THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1935. PSYCHOLOGY FOR PRESENT NEEDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21632, 30 April 1932, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1935. PSYCHOLOGY FOR PRESENT NEEDS.

On many sides are to be heard statements and questions betokening uncertainty, misgiving, and fear. “ What is ahead of us? Everything is clouded. There is no prospect of improvement.” The frame of mind thus betrayed is one that is courting disaster. Believe that a problem is insoluble, and it remains insoluble. Tell yourself you are hopelessly lost in the fog, and you arc hopelessly lost. The first requisite for escape from difficulty is to believe that escape is possible. Mankind has gone through the wilderness many a time; but, by keeping a good heart, it has safely emerged at last. The first requisite in the present times of stress is a stout heart and a steady rejection of despair. Every man who believes or preaches despair is an enemy to the public weal. Despair leads to ruin; it is anarchic and destructive. A stout heart and an optimistic outlook will not alter the face of things, but they do provide the indispensable conditions for making a right beginning. They provide the will to solve the present problems. Given the will, there must be the clear thinking that may lead to a solution. But clear thinking is impossible where man’s old enemy, fear, exists. Fear must be resolutely put away; there is no need to fear that society is going to relapse into savagery and pillage. The disturbances that occur are not the work of the many; they are not the work of any one class. Indeed, honest men of all classes, even when out of work, reprobate them in most decided terms. In addition to the suppression of fear, there must be patience. No doubt a man who has a wife and family dependent on him chafes with impatience at the slowness of economic recovery. But patience is absolutely necessary. More than that, the will to co-operate must be manifested. Sir Austen Chamberlain and Mr Baldwin both sound the same note, —co-opera-tion and the throwing down of economic barriers. They desiderate the co-operation of America and a reconsideration of war debts and reparations. In New Zealand we need local co-operation—that is, a readiness of all parties to contribute reason to the solution of our troubles. At a time like this, party strife should be hushed. Clear thinking in the interests of all the people will then get a chance. At present it gets little chance. Sectional interests are considered too much. This country is.well supplied with the necessaries of life;—there is no fear of starvation. It should be possible to go forward in the process of adjustment with some greater degree of unison than at present. To make sudden structural alterations in society is not possible, at least not in a British society. It would inevitably lead to fierce strife and intensify existing embitterment. It is unthinkable in New Zealand, outside the brains of a few unbalanced agitators. But steady, gradual alterations are possible; indeed, they are imperative. Humanity has struck its tents and is everywhere on the march. But it is not a march into a morass. For a time the way is dark and difficult, but light will come. It is extraordinary how the blackest periods in history have been often the precursors of a tremendous access of light. It would be folly to pretend that there is any cut-and-dried scheme of salvation than can be applied at once in this country or in any country. But there is a scheme all the same; it will reveal itself if we go on in goodwill and in sweet reasonableness. Every honest man in New Zealand hates mob violence, and every honest man is full of sympathy for the unemployed. His difficulty is to know what is best to do. But he will know if he keeps on in the right spirit. What the Government is trying to do for the people may or may not prove ultimately to have been the best course, but it is the best than can be done at present. When we have taken this step, the next step will then have become clearer. This advice may appear to some too anaemic, too vague. But it is sound. Without goodwill and mutual forbearance, deeper trouble will come upon the country. Unemployment has been thrust upon us by the fall in the prices of our primary exports and by the increasing application of science to industry. “We have nothing to look forward to,—no prospect of a better day,” say a few pessimists. On the contrary, there is a brighter day ahead. There is a better time coming. But we must go to meet it. It larger taxes are necessary, then they must be faced. If there is never to be a return of the old sociological and economic conditions, then gradual reconstruction can be made. There are two ways of trying to secure it. One is the way of violence; the other is that of steady development and steady change in the manner in which British institutions have always grown. Violence defeats itself. There is no inner spirit of growth in it. Goodwill, patience, clear thinking, and, again, more patience will carry us along the right road.