Dialogue: New value patterns must evolve to forestall crises

By ALAN WEBSTER*

Having led the New Zealand Study of Values and publicised its results over more than a decade, I congratulate the Herald for initiating The Common Core Debate. The debate is needed, as your editorial and writers observe, because there is a changing world environment to which New Zealand should respond creatively.

The vision of a consensus is attractive and to an extent must be valid, for the simple reason that societies tend toward agreed methods of pursuit of common goals and social relations. In other words, total disagreement is inconceivable.

The concern is, as both Gordon McLauchlan and Michael King make admirably clear, that history moves on and we need to seize its best learnings as we press forward. Just what those learnings might be will require more discussion, to which your debate will contribute materially.

My view after a decade and a half of considering the multi-textured cloth of our nation by means of comprehensive surveys is that consensus is today not nearer but farther away, and that the solutions we look for must involve not biculturalism but a dynamic multiculturalism.

I say that because our data show that the reality is much more diverse than your picture suggests. For example, while the ideal of a fair go for everyone is certainly a piece of our national wisdom, it is held in entirely different ways by different segments.

In other words, it has no single meaning. Indeed for many, if not most, it relates more to their desire to pursue their own business unimpeded by notions of sharing than to any deep desire for redistribution of wealth.

Similarly, I have to level a query with collegial respect to Michael King against the notion that there is a single Maori and a single Pakeha culture. I argue in my book on New Zealand value-cultures, to come out in mid-year, that self-identification as a Pakeha does not embrace the whole of the European-based segment; indeed, it is not the main segment.

Pakeha is both too broad and too constrained a term. For example, contrary to Michael King's belief that the Pakeha have a strong relationship with the natural world, much as they may love to boat, fish and camp, they do not by that token have more regard than others for environmental protection.

It depends which whites you are talking about. Those who identify as Pakeha are less environmentally conscious in the sense of putting the environment before their own pleasure and gain than are other whites.

Try talking species protection to the average Pakeha recreational fisherman and see how far relationship with the natural world goes. There can be no doubt that ecological values are fundamental, but does that make every Pakeha nature-boy a greenie?

Maori in our data display much stronger environmental values than do those who refer to themselves as Pakeha.

Nor is Maori a single identity. My book will display evidence that there exists a quite narrow core value culture, along with several white cultures and at least two Maori cultures.

In this light, the search for common values, while not mistaken, may miss the real question, which is to do with the conflicting values of significantly distinct cultures in this country.

Most importantly, it seems clear to me that rather than some simple core of values as the complete solution, it is a more complex modern situation in which both conflict and emergent values form part of a cultural evolution. The issue is sustainability.

In my view, sustainability is not inherent within our historical values. The state of our natural environment after 150 Pakeha years suggests quite the opposite.

Rather, the aim could be to ask what new patterns of values are needed to forestall foreseeable crises - human, social, economic and environmental.

* Dr Alan Webster is director of the New Zealand Study of Values.

Herald Online feature: Common core values

We invite to you to contribute to the debate on core values. E-mail dialogue@herald.co.nz.