The classic example of bulimic behaviour is to consume an abnormally large amount of food, and then go to the toilet to vomit it all up. It’s worth noting that simply throwing up a lot, even after eating, is not sufficient for a bulimia diagnosis. The throwing up is not the main factor, as the condition is psychological and not physical.

It’s also worth noting that bulimia is very different to anorexia, despite that both conditions are eating disorders caused by a nervous complaint. Bulimics and anorexics share many symptoms, in particular the obsession with food and body image, but there are major differences. Bulimics are often at or near a healthy weight (despite the unhealthiness of much of their activity), and anorexics do not binge eat as a general rule.

If the protagonist of your story encounters another character with bulimia, it might be a matter of slowly coming to the realisation. The character with bulimia might show signs of having thrown up a lot or recently, such as bloodshot, puffy eyes or burst blood vessels in the face. Other physical tell-tale signs are low energy and evidence of self-harm.

Another character might give away signs that they are falling into a pattern of bulimia. An obsession with dietary rules is a common early sign. A character developing bulimia might also develop a set of strict dietary rules that they expect themselves to abide by. These rules might seem obsessional to a second character, but the bulimic character is unlikely to appreciate this sentiment.

These rules are key to understanding the condition. Because consuming fewer calories than one needs to survive is not sustainable in the long-term, the strict dietary rules will inevitably be broken. This doesn’t come with a sense of relief but a sense of horror and shame – feelings so intense that they have to be purged. In this state, vomiting often brings the desired relief.

If the protagonist of your story has bulimia, they are likely to live a very difficult life with a considerable amount of confusion. Thoughts of suicide are common, a symptom of both the condition itself and the difficult life circumstances caused by the condition. Also common are depressive and obsessive-compulsive thoughts, especially self-recrimination and rituals relating to food.

A protagonist with bulimia will probably experience a great deal of anxiety in their everyday life. This is not just because of the condition itself, with the neverending worry and guilt relating to food and body shape. It is also because of the social anxiety that comes with trying to keep their condition a secret. Your protagonist might find themselves telling lies to keep other characters from realising they are bulimic.

A character who develops bulimia may do so on account of exposure to media images that create an idea about what a human body ought to look like. It’s common for teenage girls – especially those who have never previously thought about their bodies as things that sexually attract men – to develop an obsession with what their bodies ought to look like. Bodily self-hate is an inevitable consequence of this for some people.

Some societies that have not yet been exposed to sophisticated and manipulative Western advertising culture find it a shock when they finally are. Many people have been unaware of the possibility of hating their own body on account of it being the “wrong shape”. Some cultures are naive when it comes to lies and lying, and are more easily affected by them. These cultures can see sudden spikes of bulimia rates when this advertising does come.

Like many other psychiatric conditions, bulimia carries an increased risk of depression, anxiety and self-harm. Thoughts like this form an unpleasant positive feedback loop, where the low self-regard puts a person at risk for bulimia and the bulimia causes low self-regard. A character with the condition may not realise that their thoughts are circular. On the other hand, they might be all too aware, and start losing sanity.

Also like other psychiatric conditions, there is a body of literature that suggests a strong correlation between having bulimia and early childhood abuse, in this case sexual. It’s possible that the trauma of sexual abuse leads to some difficulty in handling thoughts and feelings related to one’s own sexual attractiveness.

Bulimia is, along with anorexia and schizophrenia, one of the psychiatric conditions most likely to end in suicide. It is easily possible that such a fate will await a bulimic character in your story – after all, the average woman can no easier look like a photomodel than the average man can look like Schwarzenegger. However, like most mental illnesses, the majority of people with bulimia find some way to accommodate it in their lives.

*

This article is an excerpt from Writing With The DSM-V (Writing With Psychology Book 5), edited by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

The Case For South Island Independence

There has been some talk recently about a South Island independence movement, and the initial reaction of most has been to assume it is a joke. If one thinks about it rationally, however, it actually makes more sense for the South Island to become independent than for it to remain part of New Zealand. This essay will argue that North Islanders and South Islanders are a closely related, but fundamentally different people, and therefore that South Islanders ought to have the right to govern themselves separately.

There are five major reasons for this.

The first is legal. The mainstream propaganda tells us all that the Treaty of Waitangi was the founding document of the nation, and that this gave the British the right to settle here in exchange for Maoris being given the protection accorded to British citizens. Like most mainstream propaganda, this is a heavily North Island-centric viewpoint which ignores the reality of the situation for South Islanders.

The truth is that British sovereignty over the South Island was never asserted on the basis of the Treaty of Waitangi. Like Stewart Island, the South Island had so few people living on it that the British asserted sovereignty over it by right of discovery. This occurred on the 21st of May 1840, and is an undisputed matter of historical record.

If the Treaty of Waitangi was not why British sovereignty was asserted over the South Island, then it does not apply. Therefore, those of us who live on the South Island are not bound by it, and neither are we bound to the grievance industry (based on the American model) that has sprung up around it. The Treaty of Waitangi applies to the North Island only – legal recognition of this would require that the South Island becomes independent from New Zealand.

The second reason is historical, and relates to the first. The North Island and the South Island have developed in very separate ways since the first European settlement of these islands. The South Island was not really “discovered”, but, thanks to the efforts of Ngati Toa war chief Te Rauparaha, it was close to empty when settlement began. This meant that immigration from Britain was able to proceed without much of the cheating and swindling that characterised land purchase arrangement up North.

As a consequence, relations between Maoris and white people are mostly respectful on the South Island. There is none of the pointless shit-stirring and separatist hysteria that has poisoned race relations up North. On the South Island, white people and Maoris tend to see themselves and each other as equal participants in a collective battle against the elements and against the ennui inherent to life. North Islanders have a different, darker and more antagonistic history.

Furthermore, South Island independence will give us the chance to avoid the recent monumental historical mistakes of Europe and Canada (it is already too late for the North). We don’t want to become Brazilianised like the North Island, which is now little more than a patchwork of racial enclaves and ghettoes, utterly divided and conquered and incapable of self-determination. We want to keep our own historical character, and independence is the best vehicle to achieve this.

The third reason is cultural, and relates to both the first and the second reasons. The culture of the South Island is much more like large parts of Australia than it is like the North Island. After all, the North Island has by far the densest population of any state South-East of Indonesia with the exception of the ACT, whereas the South Island, like all Australian states (again with the exception of the ACT), is sparsely-populated.

South Islanders aren’t city people. The thought of being crammed into tight suburbs like sardines being presented for consumption is alien to us. Even people who live in Christchurch get out of the city and into Nature most weekends. South Islanders look at the North and see “a greasy take away after the soul is gone”; North Islanders look at the South and see a terrifying, chaotic wilderness. Mentally, we are fundamentally different.

More difficult is the fact that neither Maoris or white people have the same culture in the North and the South. Te Rauparaha is a war hero on the North Island; on the South he is a genocidal maniac akin to Hitler, responsible for the extermination of many peaceful tribes around Nelson and Marlborough. North Island Maoris have a grievance culture where the white man is to blame for everything, whereas South Island Maoris just get on with life (and consequently become considerably wealthier, healthier and better educated than their North Island kin).

White culture is also significantly different. The colonists of the South Island are unrepentant; we don’t have ethnomasochists. Maoris are our equals and anyone who tries to split us apart with rhetoric about unsettled grievances can go fuck themselves. There are very few virtue signallers down here. North Islanders will spend all day crowing on FaceBook about how open-minded they are, and then go to parties where only white people are in attendance – we prefer real people.

The fourth reason is practical. The geography of New Zealand is such that it encompasses a wide range of different latitudes – from 34 in the North to 47 in the South. New Zealand is actually a fairly decent-sized country, roughly the same size as Britain, Japan and Germany, all of which have administrative subunits. The South Island is very poorly served by laws made in Wellington to suit Auckland.

For example, houses on the South Island ought to be built with a fair amount of insulation in order to be safe, but North Islanders write the New Zealand building code, and they did so mostly to suit Aucklanders. Moreover, laws that need to encompass a wide variety of people are sometimes necessary in the North and not on the South. People in the South Island have things in common with each other, such as a strong commitment to genuine environmental guardianship, and this cultural homogeneity must allow for a different degree of freedom.

The alcohol laws are another good example. The South Island has a strong and deeply entrenched cannabis culture. In Nelson, the West Coast and large parts of Dunedin and Christchurch, cannabis is more popular than alcohol. This newspaper has called for cannabis cafes on Bridge Street before, and will continue to do so. Many of us down South have moved on from pisshead culture – but the Wellington-based Government, beholden to major alcohol manufacturers based in Auckland, force cannabis prohibition on us anyway.

The fifth reason is purely selfish. The North Island, by itself, looks like a province of Brazil. The racial ghettoisation and segregation is so advanced that cities like Auckland and Wellington are starting to suffer from pronounced white flight. In the North Island, no-one knows their own neighbours, and there is no sense of community or solidarity. The North Island has no soul; it’s just 3.8 million people trying to make quick money by selling ever more expensive houses to each other.

The South Island has an excellent opportunity to jettison the greed-fuelled, no tomorrow thinking of North Islanders before it drags us down with it. Let’s keep our culture, let’s keep our soul. We don’t have to open the immigration floodgates just to prop up house prices and consumption; we can admit that neoliberalism has not delivered. Let the North Islanders have this insane, rape-the-planet ideology and suffer the consequences of it.

Not only would the South Island free ourselves from what is by any honest measure a failed society, but we could profit immensely from the fees that we would charge on electricity and agricultural produce, which the North Island is far from self-sufficient in. We would naturally keep the immigration channels open to North Islanders, especially Maoris and highly-educated people, but the insanity of letting in hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Africans – currently fashionable among North Islanders – would be avoided.

The details would remain to be worked out. Certainly this proposal will meet with some alarm in certain centres up North, especially those whose waste and inefficiency is subsidised by hard, honest work by Southern people. Nevertheless, the conclusion is inescapable: for both selfish and moral reasons, the South Island ought to break away from the North and become its own country.

SOUTH ISLAND PRAYER (for BT)

God
Don’t let me die in Auckland
Rotting in the heat before your
eyes are closed:a greasy take
away after the soul is gone.
Jessus,no

Let me go with the old southerly
buster:river stones in the grey
flecked sky and that white wind to keep your chin up.
Christ, yes.

– Owen Marshall

*

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