DOGMATIC NEW ZEALANDERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22032, 12 February 1935, Page 8

DOGMATIC NEW ZEALANDERS

If not carried to excess, introspection can be a salutary exercise for the individual and the nation. Hence it should not be a bad thing if Mr. Bullen's assertion at the Rotary Club that New Zealanders tend to be dogmatic gives rise to a little self-examination. Dogmatic is perhaps not quite the right word. Mr. Bullen's accusation was rather that New Zealanders inclined to see only one side of a question or, in the vernacular, that they were one-eyed. Of course that is true of everyone who cannot get our own point of view. It always has been, the world over, as well as in New Zealand. But Mr. Bullen considers this narrowness —a kinder word would be 'single-mindedness—is more strongly marked in New Zealand. It is possible he is right, and indeed New Zealand's circumstances may induce a certain cocksureness and smugness in opinion. This is still a young country, and youth inclines to dogmatism. sometimes to intolerance, and certitude in its own conceits. This is also the most isolated country in the world, remote from the shifting currents of thought and action, a stranger to the quantum theory and little versed in relativity. New Zealanders prefer to call a spade a spade, and they are quite sure it is a spade and not some physical, quasi-metaphysical, concept manufactured by a brain in a laboratory. They like a man who has a mind of his own, who is not always balancing between two opinions, who does not preface every answer by "that depends," or the even more infuriating phrase born of Einstein, "Everything is relative." Certainly there would be disadvantages if the lack of mental fluidity were complete and enduring. The clinging to old ideas and aversion to new would involve the denial of all progress. Yet in less than a century New Zealand has marched fast and far, and sometimes in the van. Partly it may be because there is a certain fixity of opinion, a faith and conviction that may not go with scientific detachment, ' but wHich does issue in action. In a world which seems to have cut adrift from its old moorings and to be drifting without chart or idea of direction, it is something to feel sure that in all cases and in every circumstance two and two make four. The assertion may be ignorant, but it is also honest, and honesty has become a precious virtue in these days when so many can make two and two add up to five or three. Relativity and scientific detachment and agnosticism are useful starting points for the scientific worker, but the average man must feel his feet firmly planted before be can go on. And, after all, the new ideas do penetrate and are accepted without all the mental and moral upset involved by consciously taking up the agnostic position, or lack of position.