Looking into the attempts by some right wing bloggers to whip up some sort of storm (in a tea cup) over David Shearer's comments about respecting those who hold that taniwha are to be considered when issues of water are discussed, I found this comment at 'A Bee of a Certain Age' that I thought valuable. I've added a snippet from another comment on the same thread, that looks at why those 'righties' can't understand the distinctions that 'lefties' seem not to struggle with at all - pardon the generalizations, but there's something in it :-)
Nick Thompson September 11, 2012 at 5:07 pm | Reply
Every time there is controversy about a taniwha, I think of the minor fracas that broke out in Scotland over the fairies of St. Fillans (and since appears to have been resolved with some concessions to the fairies):
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/builder-forced-to-design-estate-around-1051264
As I also learnt from my students, the Scottish landscape is also strewn with “clootie wells” where people still go and tie bits of clothing (everything from rags to bras) in trees around bodies of water (some barely distinguishable from puddles) and make wishes. It’s unclear whether fairies or saints are involved here, but clootie wells are much more popular than you might imagine.
NZ media always tell development vs. taniwha stories in terms of an implicit conflict between backward Maori and Pakeha modernity. In fact I suspect they tell us a lot more about the general impoverishment of Pakeha culture.
Craig said:
Nevertheless, the challenge to Shearer mounted by right wing bloggers
demonstrates their unfamiliarity with the principles of the liberal
enlightenment – even though they think that is the logic they are
championing. How self-humiliating that they don’t understand the very
value they imply guides them! They fail to see the rather stark way
Shearer applied logic to explore the relevance of non-logical views.
Descartes would recognise his method. Their depressing response is to
wield tools of enlightenment as if they were tools of bigotry, and
misreprest Shearer’s logic, rather than seek understanding.
