Dear NZ & Australia: Lets Ditch Tall Poppy Syndrome (An Open Letter)

Dear NZ & Australia.

I would like to talk of that awkward subject, that horrible addiction we have, those unhealthily too comfortable mind-shackles we choose to wear:

Tall Poppy Syndrome.

The Problem with NZ & also Australia is that too people are Prisoners of their own Egos,

& they mostly choose to stay with that familiarly uncomfortable, Viper-like, very limiting cocoon.

They then choose to teach their kids how to do this to secure the next generation of misery.

And so on & so forth seemingly until the end of time.

They make this ‘deal with the devil’ to stay this way until the daisies are very much pushed skywards.

That system of blundering dunderheadedness is the basic ingredients of the famed ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’.

I dream that one day this cycle will be broken, & NZ & Australia can embrace its own, rather bully them.

They are usually Bullied into jumping ship, suicide or the more common garden variety solution:

To take an oath of wearing a Calvinist spirit, only hold materialistic & utilitarian views.

In short, they agree to wear that well-worn mask of intellectual Lilliputianism.

Say what you like of America – for all their misgivings, they at least learnt to cut those juvenile shackles off.

NZ & Oz Love To Cut Tall Poppies

For that’s what Tall Poppy syndrome really is – ‘Shackles that Retard the Mind’.

If America did it – then so can we in NZ & Australia, & it can’t come soon enough.

I only hope that unlike America we can achieve Freedom from our shackles Peacefully –

But perhaps to kill off Tall Poppy syndrome you really do need violent revolution & civil wars.

I am a cynic, but I’m not that cynical – We can simply choose to remove our mind-shackles.

We can follow this simple process:

When the natural feeling comes over us to cut the heads off a loud annoying ‘Tall Poppy’,

We must reach into our pocket & read a laminated note that reads:

Don’t Do It.

Do this enough for ourselves & our kids & the “Don’t Do It” note becomes freely available in our heads.

Then The War is Won, & the ‘Mind Shackles’ will be a distant memory of an archaic brutal past.

Then we will have a chance to truly self-actualise.

After all – Is it really much fun being miserable? To go along with a un-reflexive crowd, baying the words ‘WHAT DO WE WANT – MORE MEDIOCRITY’? WHEN DO WE WANT IT – NOW & FOREVER’.

Nor is it joyous to carry placards through the land that say ‘STAY WITHIN YOUR LANE’?

I say to you Ladies & Gentlemen of NZ & Australia

NO IT IS NOT!.

Yours Sincerely Martin Anton Smith (a 44-year-old New Zealander and Ex Melbourne man still trying to cut his shackles – but at least I know they are there and the metal is weakening)

“Life as a Series of Lies & People to Avoid” (An Essay)

I was reading Bob Dylan’s autobiography “Chronicles Vol. 1” & a part sparked me to think of how the world normalises falseness. He roughly said that the world often asks us to live out what is essentially ‘a lie’. Here are my thoughts that sprouted from that literary spark. They flowed very quickly, I might add – so I assume they must have been percolating quietly for a while prior to writing (or should I say ‘keyboard placking’?).

I felt very old at the beginning of my life & this didn’t faze itself out until age 27. When I was young, I felt like an old man amongst babies. I just never felt “in the right place” through childhood. From about 30 I almost suddenly felt more and more child-like. Attempts to negate this failed miserably – If I tried to be “mature” I found life wouldn’t allow it. I could do well at work & be ignored for promotion. If I sounded rational in conversation, I was hated for it. If I acted “mature” to women they became uninterested romantically.

Then as I became over 37 no matter what I did, I could not curry favour with any “normal” person. I had grown tired of the “lose-lose” realities of being or trying to be just like everyone else. By age 40 I had realized the ‘not fitting in’ problem was in fact most likely to just be life itself as a human being in modern times.

I realized at this point in Homo Sapien’s low level of spiritual awareness, the point is to systemically not allow for any individual to feel comfortable. Under our terrible system of existing – you are supposed to feel uncomfortable. The world has an invisible arm guiding you to live life as some kind of ‘living lie’. You pretend that you are on top of your life – both its emotional & practical hemispheres – and you trot this line out in social gatherings.

The truth that this whole thing (from my Westerner viewpoint at least) is a system to create a total farce is a sacrilegious thing you can’t say 99% of the population. The ‘World’ has its Game, it forces you to be born into it, it hides the rules from you – & your happiness means it loses the ‘Game’.

I found the key to survival is to be happy to be an outsider. You have to see the people who are propping up this wilful insane asylum as some kind of spectres to be avoided in confidant yet non-violent fashion. This for me has thus allowed a mostly solitary a world of personal interests, books music art and when I’m really lucky – honest insightful interesting conversations with those who are my spiritual kin.

The ‘World’ doesn’t like such behaviour & cannot handle itself being rejected. The ‘World’ will send its evil angels to hold you to task & to renounce your hermit like refusal to engage & embrace its false premises. The more and more you find solace and success in rejecting the “World” the more spiteful its ‘evil angels’ are.

I guess at that point we are supposed to follow Christs maxim – ‘resist not evil’, ‘turn the other cheek’ etc, but I must admit to thinking I can cut these demons off entirely. This is probably because I still have much to learn about the World & it’s dark ways.

I have learnt at least one thing for sure from my life: Survival, Decency, Health & Sanity is the highest ‘Success’ you can have – & you have to follow the path less taken to achieve it. I am also pretty sure you wife/husband/friends won’t ever do this for you – more likely they will be the fog covering the winding ice laden road to the town your supposed to live in.

I think you have to get used to your own company & deeper thoughts to reach a breakthrough in how to deal with ‘the world’. If you can’t ever get 1 minute away from the hordes of unwitting & witting demons that constantly surround us – you’ll never find the salvation your spirit needs.

The trick is to not listen to that voice in your head that chastises you for being unsociable, an outsider, a loser, a snob, annoying or just plain ‘bad’ for disobeying the ‘Worlds’ crazy, stress filled, unfulfillable-by design diktats.

You have to keep believing your contrariness is definitely the right track – I think a sign of this is your former materialist ways & bank balance worries shrink out of the range of your mental radar.

In closing, even the best ‘world avoider’ must admit to my following lines I will describe as realpolitik poetic truism. – that is simply a paraphrase of Bob Dylan’s famous “you can please some of the people, some of the time…” lyrical quip:

You can avoid some of the people some of the time – you can avoid all of the people some of the time – but you can’t avoid all of the people all of the time.

– Essay by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com