It wasn't that long ago that sharing skills, knowledge, tools and food with your neighbours was commonplace. Back then, rather than sending grandparents packing to a retirement village in the Bay of Plenty, they would be helping babysit, baking scones, sharing war stories over a glass of sherry and keeping an eye on the young ones to make sure they grew up with the right values.
But with an increasingly divided, urbanised population these days a great number of people are missing the key element that makes young people grow up to behave well: community.
When kids have kaumatua around to look up to and learn from, they are more likely to act according the values that wisdom brings about. This crucial passing of culture and knowledge suffered a major blow in Maori culture with urbanisation.
In most city suburbs although we might acknowledge the presence of our neighbours, we are unlikely to connect with them on a deeper level. It is a sad fact that every Kiwi man is expected to have his own full set of tools that are hardly ever used rather than borrow them from someone down the road.
This materialistic idea that we must have everything ourselves is incredibly inefficient. We end up buying cheap tools with plastic components that can't be fixed - when they inevitably break we just go and buy another one from Bunnings. If we all had just a handful of good quality tools that were shared it would be cheaper and there would be far less waste.
