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.
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.
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.
Some people say autistic folks talk about themselves too much. I’ve heard variations of that line for most of my life, usually from people who assume their own conversational norms are universal. But when I tell a story, I’m not trying to centre myself — I’m trying to build a bridge. Autistic storytelling is often an invitation: walk with me for a moment so you can see what I mean. It’s a way of creating shared context in a world where shared assumptions can’t be taken for granted.
When Autistic Storytelling Gets Misread
Neurotypical conversation relies heavily on things that don’t come naturally to many autistic people: implied meaning, shared assumptions, indirect cues, and a kind of conversational shorthand built on unspoken social rules. When those rules aren’t shared, misunderstandings bloom quickly.
Autistic communication works differently. We tend to make meaning explicit. We use concrete examples. We provide context because we can’t assume the other person has it. And when we tell a story, it’s rarely about “me” — it’s about making the abstract visible.
But to someone who expects brevity, implication, and shared social cues, a story can look like a detour. Or worse, self‑centredness.
This is the double empathy gap in action: two different communication logics colliding, each misreading the other.
Lived Examples: How Stories Carry Meaning
I’ve used storytelling all my life — long before I knew I was autistic — because it’s the most reliable way I know to help someone understand my perspective.
A Bible‑Reading Story
When my wife first became Christian, her English was still quite limited. Yet she preferred reading an English Bible over the Japanese one she also owned. I asked her why. She explained that the Japanese version was a translation of an English translation, and in the process a lot of nuance had been lost. Even with her limited English, she could sense that meaning wasn’t fixed in the surface words.
That experience has stayed with me. It taught me that translation is never neutral — and that sometimes the only way to convey nuance is through lived example.
My Father’s Court‑Martial
I’ve also told the story of my father’s court‑martial more than once. Not because I’m fascinated with my own family history, but because it illustrates something abstract: how systems can punish integrity, how authority can misread intention, and how people can be caught between rules and conscience.
Stories like these aren’t self‑focused. They’re context‑focused. They’re a way of saying: “Here is what this looks like from the inside.”
What the Research Shows
For years, autistic storytelling was dismissed as rambling, tangential, or egocentric. But research over the past decade has painted a very different picture.
Studies by researchers such as Damian Milton, Catherine Crompton, Sue Fletcher‑Watson, and Elizabeth Sheppard show that autistic narrative is often:
more detailed
more explicit about motivations
more attentive to fairness and moral nuance
more careful to avoid misunderstanding
more focused on helping the listener follow the thread
In other words, autistic storytelling is frequently more other‑focused than neurotypical storytelling.
Autistic–autistic conversations show this clearly: they are coherent, reciprocal, and rich in shared meaning. The breakdown happens mainly in autistic–non‑autistic exchanges, where each side misreads the other’s cues.
Autistic people tell stories not to dominate the conversation, but to make the conversation possible.
The Parallel With Universalism
This misunderstanding reminds me of something I’ve been writing about recently: the tendency to assume that one’s own interpretive framework is universal.
Universalism (in the sense I’ve been critiquing) assumes: “My way of understanding the world is the default, and everyone else is a variation.”
Neurotypical misreadings of autistic communication often assume: “My way of conversing is the default, and autistic communication is a deviation.”
Both mistakes arise from the same root: mistaking one’s own norms for universal norms.
And in both cases, the minority group is misinterpreted through the lens of the majority.
Autistic storytelling isn’t self‑centred. It’s simply operating from a different set of assumptions about how meaning is shared.
Reframing Autistic Storytelling
So what is autistic storytelling, really?
It’s a way of creating shared context. A way of reducing ambiguity. A way of inviting the listener into one’s perspective. A way of bridging the double empathy gap. A way of saying: “Walk with me for a moment so you can see what I mean.”
It is relational, not self‑centred. It is generous, not indulgent. It is a form of translation — from one way of experiencing the world into another.
Closing Reflection
Autistic and neurotypical communication styles differ, but neither is superior. They simply operate on different assumptions. When autistic people tell stories, we’re not trying to make everything about ourselves. We’re trying to make ourselves understood. And perhaps that’s the invitation at the heart of autistic storytelling: to slow down, step into my world for a moment — or ours — and walk with us just long enough to see what we mean.
It’s been quite some time since I last wrote a Musical Monday post, and it feels right to return with a song that has never really left me. Some songs fade in and out of memory, but others settle into the background of our lives, becoming part of the landscape. Poi E is one of those songs for me — so familiar that I was convinced I must have written about it already. But a search through my blog and even my spreadsheet proved otherwise. Perhaps that says something about how deeply this song sits in my sense of Aotearoa. It feels like it has always been there.
When Poi E burst onto the scene in 1984, it did something no song had done before. Sung entirely in Te Reo Māori, it climbed the charts without the usual radio support, carried instead by community enthusiasm, word of mouth, and sheer infectious joy. It became the first fully Te Reo song to reach number one in the New Zealand charts — and the first to break into the Top 20 at all. For a language that had been pushed to the margins for generations, that was nothing short of remarkable.
But the chart history, impressive as it is, doesn’t quite capture the feeling of hearing it for the first time.
I remember that moment vividly. The beat, the energy, the unmistakable sound of Te Reo — not in a traditional action song, not in a formal setting, but right there in a pop track. It felt new. It felt bold. And it felt heart‑warming in a way I wasn’t expecting. My knowledge of Te Reo was (and still is) almost non‑existent, yet I felt a surge of pride. A sense of finally. A sense that perhaps this was the beginning of something — a shift, a recognition, an appreciation long overdue.
In hindsight, my optimism was a little premature. Cultural tides don’t turn overnight. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Poi E helped start the ball rolling. It opened a door that had been firmly shut. And once a door is open, even a crack, the light gets in.
Behind the song is a story as compelling as the music itself. Dalvanius Prime, returning home from overseas, teamed up with the visionary Ngoi Pēwhairangi to create something that blended tradition with modernity in a way no one had attempted before. The Pātea Māori Club stepped forward at a time when their community was reeling from the closure of the freezing works, and together they produced a song that was not just catchy, but culturally defiant, joyful, and utterly original.
One of the things that makes Poi E so compelling is that its meaning isn’t carried by literal sentences in the way English expects. Te Reo Māori is wonderfully adapted to expressing ideas through movement, imagery, relationship, and metaphor, rather than through the linear, noun‑heavy structure English tends to favour. You don’t so much “translate” a waiata like this as you follow the imagery and feel what it’s doing.
The song unfolds in sections, each with its own emotional and symbolic work.
The opening lines are about setting the rhythm — waking the poi, establishing the connection between performer and poi. It’s an invitation: let’s begin, move with me, find the beat. From the very first moment, the relationship is central.
Then comes the movement imagery: the poi spinning, swaying, circling, darting like a tīwaiwaka (fantail). The poi becomes lively, curious, playful — almost a creature in its own right. It’s a celebration of physical expression and the joy of movement, and it’s where the song’s visual poetry really shines.
But the heart of the song — the part that struck me so strongly even on first hearing — is the section where the performer calls the poi close. In English, the lines can sound romantic, but in Māori they express connection, unity, and shared identity. The poi becomes a companion, something to stay close, to embrace, to bind together. It’s about belonging — to the dance, to the tradition, to the culture. This is where the emotional weight sits, and it’s why the song resonates so deeply.
The closing lines reaffirm that bond. They return to the sense of closeness and shared movement, ending on a note that is affectionate, confident, and joyful. The poi and performer are now fully in sync — a single expression of culture and identity.
The sound still makes me smile. The fusion of kapa haka rhythms, 1980s synth pop, breakdance influences, and unmistakable Māori vocal lines shouldn’t work — and yet it does, gloriously. It’s a toe‑tapper, a mood‑lifter, and a reminder that identity can be celebrated with both pride and playfulness.
Decades later, Poi E continues to find new audiences. It resurfaces every few years — in films, in dance videos, in school halls — and each time it feels as fresh as ever. That’s the mark of a song that isn’t just music, but a moment in our cultural story.
So for this return to Musical Monday, I can’t think of a better choice. Poi E is joyful, meaningful, and proudly ours. And for me, it still carries that first spark of warmth and pride — the feeling that something important was beginning.
I’ll try not to leave it quite so long before the next Musical Monday.
Poi E – Patea Maori Club
Patua taku poi patua kia rite Pa-para patua taku Poi E
E rere rā e taku poi porotiti Tītahataha rā Whakararuraru e Porotakataka rā Poro hurihuri mai Rite tonu ki te tīwaiwaka e
Ka parepare rā Pīoioi rā Whakahekeheke e Kia korikori e Piki whakarunga rā Mā muinga mai rā Taku poi porotiti, taku poi e
Poi e, whakataka mai Poi e, kaua he rerekē Poi e, kia piri mai ki a au Poi e, ka awhi mai rā Poi e, tāpekatia mai Poi e, o tāua aroha Poi e, Paiheretia rā Poi, taku poi e
When I published my January post Anendophasia and AI: Why Conversational Tools Work So Well for Me, I thought I had said everything I needed to say on the topic — at least for now. Then Janecshearer left a thoughtful comment with a link to a recent Guardian article on inner speech and consciousness. Without that nudge, I might have missed an opportunity for a deeper insight into my own cognitive landscape. So, thank you, Janecshearer — this post exists because of you.
Her comment pointed me toward a long read exploring how people experience their “inner voice.” As I read it, something unexpected happened: I realised that not only do people differ in whether they have an inner monologue, they also differ in how aware they are of it. That had never occurred to me.
For someone who has never had an inner voice at all — and only relatively recently learned that most people do — the idea that people vary in their awareness of it was genuinely surprising. It prompted a moment of self‑doubt: could I have an inner voice after all, but be completely unaware of it, in much the same way that alexithymia obscures my perception of emotions?
That question led me somewhere interesting.
Inner Speech Awareness vs. Inner Speech Capacity
The Guardian article wasn’t describing anendophasia — the inability to generate inner speech — but something quite different: inner speech awareness. Some people have a constant internal monologue; others have one that is intermittent, quiet, or backgrounded. Some barely notice it at all.
This is not the same as not having one.
My own experience is not of a quiet or infrequent inner voice. It is the absence of one altogether. My thinking is conceptual, non‑verbal, and arrives in shapes rather than sentences — what I’ve previously described as a “lava lamp” of ideas rising, merging, and reforming.
But the article made me pause long enough to ask whether I might simply be unaware of an inner voice, the way I can be unaware of emotions until they manifest physically. That pause turned out to be productive.
A New Connection: Is Anendophasia Part of the Aphantasia Spectrum?
While reflecting on the idea of inner speech awareness, something clicked. If inner speech is a form of mental imagery — specifically, auditory‑verbal imagery — then perhaps anendophasia is not a standalone trait but a linguistic subtype of aphantasia.
I live with aphantasia across all sensory modalities: no visual imagery, no auditory imagery, no tactile or pain imagery. If I cannot generate sensory imagery of any kind, why would linguistic imagery be the exception?
This line of thought didn’t emerge from a step‑by‑step analysis. It arrived as a whole — a conceptual shape rather than a verbal argument. That’s the nature of my cognition. A more linear, verbal thinker might not have seen the connection because they think in the very medium they’re trying to examine. My non‑verbal cognition lets me step outside the medium entirely.
The more I sit with it, the more it makes sense: Anendophasia may be the linguistic branch of a broader aphantasia envelope.
It’s speculation, of course — but informed speculation grounded in lived experience.
Seeing the Shape of It
This distinction — between awareness of inner speech and the capacity to generate it — isn’t widely appreciated. The Guardian article highlights the former, while my original post explored the latter. They’re related, but they describe fundamentally different cognitive phenomena.
Recognising that difference helped me see a broader pattern emerging. If inner speech is a form of mental imagery, then the absence of it may sit naturally within the wider aphantasia spectrum. That possibility opens up new ways of thinking about how different minds construct meaning, language, and self‑reflection.
It also reinforces something I’ve come to understand about my own cognition: it isn’t a variation on a typical model, but a different architecture altogether — one that shapes not only how I think, but the kinds of insights that surface when I give myself space to notice them.
Closing Thoughts
I’m grateful for the comment that prompted this reflection. It’s a reminder that conversations — whether with readers, researchers, or AI tools — can reveal connections we might not find on our own.
If others with aphantasia or anendophasia recognise aspects of their own experience in this, I’d be interested to hear from you. We’re still at the early stages of understanding these traits, and lived experience is often the first clue that research eventually catches up with.
There are many ways to identify a New Zealander abroad. Some are obvious: the flattened vowels, the quiet pride in pavlova, the ability to discuss the relative merits of various sheep breeds with surprising fluency. But there is another, subtler marker — one that only emerges when we find ourselves in someone else’s home, politely shifting from foot to foot, and asking a question that instantly reveals our origins.
“Where’s your toilet?”
Not your bathroom. Not your restroom. Not your washroom, powder room, loo, or any of the other euphemisms that English‑speaking cultures have invented to avoid naming the thing directly. No, we ask for the toilet, because that is precisely what we are looking for. And if you grew up in a New Zealand home built before about 1990, you know that asking for the bathroom might send you on a scenic detour past the hot‑water cupboard, through the bedrooms, and into a room containing a bath, a basin, and absolutely no means of relieving yourself.
This, I would argue, is one of the quiet cultural distinctives of Aotearoa — a linguistic quirk rooted in architecture, hygiene, and a national aversion to mixing bodily functions that ought to remain separate.
A brief history of the Kiwi toilet (and why it wandered around so much)
To understand why New Zealanders ask for the toilet, you need to understand where the toilet used to live. And the answer is: almost anywhere except the bathroom.
Early colonial homes were timber‑framed, timber‑clad, and built with the speed of people who had more pressing concerns than interior plumbing — such as staying warm, staying dry, and not burning down the house. Water heating was done in a separate washhouse, often a small outbuilding containing a copper or a wood‑fired tub. The toilet, meanwhile, was kept at a respectful distance from the main dwelling, partly for reasons of smell, partly for reasons of tapu, and partly because no one wanted to dig a longdrop any closer than absolutely necessary.
As towns grew — sometimes explosively, from a handful of tents to bustling settlements in the space of a decade — sewerage systems struggled to keep up. Longdrops, pan systems, and backyard privies lingered well into the 20th century. Even when flush toilets arrived, they were often tucked into the washhouse, or accessed from the back porch, or placed in a tiny lean‑to that felt like a time capsule from 1910.
The bathroom, meanwhile, was a different creature entirely. It was where you bathed, washed your hair, and occasionally thawed out after a winter’s day. It was a clean space, a warm space, a space where you might linger. The toilet was none of these things. It was functional, brisk, and ideally located somewhere that allowed odours to dissipate into the prevailing wind.
With this architectural logic, it’s no wonder our language followed suit. The bathroom was for bathing. The toilet was for toileting. And never the twain should meet.
Why combined bathrooms feel like hotel rooms
Fast‑forward to the present, and modern New Zealand house plans are beginning to blur the old boundaries. Developers, ever mindful of plumbing efficiency and the price of land, have started slipping combined bathrooms into new builds. Ensuites, in particular, are almost always combined — a design choice imported from overseas, where the toilet has long been a bathroom resident.
But for those of us raised in the older Kiwi tradition, stepping into a combined bathroom still feels faintly wrong. It’s not that we’re prudish. It’s simply that the space feels… hotel‑like. Temporary. Slightly impersonal. The sort of room where you half‑expect to find a small bottle of shampoo labelled “conditioning rinse” and a folded card reminding you to reuse your towels for the sake of the planet.
There is also the practical matter of relaxation. I cannot, in good conscience, settle into a warm bath if there is even the slightest possibility that someone might knock urgently, hopping from foot to foot, and needing access to the toilet. The serenity of the moment is somewhat diminished by the knowledge that you are occupying a multi‑purpose room with competing priorities.
And then there is the toothbrush problem. Once you’ve read about micro‑droplets from flushing travelling up to two metres — landing on shelves, bath surrounds, and, horrifyingly, toothbrush bristles — it becomes difficult to un‑know it. The idea that my toothbrush might be quietly marinating in airborne toilet plume is not one I care to entertain. In a separate WC, this is a non‑issue. In a combined bathroom, it becomes a nightly act of faith.
The cultural logic behind the separation
What’s interesting is that New Zealand is not alone in this instinct. Japan, for example, is famously committed to keeping the toilet in its own room, separate from the bathing area. Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium also favour the separate WC. In these cultures, the toilet is a functional space, while the bathroom is a clean, often ritualised space. Mixing the two feels as odd to them as it does to many New Zealanders.
In Aotearoa, this instinct may have been reinforced by Māori concepts of tapu and noa, which traditionally kept bodily waste, food preparation, washing, and sleeping in distinct zones. Even if Pākehā settlers did not adopt these practices directly, the cultural environment of the country made the idea of separation feel natural and sensible.
Add to this the practical realities of early infrastructure — the longdrops, the pan systems, the slow rollout of sewerage — and you have a perfect recipe for a national preference that has persisted long after the original reasons faded.
Modern quirks: bidets, ensuites, and the reluctant survival of the separate WC
Despite the creeping influence of combined bathrooms, the separate toilet remains surprisingly resilient in New Zealand. Even in compact townhouses, developers often include at least one stand‑alone WC, tucked off a hallway like a small cultural concession to tradition.
Bidet seats, meanwhile, are becoming more common — a trend influenced by Japanese design, pandemic‑era hygiene awareness, and the practical needs of an ageing population. Our own home has two separate bathrooms and two separate WCs, both equipped with bidet units. It’s a layout that feels both modern and deeply familiar, a blend of global innovation and local sensibility.
Why we still ask for the toilet
And so we return to the linguistic quirk that started this whole reflection. When a Kiwi asks, “Where’s your toilet?”, we are not being blunt. We are being precise. We are drawing on a century of domestic architecture in which the bathroom and the toilet were not only different rooms, but often in different directions entirely.
Asking for the bathroom in an older New Zealand home might send you on a wild goose chase. Asking for the toilet gets you exactly where you need to go.
It is, in its own way, a small act of cultural clarity.
A final thought
Perhaps the most charming thing about this whole topic is that it reveals how deeply our homes shape our habits, our language, and our sense of what feels “normal”. For some cultures, the combined bathroom is the natural order of things. For others — including New Zealand — it still feels faintly like a hotel room, a temporary arrangement, a compromise between tradition and plumbing efficiency.
And so, if you ever find yourself visiting a Kiwi home, don’t be surprised when your host points you down a hallway, through a laundry, or past a sunroom to a small, self‑contained WC. It’s not an architectural accident. It’s a cultural inheritance.
And if you’re the one doing the asking, remember: “Where’s your toilet?” is not rude. It’s not blunt. It’s simply accurate. It also prevents the classic Kiwi misunderstanding in which your well‑meaning host hands you a towel and points you toward the bathroom, only for you to reappear thirty seconds later looking flustered, hopping from foot to foot, and clearly not in search of a relaxing soak. Accuracy, in this case, is a public service.
Most people assume that thinking happens in words — that there’s a little narrator in the mind describing, debating, rehearsing, and reasoning. For many, that inner voice is so constant they can’t imagine life without it. But that’s not how my mind works at all.
I’m autistic, and I also live with alexithymia, prosopagnosia, dyschronometria, and anendophasia. To some people, that might look like a list of deficits. To me, it’s simply the shape of my mind — the way I perceive, process, and move through the world. These traits give me strengths I value deeply: clarity of pattern, intuitive leaps, a sense of systems rather than snapshots, and a way of seeing that feels uniquely my own. If any of these characteristics changed, I wouldn’t be me anymore, and I’m comfortable with who I am.
But one consequence of anendophasia — the absence of an inner voice — is that I don’t “think in words.” I don’t narrate problems to myself. I don’t rehearse conversations internally. I don’t talk things through in my head. When I need to work through something step by step, the process can feel slippery, because there’s no internal dialogue to hold the thread.
This is where conversational AI has become unexpectedly helpful.
How AI Supports a Mind Without an Inner Voice
People with an inner voice often solve problems by talking to themselves internally — posing questions, testing ideas, arguing with themselves, refining thoughts. I don’t have that channel. So when I use AI, I’m not outsourcing my thinking; I’m externalising the parts of cognition that don’t happen naturally for me.
AI becomes a kind of scaffold — a place where I can lay out steps, explore options, and follow threads without needing an internal narrator. It’s not a replacement for intuition; it’s a complement to it.
Some of the ways conversational AI helps me think include:
externalising step‑by‑step reasoning: turning intuitive insights into a sequence I can examine
holding the thread of a problem: keeping context steady when my thoughts move quickly
mirroring ideas back in language: helping me see what I already understand but don’t verbalise internally
providing a calm, non‑judgmental partner: no pressure to “think like everyone else”
expanding possibilities without overwhelming me: offering information without drowning me in noise
Used this way, AI becomes less like a search engine and more like a thinking companion — a partner in reasoning that adapts to my cognitive style rather than trying to reshape it.
Why This Matters for Neurodivergent People
Many neurodivergent people are used to being told, explicitly or implicitly, “you should think this way instead.” Even well‑meaning people often respond to differences by trying to correct them. AI doesn’t do that. It doesn’t judge, doesn’t push, doesn’t try to normalise. It simply meets me where I am and helps me understand myself more clearly.
That’s one of the reasons I find conversational AI so valuable. It supports the way I think rather than fighting it.
A Tool Is Only Useful When Used as a Tool
Like any tool, AI works well only when used for the purpose it’s suited to. A hammer is terrible for slicing onions, and a knife is terrible for driving nails. In the same way, AI isn’t a “supercharged search engine.” It’s not meant to replace human judgment or intuition. It’s a conversational partner — a way to explore ideas, clarify thinking, and externalise reasoning.
When used in that spirit, it becomes a remarkably powerful ally, especially for those of us whose minds don’t run on internal monologue.
P.S. I know some of my regular readers are uneasy about AI, and that’s perfectly okay — no one should feel obliged to use tools that don’t sit comfortably with them. But for some of us, conversational AI isn’t a shortcut or a novelty. It’s a way of thinking out loud in a world where internal dialogue doesn’t come naturally. It helps me participate more fully in a society that wasn’t designed with my cognitive style in mind. If AI isn’t something you want to use, that’s entirely your choice — but please don’t wish it away for those of us who find it genuinely helpful.
I’ve been struck by how closely Ophelia’s words resonate with my own experience of autistic insight, even though she describes it through a very different lens. Where I tend to write in metaphor about the experience of insight — the shape, the pressure, the way ideas gather before they become language — she describes the process itself with clarity and precision. Together, our perspectives trace the same pattern from two angles. I’m sharing the opening of her piece here, and I encourage you to follow through to the full article on her “Ophelia Singing” site, where the depth of her framing really comes into view.
When I speak of religion, I do not mean superstition, nor do I mean the rigid adherence to dogma that many assume defines faith. I find myself drawn to Sir Lloyd Geering’s description of religion as a “total mode of living.” This definition shifts the focus away from supernatural claims and toward the way we inhabit the world — the values we embody, the practices we sustain, and the relationships we nurture. Religion, in this sense, is not a matter of assent to doctrines but of living into ideals that make life more just, compassionate, and meaningful.
This broader view stands in sharp contrast to the belief‑centered definitions that dominate public debate. For many Christian fundamentalists, religion is primarily about affirming the existence of God and obeying scripture. For many atheists critical of religion, it is precisely this definition they reject, condemning it as irrational or oppressive. Though they reach opposite conclusions, both camps converge on a narrow framing: religion as belief in supernatural claims and submission to authority. Their arguments mirror one another, locked in a binary that leaves little room for the richness of lived practice.
Quaker spirituality offers a different witness. In the Religious Society of Friends, the “Kingdom of God” is not a distant realm but a present reality — something to be enacted through human responsibility, discernment, and care. Silence, community, and ethical commitment take precedence over creeds. Here religion is not about imposing belief but about striving together toward ideals that make the world more hospitable. It is a way of living that honors integrity, compassion, and truth, without demanding uniformity of thought.
Jesus himself chose parables rather than precise definitions, which suggests that certainty was never the goal. The Kingdom of God is better understood as a way of living that grows, nourishes, surprises, and welcomes — not a concept to be nailed down. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Kingdom is revealed in compassion across boundaries, where mercy overrides prejudice and care is offered to the stranger. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, it is revealed in forgiveness and reconciliation, where love triumphs over resentment and relationships are restored. In the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast, the Kingdom is revealed in growth and transformation from the smallest beginnings, hidden forces that reshape the whole. These stories remind us that religion is not about dogma, but about how we live together in mercy, grace, and hope.
This is why I resist the temptation to claim that my understanding of religion is the correct one. To be certain that one’s own perspective must be right, and that others must therefore be wrong, is divisive and harmful — irrespective of whether one stands in the camp of belief or disbelief. Religion, like philosophy, is diminished when it becomes a contest of certainties. It flourishes when it is understood as a human project of meaning, ethics, and community, open to many expressions and interpretations.
For me, Geering’s “mode of living” definition makes religion essential. It is not about defending a creed or winning an argument, but about inhabiting the world with care, responsibility, and hope. My perspective is only one among many, but it is the one that sustains me. The parables remind us that the Kingdom is enacted in compassion, forgiveness, and growth. Religion is not about dogma, but about how we live together in mercy and hope. And as the wisdom of Aotearoa reminds us:
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.
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