KEY POINTS:
It is a fact of life for this columnist that those who disagree write copious letters to the editor while those who agree send congratulatory personal emails.
Thus it was with last week's column. I don't know how many letters to the editor there were (some seven were printed), but I do know that of the 35 emails I received last week, 32 were in praise and agreement.
And, of course, some of them asked: "What can we do?" The short answer is that "we" can do little collectively, but perhaps we can do something as individuals.
Granted, with the change of government we need as a nation to take stock of ourselves and arrive at some new goals, lest we slide off the First World register.
But a shared sense of direction and a determination to excel to achieve these goals should be about more than material prosperity. It needs to come from a set of agreed basic values, or ethical principles.
Which is all very laudable, as long as we all realise that it is up to every one of us to make New Zealand a better place.
It cannot be done by any of us trying to tell others what they should or shouldn't be doing. It can only be done 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 need 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.
The two hardest lessons to learn in this life are: (1) I cannot change other people, I can only change myself; and (2) every other person is entitled to be what he or she is.
If we believe we can change things by telling others what they should or shouldn't be doing, then 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, in the words of a dear old pastor friend of mine, that "instead of the Church making the world more churchy, the world has made the Church more worldly".
Yet while religious belief was once the tie that bound us together, over the past three decades religious affiliation has dropped like a lead balloon. 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 others' person or property, overfilled jails, declining economic output and an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
So what's to be done that we might right the good 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, then in a generation or so we will have repaired much of the damage that has been done.
If we set personal standards for ourselves and do what we can to live up to them, then others might be encouraged to do the same.
And all it requires is a commitment to nine virtues. They are: patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, integrity and sincerity.
These virtues 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 glue 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.
Those virtues may be old-fashioned; they are, nonetheless, as effective today as ever they were.
