Why do you do what you do?

Why do you do what you do?

For most of my life, I've been driven by wanting to make a difference, by wanting to find a cause, by wanting to achieve something worthwhile.  This has taken me some amazing places and I've had a chance to do a lot of interesting things – I spent nearly a year volunteering in Africa, I worked in a TV station, I've studied civil engineering and disaster management, and now I work in a job that is about saving lives.  In my current job, I can point to a situation where someone has said that what I did (install some special smoke alarms for them) is what saved their life, so in some ways it's hard to get a better, "I've done something worthwhile with my time."

But, I find I still struggle with meaning and purpose, still wonder if I'm doing enough, still wonder if anything I does really matters – or if it does matter, whether it matters enough, or if I could be doing something better.  I still spend a lot of my time – sometimes it feels like most of my time – doing things that don't feel like they are worthwhile.  I play computer games, I waste time (a lot of time), I spend far too much time on Facebook or watching YouTube.  Sure, some of that has been beneficial, and I've learned things from all of those, but that nagging, "Have I done enough?" still sits there, staring me down, a silent accusation that my talk does not match my walk.

In some ways, that can be a good thing.  That challenge to do better, to keep improving, to keep wanting to make a difference can be really positive, and it does sometimes drive me from time-wasting to doing something useful.  But, at other times it can feel condemning: "You could be doing better, you could be doing more."

This has been especially challenging for me over the last few years, and even more the last couple, as my health has not been great – I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease about 5 years ago, but recently have had a growing problem with fatigue (possibly chronic fatigue syndrome, though we're still working on a diagnosis – if anyone has been through similar health issues, you'll know it can be a long road).  So, sometimes I actually cannot do more.  Sometimes the most productive thing I can do is sleep, so I have enough energy to face the next day.  This is no end of frustration, even without that constant feeling that I need to do something worthwhile with my life.

Most of you will know that I have a pretty heavy interest in science, but that only makes these challenges worse, because I know enough to know that there are huge problems in the world that need all of us to contribute (climate change, ecosystem destruction, pollution, etc), and that most days I'm contributing more to the problems than to the solutions – because it's hard not to.  Knowing the scope of what we face as a world and how little of what needs to be done that is actually being done can be dismal knowledge to possess.

But something I've realised?  "Doing something worthwhile with your life" is not about the big things (though they definitely matter).  It's about the smaller things: about those day-to-day, person-to-person moments, those little decisions and little actions that usually feel insignificant at the time, but might matter a huge amount later.  To use that work example from above: I have installed a lot of smoke alarms for people, but only one of them actually seems to have helped save someone.  Most likely, there has been something else in my job that has prevented a fire and none of us will ever know about it – it is basically impossible to measure the thing that didn't happen because of something you prevented.  And even outside work, I expect that the things I've done which have mattered most are probably not the ones I would have thought of.  Those little actions, little things you do to help someone else aren't insignificant – they are the only things that are significant (and I say this as someone who has spent nearly my whole adult life chasing the ideal of trying to make the world better).

I heard a quote a while back on how people talk about what they would do differently if they could go back in time and change things – how small changes amplify over time – but that no one ever thinks like that in their "today".  There's no difference between some tiny, seemingly-coincidental action in the past that dramatically shaped your life now, or every action you take today, except for your perspective on the situation.  Too often we assign arbitrary significance to certain events and choices, when really every choice is like that in some way.

So, there are three things that I think about from all this: one, what you are doing matters, don't ever forget that and don't lose heart doing it; two, don't ever feel condemned that you're not doing enough; and three, if someone does something that you find valuable, then tell them – quite likely, they have done good for many others and never knew about it.  We all like to know when something we said or did counted to someone else.  Act like every little decision matters – but never beat yourself up for resting, taking the time to enjoy life, or having some fun.  Without those moments, life becomes drudgery.

Does this mean I am discouraging you from trying to go after the big stuff or to avoid attempting the giant goals?  Absolutely not.  Our world needs people who dream big, act big, and go after those impossible problems.  Even failing at trying to shift one of the big issues in the world probably still moves it just a short way forward – and, if nothing else, it's better than continuing to be part of the problems.  But, don't lose heart if you feel like what you're doing doesn't matter enough, or if you feel like you can't reach what you wanted to reach; it's still worth trying – and really, there is no such thing as a "little good" – any good you do is big, even if no one sees it (especially yourself).

Courage, dear friends.  The road is long, but we do not travel it alone.

Checks and Balances (or Why the Separation of Church and State is Important)

I actually have four possible titles for this post: "Checks and Balances", "Why the Separation of Church and State is Important", "Spheres of Influence", and "Overlapping But Separate".  I don't know which I like best, which is why I have started with listing them all.

This is actually an idea I have blatantly plagiarised from a lady by the name of Landa Cope (whose name I surprisingly remembered, despite the fact that I heard her speak 18 years ago – also, I feel old now).  She works with Youth With a Mission (YWAM).  Now, before you ragequit because I mentioned a Christian evangelism organisation, it's worth looking at the idea regardless of who said it (in fact, that is part of the point itself).

The concept, which she traces back to the Old Testament of the Bible, but which you can derive from any look into civics (among other things), is that a well-functioning society is one that has multiple spheres of influence, each responsible for a different key feature of a society.  If I recall correctly, she named seven distinct civil structures.  I will slightly expand on that list, as even within spheres of influence you still need to have checks and balances.

For anyone wondering, this is basically a logical extension of the doctrine of the Separation of Church and State, which some may find surprising was actually stated historically by a number of Christian thinkers.  All the Christians trying to marry the Church with the State today would do well to remember this... (!)  Arguably, Augustine was the originator in Christian thinking – he lived back when years on our calendar were only three digits long, that's how old this is – with the idea developed further by the likes of Martin Luther (as in the 13th and 14th Century German, not his now-more-popular namesake M.L. King Jr) and the Anabaptists.  The separation of Church and State said that "earthly" and "heavenly" powers should be separate, an idea that did not initially go down so well among the likes of the Holy Roman Empire and kings who claimed divine right to rule.  This doctrine of two-sphere separation is now enshrined in US law.

The concept that Landa Cope put forward was that we shouldn't stop there: in fact you have several areas of civic society that should maintain some independence of each other.  I think this is a very, very important idea.

Before I get into the why, this is my list of the spheres of influence in civic society today:

• Governance (Executive)
• Governance (Legislature)
• Judiciary
• Law Enforcement
• Military
• Business
• Education
• Healthcare
• The Welfare System
• Media
• The Church or religious organisation (more on this later, including analysis of whether or not it is necessary)
• Bonus category: the Environment

Through history, we can see various changes in how these functioned, or times when two or more were combined (the Holy Roman Empire mentioned above is an example).  Even today, we still get the occasional military coup displacing a government.  Smaller societies didn't always need all of these, and many areas have developed and changed over time (possibly one of the reasons why I have come up with a different list to the one that Cope developed from the Old Testament).  The media is in some respects quite a modern invention, at least as far as their functions for this concept is concerned, and some of the media's functions used to belong to the Church (more on that later as well).

The basic concept is that each "sphere of influence" or structure has a key role to play in any society that is working properly.  None should have too much or too little power.  None should be unduly pressured or controlled by another.  If any one is too strong, all of them suffer (including the one that is too strong).  I am imagining that most of us can already start to think of current examples of problematic power imbalances.  As it turns out, civil society is a difficult thing to do well.

So, a bit more detail on each one: what it is and why it is important.

Governance (Executive)

The Executive (for anyone like me who wishes there were more straightforward terms) is the part of a government who makes the decisions.  These are the people who choose things that will affect a whole country (or any size region really: these apply at any scale, including international – you will find all of them among the alphabet soup of the United Nations somewhere).  How much money will we put into healthcare this year?  What roads will be upgrade?  What will be required parts of the educational curriculum?  Will we send troops?  It should go without needing to be explained why it is critically important that this group are able to act without too much control by outside influences – but it is also extremely rare that they do, at least not entirely.  In a lot of places, we have business lobby groups pouring more total money than most entire countries make into getting someone to do what they want.

This is where one of my other alternative titles comes in: checks and balances.  In several countries (not New Zealand, but including the USA and UK) there are two different branches to their government.  In the US, this is the House and the Senate.  In the UK, it is the House of Lords and House of Commons.  The whole reason we have these is so that no one person or group holds too much power.  That is the fundamental underlying principle behind democracy itself: the more you can share power among different groups, the more likely it is that you have fair outcomes.  This rarely works well, and in some places in recent times it has not been working at all, but democracy is all about compromise (which, incidentally is why partisan politics – "I will back my team and oppose the other team no matter what" – is so destructive: entrenched positions are antithetical to compromise).  It is also part of why US politics has been such an epic clusterfail recently and NZ politics has been fairly tame in comparison: the US system forces a two-party partisan setup, but NZ's Mixed Member Proportional voting system deliberately sets out to have incomplete dominance by any one party and gives smaller parties sufficient strength to require coalitions.  The same happens in other countries like Germany (which is basically the system we borrowed for here in NZ).

Governance (Legislature)

My mention of two-house governments may have you thinking that's what I mean by the two Governance separations I am naming, but that is actually an example of the "separation" concept within a category, not of two different categories.  Legislature is the part of government responsible for making laws.  These are the people who draft up new laws for the Executive to act on.  In most countries that I know, this is predominantly done by the same people as the Executive.  I have split them because I think it is important to understand that there are two functions here, and this Legislative one will make more sense when I get on to Judiciary and Law Enforcement.

However, something that I have only learned while working for a government organisation is that most of the work of the creation of Legislation is not done by the elected politicians.  In fact, most laws are written by people that almost none of us could name.  These are the civil service, the "cockroaches of government" (a term I am stealing from the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood; yes, I am a science fiction geek), the bureaucrats who do the actual work, many of whom survive between changes of elected party, or are at least re-hired by the next politician because they were good at their job.  Unless you have had some exposure to politics or law, you probably never realise quite how much work goes into writing laws nor how many different laws there are.  I don't want to get into the sea of terms and details that is political science, and I'm not really qualified to do so anyway, but sufficient for this discussion is an understanding that the people who write laws are not always the ones who enact them.

I will explain this by an example.  In NZ, some years back we had a Prime Minister get into some trouble because their cavalcade of vehicles was caught breaking the speed limit.  This might sound trivial, but there is a deeper issue here: those making the laws need to be different to those enforcing the laws, and no leader should be above the Law (capitalisation intended).  As a ruler, you cannot – must not – be "above the law".  That is dangerous territory, because a leader needs to be able to be held to account for their actions.  That is probably the key concept in all I am discussing here: no one should have too much power.

Interestingly, NZ has had a rare introduction to a civil servant in recent months in the form of Ashley Bloomfield, chief executive of our Ministry of Health.  Note here though that his title gives away the fact that he is, at least in part, a member of the Executive: the "do-ers" rather than the "writers".  Most places involve both, because Executive and Legislature very much do overlap, even though they are functionally distinct.

Judiciary and Law Enforcement

I am going to explain these two together as it makes things simpler.  Remember my example of the speeding Prime Minister?  Law Enforcement would be the ones catching them speeding (i.e. the Police) and the Judiciary would be the ones deciding whether or not they should be fined (i.e. the Courts system).  I can probably put my idea of splitting these two areas down to a comic book character of all things: Judge Dredd is named such because in the dystopian world he inhabits, he gets to be Judge, Jury, and Executioner.  It probably doesn't take much thinking to see why all those combined is a bad idea, but if you want a more realistic example, think of a Police officer who breaks the law: if there is no separation between Enforcement and Judiciary, the Police get to decide their own outcomes, and that is open to a range of abuses.  Again, everyone needs to be accountable somewhere.

Military

This is probably the area that needs the least explanation, as most of us are aware of history where militaries usurped power, or where despotic leaders used their military to exert pressure on their populace.  However, I think it is worth stating that I think your Police and Military should be separate.  One is concerned with keeping the peace internally and the other with keeping the peace externally (as thankfully most militaries today are not involved in direct strike operations).  The methods used to fight an enemy are quite different to how you should be treating your citizens.  There are some cases where we see blurring of these lines, where tactics and tools typically used by militaries are getting employed on normal people, under names like "counter-terrorism".  Protip: if the harm done in the name of "protecting our citizens" is worse than the harm they are being protected from, you're doing it wrong.  (Note: there certainly are cases where governments need to do things like counter terrorism, but the lines can get blurry).

Business

Ah, the almighty dollar, true deity of the Western world.

I jest, but only slightly.  Today, too much is done in service of the interests of big companies ahead of the interests of the citizens of those countries.  Some places are worse than others (let's just say I'm glad I don't live in America).  A good definition for the primary purpose of a government is that it is there to protect its citizens.  This sometimes means protecting the people from the government itself or from the predatory practices of corporations interested in nothing more than making money.

Business is the part of society focused on production.  If the business sector is doing well, then people have jobs, income, and purpose.^{Note 1}  If it is not doing well, all the other areas suffer because there is no longer sufficient revenue being generated to sustain them all.  This is probably one of the simpler cross-sector relationships to understand.  However, business can get too much power, and a world where corporations control everything from the governing Executive to what people are taught to who has access to healthcare to what gets said in the media is a classic science fiction dystopia.  It is a classic because it hits a bit close to home sometimes.

I would argue that, at least in somewhere like the USA, business is the area where we see one sector having too much power over the others.  How often do we hear governments deciding things based on what is best for this nebulous thing called The Economy™ instead of talking in terms of human welfare?  Of course, the reason for this is that measures of economic activity are closely linked to measures of human wellbeing: after all, who would rather live like someone from the Congo rather than like someone from Switzerland?  (GDPs of about $800 USD and >$80,000 USD per year respectively, with similar levels of quality of life).^{Note 2}  Of course, the dark side of this is that economic activity also tracks closely with things like environmental degradation: more production means more waste (it doesn't necessarily need to but the relationship is rarely avoided – I hope we can soon start to decouple standard of living and environmental impact, as we desperately need to).

As a current-events-related aside, business and government relationships to business are probably going to be the areas where we see the greatest changes in the coming months and years due to the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.  I do not know what these are going to look like (and I doubt anyone truly does yet), but watch this space.  Most likely, the changes are going to be different, even drastically so, between countries and regions.

Education

Simple example time: Soviet Russia.  To use a weird (but in some circles popular) Internet meme: In Soviet Russia, you do not read book – book reads you.  We have all seen Government-engineered attempts to control the populace through educational means.  Many of these have not ended well.  However, the Government is not the only threat to a balanced, worthwhile education: Business and the Church can be threats too (and today, same for the Media).  Again, each area should be free from undue influence from the others and able to freely critique them.  A good education for a politically-empowered citizen should include understanding of concepts like how a Nation functions, and the critical-thinking skills to engage with the political and business spheres in their world – and, of course, the ability to critically analyse the Media in all its forms (this is, mind the pun, critically important in today's connected world).

Healthcare

This is one of the areas where it's hard not to get political.  I will try my best.

A great healthcare system is one where everyone who needs treatment, gets treatment, in a timely, non-frustrating, and affordable way.  One of the reasons that this is so rarely achieved is that some of these ideals stand in opposition to each other: if you want a fast, effective healthcare system, it is going to be expensive, and that needs to be paid for somewhere (whether by the government, insurance, having everyone be stupendously rich, whatever).

A great healthcare system also includes prevention, such as ensuring people have proper nutrition, access to exercise and clean air and water, etc.  Holistic health is important, so this cannot simply involve doctors, as important as they are.  We have all had a big reminder of this with the constant media about properly washing hands.

As you probably all know, Healthcare is an area that is constantly meddled with by Government.  Some of that is necessary: if the government is paying some or all of the bills, it gets the right to choose how that is spent.  In theory, a democratically-elected Government is also choosing things based upon the will of the people.

The Welfare System

I think I may have left the hardest sectors to last.  Like Healthcare, Welfare is a political hot potato, only more so.

However, a hopefully mostly-uncontroversial version is to say that everyone, regardless of income, ability, age, birth, race, gender, ideology, sexuality, etc, etc, should have access to essential food, water, air, shelter, and aid when they need it.  If you cannot agree with at least that definition, then I'm not sure I want to know you: it's human to have compassion on the weak.  Actually, I heard recently that a definition of when humans achieved "civilisation" was a broken and healed femur bone, because a lone individual cannot survive this without help.  In nature, an animal that breaks its femur is crippled and unable to move far nor fast.  In the wild, this is a death sentence, regardless of species.  If you find one that has healed, it means that individual had assistance to stay alive.  Cooperation and compassion are the very core of civilisation, and without them, we are no better than savages.  [Source]

Exactly what forms this welfare takes, how it is decided who receives it, and the mechanics of whatever system is chosen are all areas of debate.  Like many things, there is probably no perfect solution.  Suffice to say that it's important it exists.  (And yes, taking a meal to your neighbour who has just had a newborn or the one unable to get out because of a hip operation are absolutely part of this: compassion should always start at home).

Media

Let's get it out of the way and all say it together: "Fake news!"

Right, with that done, let's consider what useful roles are played by the media, as there are several (arguably, this is an area that could be split further, as historically some functions have been performed by the structures of other spheres of influence).  "Media" here does not have to mean newspapers or the nightly six o'clock TV bulletin, it can include any type of media, everything from the town crier of old to Snapchat.  Here are the functions I can think of:

• News from afar
• Announcements from other spheres of influence
• Investigative journalism
• Holding other spheres to account
• Celebration

The first area, news from afar, is the most obvious and one of the simplest functions.  I say "afar", but this can include local news; it's about getting information on occurrences you did not personally observe.

Announcements from other spheres of influence usually means Government announcements, but can be anything: your school newsletter is a type of Media that is important to many families.

Investigative journalism is when we start to get into the important stuff for media.  This overlaps heavily with "Holding other spheres to account".  Both are about digging past the façades and seeking out truth.  It's not an easy nor flashy job, as in the day of clickbait and snappy attention-grabbers, the considered, often lengthy, depths of investigative journalism can get missed – not to mention the sheer time it takes that could be spent spitting out some other barely-true inflammatory headline-grabber.  We do still see the occasional hard-work-that-paid-off investigative piece, and I have a lot of respect for journalists who still put in the effort.  A risk in the days of clickbait news is that politicians or businesspeople or church leaders or whoever can get away things while they deflect to the latest low-hanging scandal.  We need those who dig out the important stories, even when they're apparently uninteresting to some target demographic.

On a more positive note, media is also about celebration.  This could be heroic acts, or grand human achievements, or sports wins, but it is also the more mundane, such as the Births, Deaths, and Marriages section.  It's important that we know when things have gone well as when they haven't.

The Church/Religious Organisation

In today's secularised world, a lot will ask why I even include the church, but the history of the church's relationship with the rest of society can help us to understand what was valid about it and what we might be missing.  From history, if we move beyond the times of state-endorsed religion, a more healthy relationship grew: one where leaders (kings then, politicians later) lead a populace while the church (or Synagogue or Mosque or whatever) were responsible for the society's moral core.  It is not hard to make an argument that the Christian church has made a mess of its role as "moral guide" over the last couple of decades.  A trail of excesses, fraud, and worse leave us in a place where, if anything, the moral voicings of the church are considered by many to be outdated at best, bigoted at worst.  Not a great look, and it means that when the church has raised any valid point, they've been shouted out of the debate.

However, the failings do not necessarily mean the idea of an independent group who look out for morality is outdated.  In fact, we have this enshrined in our modern society already, in the form of (in NZ at least) the Human Rights Commission.  I don't always necessarily agree with the HRC, but I am glad they exist: someone needs to be asking, "Is this ok?" in our headlong rush forward.  Universities have ethics boards for the same reason.  Recent years have seen calls by some fairly big names to have something similar reining in research into subjects like artificial intelligence: to ask "Should we?" not just "Could we?"

So, I think the idea of "moral watchdog" is important, but it is not the only service performed by the church.  Certainly it has a place in gatherings and social interaction and weddings and funerals, but I think the important one is actually educational: as well as ask whether what we are currently doing is morally right, the church also instructed people in how to be decent human beings.  This, I think, is the role that isn't replicated well in a modern secular society.

In a church, a diverse group of people, usually collections of cross-generational families, got together to be reminded of how to treat others and were called to charitable acts.  Certainly this hasn't always worked great, but at least it gave a forum for (one version of) moral life to be shared.  Churches were a place of stories and reflection.  With the human need for storytelling met now by movies and television, I fear we might have lost the idea of "myth as instruction" present in every civilisation I can think of.  I enjoy the Marvel movies as much as anyone, but what do they teach us about the hard questions in life?  (To be fair, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies at least do address some of the aspects of "how to be a decent human".  But this isn't the case for other stories we are telling and consuming – I cringe to think what moral instruction someone would be receiving from reality TV shows...!)

In a world where the Church has become increasing irrelevant, I wonder how we are going to fill this gap.  And, before you comment, yes this should be the role of parents first and foremost.  But not everyone receives that from parents – as a parent, I realise I don't do it enough for my kids, so I mourn for the kids of parents too busy or too stressed (or too broken) to give them what they need.  What sort of humans will they become as adults?  At least in a church community, there was a weekly (or more) gathering to put another piece in the puzzle.

Most who are reading this might be wondering what I'm going on about, but realistically that's probably because you are not the people who really need this kind of input.  Most of my friends came from pretty stable backgrounds, and many had Christian childhoods.  But I think there are many people out there who are craving for good role models and not getting them.

I don't have an answer for what should fill this gap in a modern society.  Maybe it is a rebirth of the church (interestingly, even some prominent atheists are coming out now and saying that maybe Christianity isn't such a bad thing for a society after all).^{Note 3}  Maybe it falls now to the schools (as if they didn't have enough to do already).  Maybe it is some new thing I haven't seen.  Maybe it is a return to decent parenting.  I don't know.

Many of the other roles a church traditionally held (place of gathering, place of reflection, place of celebration or mourning) can be found elsewhere.

Bonus Category: the Environment

I say "bonus category" because this isn't a societal construct like the others, yet it is even more important than any of them.  Without the others, we get a breakdown in human society.  Without a properly-functioning biosphere, we get a breakdown in life as we know it.  All of the above – including, critically, the economy – exist within the environment, not the other way around.  If you ruin the environment for monetary gain, everyone loses.  I think we forget this too often.  While, as I mentioned earlier, the economy can be a reasonably good measure of human wellbeing, it presupposes that we have all of the "ecosystem services" in place to supply what both the economic activity and human lives require.  (If you haven't heard the term "ecosystem services" before, I highly recommend reading up on the concept: it attempts to put a value on the immeasurable reliance we have on the natural world).  The capacity of our world to supply human needs is being used up faster than it can replenish itself.^{Note 4}  This is a massive concern, and one we need to address.

Closing Thoughts

I realise this has been a fairly lengthy read.  Hopefully you learned something.  I've had these ideas kicking around for nearly two decades, and I find that it helps me to understand society a little, and helps as a reminder that too much of anything is a problem, but I would warn that any categorisation system is imperfect.  All of these areas overlap, most of them are fuzzy at the edges.  Some of my categories are a bit arbitrary.  I have probably missed something crucial.  But my hope is that we come away with an understanding that a well-functioning society needs to have balance: no one area or one ideal can itself suffice to supply what a complex society requires to thrive.

Power systems require that excesses be kept in check.  If any one area gets too much control, the unbalanced system can hurt the whole society.

You might ask whether we are currently living with anything out of balance.  I wondered the same thing.  My first reaction is: yes, absolutely; we are flawed humans and cannot ever get this perfect.  That is the whole reason we have separate but interdependent spheres of influence in society in the first place.  But a more considered answer?  It actually depends on where you look.  I know I have picked on America a bit here, but that is partly because (a) they do have some pretty significant systemic problems, and (b) their problems make the headlines, unlike say governance issues in Africa (of which there are far more).  The USA has too much power in the hands of corporations – Business is too strong.  It also has too much power in the hands of the Church – while the doctrine of Separation of Church and state is codified in law in the US, we still see an unholy (literally, in my opinion) marriage between the Evangelical church and Republican party.  That is a giant can of worms and a deep rabbit hole that I am not going to dive into here.  I would argue that in a lot of other places, the church has insufficient power, in so much as that role of "moral instructor" is left vacant.  (Note: I do not want to see the church given wads of political power.  Please no).  The Media is too powerful, in the manner of being a wild out-of-control beast that no one understands any more, which is thrashing about hurting everyone (including social media) – yet simultaneously, the "watchman" roles that should be performed by the media (fact-checking rulers, investigative journalism, etc) are far too weak.  Education and Healthcare are somewhat at the mercy of the other areas, so they end up as good (or as bad) as whatever else is going on.  Beyond those, I don't really have the expertise to comment with any confidence.

For me, the important thing in any system that is to function well (and which involves flawed humans) is for it to have checks and balances; for there to be ways that excesses can be reined in before they do too much damage.  In some places, Governments have too much power (and the COVID-19 outbreak has spawned some worrying trends in mass surveillance and government control, which I hope will only be temporary, but which I fear will not – almost no one, having been given power, is willing to relinquish it willingly).  Maybe we need to develop artificial intelligence to rule instead of messy humans.  I for one welcome our new robot overlords.^{Note 5}

Until and unless we manage to come up with anything better, it is important to ensure we have a society that is managed in a sensible way, and that stays in balance.  I challenge you to look out for excesses and imbalances in these areas (or others).  Be an aware citizen who thinks about the run-on effects of any new idea or policy; how might this affect each of these areas?

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave me a comment or to critique anything I've said.  I really do appreciate when someone teaches me something new.

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Note 1: If your job doesn't seem to have purpose, then either you or your employer are doing something wrong.  Find something to do that is meaningful, and find meaning in the things you have to do, even if that's as simple as serving someone their lunch.

Note 2: The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Switzerland are neither the top highest nor the lowest countries by Gross Domestic Product, but I am guessing most of my audience are not going to know much about daily life in either Qatar or the Central African Republic, and the ongoing conflicts in the Congo area are something most have likely heard about at some point.

Note 3: Apparently including none other than The God Delusion author himself, Richard Dawkins.  Apologies about the not-so-great source (it's terribly biased, and too smug for my liking), but the other one I found was paywalled: https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/atheists-sound-the-alarm-decline-of-christianity-is-seriously-hurting-society

Note 4: We are deeply in ecological overshoot. Current calculations have us at over one-and-three-quarter Earths needed to supply our current rate of resource use and degradation; https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/state-of-the-planet/overuse-of-resources-on-earth

Note 5: I suggest developing artificial intelligence to rule instead of humans only mostly in jest: YouTube: A bold idea to replace politicians | César Hidalgo (TED).  The best part about this idea is that he suggests a path to adoption that does not involve immediately signing absolute power over to software.  It starts out sounding fairly ludicrous, but hang in there for the whole thing.  And no, I had not intended to leave this as the last idea on the page.

The Black Swan

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, I have been thinking about "Black Swan" events.  For those who don't know the term, it refers to the fact that everyone took it as known that swans were white, and there was even some famous quote about it, but then black swans were discovered in Australia, and suddenly something that no one expected to be true was found to be true.  Black Swan events are those that almost no-one expects, and they can have far-reaching and often highly disruptive effects.

We are of course living through a Black Swan event right now.  Yes, there were warnings from those in the know that the world was unprepared for a major pandemic.  Even the partial-false-starts of SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Ebola, etc in recent years were not enough to wake us sufficiently to do anything (except in East Asia).  But for most of us, we never even thought about a pandemic.  It never entered our consciousness, or if it did, we fell into that same mental trap (heuristics, if you want a long word for it) of assuming that "low probability" means "zero probability", and we dismissed it (or at least made no lifestyle changes).

I have a Masters degree in this and I did nothing to prepare for a pandemic.  (It is kind of amusing, in a tragic ironic sort of sense, that the hand sanitiser we put in our emergency kit as an afterthought was actually the thing we most needed from it – so far).

As an aside, please, please make sure you have an up-to-date emergency kit.  If you don't, get one now.  If you don't, not only will you suffer, but us as responding organisations will have to carry you, while we are scrambling trying to get our own systems up and running.  If you are not prepared, you harm others too.

(I would say that I don't think there is such a thing as "too prepared", but actually there is, and it was put well by one of my Uni lecturers: don't spend a thousand dollars to save a hundred – but do spend a hundred to save a thousand).

An interesting characteristic of Black Swan events is that while unexpected, and generally considered to be random and to have unknowable timings, they are not entirely impossible to predict.  In fact, in many cases, a Black Swan event can even be expected, but merely have unknown timing.  An example is a stock market crash: if you know the signs, you can tell when one is due, but you usually will not know the final "straw that broke the camel's back" event that triggers it.  (Incidentally, some of the economic downturn we are currently experiencing was expected and due – although the catalysing event this time happens to have been a very big one).

So what does this have to do with all of us?

A lot, actually.  There is another term closely linked to Black Swan events, and that is "resilience".  This somewhat-nebulous term means the characteristic of a system of being able to bounce back from shocks to that system.  We all probably know people who are mentally resilient: no matter what happens to them, they seem to be able to get back up and carry on (and we probably all know someone – usually ourselves – who isn't good at this at all).  Resilience is hard to measure or quantify, and usually the only true measure is when something goes wrong.  It is also hard to value in economic terms, which is one of the reasons why we don't see much focus on it.  (Whether we like it or not, our current systems of government, business, and even some social interactions are measured in dollar terms – even human life is given a dollar value, as cold as that feels).

(As an aside: if this irks you – and it probably should – it is because money is a convenient measure of exchange and relative value; without any such underlying value system, it is hard to compare anything.  I don't think it is the only option, but I cannot think of a better one that would actually work).

So resilience, as hard to define as it may be, is crucial for anything we want to last.  Think of a marriage: no matter how good it seems during the good times, if it is not resilient, its days are seriously numbered, as life will always have hard times, sometime (it's why it's in standard marriage vows).  We have seen, in fairly stark terms – because the currency this time is human lives lost – responses to this virus that show resilience and some that do not.  A lot of these have been surprises.  East Asia, not so surprising, because they had a few trial runs.  NZ, a big surprise, because we were not actually all that prepared: but good leadership went a long way here (even though there is a long tail to this that even the most pessimistic of us are probably underestimating).  The USA was a big surprise too, as they had (according to one group's measures) one of the best set of pandemic plans.  It shows that resilience is more a human factor than an organisational or institutional one: a resilient person without a plan will always do better than a non-resilient person with a plan (though good plans certainly do help).

When I was younger, I was a fan of MacGuyver (and the fact that I almost always carry a Swiss Army Knife is probably because of this – it's amazing how often they are useful).  While entirely fictional, he's the perfect example of personal resilience: no matter what happens, you don't give up, but you look at what is on hand and work solutions.  You don't panic.  More recently, what may well have become be my all-time favourite movie, The Martian, was all this again, and had a number of excellent quotes:

"At some point, everything's going to go South on you.  You're going to say, 'This is it, this is how I end.'  Now, you can either accept that, or you can get to work.  You solve one problem, and then you solve the next problem, and the next, and if you solve enough problems, you get to go home."

"Work the problem." (I say this to my kids fairly frequently).

"You could call it a failure but I prefer the term 'learning experience'."

"If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search.  If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood.  If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies.  This is so fundamentally human that its found in every culture without exception." (I think this one only appears in the book).

By the way, if you haven't, you should read the book.  It's great.  I know it's a tired cliché, but the book was better.  You might even learn some science! :)

Another aside: did you know the author of that book (Andy Weir) lost about a year to debilitating depression and anxiety?  So you don't need to be a super-star to teach yourself these lessons.

(Also, depression sucks).

We are in a world now where some of the foundations have been a little shaken.  I say "a little", because as bad as this seems, it could be far, far worse – and there are institutional issues we are yet to address, yet untouched by the current crises.  This is only a small Swan, as far as Black Swans go.  It is a good time to reflect, to consider what else needs to change, what else lacks resilience and is at risk of failure.

I think The Martian was right: cooperation and compassion are fundamentals of being human.  It's why we hate the sociopathic or psychopathic villain: we instinctively know that a lack of compassion is inhumane, that it's somehow not right.  But, weirdly, we have celebrated a culture that elevates selfishness and self-interest and ego.  That isn't sustainable, not in a time when things might go wrong – or already have gone wrong.  In NZ, we saw the human responses everywhere after the earthquakes in Christchurch: people just coming out to help each other.  That crisis actually made us better neighbours, better people.  Crises often do this: they make us face ourselves with a level of harsh truth we usually shy away from, and give us an opportunity to choose to do good – but more than that, they bring out what we hide, even from ourselves, both good and bad.  Thankfully, for most of us, we are too harsh a critic of ourselves, so we find we're not as bad as we thought.

This current crisis is not going away.  In the last 24 hours I heard the head of the World Health Organisation stating that they had the single largest increase in number of cases in a single day.  While I can sit comfortably here in New Zealand knowing that things are getting back to a version of normal, that is not the reality for many parts of the world: it's still ramping up.  This will be something with a long tail: until we see a widespread vaccine deployed, "normal" will not happen.  That will take at least months, and possibly years; timescales that mean that by the time we get back to "normal", normal will no longer be the same thing it was.  I don't think any of us can properly predict what that means.  It will mean a lot of things, and different things, and many of the choices that determine what those things will be have not even been made.

The economic impacts of this will probably last the decade.

And what then?  What if we are hit by another Black Swan before this one has fully played out?  Empires seldom fell because of a singular problem, but more often because of the intersection of a range of problems, all converging to bring it down.  Our current globalised world is likely the same: one event won't break it, but too many at once might.

And that brings us to the real kicker: we are not living in a resilient world.

Look at any measures of environmental impact or global carrying capacity, and we are in overshoot.  Multiple measures in multiple key resources tell that we are taking more than the Earth can support in the long term.  If we imagine a lake used for fishing, if you take fewer fish than are born each year, the fish stocks can keep replenishing and your fish supply is secure, but if you begin to take more fish than are born, the total fish numbers will decrease, meaning even fewer fish are born, and before you know it, you've crashed the entire fishery.

For anyone wondering, I did not pick overfishing arbitrarily.  It's one of the areas currently in overshoot.

We can argue about whether or not certain measures are accurate or not (climate change is a contentious one, though it shouldn't be), but when multiple measures of multiple resources are telling the same story, that is when you need to sit up and take notice.

I don't have answers for every problem.  I struggle to have answers to my own problems!  But I think it is important to at least be aware that there are problems, to live with a conscious acknowledgement that doing the same as we have always done is causing problems, to think about how we can change, and what we can do to build resilience into everything we do.

The first step in change is a recognition that change is needed.

If I was a betting man (I'm not – too aware of maths to get suckered in to gambling), I would say that we have a roughly even probability of seeing the next big Black Swan before we see the final end of this current one.  We have a close to certain chance of seeing one within the next half-century, and even a fair chance of another big one before this new decade is out.  A lot of this is to do with ecological overshoot and climate change, but that's not to say those are the only options (though they are why I'm putting such high odds).  These are total stab-in-the-dark blind guesses, except that I have studied the subject, so maybe there's a bit of informed intuition there too.  I could be utterly wrong.  I really do hope I am.  I kind of feel I may not be.

In any case, what can you do today, in whatever counts for normal for you right now, to build a little resilience?  What can you do to take a little less, use a little less, waste a little less?  What can you do to help someone else, especially someone in a worse place to you?  The future relies on us cooperating, living with compassion, caring about how we treat each other and the beautiful, delicate systems on the Earth that we rely on.

The coming world will need us to be better humans, as it may not be as comfortable a world as we've grown used to.

[Photo: Michal Klajban, CC-SA-4.0-Intl, Wikimedia Commons].

Horror, Anger, Sorrow

Today, Christchurch, a city all too familiar with heartbreak, suffered something New Zealand hoped we would never see on our own soil: a terrorist attack.

Disbelief.  Horror.  Anger.  Sorrow.  Rage.  A questioning of how this could be real.  We are feeling all these and so much more.

As the numbers start to set in, the initial shock fades and other emotions take hold.  How do we react to this?

We will want justice, we will want to know who could, who would, do this – here.  How?  Why?

But, don't give them that.  Don't even give thought to those who committed these acts.  Lock them up, leave them there, forget them.  They have shown they deserve nothing from us.  They are not even worth our rage.

And we will feel rage.  Right now, I feel a deep, vehement burn.  This is not right.  We know this is wrong, that it shouldn't be so, that it shouldn't happen.

"Be angry, but do not sin."

Anger is an expression of deeper emotions.  Fear.  Sorrow.  That nameless thing that grapples with failing to understand.  Feel it – it's ok.  It's normal.

Then turn and do exactly what these sub-human individuals hate: show love to those hurt today.  Show that New Zealand, Aotearoa – our home – is a place of love, a place of acceptance, and a place of safety.  Reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters, who have lost so much today, and accept them as our own.

Because they are our own.  They are part of us.  Aotearoa is a land of immigrants – every person here is descended from somewhere else.  Yet all of us have a tie to the land here.  One day, one year, one generation, or the lost distant past – our length of time here doesn't separate us.  Our time here unites us.

Just because people who lost loved ones today look different, sound different, think different, act different, and believe different things is no reason for us to think them separate from us.  Re-read that last line: every one of those differences is true whether you talk of the strangest stranger or your closest friend and relative.  No other person is exactly the same as you.  And this makes us stronger.  Our variety brings richness.

We are all one race: the human race.  Let us never forget that.  There is more we are alike than we are unlike.

In this time of upset, let us show that we as the Nation of New Zealand are a people of welcome, a people of love, a people of a strength who gives, not takes.

Aroha.  Kaha.  Mana.

Christchurch, you have shown before who you are in crisis: unity, courage, generosity, love in action.  Your Muslim brothers and sisters need that of you again today, and in the days to come.

We will not surrender to fear.  Fear of others, fear of the unknown, fear of the different.  Those are not what define us, only what hunt us.

Because we are not so different to those who committed such acts today, either – we all fear, we have all treated others as less than human.  When we let ourselves drop other humans into debasing stereotypes, we let those kinds of beliefs grow in our midst.  Today was a failing of all of us.

Hate has no place here.  Racism has no place here.

I found myself thinking today on whether I would have felt different it this had been a terrorist attack of Muslims against others, rather than someone from the same ancestors as my own against Muslims.  And yes, I would have felt different: Islam taken to a destructive extreme is horrifying, but lovely, moderate Muslims exist.  White supremacy (if that indeed was the motivation – I don't care to know) is pure toxic evil.

And I say that as a white, hetero, cis-gendered, middle-age, professional male.

No people group is better than any other.  No people group, especially by birth alone, deserves better than another.

And no person, ever, is justified in racial, ideological killing.

I was saddened by hearing that, according to one intelligence expert, the South Island has more extreme Right-wing groups than the North Island.  But with my home here, I can see why.  In the South Island, people are more likely to make racial jokes, more likely to freely express opinions that others – Muslims in particular – are somehow inferior.  I heard such within the last week.  Does this make everyone who talks that way allies to today's killers?  No, but it helps those like the killers feel justified and supported.  If you treat any group as less than human, it is you who are inhuman, not them.

Give nothing to racism.  It seems we didn't listen.

Let's start: to listen is to learn.  To listen is to show respect.

As for me, my heart is open to hear – the sorrow, the heartache, and the grief of our Muslim family.  It will help me to see them as human.  Help me to see them as family.  Hopefully, help them to see us as family, too.

Jesus Who?

This Christmas season, apart from trying to avoid some really awful renditions of carols that play in supermarkets (seriously, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is bad enough already without you screechily murdering it like that), I have been thinking a little bit about who Jesus really was. Being brought up in a Christian family, you don't tend to question this much, but I was thinking that while historically it is pretty certain that there was a guy in the first century A.D. whose name gets rendered in Greek as Jesus, and whose followers called him "Christ", it's hard to know what he was really like. (As an aside, no serious students of history actually question that Jesus existed – quite a range of different sources attest to that – the questions are around whether or not he did everything that was recorded by his followers, and about his deity – or not).

He was obviously influential, as he inspired followers who were willing to go to their death rather than deny him, and he started the largest religion in the world (yes, Christianity is the largest; Islam is second – so, incidentally, over half of the world is monotheistic). Jesus is the person who separates Christianity from its parent religion, Judaism. Jesus lived in an area that to this day still does not see peace, and is, and has been for many centuries, a hotspot for religious fervour and pilgrimage. The amount of history in that area fascinates me.

Some have mentioned how Christmas is actually us celebrating a middle eastern refugee family, which puts quite a different spin on it. He was Jewish, he was middle-eastern. Whether or not his family was poor is hard to tell, but either way, their standard of living to us would have seemed very poor, although the fact that Jesus had a trade suggests he didn't do too badly for the time. I also find that you get a very different picture than the Renaissance-era paintings and stained-glass windows when you think of Jesus as a builder. He worked with his hands, and would have spent a lot of time outdoors. He associated with fishermen. These are all very blue-collar, working-class sort of people – usually fairly rough and uncouth, too. Quite different to the pious-faced, long-haired, pale white guy we are used to. I've never seen a builder who looked like that. (As an aside, I am deliberately reinterpreting the term we usually use – carpenter – because it's easy to miss its actual meaning; also, apparently the word is more closely rendered as "artisan", and may in fact have meant he was a stonemason, as this fits a bit better with the architecture of the time).

I think people tend to conceive of Jesus (and God too, which is another discussion) as a reflection of themselves – we see Jesus as a theologian, as that's how theologians have perceived him. We see Jesus as religious and "holier than thou", because that's how religious people portray him. But, through all the shrouds of history's fog, I wonder who the real person was, and what he was like. Somehow, considering that he befriending the unwanted, the poor, and the workers, and strongly offended the uptight religious types, I don't think these perceptions are anywhere near correct. Somewhere all that way back in history was an actual person. He got tired, he got hungry, he cried, he laughed, he had friends, people got upset at him. Who was the *real* Jesus?

Jesus certainly didn't seem "religious" – the only enemies he made were hypocritical religious leaders. He hung out with the screwed up, the broken, and the outcasts. "Bad", messy people loved him, respectable, "good" people were the ones who hated him. Please, Christians, remember this more!

Was Jesus God? Did Jesus do miracles? Was he who he (and his followers) said he was? These questions, while crucial to his identity, are much harder to answer, as they strike deep into the heart of one's understanding of the universe – to accept these is to accept a reality that includes the supernatural; there is no other way about it. Either Jesus was a miracle worker or he wasn't. At this point, it's easy to quote Occam's Razor and say that it takes a bigger assumption to accept the supernatural than to accept an alternative explanation (e.g. the writings we have about him are wrong, his followers were liars, etc). Also, the bigger the claim, the bigger the evidence required – and the story of Jesus certainly makes some big claims. But, to have people willing to follow you the way Jesus' disciples did (to their deaths, in all cases but one), doesn't sound like what people would do if they knew they were lying, and there are a lot of archaeological and other historical recordings that corroborate the records in the Bible. It still requires a pretty giant leap of faith to accept, but taking the on-the-face-of-it Occam's Razor version (Jesus wasn't supernatural) still leaves a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot that doesn't add up – in some ways, accepting the supernatural gives a simpler, more consistent answer.

I was thinking recently that the one place I would want to visit if I had a time machine would be to go find Jesus. The real Jesus, the actual person, to see first-hand who he was and whether or not he was able to do the things said about him in the Bible – or, conversely, to find out that actually I've been wrong all my life. Either way, it would be good to know. Either way, I think I would learn a lot. Who was this person who left such a mark on history – and why was he so important?

One thing I do know: Jesus was a significant person. Even if you don't accept his deity, we can all learn a lot from what he said. The wisdom and the care for hurting people in his recorded words and actions is undeniable. Whether or not he was God, I still want to be more like the person I read about in the Bible – care, love, wisdom, compassion, forgiveness, an ability to inspire people to better themselves without feeling condemned, a disdain for the fake and hypocritical, and a willingness towards personal sacrifice for the benefit of others. I would like to have a friend like that. I want to be more like that myself.

Think beyond just whether or not you believe in Jesus. Either way, there is a lot we can learn from that man, and I am fascinated about this enigmatic yet noteworthy individual.

What It's Like Living With a Chronic Illness

First, an apology. Some of you are good friends of mine who will probably want to know why I haven't told you about this before posting it so publicly. To you, I'm sorry, but hopefully as you read, you might get to see some of what has gone on for me.

And many of you will be surprised, as I probably haven't "seemed" sick. In fact, most days I looked normal.

I didn't even look sick enough for the doctors to take much notice... at first. My typical experience has been that a new doctor interviews me, doesn't think there is much to it, is kind of dismissive, then sees my blood tests and realises that, no, I'm actually not making this up.

So, what is wrong?

I'll start by allaying some concerns you might have: no, this isn't terminal. No, it's not going to kill me.

A little over a year ago, I started getting stomach cramps. It's hazy now, but I think it started after I had a one-off tummy bug. I have never been someone who had huge energy reserves or a lot of stamina, but it seemed to get worse: I was in a funk I couldn't get out of, and tired all the time.

Eventually, I finally listened to my wife and went to the doctor. This is where the "well, I can't see anything wrong" bit comes in, but to his credit, my doctor was someone who listened properly, and even got a stool sample done at my request. (Apologies to those who don't enjoy this sort of thing, but yeah, I'm going to have to talk about poop. Welcome to my life). This was the first breakthrough, as it showed increased markers for inflammatory bowel disease.

Many of you probably haven't heard of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (or "IBD"), but it's not the same thing as the more commonly-mentioned Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). It's actually less fun. IBD has two types: Crohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. If you care about the details, feel free to google the terms, but pretty much it ranges from tummy pain and discomfort right up to ulcers, blood in your stools, lethargy, fevers, diarrhoea, vomiting, having to have parts of your colon removed... I could have it much worse.

So, fast forward through a year of suckiness and sickness, and I'm down to working only four days a week, because I get so exhausted (did I mention ongoing anaemia?) and simply couldn't handle more than that. Even then, most days I'd be struggling to get through eight hours, or making mistakes, or forgetting things, or all three. And, making as many as six visits to the toilet in a day to poop, often urgently, and often uncomfortably.

And, the emotional drain has been so bad that my doctor has me on antidepressants. Yes, antidepressants, as in those things that you give to people with mental problems. Want a phrase that makes you feel really special about yourself? Try, "I have a mental illness." While our culture has become accepting of a lot of things (well, on the surface and in name at least), mental illness is still one of those things that we unconsciously (or even consciously) consider anathema. I've always been a friendly person and have tended to be emotionally stable – I'd even go so far to say that I was pretty unflappable in most situations, and almost never let my temper get the better of me. But this disease? My wife described me as a "different person", because I would snap at anything, yell at the kids, fail to control my emotions. Not fun.

I have friends who have had to deal with far worse mental disorders than mild depression, and now I have a lot more compassion for them. It's not a fun thing having to come to terms with the idea that "There is something wrong with me." Even physical disorders are something that you can "externalise" – i.e. convince yourself that it's a problem with "my body" rather than "me" – but you don't get such a luxury when the problem is mental. And, as I have learned, you really cannot just "talk yourself out of it", you can't "get over it". While I had grown up a bit from my younger days when I thought mental issues were just that – in your head – I now learned first-hand that the reality is that our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health are all interlinked and inter-dependant. There are times when you need to treat a mental disease with a physical cure – in my case, this was especially literal, because my emotional state was primarily a result of my physical condition. (There are a number of studies coming out now confirming that mental health is intimately linked with gut health – your gut is so important to your overall well-being that it can send "I am not ok" signals that affect everything else).

It was hard for me to admit that I needed antidepressants. There was a time when I would have said that was all wrong, and if I'm honest, if it wasn't such a direct physical cause, I might not have been so accepting. But the reality of being so sick made it an obvious choice, and in fact it was one of the best decisions we made, as after a few weeks, I finally felt like myself again. I could function emotionally again, and emotional lethargy and anger didn't control me so much.

Finally – after two colonoscopies (no, they're not pleasant), innumerable blood tests, an MRI, and almost every other test I could think of – I had the specialists at the hospital confirm that it's Crohns disease and that they are going to give me drugs to treat it. Specifically, immunosuppressants and steroids – so I get to have a weakened immune system. And apparently I'll have to stay on those drugs indefinitely. As in, for the rest of life.

But, after the year I've had, that actually feels like a win. It will be a whole lot better than what I have been living with.

And yet, I didn't "look" sick. Most days I was able to act normally. Except for when I ended up in such a bad state that the doctor admitted me to hospital for three days.

One of the things you learn with something like this is the surprising number of people you know who also have "silent" illnesses, or who suffered through things you didn't know anything about. I feel acutely aware of human frailty at the moment – my own and others'.

Did I want to tell the world about this? No, not really. It's not fun to experience, and it's not fun to talk about. Especially the need to be on antidepressants – none of us want to admit that we're somehow broken.

But, you know what? Everyone is broken somehow. It's called being human. Everyone has issues you don't know about. Maybe you disagree with them somehow, but perhaps what you don't know is how and why they got where they are. Maybe if you knew that, you might be a little more understanding.

So if someone says, "I'm sick" (for whatever reason), don't respond with an "Oh," and then stop talking to them. If someone has issues, and is gutsy enough to share them with you – or worse, circumstances force them to talk about something when they don't want to – then please be understanding. Respond with kindness, and don't say that "It will be all right one day", because maybe it won't. Maybe, like me, they have a disease for which there isn't a cure. I am hoping that one day someone finds a real solution and a real cure for Crohns – and I have done enough reading to know that there are people trying – but in the meantime, I have to live with the fact that I'm going to be taking medicines for the rest of my life. So no, it probably isn't going to be "all right". I am fine with it, and simply, this is my reality now, as it is for probably a lot more people than you realise. Secret struggles are hard, so please never respond with anything but compassion.

Admitting brokenness takes courage. We need to applaud it, especially in a day where image is everything, and everyone has a fake social media persona. Most people only show the good bits. I have massive, massive respect for the person who is willing to drop the masks and say, "You know what, I'm actually not ok." You would be surprised at what people have to deal with behind the external image of someone who has it all together. I've known enough people to know that shit happens to everyone. Usually really horrible shit.

So, this is me. I'm living with a chronic illness, even though you probably wouldn't see it. It sucks, but maybe it is making me a better person (if a more tired one), so, like everything in life, it's not all negative but is a mixture of both the bad and the good. If nothing else, I've learned that I don't have the solutions to every problem.

I hope this will help someone.

I'm Not Racist, But...

"I'm not racist, but..."

I heard this phrase recently (from someone I didn't really expect it from), and unsurprisingly, it was followed by a racist comment. Not Trump-esque inflammatory, not especially bigoted or horrible, but racist nonetheless. The worst part was that it had been preceded by that comment. Had the same thing been said with an admission that the speaker was uncomfortable with this fact about themselves, I would have been a lot more ok with what they said, but for some reason the denial made it worse.

I have two kids, and like most kids, they give responses like, "I'm not arguing with you!" or screaming "I'm not tantruming!" when they very much are. On one level it's amusing, but even at their young age, the lack of taking ownership of one's faults irks me. More than anything, it is because that has been one of my own biggest failings: it took a kind comment from a former boss about how I am always wanting to blame-shift when he approaches me with a problem before I learned to take responsibility for my own failings and mistakes. (Thankfully, at the time I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut, even though my very first thought was, "No, I don't do that!" The irony was not lost on me).

I have sympathy for people who don't take full ownership of their faults though, because I know it's really hard. That comment from my boss was about ten years ago now, and I'm still working on putting it into practice. I get it: we don't want to be wrong. In the narrative of our lives, most of us cannot bear to see ourselves as the villain - instead we would rather see ourselves doing everything for good reasons, that everything we do and say is justified.

The reality though? You are just as selfish as me. You are just as likely to be the villain in someone else's story as the morally-upright hero in your own.

I think if we are really honest with ourselves, we all know that we are anything but morally upright though, don't we?

Hmm, it's quiet in here.

So, are you racist? No, of course you aren't. We've all met someone like the old lady I talked to when I visited America years ago, who was so disappointed in my friend because he was marrying - shock, horror - a Hispanic girl. It was "so below him" to marry someone from "an inferior race".

I'll be honest, that was the closest I have ever got to wanting to inflict physical harm on an old lady. Again, thankfully at the time I kept my mouth shut, but that was only because I couldn't think of anything whatsoever kind to say in response.

We see charlatans like Donald Trump, or some of the (honestly sickening) things being said to immigrants in the UK after the Brexit vote, and it's easy to say "Wow, that's horrible - I'm glad I'm not racist like them." It's easy to compare ourselves to the worst and be self-congratulatory for not being that bad.

And, I would actually expect that, like the person who spoke the opening comment above, we honestly don't think of ourself as racist.

I have some sad news for you.

You are racist.

So am I.

I could easily point out how I love travelling and meeting new people, how I love learning from different cultures, how two of my very closest friends are Chinese, how I have other friends and acquaintances from all walks of life, backgrounds, and religions (off the top of my head, I can name Indian, Maori, Mexican, Polynesian, Iraqi, Japanese, Korean, German, people from several parts of Africa, Christian, Atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, bisexual, homosexual...) To show how I think, I could use the example of a story I am writing at the moment, with a part-Maori female engineer as the main character, and other characters who include an Arab woman, an intelligent African guy, a Japanese-American millionaire, French, Indian, someone who doesn't identify with binary genders, and a disabled guy. I actively go out of my way to root out racist tendencies in my own life. I hate hearing about racial discrimination.

But you know what? I am still racist.

I, like I expect most of you, honestly thought I wasn't, until I spent time in East Africa. One of my friends there (Australian by birth, if you really want to mess with stereotypes of who is racist) had grown up as a "missionary kid" and she simply did not see racial differences. It was weird to meet someone like that, and disconcerting to realise that at a subconscious level, I saw lots of differences between cultures and races (some nothing more than baseless perceptions). I am very glad though, because it made me see that I have a long way to go.

So perhaps dialogue on race can start with a couple of concessions from us all:

• I am racist. Say it out loud: I. Am. Racist. Say it again: I am racist. I am a bigot, whether I like it or not (hopefully, not). Feeling uncomfortable? Good. You should, as I guarantee you have said something in your life that made someone else feel uncomfortable.
• There isn't really such a thing as race anyway. (If you don't get what I'm talking about, go look it up, but in simple terms: everyone is a bit of a mongrel, and the idea of singular racial streams is an illusion - at a genetic level, there are more differences among groups of white people than between a white person and a black person. We're all human).

If you read or follow dialogues among people of racial minorities in places like here in New Zealand, you may come across the term "Micro-aggressions". Now, at first you might (like me) think, "Surely that's just trying to make a big deal of out nothing? It's not that bad, get over it - this is 21st-century New Zealand, not the 1930s in America's Deep South!"

But, then if you read more of what they are talking about (a Kiwi-Chinese guy I know from University writes very eloquently on the subject), you begin to see that, when you are the target, there genuinely are a lot of subtle racial slurs or "micro-aggressions" directed towards them. Sometimes, people do that deliberately, sometimes the aggressor doesn't even realise - and yes, some are genuine misinterpretations, but a lot less than us who are the privileged white elite would expect.

I am fortunate that I was born into a good family in a prosperous, peaceful, country, with myriad opportunities. I am, if I'm honest, a privileged white guy. By nothing that I could control or influence, I get to be considered "top of the pile" in pretty much every area, because of my sex and shade of melanin^[1]. I'm not rich (boy do I know that) by Western standards and neither is my family, but on virtually every metric of quality of life (income, safety, healthcare, education, etc), I come in at or close to the top 1% in the world. When I learned that, it disturbed me, in a way best summed up by a quote I saw this week:

What are you going to do with your privilege?

I don't know, in many ways. I am working long-term on finding ways to make my life worthwhile to those worse off than me, or who suffer more from racial discrimination, but I could do more now. We all could. But you know what? Letting that get to you will only bring despair. Don't let the size of the world's problems make you feel like you can do nothing.

You witness micro (or not-so-micro) aggressions and do nothing about them. You see idiots spouting rage and garbage (especially on the Internet) and shake your head.

But, you know people. You can be the one who reaches out to that foreign stranger and welcomes them. You can show an interest in people different to yourself. You can, instead of complaining how the Chinese are buying all the houses and ruining "our housing market", go and make some Chinese friends and learn to understand their culture. Go to an authentic foreign restaurant (or even a nearby takeaways) and try to learn how to thank them in their own language (although check they don't sound like a local first!) Engage with people who disagree with you (and do it with respect). Be the person who stands up for the awkward kid who can't speak much English and gets picked on because of it.

Show the world - your world, your little sphere of influence - that racism is not ok. Make it clear (starting with yourself) that being awful to someone you disagree with pretty much makes you an a... a jerk.

Question yourself. There is a story that says at the Museum of Tolerance (set up by Jewish Rabbis in America), there are two doors, one labelled "Prejudiced" and the other "Not Prejudiced". Most people, on arriving, stop thoughtfully for a moment here, then try the "Not Prejudiced" door, only to find it locked, forcing them to take the "Prejudiced" door. We are all prejudiced, and - I think - the more we are self-aware of this, the more likely we are to treat others better.

I do get it though: you become used to what you grew up with, and change is disconcerting. For a lot of the UK, they grew up in white-faced, comfortable townships, and now they find themselves surrounded by strangers with languages they cannot understand and incomprehensible cultures. The world around them has changed, and it makes them uncomfortable. I am supremely thankful that I grew up with a Maori kid next door and a recently-arrived Chinese family over the back fence - multi-racial environments (and new immigrants) are natural for me now, but I know that isn't the case for a lot of people. It is going to be hard, especially for those of you who are a little bit older and not used to this strange new world we live in (for you younger ones, yes, the world now is very strange compared with all of prior history). Building community with strangers takes work, but it is absolutely worth it.

Another quote I saw this week (post-Brexit) on the subject of racism was this, "I don't see the problem with the [Brexit] result being that half the country is racist, but that now the racists think half the country agrees with them." Don't let the horrible people in the world believe that others agree with them, please. I know someone in the UK who voted Leave, but definitely not for racial reasons (politics is always more complex than the media would have you believe, but that's another, very long, topic...) We need to make it clear that we, no matter who we are, do not agree with people being blatantly racist.

If you want a better-written version of this message, then go read Andrew Chen's post about Brexit. He says it better than I can, but I think it is a message worth repeating.

And, thank you. I hope that this is helpful to someone. This is me trying to influence my tiny part of the world. If enough of us do this, we might even change the big world, too.

Oh, and if you are in America - or know any Americans - please show Donald Trump that racist rhetoric will not get you elected! I know the American election this time around is the choice between "very bad" and "even worse", but we cannot let Trump's sort of attitude be acceptable for a leader.