In the future, what will the history scholars say about how we handled the current housing crisis? Photo / Fiona Goodall
In the future, what will the history scholars say about how we handled the current housing crisis? Photo / Fiona Goodall
Opinion
OPINION:
Fifty years from now, what will the history books say about how we responded to the Novel Coronavirus outbreak? About how we responded to the record wealth inequality left in its wake, the housing affordability and rental crises amplified and climate crisis that accompanied it?
We're making those decisions right now. While we're all primed to focus on what the Government will do, far less is made of the power each and all of us have in shaping our shared future.
Politics isn't something that happens "over there", done by "those people". It's the consequences of decisions that shape all of our lives that all of us have the opportunity to participate in.
That participation is a heck of a lot more than voting, running for office, or answering a phone poll. It is protest, awareness raising, calling and emailing your local representatives, submitting on policy proposals and to select committees, driving petitions and organising the people in our communities to realise our shared power to demand better. To not settle for anything less.
After the death, devastation and destruction of the World Wars, New Zealanders of the 1940s fought for a new social contract; a revolution from rationing, waste and excess to a strong safety net, built by all, for all. When hit with the "great inflation" of the 1970s, strong labour unions fought to ensure workers' wages rose alongside costs.
History tends to be told from the point of view of the people who gave the speeches, led the marches and "won" the change. Yet individuals alone could never have won these colossal social changes.
If it weren't for the crowds to cheer or march, these leaders would've been oddballs speaking to themselves or merely walking down the street. While typically sanitised and idolised in retrospect, these fights for equality and change were often ridiculed and patronised in their day, particularly by the politicians who were eventually forced to make those changes.
We've actually each got quite a lot of experience of just how exhausting this mental process is in the midst of Covid-19. Photo / Dean Purcell
Research tells us that kids start to develop a sense of fairness around 4 years old. Most kids will tell you all about it if you dare try to take a toy off them.
Moral psychologists have come to conclude that these intuitions, across the world and across cultures, don't so much evolve as our ability to argue them does.
Being open-minded is hard work. It requires constantly assessing your views and experiences in light of new evidence. We've actually each got quite a lot of experience of just how exhausting this mental process is in the midst of Covid-19.
"Moral fatigue" is the lethargy that comes with constantly thinking and rethinking about if and how you do something like see your grandma or go to the gym safely, whether your mask is properly sitting on your face, when you last washed your hands…
It makes sense, then, that as a group of people confronted with what become regular occurrences in our communities, neighbourhoods, cities, countries or continents, that we automate our assessments. They become cultural norms or customs, punishable by embarrassment or ostracism.
They may even become laws or regulations, punishable by fines or criminal conviction.
Sometimes these behaviours are repeated so often and for so long that we forget how and why we did them in the first place. They become second nature. Just the way things are.
But poverty and inadequate housing is not a natural phenomenon, in the same way that wealth and "housing" per se isn't. As author Ursula K. Le Guin put it, "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."
The wealthiest in this country are an estimated $1 trillion richer as a result of the political decisions these past two years, at the expense of workers and renters earning less in real terms and paying more to survive.
We have a choice on whether we arrest inequality or let it fester.
Do we want to keep tinkering, or do we want a brand new deal? Are we willing to reset the rules?
It's not going to happen overnight and it's not going to be easily handed over, but history tells us we can and the demands of the future require we must.
• Chlöe Swarbrick, Green Party, is the MP for Auckland Central
