Fast Track vs. Slow Track
News-Fasting, Political Skulduggery, and the Defence of the Wild Commons
Wendell Berry: “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
I gave up the Internet for Lent.1 Or rather, I limited my Internet access to 20 minutes twice a day, timed with an alarm: enough time to check emails and messages, but not enough time to slip into the time-eating, soporific river of infinite distraction. (It starts by just dipping a toe in, then click click click, looking at this or that, then the river anaesthetises you for hours. Best not to dip that toe in the first place.) It was easier for me than it would be for most people because I don’t have a smartphone— I’m already half-Luddite. My sister teases me about being Amish, but I reckon I’m avant-garde in my behindness. In five years people will be where I am now, but I’ll be somewhere else, so they’ll still think I’m a weirdo.2
Having given up the Internet, I then gave up coffee, alcohol, and sugar. I didn’t plan to, but that’s what happened. I felt like In for a penny, in for a pound. I semi-fasted: I mostly stopped eating in the evenings, which was interesting when I went to dinner with Muslim friends. It was Ramadan, so our eating schedules were opposed.3
I also renounced the news. I stopped reading the newspaper, and tried not to listen to the radio. I didn’t really want to know what that knobhead the Prime Minister was up to now, nor how many children were being bombed to death. Call me a coward; I wanted to recenter myself in my own small immediately-sensed world. It was instantly effective. I felt calmer. When I was out and about and happened to hear the news on the radio, I noticed how my anxiety instantly spiked— a cortisol shot in the ear.
I trusted that if anything important happened, other humans would tell me about it, like how my sister told me Efeso Collins had died, right next to her colleague, at a charity run, and everyone was devastated. I remembered how when Jacinda Ardern’s baby was born, on the 2018 Winter Solstice, I had heard the news this way, from a warm human mouth speaking in my ear, at Meow. That was a joyful night. The Solstice-magic was tangible, and it seemed a fate-laden birthday for the First Baby.4
(What kind of news is still big enough that people will carry it from mouth to ear before it seeps through the cold screen? Birth and death. In the old days, when someone died, the bees were told, so they could spread the word. Also in the old days, there were bards and peddlers, wanderers who didn’t stay put like decent folk did but went from place to place, carrying news as well as goods. Also, in the slightly less old days, some hack could write a scurrilous ballad commenting on current events and a ballad-singer could roam the streets singing said ballad and selling broadsheets for small change. All of these extinct information-distribution methods seem preferable to the frenetic, relentless Internet.)
After such a long stint of news-sobriety, opening a newspaper felt like knocking back a strong drink. Upon falling off the news-wagon I discovered that the Government had gutted TVNZ like a kahawai and Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee was refusing to make any statement to … the media … about it. This wilful sabotage of the Fourth Estate seems extremely sinister, particularly in the context of the underhanded pushing-through-under-urgency this Government is undertaking, riding roughshod over the requisite checks and balances of due process and accountability. Promoting smoking and firing all the public servants in order to fund tax cuts was bad enough, but now they want to undermine conservation (quite literally).5 Frankly, I knew they were dicks (don’t say I didn’t try to warn you); but it’s way worse than I expected. (Nobody had kept me updated, I guess because they were as news-bruised as me; or maybe just because most people don’t follow politics.)
On Friday I made an eleventh-hour submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill.6 Briefly, the Fast-track Bill would give three Ministers— the Regional Development, Infrastructure, and Transport Ministers— unprecedented powers to approve ‘nationally or regionally important infrastructure projects’ (overriding expert advice and the Resource Management Act), including resurrecting projects that have already been rejected by the Environment Court. Besides the environmental threat, the Bill is in conflict with climate change commitments and Te Tiriti7 obligations, and there is obvious potential for conflicts of interest if donors to political parties apply for fast-track consents.
The process is also undemocratic. The Bill is being pushed through under urgency, and as Dame Anne Salmond says in her open letter: “Even before the deadline for submissions to the select committee has expired, the ministers have appointed an advisory group, and invited projects to be submitted to the fast-track process. They are behaving as if the select committee process has already been decided, and public concerns about this draft legislation have been dismissed in advance. That is an insult to tens of thousands of New Zealanders who are writing submissions opposing this bill, and to the select committee process as well…
Until it is passed into law, this bill has no legal standing. By behaving as though it has already been passed, the ministers are treating the democratic process with contempt.”
At least being angry gave me a small jolt, enough to briefly shock me out of the fog of outrage fatigue / post-Covid fatigue to the extent of writing something down. I’d much rather think about geckos all day than have to think about David Seymour’s smug face, but needs must— here we are in Polemicsville.
Those who think only in terms of ego, profit, and competition— those who only see dog-eat-dog— can’t understand cooperation or interdependence.8 Exploitative behaviour is rewarded under Capitalism, which muddies the water. I’m a student of history, but watching the disintegration of the U.S.A. and the U.K. in real time was what made me understand the vulnerability of systems of governance when faced with a person or group who consistently acts in bad faith.9 Governmental structures are underpinned, I saw, with an assumption of basic human decency in those who seek to serve. (Obviously, no Government is perfect, no democratic system is perfect, but… Realpolitik, innit: some are less worse.)
This problem is a central challenge to any kind of communal framework: what to do about bad actors? A single person acting with intent to sabotage can do extensive damage. “Be kind,” said Jacinda Ardern repeatedly— but what to do with those who are unashamed of their cruelty? There are no easy answers to that question.
Hannah Arendt says in The Origins of Totalitarianism: “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest— forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence… and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.”
William Butler Yeats put it this way:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
The past five years have been a crucible in which a lot of what I once believed has been burned away, the metal of thought refined. I don’t think I know everything— I know I will never know everything. I know I will change my mind again and again, seeking to come at reality, seeking to evolve into clarity. I know that there is no alternative to this path. The hard work of thinking— of ethics— is never finished. One thing I know for sure: Beware simplicity. One can know truth by its complexity.
Talking with James on the phone, ahead of drafting my submission.
Me: “I stand in defence of the truth— and the truth is ambiguous.”
James: “I stand in defence of questions and arguments. The moment you say ‘X = Y’— no questions, no grey zones— that’s bullshit. That’s fascism. But sometimes the process of finding the least harmful path forward is inefficient— it’s messy. Sometimes I think that inefficiency is the saving grace.”
He means, because it stops things from moving too quickly: slow process means less likelihood of rushing into irreversible mistakes. I tell him about Kev’s theory that New Zealand (the design of it, the towns, the roads) is ugly because it was made after the Industrial Revolution: made with machines, too fast. Unlike England— where the little towns link to each other by ancient trackways, a net of small connections— New Zealand is essentially extractive in design. Resources are funnelled from the heartland to the ports.10
James says “Yes, I see. The forms are not emergent.”
I think of Ben, carving stone down in the river, rubbing stone against stone in the old way. He says: “Whenever I can, I'll return to the original tools and techniques of hand grinding, rubbing with blocks, sand and water, ‘sticks and stones’, in order to slow down, follow the stone and carefully create works that may not survive the process of manufacture otherwise.”
I see that I’m talking about time, again. Considered slowness: the opposite of the fast-tracked Fast-track Bill and everything it stands for. Fast Track to where? To the destruction of things that can’t be reconstructed.
in his excellent recent summary of the dangers of the Fast-track Bill quoted Professor Margaret Stanley: “Ecosystems cannot be restored. Once destroyed, they are gone forever. This is known in restoration ecology as the ‘Humpty Dumpty effect.”It is easy to smash something beautiful, ancient, complex, and undefended. Like the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Like an ecosystem. Once smashed, fait accompli: all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can’t unbreak what’s broken.
Since I wrote my submission, and suggested others do the same, linking to submission guidelines on the Greenpeace website, the algorithms have been spamming me with Greenpeace ads. This koala family will die in a bushfire. This baby turtle will not reach the ocean. Probably talking about it here will only make the problem worse. Talking about the news brings more news. Whenever I see the word Greenpeace, I think of what a friend who worked for Greenpeace on the street used to call them, which was Peen-Grease.
“Kaczynski describes a thought experiment involving a forested region occupied by several rival kingdoms. The kingdoms that clear the most land for agriculture can support a larger population, affording them a military advantage. Every kingdom must therefore clear as much forest as possible, or face being conquered by its rivals. The resulting deforestation eventually leads to ecological disaster and the collapse of all the kingdoms. Thus, a trait that is advantageous for every kingdom’s short-term survival leads in the long term to every kingdom’s demise.
Kaczynski was describing a ‘social trap’,11 a term coined by a student of Skinner, John Platt, who’d theorized that an entire population behaving like pigeons in a Skinner box, each acting only for the next immediate reward, would eventually overexploit a resource, causing ruin for everyone.”
This seemed a variation on the Tragedy of the Commons. I investigated further. Platt’s article in the journal American Psychologist is paywalled, but there is a summary: “[T]he term ‘social trap’… describe[s] situations like a fish trap, where individuals, organizations, and societies get started in a direction that later proves unpleasant or lethal but difficult to back out of; actions or inactions prompted by self-interest create long-range effects that are to almost no one's interest.”
Wikipedia says: “Platt… distinguishes between social traps and social fences (countertraps). Social traps represent a behavior or action which prioritizes individual gains at the expense of collective gains. Social fence refers to a short-term avoidance behavior by individuals that leads to a long-term loss to the entire group.”
In the case of the Fast-track Bill, the Government is aiming to entrench a social trap, to funnel profit from the extraction of (currently protected) communal resources into the pockets of the billionaires and corporations who funded them into power.12 They are doing it in an underhanded way because it is an unethical, indefensible thing to do, and they are trying to get it pushed through before people notice.
The not-wanting-to-read-the-news overwhelm and apathy a lot of citizens are feeling is more of a social fence: we feel powerless to stop what’s happening, that powerlessness makes us despairing, and so on. Writing this piece is an attempt to disentangle myself from the social fence / countertrap. I don’t want to swallow the poison of not speaking when it’s time to speak.
When I first read that phrase social fence (countertrap), I misunderstood it to mean the counterforces that limit selfish exploitation: the interwoven social fabric that inhibits over-extraction. This fabric of interconnectedness is generally strong in cultures that draw from and rely upon collective resources. (An example: limiting hunting of certain animals by means of myth and taboo.) It is damage to the social fabric— as happened during the Pandemic— that creates the conditions for divide-and-rule politics like we are seeing now. As economic stress increases for the relatively powerless, people are encouraged to take their frustrations out on those who might otherwise be allies13 rather than teaming up to fight the true overlords: Übercapitalists, those who seek to suck every last fossil fuel out and burn it for profit, risking life itself in the process.
It was nice to have a holiday from current events, but the thing about current events is that they continue to happen whether you’re personally watching or not. I wish I’d tuned in sooner, in time to encourage others to write submissions well ahead of time. But although public submissions on the Bill are now closed, much cleverer and more attentive people than me are speaking forcefully about how this Government is attempting to undermine democracy, which is heartening.14
On Friday night I was at a gig. (Delaney Davidson.) It was a different crowd to my usual: older and better-off. I got talking to the people in the row behind me. It was the last day to make submissions on the Fast-track Bill and I asked them if they had done so, but they hadn’t heard about it. They were shocked into silence for a minute, then one woman said “It must be time to get back into the streets!”
They began reminiscing about protests of the past, all the way back to “the big one— the Springbok tour.”
This made me annoyed in a minor, kneejerk kind of way— it was such a Boomer response to present danger to hark back to some past glory.15 But it also got me thinking. This Government is acting in haste and in stealth, and a lot of people don’t yet know what’s going on. Theoretically, if the Fast-track Bill were to pass, and, for instance, a mine were to be approved in conservation land— I think we would see direct action. I believe New Zealanders would be galvanised by such egregious trespass. I said as much to Tom last night, and he said he’s heard lots of people saying the same thing.
We are seeing the true intent of this Government now, less than a year into its first term. Turns out the rhetoric of ‘getting the country back on track’ and ‘economic stability’ is a euphemism for extraction of resources and the direction of subsequent profit to the rich mates of Luxon and co. Like… Quelle surprise.
Over at the Democracy Project,
is initiating Fast-Track Watch. He says: “I’m hoping to crowdsource information about the potential Fast-Track projects and processes. Therefore, hopefully whistleblowers and well-informed citizens will provide additional information. Please send me your tips, ideas, feedback, or offers of assistance.”If there’s a silver lining to this shameful phase of our country’s history, maybe it’s in that aforementioned galvanisation. Deep love of Nature is intertwined with the national character, in te Ao Māori and te Ao Pākehā alike. Aotearoa’s native frogs are the sole members of an ancient lineage that split off from other frogs 200 million years ago. Only three species now remain. They are so well-camouflaged that although they live in the forest where I grew up, I’ve never seen one. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let some fucker run them over with a bulldozer. I think we will see increasingly strong opposition to this Government in the coming months and years. New Zealanders understand that the biodiversity we are privileged to inhabit and live alongside is another kind of richness— a treasure beyond price.
Mid-February to Easter— 40 days
Whatevs
I was happy to sit and keep company without eating. We drank cold water from a glass jug. Behrouz said “Have you had this water? This is the best water.” Then he ate steadily through the food, as is his wont. I asked him why he’s so skinny if he eats so much and he said it’s because he walks everywhere— walking, walking, walking.
The Prime Minister having a baby was massive news at the time, but looking back it seems an innocent age, before all the shit went down: Christchurch massacre, White Island, the Pandemic, Auckland floods, Cyclone Gabrielle, etc.
Sorry about this, but this is what I’m talking about:
I wish I’d thought to keep a copy of my submission so I could share what I wrote here, but a submission is a matter of public record, so it will reappear when the Select Committee publishes its findings. Suffice it to say that although succinct, it was strongly worded.
Te Tiriti / The Treaty of Waitangi
They think we are weak; but we know they are wrong.
Up to and including narcissists and psychopaths
Kev: “I call it dendritic.” He means tree-shaped, with the port the root, splitting into branches of roads, and at the end of each twig, a farm. The interconnectedness of the farms is secondary. “It’s not so much the Industrial Revolution; it’s a colonial-economic model of extraction.”
If you doubt this claim, ask yourself if there’s any sane reason for repealing anti-smoking measures, or if it’s more likely that some kind of behind-the-scenes deal was made with tobacco lobbyists in exchange for campaign backing.
For instance, along race or gender lines
Some good responses collated by Bernard Hickey here: 'This bill is dangerous for the environment and our democracy'
I don’t mean to be too harsh. They were nice people.
Did you listen to Dougald's conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta ? DH is lauding the connectivity of kinship when TY points out that kinship necessitates stringent limits that are meant to curb exactly this kind of pathological behavior. And I am rereading TY's new book, Right Story, Wrong Story and just read the section which muses- during a psychotic break, no less- on how an open system (Aboriginal Lore) can interface with a closed system (Modern Capitalist Deathwish) without it falling prey to the closed system. They didn't have an answer, but my hunch is that you have to wait for (and maybe encourage) the closed system to crack open from its own internal strain. And one of the consistent ways that Wrong Story happens, is going fast, wanting things now- this relation to time. As Bayo (and Buddhists before him) say: Everything is very urgent, thus we must go very slowly.
Those who think only in terms of ego, profit, and competition— those who only see dog-eat-dog— can’t understand cooperation or interdependence. Exploitative behaviour is rewarded under Capitalism...
Well written, thanks Rosie. Almost everyone I speak to is appalled at the way we're heading, but that might just reflect the bubble I'm in; I also have conservative farmer neighbours who can't see the harm.
But it's an interesting phenomenon which I suspect might be a way of coping with the growing insecurity in the world; grab what you can and run for the bunker. A complete fallacy of course, but encouraged by disinformation from some who want to see a collapse.
We certainly do live in interesting times.