A Pebble on the Ocean Shore

something still missing

Note: First published 29/8/2026 on the Wordpress.com prior incarnation of this blog

Way back in 2016, I wrote this piece attempting to draw on Classical Chinese philosophy to illuminate something I perceive as being rather wrong in modern New Zealand politics. I fear not much has changed – at least, not for the better.

We have an election coming up in a couple of months time. I won’t tell anybody else who to vote for, nor how to vote, nor how to choose who to vote for, nor how to choose how to vote. I won’t even say who I’m voting for – at least, not online. You could probably make a fairly educated guess, anyway, based on stuff I have posted online, both here and elsewhere. But I am happy to share my thought processes.

In that post I wrote in 2016, linked above, I was trying to draw on ancient Chinese wisdom, and I was looking at problems in society as a whole. And I do think we need a lot more 仁/rén/benevolence, kindness, humanity in our society. And yes, we need that at every level from the individual, through the community, and into our politics. But you don’t need to look to faraway, exotic traditions to understand this.

Take Michael Joseph Savage and his description of his government’s socialism as “applied Christianity”, for example, and remember how Jacinda Ardern had his portrait in her office in the Beehive when she was prime minister, when she modelled empathy, encouraged us to be kind, and lead the “team of five million” in the fight against covid.

So what I’m looking for in politicians and parties in the run-up to an election is answers to a few simple questions:

Or, conversely, and more positively: