It is a beautiful early summer morning here in North Canterbury, specifically Rangiora. Rangiora is a farming community in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand’s South Island (Southland), about 30 minutes from the largest Southland city of Christchurch. A great day to pause and reflect on 2017, and my arrival here in December of 2016.
Rangiora is a town of just under 20,000, and considered a farming community by most. It has a High Street, several decent shops, and of course a gym, medical clinic, and supermarket within easy walking distance. It is a great place to live, and its citizens, with whom I chat or wave as I walk by, are as friendly as you can find anywhere in the world I have traveled.
Soon, however, we will relocate to Auckland, the largest city of New Zealand on the North Island. It is the main gateway to New Zealand from most of the world, so if you travel here you will most definitely go through it. But living in Auckland will be a far cry from the quiet semi-rural life of Rangiora. However, my partner’s career comes first, and he has taken a very exciting position at a veterinary clinic which will challenge him to improve his veterinary skills with abundant support at the ready. So, off to Auckland in late January.
I have been in New Zealand for just over a year, and soon I will make my application for residency. Providing the necessary documentation is an arduous process at which I have been working for most of 2017, given its importance to our future happiness. One does what one must in such critical circumstances. I hope to hear in April of next year.
On this summer morning, I am reflecting on 2017, which has played out on the world’s stages in many ways I had foreseen. I will steer clear as far as I can from politics, but almost everything I say will provide some political derivation. I will try not to be so very overt with the items I post for this reflection, preferring to post more than a sloganeering “ideogram” (The kind you see in Tiananmen Square) of an obvious political vintage and provoking serious thought rather than an emoji.
FaceBook (FB) has become so wrought with nastiness and binary thought that I have repeatedly bitten my lip and held back responses. Not wanting anyone to wince at the thought of my scarred lips (skin about the lips heals quite quickly anyway), I will assume you know whereof I speak regarding the nastiness in many FB posts. And the profanity! Oh my!
But I will touch just a moment on binary thought. Someone of either part of the yawing divide in the U.S. (and increasingly the world) posts an article, cartoon, video, etc., that is intended to prove a point or at least evoke an emoji. Occasionally someone will disagree with the post, and the “Comments” section will alight like tinder for a fire. But, apart from quickening the heart for a moment, who really cares?
Most of the comments or “likes” come from ardent supporters. So in effect the post preaches to the choir of supporters, such as the “poster” may think they have. The number of serious exchanges in such transactional posts is scanty if that. Does anyone who posts such things really expect a serious discourse on an issue (more often a personality such as Clinton or Trump)? I think that is unlikely based on what I have seen on my FB “News Feed”.
Sometimes the FB posts I mention are almost pure “Fake News”, or tilted in such ridiculous ways that the truth behind them cannot be discerned without careful research. I use “Snopes” for such things, and if I do react to something it will be what has been declared “False” or “Mostly False” by Snopes as posting it on FB without comment is irresponsible and perhaps the equivalent of incitement.
And some of the FB posts I mention as dubious or outright false come from educated people. That confounds my ability to discern their motive even more. But then again, as the old joke goes, “Opinions are like A_ _HOLES. Everyone has one.” And so after calling the post out in the comment line, I set it aside.
Yet these posts create angst, and maybe that is what gets people to think they need to post them on FB. Is the motive behind such posts “a voice crying in the wilderness”? If that is so, the world is beset by howls from Tokyo to Rome. Frankly, with my friends and family, I am much more interested in their health, family, and doings. For that, FB is maybe as useful as it gets.
The reference to the binary nature of most of these FB posts is that they are looking at half a picture, issue, etc. So divided is the U.S., that reporting a traffic accident objectively would be difficult for most on my FB list. I am afraid I would be required to see the accident myself to understand the act and causes, effects, blame, etc. Playing the Brahms Piano Concerto #1 with one hand is hardly the way to make it understood and appreciated when it was written for two hands.
So, with less than two weeks left in 2017, it is time to reflect a bit on events both personal and otherwise. I will use the next two weeks to make posts about 2017 as the spirit moves me, but I thought I would start with some Gilbert and Sullivan to help capture my sense of 2017. While the global challenges are many, maybe many FB posters will “rehabilitate” to make FB become the source of the most meaningful. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the very apparent satire in Sullivan’s lyrics.
There Lived a King, The Gondoliers
The Grand Inquisitor’s second song, in which he explains a previous incident in which an experiment in republican monarchy failed
Don Alhambra: There lived a king, as I’ve been told,
Iin the wonder-working days of old,
When hearts were twice as good as gold,
And twenty times as mellow
Good temper triumphed in his face,
Aand in his heart he found a place
For all the erring human race, and every wretched fellow
When he had Rhenish wine to drink,
It made him very sad to think
That some at junket or at jink must be content with toddy!
He wished all men as rich as he–
And he was rich as rich could be–
And so, to the top of every tree, promoted everybody!
Marco, Giuseppe: Now, that’s the kind of king for me!
Don Alhambra: Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats,
And bishops in their shuttle hats were plentiful as tabby cats–
In point of fact, too many! Ambassadors cropped up like hay;
Prime Ministers and such as they grew like asparagus in May
And Dukes were three-a-penny!
On every side field-marshals gleamed
Small beer were Lords-Lieutenant deemed;
With admirals the oceans teemed all round his wide dominion!
And Party Leaders you might meet
In twos and threes in every street
Maintaining, with no little heat, their various opinions!
Marco, Giuseppe: Now, that’s a sight you couldn’t beat!
Don Alhambra: That King, although no one denies
His heart was of abnormal size,
Yet, he’d have acted otherwise if he had been acuter!
The end is easily foretold: when every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver or of gold, you long for simple pewter!
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins fair,
For cloth of gold you cease to care–
Up goes the price of shoddy!
In short, whoever you may be, to this conclusion you’ll agree:
When everyone is somebody…then no-one’s anybody!
Marco, Giuseppe: Now, that’s as plain as plain can be!
Don Alhambra del Bolero: John Rath
