Since Hume, academic philosophers in the West have known how problematic induction is. There is no proof for it. Just because the last fire you touched was hot, and the fire before that, and every other fire you ever touched, was hot, it does not follow that the next fire you touch will be hot. Of course we can't live like that in the real, philosophically naive world. We would get helluva burned up for a start. But Hume successfully turned logic on its head and it's been that way ever since.
Since the Christchurch earthquake, i have felt less trustful of induction even at its most ingenuous. Just because i drove down that street yesterday, it does not follow that i can drive down it again today. Today, it may be blocked off because aftershocks have caused fissures in the road. It can take several attempts to get anywhere.
Here in New Zealand we have benefited from an incredibly stable and safe social and physical environment. We expect today to be the same as yesterday (although we hope we may be a little richer and a little thinner). The uncertainty of the earthquake and its aftermath, where some people still have no water and raw sewage arupts into people's houses, has shocked us.
If we lived almost anywehre else it the world we would perhaps be more flexible. Perhaps if i lived in Mexico it would be fairly ordinary to avoid a street one day because a new drug lord had taken it over. In parts of Vietnam, houses flood every year and everyone decamps to their top storeys for a few weeks until it is over.
Now it is our turn to trim sails and adapt and do life differently for a while.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The state of the police
Or the police state, given the number of them working in Christchurch since the earthquake. This has led to some interesting findings, as houses fall down and there are just so may police around. Somebody set up a P lab in an abandoned house - full marks for entrepreneurialism. One poor woman in her 50's tried to keep her cannabis plants alive with no water or power and was so relieved when the Police finally removed them.
Then there is the state of the police station. The building has always been on a bit of a lean, and i'm sure the lifts move sideways. Now they don't move at all. The top 4 floors of the 13 storey building are unusable due to earthquake damage.
The cells at the best of times are best described as a cross between an abbatoir and a submarine. A maze of concrete cells, the worstone being the 'tank' which is a concrete box with a drain. They put the prisoner in the recovery position with his/her face towards the drain, which then accommodates vomit/blood, shit etc and there is minimal cleaning afterwards. The cells always smell of vomit, blood, shit etc, and alcohol, and disinfectant and rotting rats. Rats appear in the cells at night, leading to people screaming and flinging themselves against the bars. Sometimes even the prisoners become alarmed.
Post earthquake, the cells, which are underground, have cracks in the walls and shake badly in the aftershocks. Several times a day they are plunged into darkness. There is a nasty ka-joonk noise, and all the watch house computers die, and by darkness i mean primal chaos type of darkness. Like, Darkness. That leads to people screaming and flinging themselves against the bars. Sometimes even the prisoners become alarmed.
Actually, what am i saying. Down in the cells people scream and fling themselves and rattle bars and hurl abuse all the time.
Another earthquake story. The girls of my daughter's high school are taught earthquake drill and how to get under their desks. Being plump Kiwi girls, most of them can't get under the desk, and crawl around the floor like snails.
Then there is the state of the police station. The building has always been on a bit of a lean, and i'm sure the lifts move sideways. Now they don't move at all. The top 4 floors of the 13 storey building are unusable due to earthquake damage.
The cells at the best of times are best described as a cross between an abbatoir and a submarine. A maze of concrete cells, the worstone being the 'tank' which is a concrete box with a drain. They put the prisoner in the recovery position with his/her face towards the drain, which then accommodates vomit/blood, shit etc and there is minimal cleaning afterwards. The cells always smell of vomit, blood, shit etc, and alcohol, and disinfectant and rotting rats. Rats appear in the cells at night, leading to people screaming and flinging themselves against the bars. Sometimes even the prisoners become alarmed.
Post earthquake, the cells, which are underground, have cracks in the walls and shake badly in the aftershocks. Several times a day they are plunged into darkness. There is a nasty ka-joonk noise, and all the watch house computers die, and by darkness i mean primal chaos type of darkness. Like, Darkness. That leads to people screaming and flinging themselves against the bars. Sometimes even the prisoners become alarmed.
Actually, what am i saying. Down in the cells people scream and fling themselves and rattle bars and hurl abuse all the time.
Another earthquake story. The girls of my daughter's high school are taught earthquake drill and how to get under their desks. Being plump Kiwi girls, most of them can't get under the desk, and crawl around the floor like snails.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Keep Calm and Carry On
This old World War Two British motto has become a catchword for life after the earthquake (AE). It does seem to characterise how we are managing. Work goes on - currently people are painting my roof. My workplace is uninhabitable so we are camping in a crowded office in the suburbs. We have now had over 500 aftershocks and i sleep through most of the night ones. We can probably guess magnitude as the aftershocks happen - hmm, i would say that one was about 4.7.
i think i would handle it differently if i had had a terrible experience. If i had major damage to my house, or a narrow escape, or had toddlers who were frightened, i may be taumatised. One teenage girl is still managing her mother who continues to panic after each aftershock. One man struggled through the broken glass as the earth rocked, carrying his tddler under one arm and trying to get to the baby crying in his cot. His wife was away, in Wellington, and he feared that she had been in an even bigger earthquake, because Wellington is earthquake prone. Fearing her dead, he managed his panicking toddler until she could return. Some people are still without sewerage and using public port-a-loos. A hospital security guard is trying to carry on at work while struggling with his own constant panic. Lots of people are just plain over it.
The state of emergency was lifted today. There is still a very small cordon around some of the CBD. One of the most poignant sights for me was driving past the Peaches and Cream Adult Superstore at night. The building was cordoned off.and clearly damanged. A mannequin wearing pink bunny ears and a fluffy pink negligee still posed in the broken window, the little cute pink skirt fluttering sadly in the night breeze.
We now have celebrity geologists. The best website is Christchurch Quake Map which has excellent graphics showing the Big One and all the subsequent aftershocks with magnitude, depth and time. i look at it daily.
Everyone has an earthquake story. i like this one:
Ollie age 6 was looking forward to returning to school because he had News! Liam age 8 says to him, witheringly, 'It's not the eathquake, is it, because everybody's got that one'. No, says Ollie, patently lying, it is the Brick, the souvenir brick he took from the fallen chimney. When you are 6 your world is quite small, and the earthquake was special because it happened to you. When you are 8 your world is bigger, and you also get to be scathing.
i think Christchurch will never get back to normal in the sense of BE (before earthqauke). It's a bit like having a baby - you do get back to normal but it is a different normal and it is years after the birth.
i think i would handle it differently if i had had a terrible experience. If i had major damage to my house, or a narrow escape, or had toddlers who were frightened, i may be taumatised. One teenage girl is still managing her mother who continues to panic after each aftershock. One man struggled through the broken glass as the earth rocked, carrying his tddler under one arm and trying to get to the baby crying in his cot. His wife was away, in Wellington, and he feared that she had been in an even bigger earthquake, because Wellington is earthquake prone. Fearing her dead, he managed his panicking toddler until she could return. Some people are still without sewerage and using public port-a-loos. A hospital security guard is trying to carry on at work while struggling with his own constant panic. Lots of people are just plain over it.
The state of emergency was lifted today. There is still a very small cordon around some of the CBD. One of the most poignant sights for me was driving past the Peaches and Cream Adult Superstore at night. The building was cordoned off.and clearly damanged. A mannequin wearing pink bunny ears and a fluffy pink negligee still posed in the broken window, the little cute pink skirt fluttering sadly in the night breeze.
We now have celebrity geologists. The best website is Christchurch Quake Map which has excellent graphics showing the Big One and all the subsequent aftershocks with magnitude, depth and time. i look at it daily.
Everyone has an earthquake story. i like this one:
Ollie age 6 was looking forward to returning to school because he had News! Liam age 8 says to him, witheringly, 'It's not the eathquake, is it, because everybody's got that one'. No, says Ollie, patently lying, it is the Brick, the souvenir brick he took from the fallen chimney. When you are 6 your world is quite small, and the earthquake was special because it happened to you. When you are 8 your world is bigger, and you also get to be scathing.
i think Christchurch will never get back to normal in the sense of BE (before earthqauke). It's a bit like having a baby - you do get back to normal but it is a different normal and it is years after the birth.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Eartthquake7.1
Here everyone has an earthquake story. In fact we all have the same earthquake story, with minor variations. We all were woken by the earthquake at 4.30 on Saturday morning, damage was done, we all survived. It measured 7.1 and was centred 30 kms west of Christchurch. Some of us lost everything. i lost a mirror and the mizzen mast of a model sailing ship. The next day sand volcanoes sprung up at the end of the street and there were fissures and cracks to wander amongst. People really did check on their neighbours and lend each other things, and when i walked in the neighbourhood i overheard the same conversation from each house. Are you OK? What was it like? There was looting which got people pretty excited - i think what actually happened was two young men tried to throw bricks through a window but were caught in the act. It was a very restrained and Protestant emergency. The day after, everyone tried to contact friends. Despite authorities asking that people keep communication to a minimum most people phoned or texted or went on social networking sites - everyone must be accounted for. We have had 85 aftershocks that could be felt, and more that were too small. Some up to 4.whatsit. We were without power for 12 hours and the water is still contaminated. i know i am a girlie swot but i have collected about 33 litres of water and kept it more or less refreshed since 1999. We had torches and batteries and a radio which we eventually go going, and food for days and everything except hand sanitiser. The main issue now is waterborne disease. And of course the damage. This will be the day of the steel capped boot wearer who will rise up and speak out and demand ... triple time i'd say. Good on them.
My daughter pointed out how unique this was - everybody in the area had the same experience at the same time. Last time that happened was perhaps the big snow of 1992. Or maybe 9/11. But in a city this size, a small city but a city nevertheless, there is very little shared experience. When was the last time everybody watched an election on TV, for example, i mean everybody? That used to happen in the 1960's. Now, we are mobile and fluid and atomised.
i always said Christchurch is a model of Victorian positivist engineering. Drain the swamps! Tame the river! Build the bridge! Ready-to-consume suburbia complete with leafy avenues! But what amazing engineering it is. No lives lost, thousands of houses with little damage. If this was Haiti or Mexico we would be bleeding. There would be an international aid appeal! School children would send us their clothes! But no, here we are, and i am thankful for a law abiding, stable society and for hundreds of nameless engineers and builders and other workers who have done such a sterling job.
My daughter pointed out how unique this was - everybody in the area had the same experience at the same time. Last time that happened was perhaps the big snow of 1992. Or maybe 9/11. But in a city this size, a small city but a city nevertheless, there is very little shared experience. When was the last time everybody watched an election on TV, for example, i mean everybody? That used to happen in the 1960's. Now, we are mobile and fluid and atomised.
i always said Christchurch is a model of Victorian positivist engineering. Drain the swamps! Tame the river! Build the bridge! Ready-to-consume suburbia complete with leafy avenues! But what amazing engineering it is. No lives lost, thousands of houses with little damage. If this was Haiti or Mexico we would be bleeding. There would be an international aid appeal! School children would send us their clothes! But no, here we are, and i am thankful for a law abiding, stable society and for hundreds of nameless engineers and builders and other workers who have done such a sterling job.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Lemmiwinks the Gerbil King - a pre-axial age hero
Hopefully you will be familiar with the sublime South Park episode 'The death camp of tolerance'. A plot summary is on Wikipedia. For these purposes, Mr Garrison the children's teacher is trying to behave in an outrageous manner in order to get fired so he can then sue the school. He reaches his denouement by inserting Lemmiwinks the class gerbil into the anus of his lover, Mr Slave.
Once the sphincter closes, Lemmiwinks begins an epic journey through the gay man's digestive tract. He is aided bythe spirits of other animals who have been inserted in a similar manner. These are the Frog Prince, who gives him a magical helmet, the Sparrow Prince who advises him, and the Catata Fish who tests him with a riddle which he must solve. When he finally escapes and is coughed up by Mr Slave, he frees the spirits of the animals and is crowned the Gerbil King. Throughout, a song accompanies his quest. It is sung in a folksy voice and in a quasi-bardic style it outlines his heroic exploits.
Google Lemmiwinks and you will see excellent YouTube videos. The animated journey has Lemmiwinks portrayed as a realistically drawn gerbil, with no human expression on his face. Lemmiwinks has no internal life and undergoes no reflective process. He does not develop as a character, and his story is told entirely from an outside point of view - of the bardic singer and the animal spirits.
When i first saw the episode, i was amused for several reasons, only one of them being a long term love of the scatological. Obviously, Lemmiwinks is cute and innocent and that is juxtaposed with his gory plight. And obviously, he does not show human expression - he's a gerbil, for heaven's sake. But i was surprised how much his story resonated with me, and how i intuitively understood how the story went. Lemmiwinks is of course an archetypal hero in the Joseph Campbell mode. We know his story as intimately and unconsciously as we know that of Luke Skywalker or Herakles. Or Harry Potter.
But let's go back further, to a crucial age in the development of humankind, and because all of our thinking is moderated by the popular media we will consider Lemmiwinks the gerbil king from the points of view of two theories which i believe intersect in interesting ways - Karl Jasper's seminal ideas about the Axial Age, and Julian Jaynes' theories in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Thus we step into the gloriously dodgy field of psycho-history.
Between about 900 and 300 BCE vast and traumatic changes took place in the main civilisations of the world. People travelled and traded more, environmental crises occurred as semi-pastoral societies ran out of resources, and new technologies emerged. Larger units of society such as city states developed. The cultures we think of as our own various heritages were formed then - India, China, the Levant, and Greece.
There is evidence that prior to this Axial Age people did not have the reflective capacity we have now. They experienced their actions as driven by fate or the gods. Individuals had a name, loyalties and ties, and a personal history, but did not see themselves as conscious moral decision makers. Terry Pratchett would say they did not have a psycholology.
Jaynes takes the view that in the days of Homer's heroic age, people literally heard or were commanded by the gods. When early writing talks about this, it is meant literally. For Jaynes, people routinely hallucinated and obeyed their hallucinations. Their brains were 'bicameral', or split in two, and one side talked to the other. During this period of time, peoples' brains physically changed. They learned to mentalise - to talk to themselves inside themselves, and to reflect and choose. They became conscious moral agents. Jaynes sees vestiges of bicameralism in some modern phenomena such as hallacinations in mental illness, and the experience of religion or the psychic world.
Jasper noted the change wrought during the Axial Age in the development of religion. Early Vedic and Biblical scripture is ritualistic, and people become briefly divine by following ritual properly. Over time, ritual becomes more symbolic, and finally it becomes internalised. Instead of sacrificing an animal in fire, people meditate on their own internal fire, or even do away with the symbol altogether and just meditate. Early prophets in the Old Testament describe being driven by God to act, even against their will. Later on, God is less present in the world, but works through the moral doings of his servants. All our great world religions came from this period. All of them came to some sort of view that we must live rightly to understand our spiritual selves, and that we must have compassion for others. This was a revolution, and it happened over a surprisingly short time.
Lemmiwinks is a bicameral, pre-axial hero. He is guided directly by spirit animals, not by his conscience or by entering a higher state. In other words, he hallucinates his way through the gay man's digestive tract. He does not reflect on his actions, nor is he a free moral agent. His only choice is keep going or die. Despite having a deeply chthonic experience that harks back mythically to the time of Chronos, he is not aware of this. He frees the animal spirits incidentally, not because of any conscious compassion or belief about the value of life. If he has a soul, and there is an afterlife, he does not know about it.
He's a gerbil, for heaven's sake!
Recommended reading:
Daniel Smith 'Muses Madmen and Prophets' on hallucinations and bicameralism
Karen Armstrong 'The Great Transformation' on the Axial Age.
Once the sphincter closes, Lemmiwinks begins an epic journey through the gay man's digestive tract. He is aided bythe spirits of other animals who have been inserted in a similar manner. These are the Frog Prince, who gives him a magical helmet, the Sparrow Prince who advises him, and the Catata Fish who tests him with a riddle which he must solve. When he finally escapes and is coughed up by Mr Slave, he frees the spirits of the animals and is crowned the Gerbil King. Throughout, a song accompanies his quest. It is sung in a folksy voice and in a quasi-bardic style it outlines his heroic exploits.
Google Lemmiwinks and you will see excellent YouTube videos. The animated journey has Lemmiwinks portrayed as a realistically drawn gerbil, with no human expression on his face. Lemmiwinks has no internal life and undergoes no reflective process. He does not develop as a character, and his story is told entirely from an outside point of view - of the bardic singer and the animal spirits.
When i first saw the episode, i was amused for several reasons, only one of them being a long term love of the scatological. Obviously, Lemmiwinks is cute and innocent and that is juxtaposed with his gory plight. And obviously, he does not show human expression - he's a gerbil, for heaven's sake. But i was surprised how much his story resonated with me, and how i intuitively understood how the story went. Lemmiwinks is of course an archetypal hero in the Joseph Campbell mode. We know his story as intimately and unconsciously as we know that of Luke Skywalker or Herakles. Or Harry Potter.
But let's go back further, to a crucial age in the development of humankind, and because all of our thinking is moderated by the popular media we will consider Lemmiwinks the gerbil king from the points of view of two theories which i believe intersect in interesting ways - Karl Jasper's seminal ideas about the Axial Age, and Julian Jaynes' theories in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Thus we step into the gloriously dodgy field of psycho-history.
Between about 900 and 300 BCE vast and traumatic changes took place in the main civilisations of the world. People travelled and traded more, environmental crises occurred as semi-pastoral societies ran out of resources, and new technologies emerged. Larger units of society such as city states developed. The cultures we think of as our own various heritages were formed then - India, China, the Levant, and Greece.
There is evidence that prior to this Axial Age people did not have the reflective capacity we have now. They experienced their actions as driven by fate or the gods. Individuals had a name, loyalties and ties, and a personal history, but did not see themselves as conscious moral decision makers. Terry Pratchett would say they did not have a psycholology.
Jaynes takes the view that in the days of Homer's heroic age, people literally heard or were commanded by the gods. When early writing talks about this, it is meant literally. For Jaynes, people routinely hallucinated and obeyed their hallucinations. Their brains were 'bicameral', or split in two, and one side talked to the other. During this period of time, peoples' brains physically changed. They learned to mentalise - to talk to themselves inside themselves, and to reflect and choose. They became conscious moral agents. Jaynes sees vestiges of bicameralism in some modern phenomena such as hallacinations in mental illness, and the experience of religion or the psychic world.
Jasper noted the change wrought during the Axial Age in the development of religion. Early Vedic and Biblical scripture is ritualistic, and people become briefly divine by following ritual properly. Over time, ritual becomes more symbolic, and finally it becomes internalised. Instead of sacrificing an animal in fire, people meditate on their own internal fire, or even do away with the symbol altogether and just meditate. Early prophets in the Old Testament describe being driven by God to act, even against their will. Later on, God is less present in the world, but works through the moral doings of his servants. All our great world religions came from this period. All of them came to some sort of view that we must live rightly to understand our spiritual selves, and that we must have compassion for others. This was a revolution, and it happened over a surprisingly short time.
Lemmiwinks is a bicameral, pre-axial hero. He is guided directly by spirit animals, not by his conscience or by entering a higher state. In other words, he hallucinates his way through the gay man's digestive tract. He does not reflect on his actions, nor is he a free moral agent. His only choice is keep going or die. Despite having a deeply chthonic experience that harks back mythically to the time of Chronos, he is not aware of this. He frees the animal spirits incidentally, not because of any conscious compassion or belief about the value of life. If he has a soul, and there is an afterlife, he does not know about it.
He's a gerbil, for heaven's sake!
Recommended reading:
Daniel Smith 'Muses Madmen and Prophets' on hallucinations and bicameralism
Karen Armstrong 'The Great Transformation' on the Axial Age.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
To KM
Two notes may help this poem.
1. i express the idea 'necessary but not sufficient', which is often used in academic philosophy. i can think of many situations in real life where something is necessary but not sufficient.
2. i hold a negative view of evil. i share this with some important thinkers such as Augustine. Evil is the absence of good - it is what happens when good people do nothing. Evil is not a positive force or a person. Evil is in stupidity, ignorance and laziness. Evil is easy. It is what we sink to without education or hope or exposure to virtue. It is not a metaphysical concept. Major evil is probably rare.
i think when we die we take only virtue into the next life. This means if we have not developed virtue, we do not do well in the next life, because we lack the tools. A baby in the womb develops limbs and lungs for which it has imperfect or no use. Only when it is born does it find the use for what it has developed. We develop virtues in this way - but in this world we have the choice to do so consciously.
Here, then, is the poem.
TO KM, WHERE HE IS NOW
No one kills themselves on my watch.
i won't allow it.
But you did.
You were loved.
You were the most loved of men.
Love is necessary but not sufficient.
You were good.
You weere known for it.
Goodness is necessary.
Goodness is still necessary.
You take it with you
and you leave it behind.
1. i express the idea 'necessary but not sufficient', which is often used in academic philosophy. i can think of many situations in real life where something is necessary but not sufficient.
2. i hold a negative view of evil. i share this with some important thinkers such as Augustine. Evil is the absence of good - it is what happens when good people do nothing. Evil is not a positive force or a person. Evil is in stupidity, ignorance and laziness. Evil is easy. It is what we sink to without education or hope or exposure to virtue. It is not a metaphysical concept. Major evil is probably rare.
i think when we die we take only virtue into the next life. This means if we have not developed virtue, we do not do well in the next life, because we lack the tools. A baby in the womb develops limbs and lungs for which it has imperfect or no use. Only when it is born does it find the use for what it has developed. We develop virtues in this way - but in this world we have the choice to do so consciously.
Here, then, is the poem.
TO KM, WHERE HE IS NOW
No one kills themselves on my watch.
i won't allow it.
But you did.
You were loved.
You were the most loved of men.
Love is necessary but not sufficient.
You were good.
You weere known for it.
Goodness is necessary.
Goodness is still necessary.
You take it with you
and you leave it behind.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Wilie and the Poor Boys
i mentioned more on Willy Apiata and it is timely given that New Zealand/Aotearoa has had its first military fatality in Afghanistan. It rattles the teeth a bit. i have a nephew-in-law over there. We are still a small enough society to know someone who ...
On heroism. When i talked to my husband the Archduke Piccolo about Willy's VC he was scornful. In his view, New Zealand is an invading power and the true heroisim lies with the 'insurgents' who have been invaded, and who are fighting back with everything at stake. Yeah, i agree it is still the wrong war, even if Iraq was wronger. And i agree it is good to look at our ideas of heroism and take them beyond the military purview. To ask what are the medals for and what do they show us. And who gets them.
i wondered about the George Cross, which can be given to civilians. i noted that its recpients tended to be in uniform, if not in the miliatary itself. The only female recipient outside the British secret security forces in World War Two, (and unless you count half the population of Malta) was Barbara Harrison, a (uniformed) airline stewardess who saved passengers from a plane on fire, and gave her life doing it. New Zealand's most recent GC came out of the Aramoana shootout ( a quasi-military exercise, if you will). So the sort of heroism for which you get medals could be characterised by a sort of uniformed mentality. Nothing wrong with that. Short bursts of extreme action. Giving it up for your mates. Pragmatism. Knowing who you are. Task focused. Wily, quick, strong. Punching above your weight. Unity. But then of course there are other sorts of heroism - like the residents of Gaza, who require acts of uncommon bravery just to get through the day. Or those already-poor people of New Orleans who saved others during Hurrican Katrina - young people who kept others safe, and who are now battling poverty and gang violence in forgotten communities. There are also many people who are simply heroes of their own lives, survivors of the usual soul-crippling muck our kids often get dished out like sexual abuse and impoverishment and ignorance and stupidity.
i still think Willy Apiata is a hero. He also portrays dignity and humility and courtesy in all his public dealings. i hope he lives. i hope he continues to exude mana and provide a true role model to young men. Moreover, i hope noone tries to deconstruct him, or do a revisionsist hatchet job on him.
i also nominate for my own personal GC list Nicola Inchmarch, of Viva Palestina, who i understand is heading back again to run the Gaza blockade. Kia Ora Gaza!
On heroism. When i talked to my husband the Archduke Piccolo about Willy's VC he was scornful. In his view, New Zealand is an invading power and the true heroisim lies with the 'insurgents' who have been invaded, and who are fighting back with everything at stake. Yeah, i agree it is still the wrong war, even if Iraq was wronger. And i agree it is good to look at our ideas of heroism and take them beyond the military purview. To ask what are the medals for and what do they show us. And who gets them.
i wondered about the George Cross, which can be given to civilians. i noted that its recpients tended to be in uniform, if not in the miliatary itself. The only female recipient outside the British secret security forces in World War Two, (and unless you count half the population of Malta) was Barbara Harrison, a (uniformed) airline stewardess who saved passengers from a plane on fire, and gave her life doing it. New Zealand's most recent GC came out of the Aramoana shootout ( a quasi-military exercise, if you will). So the sort of heroism for which you get medals could be characterised by a sort of uniformed mentality. Nothing wrong with that. Short bursts of extreme action. Giving it up for your mates. Pragmatism. Knowing who you are. Task focused. Wily, quick, strong. Punching above your weight. Unity. But then of course there are other sorts of heroism - like the residents of Gaza, who require acts of uncommon bravery just to get through the day. Or those already-poor people of New Orleans who saved others during Hurrican Katrina - young people who kept others safe, and who are now battling poverty and gang violence in forgotten communities. There are also many people who are simply heroes of their own lives, survivors of the usual soul-crippling muck our kids often get dished out like sexual abuse and impoverishment and ignorance and stupidity.
i still think Willy Apiata is a hero. He also portrays dignity and humility and courtesy in all his public dealings. i hope he lives. i hope he continues to exude mana and provide a true role model to young men. Moreover, i hope noone tries to deconstruct him, or do a revisionsist hatchet job on him.
i also nominate for my own personal GC list Nicola Inchmarch, of Viva Palestina, who i understand is heading back again to run the Gaza blockade. Kia Ora Gaza!
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