Dear Sirs/Mesdames
Thank you for the
invitation to comment on the University’s new name. I was a student at Victoria University of
Wellington (VUW) in the early 1970s. I
do not approve of the name change or its visual identity.
There are several reasons
for this, and they relate mainly to ideological trends which have markedly
progressed in recent decades. They have
suffused the Weltanschauung to an extent where the majority of commentators
seem unaware of it. The changes to the University’s identity follow these trends
diligently.
Its close identification
with Maori culture is perhaps the most incongruous facet. Maori culture is primitive, and lies in sharp
contrast to developed cultures. By that
I mean that it is tribal, with no national or overarching identity, and has
collective land ownership gained by conquest.
It rejects rule of law and the state’s monopoly on violence. It exhibits lower levels of the value of
human life along with cannibalism, and higher levels of violence, often
practiced as retributive subsidiarity since the rule of law is not part of
primitive cultures. It is hierarchical
and includes slavery. It is highly
spiritual but low on analysis or development.
Its traditions are oral which limits its transmissibility. While its culture has sufficient breadth to
cover the needs of its members, it is shallow, and thus has limited artistic
development and shows a low tendency to refinement. It appears loath to adopt
external influences, and of late, to share their own with other cultures. Primitive cultures’ education process is
that of informal enculturation, a simple one-on-one process which does not lend
itself to accumulation and advancement, which is in antipodal contrast to the
sine qua non of universities’ purpose.
Maori culture’s move away
from its worst features is solely due to the civilising influence of Western
migration. Western culture’s move
towards Maori culture is more complex and imbued with ideologies. One is a nod to anarcho-primitivism, manifest
in forms such as ‘paleo-diets’, ‘rewilding’, and the elevation of primitive
culture and beliefs to an equal basis with advanced cultures, as an imaginary
age of Rousseauian innocence against Hobbesian evidence. Since primitive culture and universities are
antithetical, the true reason for VUW’s increased association with Maori
culture is obscure and can only be guessed at.
Is it pandering? Is it a morally-anachronistic
judgment on civilisational expansion? Is
it a way of destroying the status ante, and with nothing significant to identify
with, it attaches itself to a culture of convenience?
Another ideology which
could have affected VUW Council’s proposal is Marxism, in its neo or Gramscian
cultural mode. Plenty has been written
about the shift from political neutrality to the far Left and its damning results. For example, Kenneth Westhues on academic
mobbing, Frank Furedi with Free Speech on
Campus, Langbert, Quain and Klein’s paper on Faculty Voter Registration, research
and commentaries by Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt and Camille Paglia, the
Adam Smith Institute’s paper Lackademia,
Brookings Institute’s findings on ‘positive’ as opposed to ‘open’ learning
environments, and much more. There are commonplace
events such as no-platforming (Don Brash, Roger Scruton, Heather MacDonald), disinvitation,
hecklers’ veto, smear and jeer, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and capitulation
to student demands in a form of liberum
veto.
Conservative institutions such
as The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation has great difficulty in finding a
campus to host it. Islamic institutions have
no such difficulty, despite being extremely conservative and financed from
overseas, because the neo-Marxist influence on universities blind them from seeing
it as an ally in Marxism’s near-term goal.
Academia’s creation of an Islamic imaginary is something it should have
to answer for, but it won’t need to in the current environment.
TO BE CONTINUED...
