The problems of New Zealand
What is the darkest side of New Zealand that people never talk about?
New Zealand is a beautiful country made up of lots of honest, genuine, down to earth people that punch above their weight on the world stage, but like every country, it has its dark sides.
Perhaps precisely because it’s a highly developed country that’s also an island paradise - a unique combination - life can be relatively boring and ‘low stakes.’ (The TV news is frequently hilariously trivial and parochial.) This is probably a significant factor behind New Zealand’s high rates of youth suicide, teen pregnancy, and alcoholism. I will not presume to speculate as to what fuels New Zealand’s rates of domestic violence.
There’s a raging methamphetamine epidemic, fuelled by the Asian gangs who import it, the local gangs who distribute it, and the economic hopelessness of increasing numbers of people who have been left behind thanks to the neoliberal reforms of the last 30 years (and the insane property market of the last 10 years). Needless to say, where there’s meth, there’s violence.
While New Zealand is less violently racist, and less legislatively racist than most countries with relatively high proportions of minorities (over one third of the country is Maori, Asian, and Polynesian), Maori and Pacific Islanders feature at the bottom of most statistics. Maori in particular have yet to be treated equally by the government to overcome the historic wrongs committed by the British crown.
New Zealand also suffers from what’s known locally as “tall poppy syndrome,” a.k.a. the politics of envy and resentment. This syndrome is so-called because the tallest poppies in a field are the ones that get cut down. It’s an extension of how New Zealanders value humility - arguably a good thing - but it’s taken to an extreme, wherein anyone who succeeds at something, or is perceived to be succeeding, is invariably assumed to be arrogant and big headed, and therefore worthy of mockery, and/or condescension, spite, and negativity. It’s often naked jealousy, and the polar opposite of how Americans like to celebrate success.
New Zealand is a small, young, isolated country of 4.5 million people. (It’s so far away from everywhere that it was the last country in the world to be discovered by humans.) Which is probably what drives a national insecurity that has yet to be fully overcome. This insecurity manifests itself in the pettiness and parochialism you find in many locations that are small and/or isolated.
These are probably the worst aspects of life in New Zealand. While these dark sides are certainly not ignored within New Zealand, they are not commonly known in the rest of the world.
Source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-da...ver-talk-about
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