If you ever want proof that Aotearoa New Zealand is not quite like other countries, you don’t need to look at our birds, our rugby, or our habit of wearing jandals in winter. Just listen to how we talk about politicians.
In America, they have Reaganomics. In Britain, Thatcherism. In Australia, they have… well, mostly shouting.
But here? We had Rogernomics and Ruthanasia — named not after the stately surnames of Douglas and Richardson, but after “Roger” and “Ruth”, as if they were the couple next door who borrowed your lawnmower and never returned it.
And we didn’t stop there. Say “Winston” and everyone knows exactly who you mean. Say “Jacinda” and half the country smiles while the other half mutters into its Weet‑Bix. Say “Norm” and older Kiwis get misty‑eyed. Say “John” and people still picture a man in a hi‑vis vest looking slightly surprised to be prime minister.
We are, it seems, a nation on first‑name terms with our leaders.
It’s not that we’re disrespectful. It’s that we’re very respectful — of ourselves. We simply refuse to elevate anyone too far above the rest of us. If a politician starts getting ideas, we gently tug them back down to earth by calling them “Helen” or “Chris”, the same way we’d talk to the plumber or the neighbour who keeps parking on the berm.
This is not how most democracies work. But then, most democracies don’t have a prime minister who can be spotted buying a sausage roll at the BP in Morrinsville.
I didn’t realise how deeply Kiwi this habit was until an American reader once scolded me — quite firmly — for referring to Hillary Clinton as “Hillary”. To them, it was disrespectful. To me, it was simply the name she uses when she introduces herself. It was a small cultural collision, the kind that leaves both sides blinking politely, and it reminded me that New Zealanders instinctively pull politicians down to human scale, while other countries lift them up onto pedestals.
And yet — and this is where things get interesting — the reverse is also true. When a politician does something we strongly disapprove of, we quietly drop the first name and switch to the surname, as if we’re a disappointed schoolteacher calling the roll.
During the Covid years, people who disliked the government’s response almost universally referred to Jacinda Ardern as “Ardern”, never “Jacinda”. The same happened with John Key: supporters said “John”; critics said “Key”, often with the tone one uses when discovering the dog has been in the rubbish again. And Winston Peters becomes “Peters” the moment he says something that makes half the country sigh deeply into its tea.
It’s a subtle linguistic manoeuvre — the Kiwi version of withdrawing the welcome mat. First names for warmth, surnames for distance. A tiny social thermostat built into our political vocabulary.
Curiously, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to Christopher Luxon as “Christopher”, or even “Chris”, with the same easy familiarity. Perhaps that’s because he hasn’t yet acquired the kind of charismatic shorthand that turns a politician into a household first name. Or perhaps it’s because New Zealanders are still deciding where to place him on the warmth‑to‑distance scale.
Either way, the naming tells its own story.
Somewhere around here, the humour gives way to something more revealing.
Our first‑name habit isn’t just a quirk. It’s a window into the deeper architecture of Kiwi political culture — the part we rarely articulate because it feels so normal to us.
New Zealanders have always had a strong egalitarian instinct. Not perfect, not evenly applied, and certainly not immune to contradiction, but real nonetheless. We don’t like hierarchy. We don’t like pretension. We don’t like people who think they’re better than us. And we especially don’t like politicians who forget that they work for the public, not the other way around.
Using first names is our way of keeping politics human‑scaled. It’s a linguistic reminder that power is temporary, but community is permanent.
It also shapes how we communicate politically. Our leaders are expected to be approachable, plain‑spoken, and slightly self‑deprecating. Grand ideological speeches don’t land well here. We prefer a bit of humour, a bit of humility, and the sense that the person speaking could still make a decent cuppa if required.
But there’s a flip side.
First‑name politics can blur accountability. When we talk about “Roger” or “Ruth”, the structural consequences of their reforms can feel like the actions of individuals rather than the product of an entire political and economic shift. Familiarity softens critique. It makes politics feel personal when it is, in fact, systemic.
And yet, perhaps that’s the paradox of New Zealand: we want our leaders close enough to talk to, but not so close that we can’t see the machinery behind them.
So yes — we are a country where prime ministers are known by their first names, where economic revolutions are named after the bloke who introduced them, and where political commentary often sounds like gossip from the dairy.
But beneath the informality lies something serious: a belief that power should never be allowed to drift too far from the people it affects. First‑name politics is our cultural shorthand for that belief.
It’s not perfect. It’s not always consistent. But it’s ours.
And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that in Aotearoa, even the most powerful person in the country is still, fundamentally, just Jacinda, or Winston, or Norm — someone you could run into at the supermarket, nod to politely, and then complain about the price of cheese together.
Over the past few years, I’ve found myself writing more and more about perspective — about the worlds we think through, the lenses we inherit, and the quiet ways our understanding of each other is shaped by culture, history, and experience. At the time, I thought I was simply following a thread of curiosity. But looking back, I can see that those reflections were also carrying something else: a sense of unease I hadn’t yet named.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even conscious. It was more like noticing a subtle change in the weather — a shift in the air pressure, a faint cooling of the atmosphere. A feeling that something in the world was no longer sitting quite right.
For a long time, I couldn’t articulate it. I only knew that the optimism I once held — a gentle, joyful belief that society was slowly becoming more open to difference — had begun to feel less certain. Not gone, but altered. Tempered.
I used to believe, perhaps a little naively, that the arc of acceptance was bending steadily in the right direction. That diversity, in all its forms, was becoming something to value rather than tolerate. That the world was learning to make space for a wider range of human experiences — neurodiversity, gender identity, sexuality, culture, religion, ethnicity, disability.
But lately, it has felt as though that arc has wavered.
Not broken. Not reversed. Just… less sure of itself.
Across many parts of the world, diversity has begun to be spoken of as if it were a problem to be solved rather than a richness to be embraced. Inclusion is being questioned. Communities that once felt the slow warmth of acceptance are now facing a colder wind of suspicion. And even here in Aotearoa — a place that often prides itself on fairness and openness — the shift is noticeable.
It is not that people have suddenly become hostile. It is that the social goodwill that once felt abundant now feels thinner, more fragile, more easily disrupted.
And so I find myself holding a different kind of hope than I once did.
Not the buoyant, joyful hope of a world opening its arms. But a quieter, steadier, more determined hope — the kind that keeps walking even when the path becomes uneven.
Joyful hope says, “Things are getting better.” Determined hope says, “Even when things get harder, the journey is still worth taking.”
Joyful hope is carried by favourable winds. Determined hope is carried by resolve.
Joyful hope is a springtime feeling. Determined hope is a winter skill.
And perhaps this is the kind of hope the moment calls for.
Because the truth is that many communities are feeling this shift — not just one. Disabled communities. Queer and trans communities. Migrant communities. Religious minorities. Ethnic minorities. Anyone whose existence challenges a narrow definition of “normal”.
The details differ, but the pattern is the same: a retreat from difference, a narrowing of what is acceptable, a growing discomfort with complexity.
And yet, despite this, I do not feel despair.
If anything, I feel a deeper clarity about what matters.
I am reminded that inclusion was never a straight line. That progress has always been uneven. That every generation faces its own version of this tension between fear and openness, between sameness and diversity, between certainty and curiosity.
And I am reminded that hope — real hope — is not the belief that things will always get better. It is the commitment to keep moving toward a more generous world even when the way forward is not obvious.
It is the belief that the journey is worthwhile, even when the path bends.
So this is where I find myself now: not disillusioned, but grounded. not hopeless, but determined. not naïve, but still willing to imagine a future where difference is not something to fear.
A future where we can hold space for each other’s ways of being. A future where diversity is not a threat but a source of strength. A future where communities — all communities — can stand without apology.
This is the hope I carry. Not joyful, but steadfast. Not light, but enduring. Not effortless, but deeply human.
I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the claim that “the only reliable source of knowledge is empirical evidence.” It’s a neat sentence, tidy in the way Western categories like to be tidy, but it has always felt too small for the world I actually inhabit. My reality — and I use that word deliberately — is not a universal one. It is the reality I live inside, shaped by my culture, my neurology, my relationships, and the particular path I’ve taken through the world. What feels empirically solid to me may be invisible, or irrelevant, or simply unrecognisable to someone else.
This isn’t a rejection of science. It’s a recognition that experience is never neutral, and that what we call “evidence” is already filtered through the lenses we carry. I’ve learned, sometimes awkwardly, that my way of perceiving the world doesn’t automatically align with the neuronormative expectations around me. That mismatch has taught me something important: reality is not a single shared landscape but a terrain of many vantage points, each shaped by the ground beneath our feet.
Perhaps that’s why I find myself uneasy when enquiry is funnelled into narrow channels — when we insist that only certain kinds of questions are legitimate, or that only certain methods can lead to truth. It’s not that those methods are wrong; it’s that they are partial. They illuminate some things beautifully and leave other things in shadow.
And so this reflection begins not with a grand theory, nor with a tidy definition of “what is,” but with a simple recognition: the way we frame enquiry shapes what we are able to see. If we begin with categories, we end with categories. If we begin with openness, we may end somewhere we didn’t expect.
This piece is an attempt to follow enquiry where it wants to go — not where Western habits of thought tell it should go. It begins with the limits of those habits, moves through the spaciousness I’ve found in Māori and Quaker worlds, and opens finally into a possibility that feels truer to my lived experience: that diversity, not uniformity, is the natural state of enquiry.
How Western Categories Limit What We Can Ask
I’ve come to realise that the questions we ask are never neutral. They arise from the categories we inherit, the assumptions we absorb, and the quiet expectations of the cultures we move through. Western thought, for all its brilliance, has a habit of tidying the world into boxes: science here, religion there, philosophy over in the corner, and “mythology” somewhere on the bottom shelf. These boxes are useful, but they also narrow the paths enquiry is allowed to take.
One of the clearest examples is the Western insistence on falsifiability as the gold standard for meaningful knowledge. It’s often presented as a scientific principle, but it is, at heart, a philosophical stance. Falsifiability cannot justify itself by its own criterion — it isn’t falsifiable. It simply reflects a cultural preference for certainty, clarity, and testability. There’s nothing wrong with that preference, but it is a preference, not a universal truth.
And once you see that, you begin to notice how much of Western enquiry is shaped long before any experiment begins.
Take autism. If autism is assumed to be a disorder, then the “scientific” questions that emerge — the ones that seem testable, measurable, falsifiable — will all orbit around deficit. What causes autistic impairments? What abnormalities can be detected? How can autistic behaviour be normalised? These questions feel empirical, but they are built on a philosophical foundation: the belief that there is a single “normal” way to be human.
Shift the worldview, and the questions shift with it. If autism is understood as a form of human diversity, then the falsifiable questions become entirely different. What cognitive strengths correlate with autistic perception? What environments support autistic wellbeing? How does sensory diversity contribute to creativity? The method hasn’t changed — the worldview has. And with it, the entire landscape of enquiry.
A similar dynamic appears in the long‑running discussion about including Māori epistemology in science education. For international readers, this refers to the proposal that students learn science not only through a Western lens but also through mātauranga Māori — Māori ways of understanding the natural world. From a strictly Western perspective, this can look like confusing fact with fiction. But that reaction reveals an assumption: that Western science is the only valid framework for understanding reality.
In practice, what was proposed was not replacing science, but expanding the lens — helping students see that all science is taught from within a worldview, and that Western categories are not the only way to make sense of the natural world. The Ministry of Education continues to support Māori‑centred STEM learning, including resources for pūtaiao (science in Māori‑medium contexts), teacher capability building in te reo Māori, and the development of Māori‑centred STEM pathways in the curriculum. The current government has eased back the pace of the broader curriculum refresh, but these Māori‑centred approaches remain part of the Ministry’s ongoing work.
This example, like the autism one, shows how preconception shapes what we think is “scientific.” If Western science is assumed to be the only valid lens, then mātauranga Māori appears “non‑scientific.” But if we recognise that all knowledge systems arise from cultural worldviews, then the question shifts from “Is this science?” to “What does this way of knowing reveal that another might miss?”
Western thought also draws a sharp line between the “objective” and the “subjective,” as if the world can be neatly divided into facts on one side and feelings on the other. But this split is cultural, not universal. In Māori cosmology, knowledge is relational — woven through whakapapa (genealogy and interconnectedness), land, and community. In Quaker practice, truth emerges through collective discernment, not detached observation. And in my own life, shaped by autistic perception, the boundary between inner and outer experience has never felt as rigid as Western categories suggest.
Another Western habit is to treat knowledge as something individual — the lone thinker, the solitary scientist, the detached observer. But many cultures, Māori and Quaker among them, understand knowledge as something that arises in relationship. Enquiry is not a solo performance; it is a communal unfolding.
And then there is the Western preference for linear enquiry: question → hypothesis → test → answer → progress. It’s a tidy model, but it doesn’t reflect how most of life actually works. Enquiry, in my experience, is cyclical, emergent, and often surprising. It loops back on itself. It wanders. It listens. It changes direction when something unexpected appears. It is more like a conversation than a pipeline.
All of these habits — the insistence on falsifiability, the objective/subjective split, the elevation of the individual, the linear model of progress — are not universal features of human thought. They are cultural patterns. And like all patterns, they illuminate some things beautifully while leaving other things in shadow.
What they leave in shadow, I’ve found, are the relational, the contextual, the mysterious — the very qualities that make enquiry feel alive.
Why Māori and Quaker Worldviews Feel Spacious
If Western categories tend to narrow enquiry, then Māori and Quaker worlds have done the opposite for me: they have opened it. Not by offering answers, but by offering a different way of being with questions. A way that feels less like navigating a system and more like entering a relationship.
I’ve often wondered why I feel so at ease in these two communities, despite coming from neither. Part of it, I think, is that both traditions begin with an assumption that Western thought often forgets: people arrive with different realities, and that is not a problem to be solved. It is simply the world as it is.
On a marae (a Māori communal meeting place), this is made explicit. Before any formalities begin, the kawa (protocols) and tikanga (customs) of that particular place are explained — not only for Pākehā like me, but for Māori from other iwi (tribal groups) as well. There is no expectation that anyone should “just know.” The explanation is not a concession; it is an act of manaakitanga (hospitality and care), a recognition that each person carries their own background, their own way of being, their own reality. The marae does not demand assimilation. It offers orientation.
This explicit hospitality feels like oxygen to me. Perhaps because, as an autistic person, I’ve spent much of my life navigating spaces where the rules are unspoken and the expectations invisible. On the marae, nothing is hidden. The structure is clear. The welcome is genuine. And the diversity of those present is assumed, not treated as deviation. It is a worldview grounded in whakapapa, where relationships, not categories, define the shape of reality. It is a world where enquiry begins with connection, not classification.
Quaker practice offers a different kind of spaciousness, but one that resonates in a similar way. A Quaker meeting begins with silence, but not an empty silence. It is a shared listening, a communal attentiveness to whatever might arise. Newcomers are gently told what to expect — not because Quakers believe their way is the only way, but because they know that silence without context can feel disorienting. Again, the norms are named. The expectations are clear. And the diversity of experience within the room is welcomed rather than managed.
What I find most spacious in Quakerism is its refusal to collapse mystery into doctrine. Truth is not a proposition to be defended but a presence to be encountered. Ministry arises not from authority but from leading. Discernment is not a debate but a collective listening. It is a way of being that treats mystery as a feature of reality, not a flaw in our understanding. And in that sense, it aligns closely with Māori cosmology, where the world is alive with relationships, presences, and meanings that cannot be reduced to categories.
Both traditions, in their own ways, resist the Western urge to tidy the world into boxes. They do not divide knowledge into “objective” and “subjective,” or “scientific” and “spiritual.” They do not assume a single centre from which all meaning radiates. Instead, they begin with plurality. They assume diversity. They treat difference as relational rather than hierarchical.
And perhaps this is why I feel at home in both spaces. They do not ask me to pretend that my reality is the same as everyone else’s. They do not require me to absorb unspoken norms. They do not treat my way of perceiving the world as deviation from a standard. Instead, they offer a place where enquiry can unfold without being funnelled — where questions can arise from lived experience rather than from inherited categories.
In Māori and Quaker worlds, enquiry feels less like a method and more like a conversation. Less like a search for certainty and more like a deepening of relationship. Less like a narrowing and more like an opening.
And it is from within that opening that the next part of this reflection emerges: the possibility that diversity, not uniformity, is the natural state of enquiry.
Diversity as the Natural State of Enquiry
The more I sit with these questions, the more I realise that what feels spacious in Māori and Quaker worlds is not simply their hospitality or their clarity of practice. It is something deeper: a worldview in which diversity is assumed, not explained. A worldview where plurality is the starting point, not a complication to be managed.
In Western thought, diversity is often treated as variation from a norm — a scattering of points around a central line. But in the natural world, diversity is not deviation. It is the fabric of life itself. Ecosystems thrive on variation. Evolution depends on it. Cultures grow through it. Even within a single person, experience is layered, shifting, and relational. Nothing is ever just one thing.
Enquiry, I’ve come to realise, is no different.
When enquiry begins with the assumption of a single correct method, or a single valid form of evidence, or a single universal truth, it becomes narrow. It becomes a search for confirmation rather than a movement toward understanding. It becomes a funnel. But when enquiry begins with diversity — with the recognition that reality is experienced differently by different people, cultures, and communities — it becomes something else entirely. It becomes relational. It becomes ecological. It becomes alive.
This is where my own lived experience has been an unexpected teacher. Being autistic means I have never been able to assume that my way of perceiving the world is the default. I’ve always known, sometimes painfully, that my reality is not everyone’s reality. But that awareness has also been a gift. It has taught me that there is no single centre from which all meaning radiates. There are only vantage points, each shaped by culture, neurology, history, and relationship.
From that perspective, diversity is not a challenge to enquiry. It is the condition that makes enquiry possible.
Māori cosmology expresses this through whakapapa — the understanding that everything exists in relationship, and that those relationships are layered, dynamic, and alive. Quaker practice expresses it through communal discernment — the recognition that truth emerges not from a single voice but from the interplay of many. Both traditions assume that no one person, no one method, no one worldview can hold the whole.
This is not relativism. It is humility.
It is the recognition that reality is too large, too complex, too relational to be captured by any single framework. And it is the recognition that enquiry, at its best, is not about narrowing the world into categories but about opening ourselves to the richness of what is present.
When I think about enquiry in this way, it no longer feels like a ladder to climb or a puzzle to solve. It feels more like walking through a forest — noticing patterns, listening for what is hidden, paying attention to what emerges, and accepting that the path will not always be straight. It feels like a conversation rather than a conclusion.
And perhaps this is the heart of what I want to say: diversity is not something we encounter at the edges of enquiry; it is the ground on which enquiry stands. When we begin from that ground, the world becomes larger, not smaller. Questions become invitations rather than tests. Mystery becomes a companion rather than a threat. And enquiry becomes a way of being in relationship with the world, rather than a method for controlling it.
This is the kind of enquiry that feels true to my lived experience. It is the kind of enquiry I find in Māori and Quaker spaces. And it is the kind of enquiry I hope to honour in this reflection — one that begins with diversity, moves through relationship, and remains open to whatever might unfold next.
Closing
As I come to the end of this reflection, I’m aware that nothing here resolves into a single answer. That feels appropriate. Enquiry, at least as I’ve experienced it, rarely leads to closure. It leads instead to a widening — a sense that the world is larger, more relational, more diverse than the categories I inherited ever allowed me to see.
If there is a thread running through these thoughts, it is simply this: the way we frame enquiry shapes what we are able to notice. When we begin with narrow categories, we see only what fits inside them. When we begin with diversity, we discover that the world is full of ways of knowing, each grounded in its own relationships, histories, and realities.
Māori and Quaker worlds have taught me this in different ways. One through whakapapa, the other through silence. One through explicit hospitality, the other through communal listening. Both through a humility that recognises that no single perspective can hold the whole. Both through a spaciousness that allows enquiry to unfold without forcing it into predetermined shapes.
And perhaps that is what I have been circling all along: a desire for enquiry that is not constrained by the need for certainty, nor by the categories that claim to define what counts as knowledge. An enquiry that begins with relationship rather than method. An enquiry that honours the diversity of human experience rather than treating it as deviation. An enquiry that remains open to mystery, not as a failure of understanding but as an invitation to keep listening.
My own reality — shaped by autistic perception, by cross‑cultural encounters, by the quiet clarity that comes from not fitting neatly into the expected norms — has taught me that there is no single vantage point from which the world can be fully understood. There are only perspectives, each partial, each valid, each offering something the others cannot.
If there is a closing thought, it is simply this: enquiry is at its most alive when it remains open to the diversity of realities that make up our shared world. When we allow ourselves to wander, to listen, to be surprised, we find that understanding is not a destination but a relationship — one that deepens as we move through it.
And so this reflection ends not with an answer, but with an openness. A recognition that the world is richer than any single framework can contain, and that enquiry, when freed from its funnels, can lead us into that richness with curiosity, humility, and a sense of wonder.
By coincidence, The Pink Agendist published a parody today — wildly exaggerated, yet with a disconcerting ring of truth. Rowling and Bindel Unveil Revolutionary New Feminism: Patriarchy, But Us is humorous precisely because of its overstatement, but unlike the American‑critique video I discussed earlier, this piece settles into a calmer, more serious reflection as it unfolds. It is, again, a perspective rather than a reality — but sometimes satire reveals what plain argument cannot. I offer it here for your own reading and interpretation.
Every so often a piece of commentary comes along that captures a mood more than a fact — a feeling that has been circulating quietly in the background of global conversation. Why Are Americans So Bloody Stupid? is one of those pieces. It is not a calm analysis, nor does it pretend to be. It is an expression of frustration, exasperation, and, in places, genuine grief about what America has become and how its internal turbulence spills outward into the world.
And whether we like it or not, it does spill outward. There is a reason the old saying persists: “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.” It is an exaggeration, of course, but like most exaggerations it contains a kernel of truth. The United States remains the most powerful nation on earth — militarily, economically, culturally, and digitally. What happens there rarely stays there. The reverse is not true. Aotearoa does not shape America in any meaningful way. The asymmetry is simply part of the world we live in.
The video gives voice to the experience of living in that asymmetry. It articulates a perception shared by many outside the United States: that American dysfunction is no longer a domestic matter but a global one. And perceptions, even when imperfect, matter. They shape how people interpret events, how they feel about their neighbours, and how they understand their place in the world.
But perception is not the same as reality, and this is where the presentation begins to overreach.
Perception, Emotion, and the Temptation of a Single Story
The video argues that America’s institutions were intentionally designed to suppress critical thinking — that anti‑intellectualism was not merely present in the culture but deliberately engineered into it. This is an emotionally powerful narrative. It offers a clear explanation for a complex problem, and it resonates with anyone who has watched the American education system struggle, or who has seen the rise of epistemic tribalism in recent years.
Yet the historical reality is far more fragmented.
Some early settlers did indeed discourage questioning. Certain religious communities sought to enforce doctrinal conformity, and later political movements — from McCarthyism to the culture wars — have treated critical inquiry as a threat. But these were not the only forces shaping America. Enlightenment thinkers, scientific societies, reformers, educators, and activists were also part of the story. The discouragement of critical thinking was an outcome, not a blueprint. It emerged from a patchwork of local priorities, cultural anxieties, economic pressures, and political incentives — not from a coordinated plan.
Patterns are not the same as intentions. They can feel intentional, especially from the outside, but that does not make them so.
The Emotional Truth Beneath the Overstatement
Where the video is strongest is not in its historical claims but in its emotional honesty. It captures something real about how America is experienced from abroad: as unpredictable, overwhelming, and impossible to ignore. The frustration is not abstract. It is lived. When American politics destabilises, markets wobble. When American social media platforms amplify misinformation, the effects are global. When American democracy falters, authoritarian movements elsewhere feel emboldened.
In that sense, the video is not wrong. It is simply speaking from the inside of a feeling rather than the outside of a fact.
The Problem of “You” — and Misdirected Anger
One of the presentation’s weaknesses lies in its rhetorical shift toward the end. The speaker begins addressing the viewer directly as “You”, as though the individuals still watching are personally responsible for America’s trajectory. This feels like misdirected anger. Anyone who remains engaged with a forty‑minute critique of American dysfunction is unlikely to be the problem the video is railing against. They are, almost by definition, the curious, the reflective, and the internationally aware.
The anger is understandable — even justified in places — but its target is misplaced. Structural problems cannot be laid at the feet of individual viewers.
This is where the presentation’s emotional force begins to undermine its analytical clarity. The frustration is real, but the blame is too broadly cast.
Holding Truth Lightly
For me, the value of the video lies not in its accuracy but in its candour. It reveals how many outside the United States experience American power: as something that shapes their lives without their consent, and often without their understanding. That perception deserves attention, even when the rhetoric obscures as much as it illuminates.
But it also reminds me of the importance of holding truth lightly. Experience is not reality. Perception is not fact. Emotion is not analysis.
The presentation expresses a feeling that is widely shared, and in many ways I am sympathetic to it. But sympathy does not require agreement with every detail, nor does resonance require endorsement. The world is more complicated than any single narrative — especially one delivered in the heat of frustration.
In the end, the video is a perception, not a diagnosis. And perceptions, even when imperfect, are worth listening to — but they are not the whole story.
For those who would like to explore the presentation firsthand, I’ve embedded the video below. It’s close to fifty minutes long, and although the speaker is a psychotherapist with an Australian accent, her delivery is easy to follow. The anger that surfaces near the end surprised me, though I can understand where it comes from. I encourage you to watch it and draw your own conclusions.
Every year, around this time, Frankie reminds us that winter is approaching. Some cats grow a thicker coat. Frankie simply sheds his. Being a long‑haired, silver‑tipped chinchilla tabby, he produces enough white fur to suggest that he has exploded quietly in the night. I come downstairs to find several neat piles of five‑ to eight‑centimetre fibres arranged around the house like small snowdrifts. Frankie himself remains intact, which is always a relief.
Winter is also the season when rodents begin looking for warmer accommodation. Frankie considers this a personal challenge. He does not wait for them to find their own way inside. He escorts them through the cat door in his mouth, deposits them on the carpet, and initiates a game he calls toss the rodent. He plays this in the rooms with the most furniture, ideally the kind that neither he nor I can reach under. The mouse eventually finds refuge behind something immovable, and Frankie settles in to wait.
This year he has developed a new variation. He brings the mouse upstairs, releases it under my bed, and then lies on his back, running his paws along the underside of the mattress in an attempt to herd it in circles. This is not something one can sleep through. After a few minutes he begins issuing long, insistent meows, which gradually deepen into growls if I fail to participate. Experience has taught me that ignoring him is unwise. If I do not assist, he eventually loses interest and leaves the mouse to resolve its own fate. This has consequences.
The other day the laundry developed a noticeable odour. It was the sort of smell that made being in the room and breathing mutually exclusive activities. I removed the washing machine, emptied the cupboard under the tub, and cleared the hot water cupboard. The smell remained. Eventually, after moving a cabinet of cleaning supplies, I found the source. It was a rat of considerable size. Its nose extended beyond one side of the shovel I used to remove it, and its rear end extended beyond the other. The injuries were consistent with an extended session of toss the rodent.
Living with Frankie’s winter traditions has taught me that resistance is largely symbolic. For example, if I stand up from my computer, Frankie immediately claims the chair. I could move him, but it is simpler to fetch another chair. This approach reduces friction.
Winter is coming. Frankie has made sure we all know.
Among Friends, a “concern” is not a fixed opinion but a moral unease that asks to be held up to the Light. This is one such concern.
We rarely place military conscription and slavery in the same frame. One feels too extreme, too morally charged, too bound to histories of cruelty and ownership. The other is often spoken of as duty, service, or necessity. Yet I find myself returning to a quiet question: why are we so certain they belong in different moral categories.
Modern understandings of slavery no longer depend on the idea of one person legally owning another. Instead, they focus on the experience of being unable to refuse — being compelled to work under threat of penalty, with little or no control over one’s own direction. When I sit with that definition, and then sit with the idea of conscription beside it, the resemblance is difficult to ignore.
A conscript cannot decline. The penalties for doing so can be severe. The state determines the nature of the service, the risks involved, and the length of time a person must give. Whatever the individual may feel about the conflict itself, their own discernment is set aside. If a private employer demanded such conditions, we would have no hesitation naming it forced labour.
International law quietly acknowledges this tension. Conventions that prohibit forced labour include an explicit exemption for military service. I find myself pausing over that. If conscription were obviously different in kind, why would an exemption be needed at all.
Supporters of conscription often speak of civic duty, of shared responsibility, of the need to defend the community. These are not small things. Many have served with courage and integrity, and nothing here is meant to diminish that. But I still find myself wondering whether the purpose of the coercion changes the nature of the coercion.
Among Friends, we sometimes talk about “holding something up to the Light” — not to condemn it, but to see it more clearly. When I hold conscription up in that way, I struggle to see a clear boundary between it and the forms of compelled labour we now recognise as slavery‑like. The resemblance may not be exact, but it is close enough to trouble the mind.
I offer this not as a conclusion, but as a query. If modern slavery is defined by coercion and the inability to refuse, what allows us to be so certain that conscription stands outside that definition.
I was genuinely surprised when I read Scottie’s recent post and discovered that electronic shelf labels are viewed with a degree of caution in the United States. Here in Aotearoa, they feel so ordinary that I barely notice them — part of the quiet background hum of supermarket life. Or at least, that’s what I assumed. It wasn’t until I went looking for confirmation that I realised my certainty was built almost entirely on my own patch of the country, where ESLs are everywhere. Step outside the lower North Island and the picture becomes more uneven. It was a small but useful reminder that even the most mundane beliefs — like how common a price label is — are shaped less by the world itself and more by the cultural lens we happen to be looking through.
That small jolt of self‑correction made Scottie’s point land with unexpected force. If I could so easily mistake my local experience for a national one, how much more might entire cultures do the same? And that, in turn, made me look again at the American reaction he described. What struck me wasn’t just that US shoppers view electronic shelf labels with suspicion, but that their suspicion made perfect sense within their cultural frame. The same technology that feels mundane, even reassuring, in my corner of Aotearoa can look like a tool for surveillance or price manipulation when filtered through a different history of banking, retail, and trust. The labels haven’t changed — only the lenses through which they’re read.
Two Countries, Two Lenses
What really struck me, once I started looking more closely, was how differently the two countries arrived at their present relationship with retail technology. In New Zealand, trust in digital infrastructure has been quietly accumulating for decades. We were early adopters of electronic transactions — known locally as EFTPOS, or Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale — and early adopters of nationwide ATM networks and a centralised clearing system that made electronic banking feel safe, predictable, and almost invisible. Even today, it’s perfectly normal to give your bank account number to a business, a friend, or the neighbour who owes you for firewood — a gesture that astonishes many visitors.
Our whole payments ecosystem grew up inside a framework of cooperation and interoperability, so electronic transactions came to feel like an extension of everyday life rather than a leap into the unknown. In the United States, the story unfolded very differently. Their banking system is fragmented, their retail environment more adversarial, and their history with digital payments far more uneven. It’s hardly surprising, then, that a technology which reads as “convenience” in New Zealand can read as “surveillance” in America. The difference isn’t in the technology itself, but in the cultural soil it lands in.
The contrast becomes even sharper when you look at how these different histories of trust and mistrust play out in something as ordinary as supermarket technology. In New Zealand, electronic shelf labels tend to be read as a small but welcome improvement — tidy, accurate, consistent, and refreshingly free of the little pricing ambiguities that paper tags sometimes encouraged. They sit comfortably within a wider pattern of digital systems that have generally behaved themselves.
But in the United States, the same labels carry a very different emotional weight. There, a long history of fragmented banking, opaque fees, and corporate experimentation with things like dynamic pricing has primed shoppers to see any instantly changeable price as a potential threat. Add in loyalty programmes that track purchasing behaviour in far more detail than most New Zealanders would tolerate, and it’s easy to understand why an ESL might look less like a convenience and more like a tool for surveillance pricing. Even self‑checkout — which Americans adopted earlier than we did — is interpreted through this lens: a sign of cost‑cutting, automation, and the steady erosion of human service. The technology is the same on both sides of the Pacific, but the stories wrapped around it are not.
The Lens We Don’t See
What all of this brings into focus is something much larger than supermarket technology. The way New Zealanders and Americans read the same devices isn’t really about labels, scanners, or checkout lanes at all — it’s about the deeper stories each culture carries about trust, institutions, and the likelihood of being treated fairly. We don’t approach new technologies as blank slates. We approach them with a lifetime of accumulated expectations: what banks have done in the past, how retailers behave during crises, whether regulators step in when things go wrong, whether systems generally work as promised. Those expectations become the lens through which we interpret whatever sits in front of us.
And once you start noticing that lens, you see it everywhere. It shapes how people read scripture, how they interpret silence in a Quaker meeting, how they understand words like “Christianity” or “truth”, and how they react to ideas that challenge familiar patterns. It shapes memes that refuse to evolve, definitions that harden into dogma, and assumptions that feel like facts simply because they’ve never been questioned. The supermarket aisle turns out to be just another place where the same old human habit plays out: we don’t see the world as it is — we see it as our culture has taught us to expect it to be.
I’m conscious, too, that my own relationship with digital payments colours how I interpret all of this. I’ve been effectively cashless since the early 1990s, ever since the local savings bank in Whanganui handed me one of the country’s first EFTPOS cards. For more than three decades, tapping a card has been as ordinary to me as turning on a light switch. Even at the Friday farmers’ market, where the stalls sit under canvas and the produce still smells of soil, electronic payments feel entirely natural. On the rare occasion a retailer doesn’t offer them, I simply go elsewhere. That long familiarity has shaped my expectations in ways I barely notice.
My sense of what counts as “normal” has also been shaped by the contrast with Japan, where my wife’s family lives and where I’ve spent a fair amount of time. When I last visited in 2017, it was still very much a cash‑based society. It wasn’t unusual to see someone stop at an ATM, withdraw a tidy stack of notes, do their shopping, and then deposit whatever remained on the way home. Even large retailers expected cash. Electronic payments existed, of course, but they sat at the edges of daily life rather than at its centre. For someone who hadn’t carried cash in New Zealand for more than two decades, it felt like stepping sideways into a parallel universe — one that was modern in every respect except the one I took most for granted.
My earliest lesson in how differently cultures handle money came long before electronic payments existed. When I married my wife in 1971, my wages were paid directly into my bank account — a perfectly ordinary arrangement in New Zealand even then. But for her, raised in rural Japan, it was quietly unsettling. At that time, it was normal — even expected — for a husband to bring home his unopened pay packet in cash and hand it straight to his wife, who managed the household finances. The husband would then receive a modest allowance for his own use. Despite the Western stereotype that Japanese men control everything, it was the wife who held the purse‑strings, and everyone understood this as the natural order of things.
Our workaround was simple and elegant: my wages were paid into her bank account, and an automatic payment transferred my pocket money. Happiness all round. But the memory stays with me because it shows how deeply financial habits are woven into cultural expectations. What felt entirely ordinary to me felt entirely foreign to her — not because either of us was wrong, but because we had grown up inside different systems of trust, responsibility, and social rhythm.
The same pattern shows up in my relationship with technology more broadly. I find AI genuinely helpful because it gives me a way to express ideas that bridge the autistic–non‑autistic communication gap — a kind of conversational scaffolding that lets me share concepts with far less friction. But I’m well aware that others see the same technology through a very different lens: as a threat to intellectual property, a generator of “AI slop”, or a sign that creativity is being hollowed out. The tool hasn’t changed; only the stories wrapped around it have.
Closing Reflection
Which brings me back to where this whole reflection began. The technology in front of us — an electronic shelf label, a bank card, a self‑checkout terminal, or even an AI assistant — is never just a piece of hardware. It’s a mirror that reflects the assumptions we carry, the histories we’ve inherited, and the quiet expectations we rarely notice until they’re challenged. Scottie’s post reminded me that even something as mundane as a supermarket price tag can reveal how differently people see the world, not because the world itself has changed, but because the lenses we look through are shaped by the cultures that raised us. And perhaps that’s the most useful reminder of all: we don’t see the world as it is — we see it as our culture has taught us to expect it to be.
A small curiosity about how one elegant idea — the meme — seems to stop just short of the place it fits best.
Richard Dawkins’ idea of memes has always appealed to me. It’s a wonderfully tidy way of describing how ideas behave a bit like living things — spreading, mutating, adapting, and occasionally going feral. As a framework, it explains a great deal about how cultures shift and why certain notions take hold while others quietly fade away.
But there’s one small puzzle I’ve never quite resolved. Dawkins applies the meme concept to almost everything: fashion, politics, social habits, superstitions, advertising jingles — you name it. Ideas evolve everywhere… except, apparently, in religion.
When it comes to religion, Dawkins suddenly treats beliefs as fixed, literal, and uniform, as if they were carved in granite rather than shaped by centuries of cultural cross‑pollination. It’s an odd exception, given that religious ideas have changed more dramatically — and more visibly — than almost any others.
I’m not offering an answer. I just find it curious that the one domain where memetic evolution is most obvious is the one place the meme lens is set aside.
Every now and then I’m reminded that I live in a world where people assume their understanding of a word is not only correct, but universally correct — and that anyone who uses the same word differently must be confused, misguided, or in urgent need of a dictionary. Over the past few months this reminder has come from several directions at once: a blogger convinced that “Pākehā” has one true meaning, Ark’s heroic attempts to force the Bible into a literal straitjacket, LaMar’s YouTube sermons on why metaphor is apparently a moral failing, and my own growing awareness that, as an autistic person navigating a neurotypical‑dominant world, I seem to inhabit a slightly different linguistic universe.
It’s not that I go looking for these encounters. They simply accumulate — like whiteware in a Kiwi kitchen, or cobwebs on a draft blog post. And this particular draft has been gathering cobwebs since 2016, quietly waiting for the right combination of linguistic misunderstandings to nudge it into daylight.
What finally tipped me over the edge was realising that the problem isn’t any one conversation, or any one person. It’s the broader human habit of assuming that words behave like obedient pets: sit, stay, mean exactly what I tell you to mean. In my experience, words are more like our cat Frankie — independent, context‑dependent, and prone to wandering off into unexpected meanings when you least expect it.
So, in the spirit of gentle bemusement (and perhaps mild self‑preservation), I’ve dusted off this long‑gestating piece. It’s an exploration of how words actually work in the wild — from “whiteware” to “kiwi” to “God” — and why insisting on one fixed, literal meaning is about as practical as insisting that all Kiwis must be fruit.
How Language Actually Works (Or: Why Words Are More Like Cats Than Obedient Dogs)
If there’s one thing the past few years have taught me, it’s that many people approach language with the same confidence they bring to assembling flat‑pack furniture: “How hard can it be? A word means what it says on the box.” And then they’re terribly offended when the linguistic equivalent of an Allen key doesn’t fit the hole they expected it to.
From my vantage point — autistic, observant, and permanently puzzled by the neurotypical belief that words behave themselves — language looks rather different. Words don’t sit neatly in their assigned places like well‑trained Labradors. They wander. They evolve. They pick up new meanings the way Frankie picks up burrs in the garden. And sometimes he turns up on our doorstep carrying a meaning we’re fairly sure we never authorised.
This is especially true of abstract concepts. Concrete objects at least give you something to point at. A chair is a chair, unless of course you’re in a design store where it’s suddenly a “seating solution.” But once you move into the realm of ideas — God, religion, identity, culture — the tidy boundaries people imagine simply dissolve. Words become porous, slippery, and occasionally mischievous.
Yet many people cling to the idea that a word has one correct meaning, preferably the one they learned at age twelve. They treat dictionaries as sacred tablets handed down from Mount Oxford, rather than what they actually are: descriptive snapshots of how a group of lexicographers believe a word is being used at a particular moment in time. Dictionaries don’t define meaning; they chase after it with a clipboard, trying to keep up.
And this is where the trouble starts. When someone insists that their definition is the definition, they’re not defending clarity — they’re defending familiarity. They’re saying, “This is how I learned the word, therefore this is how everyone must use it.” It’s a comforting illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.
In reality, meaning is a negotiation. A dance. A slightly chaotic one, admittedly, where half the dancers are following different music and the other half are trying to remember whether they’re meant to lead or follow. But a dance all the same.
Which brings me to the examples — the words that have caused me to raise an eyebrow more times than I can count. Words that behave perfectly well in one cultural context and then cause utter confusion in another. Words that reveal, with delightful clarity, just how impractical it is to insist on one fixed, literal meaning.
Let’s start with a favourite of mine: whiteware.
Whiteware: A Perfectly Ordinary Word That Refuses to Behave
If you ever want to observe the chaos of language in its natural habitat, you don’t need to study ancient manuscripts or decipher obscure theological metaphors. You can simply ask a roomful of people what the word whiteware means and then sit back with a cup of tea while the confusion unfolds.
For most of my life — seventy‑odd years and counting — whiteware has meant the large appliances that lurk in kitchens and laundries: fridges, freezers, washing machines, ovens, and the occasional dishwasher that promises to be quiet but never quite is. This is such an unremarkable, everyday usage in Aotearoa that I never imagined it could mean anything else. Why would I? Everyone I knew used it the same way.
Then one day, out of idle curiosity, I looked it up online.
According to Merriam‑Webster, whiteware is a type of ceramic. Encyclopædia Britannica agrees. Wikipedia cheerfully directs you to pottery. The Free Dictionary insists it’s earthenware. Not a single fridge or washing machine in sight. If you believed these sources, you’d think New Zealanders have been storing their milk in large bowls of porcelain for decades.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Ministry for the Environment defines whiteware as refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, ovens, stoves, rangehoods, waste disposers, air conditioners, dehumidifiers, and microwaves. Not a single mention of pottery — unless you count the occasional ceramic mug left inside a microwave by someone who really should know better.
Retailers agree. Search for whiteware on the website of any major NZ department store and you’ll be presented with a cheerful parade of appliances, none of which could be described as earthenware unless something has gone terribly wrong in the manufacturing process.
So who’s correct? The lexicographers or the Kiwis?
The answer, of course, is “both,” depending on where you’re standing. Dictionaries are descriptive snapshots, not universal commandments. They tell you how a word is used somewhere, not how it is used everywhere. And in this case, the “somewhere” happens to be everywhere except New Zealand.
For a brief, shining moment, Lexico.com even acknowledged this, noting that whiteware is a New Zealand mass noun for large domestic appliances. It was a small but satisfying victory — proof that sometimes, just sometimes, the world notices that Aotearoa exists.
But the real lesson here isn’t about appliances or pottery. It’s about the delightful unpredictability of language. A word that seems perfectly clear in one culture can mean something entirely different in another. And if that’s true for something as mundane as whiteware, imagine the chaos that ensues when we move on to words like kiwi, Pākehā, or — heaven help us — God.
But before we get to the big ones, let’s enjoy one more linguistic detour. Because if whiteware can cause this much confusion, just wait until we get to kiwi.
Kiwi: A Word With Three Literal Meanings (And None of Them Universal)
If whiteware is a gentle nudge reminding us that words refuse to stay in their assigned boxes, kiwi is the full theatrical production — complete with costume changes, unexpected plot twists, and an international cast who all swear they’re using the word correctly.
Ask someone overseas what a kiwi is, and nine times out of ten they’ll picture a kiwifruit sliced neatly in half, its bright green insides staring up at them like a cheerful botanical eye. This is so common that the only kiwi emoji available on most devices is, indeed, the fruit. If you want to represent New Zealand in emoji form, you’re apparently meant to do it with a salad ingredient.
Meanwhile, ask a New Zealander what a kiwi is, and they’ll think of the bird — that endearingly odd, nocturnal creature that looks like it was designed by a committee who couldn’t agree on whether birds should have wings, feathers, or dignity. The idea that “kiwi” might refer to a fruit is so foreign to most Kiwis (the people) that it produces the same expression you’d get if you told them pavlova was invented in Australia.
And then, of course, there’s the third meaning: Kiwi as a person. Capital K, plural Kiwis, and absolutely not to be confused with the bird or the fruit unless you enjoy watching New Zealanders twitch. This usage is so ingrained that many of us forget it’s a metaphor — a national identity borrowed from a flightless bird that spends most of its life avoiding predators and minding its own business. Make of that what you will.
So which of these is the “literal” meaning of kiwi? All of them. And none of them. It depends entirely on context — cultural, linguistic, and occasionally culinary.
This is where literalism begins to wobble. If a single, perfectly ordinary word in modern English can have three distinct literal meanings, each correct in its own setting, then the idea that any word — let alone an ancient one — has one fixed, universal meaning becomes rather difficult to defend.
It also raises delightful questions. If someone says, “I saw a kiwi today,” should we assume they visited a zoo, a supermarket, or simply walked past a mirror? If a tourist announces they’ve eaten kiwi, should we call the police, the SPCA, or simply ask whether they prefer the gold, green or ruby variety? And if someone insists that the fruit is the only correct meaning because that’s what they learned first, should we gently suggest they spend more time in Aotearoa before making sweeping declarations?
The point, of course, is not to mock anyone — although the temptation is occasionally strong — but to illustrate how meaning shifts depending on where you stand. If kiwi can mean three different things in the same language, spoken in the same century, imagine the interpretive gymnastics required for words written thousands of years ago in cultures that no longer exist.
And if that doesn’t make you slightly suspicious of rigid literalism, nothing will.
Pākehā, Bum, Tramp, Fanny, Dairy, Crib, Bach: A Guided Tour of Cross‑Cultural Confusion
If whiteware and kiwi haven’t yet convinced you that words are slippery creatures, this next collection should do the trick. These are the words that have caused me — and many other New Zealanders — to pause mid‑conversation, tilt our heads like puzzled kea, and wonder whether we’re even speaking the same language as the person in front of us.
Let’s begin with Pākehā, a word that seems to cause more confusion among newcomers than any other. A blogger who inspired part of this article had never encountered it before, looked it up in a dictionary, and promptly informed me that I was using it incorrectly. This is a bold move when speaking to someone who has lived in Aotearoa for more than seventy years, but I admire the confidence.
The truth is that Pākehā is one of those words whose meaning depends entirely on context — social, cultural, historical, and occasionally familial. I am always Pākehā. My wife, who grew up in Japan and looks “Asian,” is sometimes Pākehā and sometimes not, depending on who’s speaking and what they mean by it. Our children occupy a liminal space where the answer is “it depends,” and our grandchildren, with their blend of European, Japanese, and Māori ancestry, complicate the picture even further. Most New Zealanders understand this instinctively. Outsiders, understandably, do not.
And that’s before we even get to the everyday words that trip up visitors with delightful regularity.
Take bum. In many parts of the world, a bum is a vagrant or someone down on their luck. In New Zealand, it’s the part of your anatomy you sit on. This can lead to awkward moments, especially when a well‑meaning American announces that they “saw a bum outside the supermarket,” and we wonder whether to call social services or simply offer them a cushion.
Then there’s tramp. In the US, a tramp is a homeless wanderer. In New Zealand, a tramp is a long walk in the bush — a wholesome recreational activity involving backpacks, sturdy boots, and the occasional sandfly. “We’re going tramping this weekend” is a perfectly normal sentence here. Elsewhere, it may raise eyebrows.
Fanny is another linguistic landmine. In the US, it refers to the bum (the anatomical one). In New Zealand, it refers to a rather different anatomical region, one that half the population does not possess. This has led to more than a few moments of cross‑cultural alarm, especially when American tourists cheerfully announce that they “fell on their fanny.”
And then there’s rooting, a word that has caused more than one moment of trans‑Pacific panic. An American exchange student once told her Kiwi host family that her favourite hobby was “rooting for my high school football team.” There was a stunned silence, followed by a teenage son blurting out, “What — the whole team?” The poor girl meant she was a cheerleader. The Kiwis, meanwhile, were operating with the local meaning of root, which refers to an activity rather more intimate than school spirit. Once the confusion was cleared up, everyone laughed — but it was a perfect reminder that even the most innocent sentence can go spectacularly wrong when two versions of English collide.
Dairy is yet another example. In many countries, a dairy is a farm where cows live. In New Zealand, it’s the corner shop where you buy milk, bread, ice blocks, and the newspaper. If you ask a Kiwi where the nearest dairy is, they will not direct you to a paddock.
And then we have crib and bach, two words that refer to the same thing — a modest holiday home — but are divided neatly along the Cook Strait. In the South Island, it’s a crib. In the North Island, it’s a bach. Neither group is wrong. Both are convinced they’re right.
All of these examples illustrate the same point: meaning is not fixed. It shifts with geography, culture, history, and usage. A word that seems perfectly clear in one place becomes baffling in another. And if this much confusion can arise within modern English, spoken by people who can hop on a plane and visit each other, imagine the interpretive gymnastics required for ancient texts written in languages no one speaks anymore.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the abstract words — the ones that cause even more trouble than bum, tramp, or rooting. Words like God, religion, Christian, and Quaker. But before we dive into those, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how much linguistic chaos we’ve already uncovered.
Because if we can’t even agree on what a tramp is, what hope do we have of agreeing on what God is?
Moving from Concrete Words to Abstract Ones
By now we’ve wandered through enough linguistic potholes to appreciate that even the most concrete words — bum, tramp, dairy, kiwi — can cause confusion when they cross cultural borders. These are words tied to physical things: body parts, shops, birds, fruit, and the occasional startled American cheerleader. And yet even they refuse to behave consistently.
So what happens when we leave the relative safety of concrete nouns and venture into the shimmering, shape‑shifting world of abstract concepts?
This is where things get truly entertaining.
Concrete words at least give you something to point at. If someone says “bum,” you can gesture discreetly toward the relevant anatomical region (preferably your own). If someone says “dairy,” you can point to the corner shop or, if you’re overseas, to a field full of cows. There may be confusion, but at least there’s a physical object involved.
Abstract words, however, are another species entirely. They don’t point to objects; they point to ideas. And ideas are notoriously unruly. They expand, contract, overlap, contradict, and occasionally wander off into philosophical territory where even dictionaries fear to tread.
Take words like God, religion, Christian, or Quaker. These are not objects you can photograph or store in the garage next to the whiteware. These are concepts — vast, layered, historical, cultural, emotional, and often deeply personal. They carry centuries of accumulated meaning, debate, reinterpretation, and, in some cases, outright argument.
Yet people often approach these words with the same confidence they bring to “chair” or “toaster”, assuming that their understanding is the default and everyone else is simply misinformed. It’s a charming belief, in the same way that my wife believes Frankie will come when called is charming. Occasionally it even happens, but only by coincidence.
The blogger who insisted I was using Pākehā incorrectly also insisted that God must mean what they think it means, that Quaker must mean what they think it means, and that Christian must be defined by a specific set of theological criteria that most Quakers — historically and currently — do not share. This is not unusual. Many people treat abstract words as if they were fixed objects rather than evolving ideas.
But abstract concepts are not fixed. They are fluid. They shift with culture, history, personal experience, and the needs of the communities that use them. They are shaped by metaphor, story, symbol, and the human tendency to make meaning out of the world around us.
If we can’t even agree on what whiteware means, what hope do we have of agreeing on what God means?
And yet, somehow, people try. They insist that their definition is the correct one, the original one, the one that everyone else must adopt. It’s a valiant effort, but ultimately as futile as insisting that all Kiwis must be fruit.
Which brings us neatly to the next part of this linguistic adventure: the abstract words that cause the most confusion of all — God, religion, Christianity, and Quakerism. Words that have been debated for centuries, reinterpreted countless times, and continue to evolve even today.
But before we dive into those theological waters, it’s worth remembering one simple truth:
If concrete words can mislead us so easily, abstract ones don’t stand a chance.
A Blogger’s Confusion About “God”
By the time we reach words like God, the linguistic terrain has shifted from mildly chaotic to full‑blown philosophical swamp. This is where people who were perfectly calm about whiteware and tramping suddenly become very certain indeed — certain that their understanding of the word is the correct one, the original one, the universal one, and that anyone who uses it differently must be either confused, heretical, or (my personal favourite) “making up their own definition.”
One blogger I encountered falls squarely into this camp. They admitted, quite openly, that it had never occurred to them that God might be understood metaphorically, symbolically, poetically, or as a set of values rather than as an all‑powerful cosmic micromanager. This is surprising, given their intense (and often antagonistic) interest in religion. One might think that someone who spends so much time critiquing belief systems would have encountered at least one alternative interpretation along the way.
But no. For this blogger, God has one meaning — the one they grew up with, the one they reject, and the one they assume everyone else must be referring to. When I mentioned that my understanding of God aligns more closely with the non‑realist tradition — the one explored by thinkers like Lloyd Geering, Don Cupitt, John Shelby Spong, Karen Armstrong, and even Enlightenment figures like Spinoza — they responded with the memorable accusation that I was following “some obscure theologian in New Zealand who made up his own definition.”
This is where I had to suppress a smile.
Sir Lloyd Geering may be obscure to them, but in Aotearoa he is world‑famous in New Zealand, a phrase that will make perfect sense to any Kiwi and absolutely none to anyone else. His work is part of a long intellectual tradition that treats God not as a literal being but as a human attempt to express meaning, value, connection, and moral aspiration — a tradition that predates the Enlightenment and spans multiple cultures and religions.
In other words, the idea that God might be metaphorical is not a fringe invention. It is a well‑established, widely discussed, and deeply rooted strand of religious thought. It is also, I might add, a perfectly reasonable response to living in a world where literal interpretations of ancient texts often lead to more heat than light.
But the blogger’s confusion is understandable. If your only exposure to religion is the literalist, supernaturalist, interventionist version — the one where God behaves like a cross between a celestial accountant and an overbearing parent — then the metaphorical or non‑realist view can seem baffling. It’s like discovering that not everyone thinks kiwi means fruit.
The real issue here is not theology but semantic range. The word God spans an enormous spectrum of meanings, from the omnipotent deity of classical theism to the quiet inner compass of liberal religion. Some people use the word to describe a supernatural being. Others use it to describe the highest human values. Some avoid the word entirely but still speak of spirit, meaning, or connection. And many — especially in Aotearoa — sit somewhere in between.
So when someone says “I don’t believe in God,” the only sensible response is, “Which God don’t you believe in?” Because without context, the statement is as ambiguous as “I saw a kiwi today.”
This blogger’s mistake was assuming that their definition of God is the only one available. But as we’ve already seen, even concrete words refuse to stay put. Expecting an abstract concept like God to behave better is optimistic in the extreme.
And this brings us to the next linguistic battleground: religion itself — a word that has suffered even more from literalism, caricature, and cultural misunderstanding than God ever has.
What “Religion” Means Today
If the word God is a philosophical swamp, then religion is the entire wetland system — reeds, mudflats, migratory birds, and the occasional startled tourist who thought they were on a well‑marked path. People often speak of religion as if it were a single, clearly defined category, like “furniture” or “vegetables.” But the moment you look closely, the boundaries dissolve.
One of the most revealing facts — and one that still surprises many Westerners — is that not every culture even has a word for “religion.” The very idea that religion is a separate domain of life, distinct from culture, law, ethics, story, and daily practice, is a relatively recent Western invention.
A Māori kaumātua once told me that before the arrival of Pākehā, Māori had no concept of “religion” as something separate from ordinary life. Wairua, tapu, atua, mauri, whakapapa — these were not “religious beliefs” in the Western sense. They were simply part of the world, woven into relationships, land, community, and identity. To ask whether Māori “had a religion” before colonisation is to ask the wrong question. The category didn’t exist.
The same is broadly true in classical Chinese culture. The modern word 宗教 (zōngjiào) — now used to mean “religion” — was coined in the 19th century under Western influence. Before that, Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, ancestor rites, and folk practices were not grouped together as “religions.” They were philosophy, ritual, ethics, cosmology, social order, and cultural tradition — but not a separate compartment of life.
And this is where the trouble begins. When someone insists that “religion means believing in supernatural beings,” they are not describing a universal human category. They are describing a Western Protestant category, exported globally through colonisation, missionary activity, and the assumption that one’s own conceptual framework is the default.
In reality, the semantic range of religion is vast. For some, it means a set of doctrines. For others, a community. For others still, a way of life, a moral compass, a cultural inheritance, a set of stories, or a mode of meaning‑making. Some religions have gods. Some do not. Some emphasise belief. Others emphasise practice. Some are individual. Others are communal. Some are about transcendence. Others are about immanence, ethics, or simply living well.
Trying to force all of this into a single definition is like trying to define kiwi in a way that simultaneously satisfies fruit growers, ornithologists, and New Zealand passport holders. It can be done, but only by flattening the richness of the word into something unrecognisable.
This is why conversations about religion so often go sideways. People assume they are talking about the same thing when they are not. One person is thinking of institutional Christianity. Another is thinking of Buddhist meditation. Another is thinking of Indigenous cosmology. Another is thinking of televangelists. Another is thinking of Quaker silence. And another — often the loudest — is thinking of a childhood Sunday school lesson they have spent the rest of their life trying to escape.
So when someone declares, “Religion is X,” the only sensible response is, “Which religion? In which culture? At which point in history? And according to whom?” Without context, the statement is as ambiguous as “I saw a tramp outside the dairy.”
This brings us to the next part of the story: Christianity itself — a tradition so internally diverse that even its adherents cannot agree on what it means, let alone outsiders. And within that diversity sits a small, peculiar, quietly persistent group whose approach to religion confounds literalists entirely: the Quakers.
What “Christian” Means (and Why Quakers Complicate It)
If the word religion is a swamp, then Christian is the patch of quicksand in the middle — the bit that looks deceptively solid until you step on it and suddenly find yourself sinking into 2,000 years of theological debate, cultural variation, and earnest people insisting that their version is the original one.
Many people assume that “Christian” has a single, fixed meaning, preferably the one they learned in childhood. This usually involves a particular set of beliefs about God, Jesus, the Bible, salvation, miracles, and the afterlife. For some, these beliefs are essential. For others, they are optional. For still others, they are historical metaphors. And for a surprising number of people, they are entirely irrelevant to how they understand the word.
This is where things get interesting — and where Quakers complicate the picture beautifully.
Quakers have always been a slightly awkward fit within the Christian landscape. Not because they are rebellious (though some certainly are), but because they have historically prioritised experience over doctrine, practice over creed, and integrity over orthodoxy. Early Friends were unmistakably Christian in language and worldview, but they were also deeply suspicious of fixed statements of belief. They preferred lived truth to recited truth.
Over time, this suspicion of creeds produced a remarkable diversity. Today, Quakers range from explicitly Christ‑centred Friends to non‑theist Friends, universalist Friends, liberal Friends, evangelical Friends, and Friends who would rather not label themselves at all. Some Quakers use Christian language. Some do not. Some see Jesus as a historical teacher. Some see him as a symbol. Some see him as central. Some see him as optional. And some see him as irrelevant to their spiritual practice.
So when someone asks, “Are Quakers Christian?”, the only honest answer is, “It depends which Quakers you mean.”
This is not a dodge. It is a recognition of the fact that “Christian” is not a single, tidy category. It is a sprawling family of traditions, practices, cultures, and interpretations. Some branches emphasise belief. Others emphasise behaviour. Some emphasise scripture. Others emphasise experience. Some emphasise salvation. Others emphasise justice, compassion, or community.
The blogger who inspired part of this article assumed that “Christian” must mean “someone who believes a specific set of supernatural claims.” This is a common assumption, but it is historically narrow. Christianity has always been more diverse than its gatekeepers admit. Even within the first few centuries, Christians disagreed — vigorously — about the nature of Jesus, the meaning of salvation, the authority of scripture, the role of ritual, and the relationship between faith and works.
If early Christians could not agree on what “Christian” meant, it seems optimistic to insist on a single definition today.
Quakers, with their refusal to adopt creeds, simply make this diversity more visible. They expose the fact that Christianity is not a monolith but a conversation — sometimes harmonious, sometimes argumentative, occasionally exasperating, but always evolving.
So when someone says, “You’re not a Christian,” the only sensible response is, “According to which definition?” Because without context, the statement is as ambiguous as “I’m going tramping with a tramp outside the dairy.”
And this brings us to the next part of the story: Quakerism itself — not as a subset of Christianity, but as a tradition with its own history, its own internal diversity, and its own way of navigating the shifting meanings of religious language.
What Quakerism Actually Is (and Isn’t)
One of the most common misunderstandings — especially among people who have never met a Quaker — is the assumption that Quakerism is simply a quirky Christian denomination, like Presbyterians with better biscuits. This is understandable, given its origins in 17th‑century England, but it is no longer accurate. Quakerism today is a broad, diverse, evolving tradition whose unity lies not in doctrine but in practice, ethos, and a shared commitment to integrity, peace, equality, and listening for what early Friends called the Inner Light.
This diversity tends to unsettle people who prefer their religious categories neat and clearly labelled. One blogger I encountered responded to this diversity with a classic No True Scotsman manoeuvre: if a Quaker didn’t match their personal definition of “Christian,” then — by definition — that person was “not a true Quaker.” It was an impressive display of circular reasoning, and a perfect example of how rigid categories collapse the moment they encounter lived reality.
Quakerism simply doesn’t work that way. It is not defined by a creed. There is no list of required beliefs, no doctrinal test, no theological entrance exam. A person becomes a Quaker not by signing a statement of faith but by participating in the community — sitting in silence, listening deeply, speaking when moved, and trying (with varying degrees of success) to live with honesty, compassion, and attentiveness.
This means that Quakers include:
Friends who use explicitly Christian language
Friends who understand the Inner Light in metaphorical or humanistic terms
Friends who draw from Buddhist, Jewish, or Indigenous traditions
Friends who are non‑theist or non‑realist
Friends who avoid labels altogether and simply say, “This is the community where I feel most at home”
What unites them is not belief but practice — the discipline of silence, discernment, and collective listening. It is a way of being in the world, not a set of propositions about how the universe works.
This is why attempts to define Quakerism purely in theological terms always fall short. They miss the lived reality: the quiet, stubborn, practical spirituality that has shaped Quaker communities for centuries. Quakerism is not primarily about what you believe. It is about how you live, how you listen, how you treat others, and how you respond to the world’s needs.
It is also why Quakerism confounds literalists. If your worldview depends on clear doctrinal boundaries, Quakers are deeply inconvenient. They refuse to tell you what you must believe. They refuse to tell you what they believe in a way that can be neatly summarised. They refuse to reduce spiritual experience to a checklist. And they refuse to pretend that ancient words have only one meaning.
So what is Quakerism?
It is a community of people who gather in silence, listen for truth, and try to live with integrity. It is a tradition that values experience over doctrine, conscience over conformity, and compassion over certainty. It is a way of being religious that does not require supernaturalism, and a way of being non‑religious that still honours depth, meaning, and connection.
And what is Quakerism not?
It is not a creed. It is not a fixed set of beliefs. It is not a theological club with membership criteria. It is not a relic of the 17th century. And it is certainly not something that can be understood by reading a dictionary entry and assuming you’ve grasped the whole thing.
Conclusion: The Limits of Literalism (and the Joy of Confusion)
After wandering through this landscape of shifting meanings — from whiteware to kiwi to God to Quakerism — one truth becomes impossible to ignore: literalism is a fragile thing. It works only when everyone shares the same cultural background, the same assumptions, the same metaphors, and the same dictionary. The moment any of those variables change, meaning begins to wobble like a poorly balanced pavlova.
We’ve seen how even the simplest words can betray us. A bum can be a person or a body part. A tramp can be a hiker or a vagrant. A fanny can cause mild embarrassment or outright panic, depending on the hemisphere. And rooting can be either wholesome school spirit or something that would get you expelled.
If concrete words can cause this much trouble, abstract ones don’t stand a chance.
This is why arguments about religion, Christianity, or God so often collapse into confusion. People assume they are talking about the same thing when they are not. They assume their definition is universal when it is not. They assume their cultural frame is the default when it is not. Even Richard Dawkins — a favourite of those who prefer rigid categories — coined the term meme to describe how ideas evolve, mutate, and adapt as they spread. If even he recognised that cultural concepts behave like living organisms, constantly changing as they move from mind to mind, then it should not surprise us that religious ideas have done the same for thousands of years.
And sometimes, the results are unintentionally hilarious.
During a visit to the United States many years ago, I discovered just how powerful these assumptions can be. I found myself explaining to Americans — with a perfectly straight face — that owning or eating kiwi is a serious offence in Aotearoa. The looks of horror, confusion, and moral distress were so delightful that I began steering conversations toward the topic just so I could deliver the line again. Even as an autistic person who doesn’t always read facial expressions easily, I could recognise the moment their brains short‑circuited.
Of course, they were thinking of the fruit. I was thinking of the bird. And neither of us was wrong — we were simply using the same word in different ways.
That is the whole point.
Words do not have single, fixed, eternal meanings. They have histories, contexts, cultures, and communities. They evolve. They wander. They contradict themselves. They pick up new meanings and shed old ones. They behave, in short, like living things.
So when someone insists that kiwi must mean fruit, or that Pākehā must mean what a dictionary says, or that God must mean a supernatural being, or that Quaker must mean a particular kind of Christian, they are not defending truth. They are defending familiarity.
And familiarity is not the same as accuracy.
If we learn anything from this linguistic journey, let it be this: meaning is negotiated, not imposed. It arises from community, culture, history, and use. It is shaped by who we are, where we stand, and what stories we inherit.
And if we can hold our meanings lightly — with curiosity rather than certainty, with humour rather than defensiveness — we might find that the world becomes not only more comprehensible, but more interesting.
After all, if a single word like kiwi can mean a bird, a fruit, or a person, imagine what possibilities lie hidden in the rest of our vocabulary.
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