Dialogue: Nine simple ways to heal a nation

The two hardest lessons I have had to learn in this life are these: (1) I cannot change other people, I can only change myself; and (2) if there is something wrong, it is wrong with me.

These principles came back to me at the weekend when I read in the Weekend Herald the opinions of eight citizens from all walks of life, and our editor-in-chief, on our need as a nation to take stock of ourselves and arrive at some new goals, lest we slide off the First World register.

A shared sense of direction and a determination to excel to achieve these goals must, said the Herald under the heading "Putting values first to make New Zealand a better place," be about more than material prosperity. It would have to grow out of a set of shared basic values, or ethical principles.

Stirring stuff, indeed, and comforting to know that throughout our society there are men and women who are gravely concerned about the direction in which this nation is going, or not going.

Which is all very well and very laudable, as long as we all realise that it is up to every one of us personally and individually to make New Zealand a better place, to return it to a position at the forefront of world social and economic excellence that it once inhabited.

It cannot be done by any of us trying to tell others of us what they should or shouldn't be doing. It can be done only if enough of us are prepared to do the right thing for ourselves and for our fellow Kiwis in our homes, our workplaces and our communities.

It cannot be done by any of us blaming any others of us for the conditions we find ourselves in. We have to come to understand that we are all personally responsible for who and what we are and that if we don't like it, only we can change it.

If we believe we can change things by telling others what they should or shouldn't be doing, we haven't been watching what's been happening to the Christian religion for centuries.

Ever since the apostles were cold in their graves, religionists have been trying to tell the world how to live - and a whole bunch of them are still at it. Yet the result has been that, in the words of a dear old pastor friend of mine, "instead of the Church making the world more churchy, the world has made the Church more worldly."

As Gavin Ellis pointed out at the weekend in his essay "Towards shared values," religious belief was once the tie that bound us together, but over the past three decades religious affiliation has been dropping faster than a lead balloon - and by a full third between 1991 and 1996 alone.

That's what you get for trying to tell others how they should live - anger, resentment, bitterness, frustration and, in the end, alienation.

And as for blaming others for our situation, Kiwis in general have been blaming the government and the weather for just about everything ever since I was old enough to know what those things were; and more recently political correctness has instilled in many of us a victim mentality that tells us that someone or something else is to blame for anything and everything that happens to us that we don't like.

Where has that got us? It has created among us a large group of people who spend their lives in anger, resentment, bitterness, frustration and, ultimately, alienation, which breeds broken marriages, fatherless children, venereal disease, child abuse, violence, disrespect for other people or their property, overfilled jails, declining economic output and an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

So what's to be done in order that we might right the ship New Zealand and get all of us sailing in the right direction. The answer is simple: if enough of us are prepared personally to live the sort of lives that are attractive to others, in less than a generation we will have repaired much of the damage that has been done.

If we set standards for ourselves personally and do what we can to live up to them, others will be encouraged to do the same.

And all it requires is a commitment to nine simple virtues. They are: patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, integrity and sincerity.

These are virtues that can be practised by every man and woman every day and in all their affairs - at home, at work, at play. The indispensable thing about them is that they provide the mortar that holds a society together.

Social cohesion is what we've lost. Only by regaining it will we, as individuals and as a nation, be able to develop financially, socially, intellectually and environmentally.

And don't tell me those virtues are old-fashioned. So is the Treaty of Waitangi.

* E-mail Garth George