The fashion of listening

Listening seems to have gone out of fashion in this country.

It doesn't matter what is actually said, people only hear what reinforces their own ideas and opinions, no matter how ignorant of reality those might be. Actually, it appears the less their opinion is biased on fact and reason, the less they seem to hear.

This dominated my mind last night and this morning after reading Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury's blog Tumeke 

(and if you take a look at the comments you'll find the beginnings of this post).

I was sickened, ashamed and quite tearful reading the comments he had extracted from the Facebook page "Get out of our government Hone Harawira you piece of crap"

I had a peek (okay it was more like a 25 minute gawk) at the page and based on recent comments by the admin and  fact that some posts say "13 comments" but only have 6 (which sound out of context), I think it has been cleaned up a little since Bomber looked at it.

Even so I found more than a few distasteful, off topic, ignorant and downright racist comments.

I'm sure I don't have to explain what's wrong with Mic Filler's comments "Don't bow down to pressure & remove the posts calling for violence against that piece of shit NIGGER Harawira."

And last time I checked, all New Zealanders were entitled to unemployment benefits when they hit rock bottom. I know I got one (and I am very white and very middle classed) but Nick Broome disagrees "They get given benefits because the nz government has no balls & they think they have to look after the maori/maori party because the time may come were they need the moari vote to get elected."

"The Government is responsilbe for this cultral devide in my eyes! of course youre going to hate on people who get Preferential treatment, when you have to work you arse of to get everything. Why should the government help people who dont want to help themselves. I understand tho i mean why would you go to work when you get money for doing nothing+all the other perks that are for Maori only!! EQUAL RIGHTS!!!!"

At least Steve Bagz Lunjevich knows he's racist " sorry, haven't been racist on this page till now but sick of hearing all you maoris complain. get the fuck over it alright. compared to other indigenous people around the globe you guys have it pretty fucken sweet. Your like spoilt little brats, you get nearly everything you want but you still feel mistreated, you don't know how lucky you are, look at the abos in Australia they have nothing compared to you. if they said they wanted abo seats and an abo party they would get laughed at!"

 And the punch line to Lucy Thomas' joke:  "...The old farmer said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a Tortoise balanced on top, that's a post Tortoise."

The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he sure as hell isn't goin' anywhere, and you just wonder what kind of dumb bastard put him there in the first place." "

These comments are disgusting but there are even worse over on Tumeke, ones I really have no interest in repeating.

I have no issue with people who don't agree with Hone's politics or how he gets his message out. I'm not a fan by any stretch of the imagination but I don't take his comments personally.

Much of the page and the media rhetoric is about his so called racist comments "cracker", "Honky", "white @#%!” . If you want to be pedantic over semantics then you can draw conclusions of hypocrisy but we all know those words are not the same as "hori”, "nigger" and "black".  

They just don't have the same power. Any reference to my skin colour is positive.

It means at best I was statistically more likely to be born to socioeconomic privilege and at worst I was born with only the privilege of living in a society where my culture and values were the norm.

I don't believe "white" people are offended or hurt by it, they are threatened. It means someone is angry and that's uncomfortable.

Get over it. Conflict is a fact of life. It's how we move through it that matters. How we give and take, listen and refuse to let our fear of change dominate the dialogue.

I may not agree with Hone but he is entitled to play the game the same as the rest. So he plays on race. It was Don Brash who stirred that pot - or rather scraped the bottom of it.

We can focus on feeling indignant over perceived hypocrisies, or we can open our eyes, ears and brains and learn a little.