Unviably into the future

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 15

Unviably into the future

A Question of Priorities: New Zealanders in Conversation About the Future. By Peter Phillips. Commission for the Future, 1979. 309 pp. No price given.

A review book which is accompanied by a publisher’s letter addressed to “Dear Media-person” is not well placed to receive favourable attention. The abuse of English gains no marks. The offence is quickiy compcfunded. Almost on its first page, the book warns its readers: “Before we go too far, we must accept that we are unviable . . .” If “unviable” is more than a random collection of letters, it might mean something like “incapable of sustaining life” or “incapable of leading an existence.” If so, then surely “A Question of Priorities” need go no further. By making an early announcement that we do not exist, it has rendered absurd any further discussion about the future.

Why, then, does the book bother to go on for 309 pages of tiny print to reach the banal commonplace that “we cannot change the past, and we can only fantasise the future”? The answer seems to be that the Commission for the Future cast about for a research project to justify itself, provided a researcher with money from the

taxpayers, and then felt obliged to publish the result. It need not have bothered. Peter Phillips is a Welshman from Birmingham who, having spent more than a year on this book, is said to have gone abroad on holiday. The book gives the impression that Dr Phillips has been- on a good deal of holiday lately, wandering the length of New Zealand, talking to 150 people chosen almost at random, and has offered an edited mish-mash of their conversations as being something more than mere chatter. Odd snippets of genuine information emerge: “There used to be four drapers in Eketahuna. Now you can’t even buy a pair of grey socks.” We needed a research project fo establish that. Although Dr Phillips is a geographer, he speaks “sociologese” so that schools become “learning situations,” and so on. According to this text we live in a world of depersonalisation,” Of “pluralisation of social relations,” of “multiplication of roles,” and similar gibberish. No wonder we are confused. One certainty does come out of “A Question of Priorities”: If the researchers have their way, none of us will be speaking comprehensible English if the future ever does arrive. — Literary Editor.