Beautiful art created from naturally fallen trees.
The past year has revealed a lot about the human race and how we accumulate knowledge. Conspiracy theories have surged in popularity, and people have failed to agree on a set of facts—or a process for arriving at them. It wouldn’t be such a problem if we disagreed about subjective things, such as what makes good art. But we disagree about objective things, such as whether the virus that causes COVID-19 was manufactured by people (it wasn’t), or whether 5G cellular networks are tools for mind control (they aren’t). False information arises around things that we don’t see well or understand properly. Human health, in particular, is fertile ground for high-stakes misinformation. It has all the right ingredients—complexity, varied efficacy, diversity in culture, and eight billion personal experiences of treatment going right or wrong. Health also interfaces with science and technology at the highest level. We can kickstart someone’s heart, we can help them breathe with artificial lungs, but we can’t answer basic questions: Why do some people thrive, and some people do not? Why have some people recovered from COVID-19, while some remain desperately sick a year later, and others never even realised the virus was inside their bodies? Based on the machines we’ve invented and the mechanisms we understand, it seems as though we should be able to answer some of these other questions. But we can’t. And that leaves our species—one that craves certainty—with the one thing we struggle to accommodate: uncertainty. Belief arises where certainty is in short supply. And that’s where things get murky. Human health is deeply entangled with our beliefs. This is best illustrated by the placebo effect—the phenomenon where pretending to give a patient medicine or treatment makes them feel better. Study after study has shown that someone’s health can improve if they receive not treatment but only the ritual of treatment—the examination, the pill, the anaesthesia, the hospital stay. Even when someone knows the treatment is fake—the pill is sugar—they may improve. Equally at play is the nocebo effect, where negative expectations of a treatment lead to worsening health. We don’t entirely understand why this is. The placebo and nocebo effects are limited to us as individuals. But beliefs are contagious, and can spread through social groups, to helpful or harmful ends. In this issue, we look at misinformation, myth and belief. How do we form our beliefs? How do they change? We’re surrounded by things we take on faith, because it’s impossible for any of us to assess all the evidence about everything. We may trust methods, like science. We may trust institutions, if we perceive them as helpful. We definitely trust our friends and communities. We know in groups, just like we live in groups. I don’t really like the thought that my ideas aren’t my own, that perhaps I haven’t selected them for their objective rightness. But the notion that I act entirely without influence is a dangerous one. Recognising what influences us is one thing. Shifting our understanding of the world is another. Hayden Donnell’s story on page 54 looks at people who’ve undergone epistemological transformations—they changed their minds. They moved from an understanding of the world based on false ideas to one based on evidence. It’s a more difficult transition than it sounds, and it was made possible by the empathy of others—the greatest influencer of all.
From cats to conspiracy theories, Hayden Donnell explores how our context affects us.
The world is complex and confusing, and much of it doesn’t make sense. But there is information available at our fingertips—information of wildly varying quality. Sometimes, this information gets dangerous, especially in situations when we desperately want answers to questions that don’t have answers. So, how’s a rational person to tell truth from fiction these days? How do we, as a society, agree upon what’s true? And why have we been so catastrophically unable to agree in 2021?
It’s April 15, 2020. Ashley Bloomfield reports 20 new cases of COVID-19 at the 1pm briefing. Everyone except essential workers is confined to their bubbles. Looking back, if you felt stressed at this point of the lockdown, you weren’t alone. A survey of 2000 New Zealanders between April 15 and 18, 2020, revealed that Alert Level 4 negatively affected our wellbeing. In this snapshot, captured by researchers at the University of Otago, one-third of people surveyed felt moderate to high distress, with young people more likely to feel anxious. For some people, the lockdown intensified serious issues, with rates of family violence and suicidal feelings increasing. Our alcohol consumption patterns changed, too: 20 per cent of people drank more, and 20 per cent drank less. For many, social media became the primary means of connecting with people beyond their bubble. Social media has a reputation as a driver of poor mental health, but new research suggests that how we socialise online affects us in different ways. Young people who spend more time posting updates, links and photos publicly have a higher risk of self-harm. Those who tend to compare themselves negatively with the highly curated online personas of others also report higher risk. In contrast, using social media to privately message friends appears to have a protective effect, associated with lower risk of self-harm.
Bluff Marine Radio operator Meri Leask has been voluntarily answering boaties’ calls for the past 40 years.
Cats provide comfort, companionship and connection to the wild. Nearly half of all New Zealand households include a feline member. But now the country is at a crossroads—should we introduce stronger rules governing how we look after our most beloved companion animal?
Sixth-generation weaver Veranoa Hetet brings the strands of past and future together.
There have been significant low points in 2020, but researchers at one lab reckon that the saddest day in 2020 so far was May 31. According to them, that Sunday was more demoralising than any other day since the study began in 2008. A computerised algorithm called the Hedonometer measures global mood by sifting through messages posted to the social media site Twitter. Every day, it randomly gathers 10 per cent of all tweets in a dozen languages, then looks for specific words that have been ranked in terms of their positivity or negativity. Based on the frequency of those words, it calculates an average happiness or sadness level for that day.The Hedonometer was created by mathematicians and computer scientists Chris Danforth and Peter Dodds, who co-direct the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont. Events in the United States dominate the mood of the Hedonometer most of the time—but not always. In 2019, the lowest point occurred on the day of the Christchurch terrorist attacks. Every year, Christmas Day is marked by a massive spike in positivity. But aside from the plunges in mood in 2020, which correlate with Black Lives Matter protests as well as COVID-related events, the mood of the internet describes a gently fluctuating wave, always curving back to the centre.
Are hate crimes becoming more common in New Zealand or less? And who is at risk of being targeted? It’s hard to say, because New Zealand authorities don’t keep records of this type of crime. University of Auckland researchers set out to investigate hate crimes using the data they did have: the media. Senior lecturer Chris Wilson and a team of students scanned reports of hate crimes between 2013 and August 2020 to create an overview of these incidents. In a hate crime, someone is assaulted physically or verbally because another person objects to their race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. The team found hate crimes against Muslims in New Zealand increased 1300 per cent after the Christchurch terrorist attacks. International research shows that hate crimes can be precursors to more extreme violence. But figuring out the connection between the two in New Zealand is impossible without good-quality data. Wilson and PhD student Sanjal Shastri describe hate crimes against Muslims as “a perpetuation of the Christchurch attacks”, noting that the number of these crimes reported in 2020 is much higher than in years before the massacres. “Despite the best intentions of many in New Zealand,” they write, “the attacks have made the country more, not less, dangerous for Muslims and other minorities.”
For four years, I edited a photography magazine that featured interviews with professional photographers from around the world. For four years, I was every day amazed and convicted by their work, and the culture of photography that they talked about in their home countries: exhibitions, grants, support… respect. That culture seems to be lacking in New Zealand today. Look at the pictures that New Zealand photojournalist Melanie Burford made of communities affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Or the pictures that New Zealander Robin Hammond has made of daily life in Lagos. They are among our best photographers, and neither has worked in this country in decades. We have little work like this in New Zealand because we have few publications that can afford to pay a photographer to spend months on a story. New Zealand Geographic photographer Richard Robinson began collecting images for his feature on seabirds in this issue nine years ago. Neil Silverwood has been working up his West Coast feature since 2018. But there is not enough income from New Zealand Geographic to support an entire industry. Photojournalist Adrian Malloch once made the bulk of his income taking pictures for magazines published by Bauer Media, which ceased publishing in April this year. He has turned his attention to commercial photography, but it’s a poor substitute. “There’s so much photography of people now, but it’s all curated by advertising agencies, publicists, marketing people,” he says. “Whatever it is they want to tell us is everywhere for us to see. But who are we and what we care about, what matters to us, that’s what documentary photography is able to do if it’s done properly.” Today, one of New Zealand Geographic’s best and longest-standing photographers is working in a kiwifruit packing house to make ends meet. Another has a full-time job in healthcare. Eleven years ago, New Zealand Geographic inaugurated Photographer of the Year to stimulate pros, encourage emerging photographers, and involve the public in a more critical visual examination of our environment and society. The finalists of this year’s competition are online now, and will be exhibited at the Maritime Museum later in September. It’s a reminder of what we look for in photography, and what is usually available in the media. News photography covers dramatic events and famous people. Disasters and dignitaries. But it’s the slower pace of documentary photography that records everyday life—beautiful, with dignity and grace. Internationally, there are structures in place to support documentary photography. Aspiring photographers can win places in workshops to discuss art and ethics. Documentary photography is exhibited in art galleries and professional photographers can apply to non-profit funding bodies such as the Pulitzer Centre or ProPublica which allow them to pursue stories over the long term. Photojournalism is in crisis in New Zealand, and yet our major media and arts funding agencies don’t support it. If NZonAir supported photojournalism like it supports screen production we would have a compelling and important new view of our nation. If Creative New Zealand recognised documentary photography as a valuable visual art, our galleries would be as full of challenging and relevant photography as those overseas. Recognising the importance of documentary photography, before it is gone, would bolster an entire industry of creative professionals. But perhaps more importantly, it would give us a better view of who we really are as a nation, because pictures give us something that words do not.
This magazine is a small miracle.
People’s attitudes towards poverty depend on the stories they’re told about it, according to two surveys of more than 32,000 people in 34 countries, including New Zealand. Those who believed poverty was caused by situational factors, or things out of people’s control, supported social-levelling policies. People who believed poverty was due to individual factors, such as merit, were less egalitarian. The study also found that participating in a virtual simulation of poverty increased the weight people gave to situational factors, and prompted more egalitarian behaviour.
Increasing numbers of New Zealand high school students are suffering from poor mental health. Last year, researchers from the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Otago and Auckland University of Technology surveyed nearly 8000 young people about their wellbeing, as part of the Youth19 Rangatahi Smart Survey. The findings were compared to similar surveys carried out regularly since 1999. Some trends are positive; high-schoolers are smoking and binge-drinking much less than they were two decades ago. But while more than two-thirds of the students reported good mental health, nearly a quarter—23 per cent—said they’d experienced significant depression. Female students and those from minority groups were most likely to be affected—and for many groups, the proportion reporting depression symptoms has doubled since 2012. Suicide attempts have also increased, especially for boys. The researchers said there’s now strong evidence that the general mental and emotional wellbeing of New Zealand’s teenagers has worsened over the past seven years. There was no single cause. Social media, loneliness, discrimination, and concern about climate change and the future were all cited by young people as being factors in their distress.
Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon on growing up across cultures and tackling racism.
New Zealand has 123 statues of named people on outdoor public land. Over 2018 and 2019, a team from the University of Otago, Wellington studied whether these statues had ever been attacked. Almost a quarter of them had. The weapons of choice? Hammers, axes, concrete cutters, and paint: gold, red, blue. Seven per cent of statues had had their noses damaged or knocked off. (Robbie Burns, in Hokitika, is still missing his.) Six had been decapitated, some repeatedly. (A statue of King George V in Matakana has lost his head five times.) Three statues were destroyed entirely. The study found that 93 per cent of statues were of European people, and 87 per cent of them were men. Only one statue on public land featured a person of Pacific ethnicity: that of rugby player Sir Michael Jones. This research is thought to be the world’s first study surveying a country’s attitude towards its public statues. It wasn’t funded; the four authors carried it out in their spare time, out of personal interest. Its publication comes at a time when we’re asking ourselves: Who do we venerate? Who are our cities and streets and maunga named after? The answers to these questions can be rather dismaying. Recently Wairarapa resident Raihānia Tipoki looked into the namesakes of five of the region’s towns: Joseph Masters, Charles Carter, George Grey, Isaac Featherston and John Martin. All were active in displacing the area’s original inhabitants. “So as the many kāinga throughout Wairarapa slowly shrank behind the billowing smoke of the growing colonial towns, new streets were created, monuments erected,” writes Tipoki, “and now as I drive north to visit my friends in Masterton, my eyes are subjected time and time and time again to the names of the people riddled throughout our region who sought and succeeded to suppress the indigenous peoples of this land.” A former mayor of Hamilton is calling for a referendum on restoring the city’s original name, Kirikiriroa, which means “long stretch of gravel” in reference to the Waikato River. A statue of Captain John Hamilton was removed by the city council in June after a request by the confederated iwi of Waikato-Tainui. A statue of George Eden, Lord Auckland, only ended up in its namesake city after being kicked out of West Bengal. (Eden had been Governor-General of India; he never set foot in New Zealand.) When one state government in India decided in 1969 to retire all colonial statues, a New Zealand insurance company offered to ship Lord Auckland over here. His statue, which usually stands near Aotea Square, is presently in storage due to construction work. Some of our public figures are not connected to this country at all. Some of them were responsible for terrible things. What do we do with these monsters of history, looming at us all of a sudden out of the dark? As more than one nation is learning, it isn’t possible to move on from a racist past by pretending it didn’t happen. We can’t just switch the lights off and hope the darkness makes our monsters disappear. Ocean Mercier, profiled here, suggests we tell the full story of people that our statues commemorate, crucial as they were to New Zealand history. The George Edens and the George Greys alike. But my favourite solution to the problem comes from Tūhoe activist Tame Iti, who wrote on Twitter: “Don’t destroy the statues! Put them in a place all together where people can talk about them... like a racist museum... having them altogether in one space as racists and no longer as upstanding citizens is way more useful than having them at the bottom of a river.” Let’s turn the lights on. Let’s remember the racism of our past, so that we can recognise it when it looms up again, and turn with confidence to a different future.
COVID-19 has caused upheaval in our lives, changing them for the worse—but also for the better. What we can take from this time?
Brett Phibbs takes on the essential service of documenting an unprecedented month in New Zealand history.
Freelance jockeys, keen spectators, farming families with station hacks and horse trainers with thoroughbreds descend on the Wairarapa every autumn to take part in one of New Zealand’s longest-running events.
As social researchers seek ways to defuse hostility towards “outgroups”, one United States study has found a simple means to get people to rethink their attitudes towards, in this case, Muslims. First, the researchers asked their Spanish study subjects whether they considered themselves responsible for the actions of white supremacists such as Anders Breivik. Overwhelmingly, they felt that they were not. Then the researchers asked whether individual Muslims should be held responsible for the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, which were committed by Islamic extremists. The subjects again said no. People’s natural desire to be consistent, say the authors, moderates prejudice and delivers more considered views on conflict.
Loading..
3
Unlimited access to every NZGeo story ever written and hundreds of hours of natural history documentaries on all your devices.
$1 trial for two weeks, thereafter $8.50 every two months, cancel any time
Already a subscriber? Sign in
Signed in as . Sign out
Thanks, you're good to go!
Thanks, you're good to go!
Ask your librarian to subscribe to this service next year. Alternatively, use a home network and buy a digital subscription—just $1/week...
Subscribe to our free newsletter for news and prizes
