Monday, July 05, 2010

It always comes back to philosophy

A presenter at the Welfare Working Group forum last month was Donna Matahaere-Atariki. Her subject;


What sort of society do we want? And how might a collective vision contribute to reducing long-term benefit receipt?


She starts to get my attention right here;

It is incredibly frustrating for me to note, that successive generations of our youth have come to believe that benefit receipt is a career choice.

Who tells them this stuff? Who gets them to believe that this is all they can aspire to?


Good question. Is it the likes of me, because I talk about welfare being a lifestyle choice, not necessarily an active choice but an easy default? I wonder because the next thing I get to is what looks like a criticism of a paper I wrote last year about Maori and welfare.

Last year I read a paper that focused on the legacy of Maori benefit receipt and the contribution of the welfare state to this unprecedented dependency.

While there were many aspects of the paper that I could agree with I felt that essentially it lacked a much broader analyses of the political economy.

It did not even begin to analyse the root cause that underpinned the level of benefit passivity that I perceive among some of our most gifted youth.

In short, the paper failed to define the collective problem to be solved.

Similar to other analyses that focuses only on the subjects of long-term benefit receipt the paper overlooked the context that produced the human experience under scrutiny.

Unable to resolve the issue of so-called ‘Maori benefit receipt’, it collapsed back onto its subject where individual pathology or effect is a shallow proxy for cause.

A sure sign that we have yet to define the problem is to confuse effect with cause.


I know this blog has some very sharp readers so anyone want to have a go at translating that passage for me? Is it any more than the philosophy of determinism being asserted as more powerful than free-will? And if so, isn't that belief the answer to Donna's question, Who tells them this stuff?

5 comments:

Redbaiter said...

Jesus Christ on a bike. The left produce these underclasses as part of their political program.

They need the votes.

Its not fucking rocket science and has been recognised as a political ploy ever since Marx started propagating his subversive bullshit.

The middle class must be crushed. This is done by growing an underclass of welfare dependant political cannon fodder who will always vote for the hand that feeds them- the left in government- the Marxists.

Who tells them this stuff??

Jesus- just look at the curriculum of any NZ primary school.

Anonymous said...

"lacks broader analyses of the political economy"

Translation: Facts and figures that do not fit in your narrative can be put aside at will, after all any temporary observation of reality must always be seen in the context that it merely represents an observation of a transient state that does not as of yet comply with the greater objective of the well regulated collectivist utopia were individual responsibility is assumed into the greater good. Where current developments appear to point out that policy objectives are incorrect or unattainable, this is merely proof that not yet enough effort and money has been spent on ideological programmes. Also, anybody who dares to espouse contrary opinions, even where based on assessable fact, is too stupid to see or understand the greater picture.

"It did not even begin to analyse the root cause that underpinned the level of benefit passivity that I perceive among some of our most gifted youth."

Translation: See previous point. In addition, and unfortunately, our best and brightest youth are also too stupid to understand the greater scheme of things and hence experience a disjunction between reality and logic and the utopia that awaits them.

"the paper failed to define the collective problem to be solved"

Translation: see point one. The author of the paper is too stupid and ignorant to understand that the problem is not that of individual choice and responsibility, but a lack of definition and implementation of a collective ideal, the parameters of which are beyond understanding of mere mortals, and are to be left to intellectuals like myself, who have the vision to understand the greater scheme of things and how collective welfare is the answer to all conceivable problems.

"context that produced the human experience under scrutiny"

Translation: See point one. One cannot consider individual responses to societal context without observing that the utopian ideal has not yet been achieved, and we must strive to reach a situation where individual responsibility and happiness is a subset of a collective ideal, not the other way around.

"it collapsed back onto its subject where individual pathology or effect is a shallow proxy for cause"

translation: See point one. Individual circumstances are irrelevant when seen out of context with collective aspirations.

"A sure sign that we have yet to define the problem is to confuse effect with cause."

Translation: See point one. Individual circumstances are not created by individual choices, but by the collective social context. Individual problems can therefore not be resolved with resolving the collective problem: the attainment of the ideological collectivist utopian model.

Summary:
All these paragraphs say exactly the same thing: what you observe as a social problem resulting from individual choices is nothing of the kind. What you observe are the growing pains towards a collectivist ideal, which would be easier to achieve if you would get on board with the programme and stop pointing out inconvenient facts, which, by the way, only go to demonstrate that you are too stupid to understand these things anyway.

Bez

Anonymous said...

I have no idea what she's talking about. But I do know that working with people to take responsibility for their lives as INDIVIDUALS produces remarkable results.

Linda

Oswald Bastable said...

That piece is a typical piece of pseudo-intellectual arse- trumpeting- never say what can be said in a sentence in under 300 words!

The 'collective problem to be solved' is the sense of entitlement.

Like most behaviors, it is primarily learned in the home and from the wider family (and I use that term very loosely)

You will never teach pigeons NOT to scavenge.You need to STOP FEEDING THEM.

Anonymous said...

Know of DM-A and agree with OB- except I am coming from a Maori perspective- I am Ngai Tahu. She is a prime example of Maori who feed at the trough - articulate, but not much there when it comes to solutions. Good mate of Tahu Potiki failed CEO of NT - another trougher, except he is worse. Record of GBH an a former member of a white supremacy gang in Christchurch- yes, white. But "The Press" seems to like him -regular, weekly, columnist reporting on Maori. Married Tipene O'R's daughter, Hana-good woman, short lived- she saw through him
The point: how do these w------ get through?