It’s unAmerican. Is that good?

Wrapping my head around it

My tour of the South Island of New Zealand is complete as I write this from the Auckland airport. And I’m wrapping my head around it, as best I can.

I’d mentioned the mountains being surreal partly because there are no traces of the wild canines, cats, bears, and herbivores that I’m used to seeing.

Turns out New Zealand is surreal in other ways, for this lifelong American citizen.

Distinctive cultures

The vast and diverse beauty here is of course front and center for most visitors. But some cultural differences have finally crystallized for me, too. You might think the differences would be minor. The language is the same, granted the accents are different. But does that matter? Many aspects of daily life are similar or the same in both countries.

However. There is a huge and fundamental difference in the way Americans and New Zealanders view the concept of Rights.

For many Americans, the importance of individual rights is so critical that we’ll give up almost anything and everything to protect them. Being allowed to do whatever we want is more important than anything else in the world.

Individual rights matter in many aspects of life here. But for most New Zealanders, fairness and community impact are even more important. Kiwis will “sacrifice” a few things in those pursuits (Although I don’t believe they consider their choices as sacrifices, exactly).

When I’m chatting with people in a store or restaurant I find residents of both countries to be equally friendly and personable. Each are filled with wonderful people, and I love America. But Kiwis have created a society that the rest of us could learn from. If we’d be willing.

As one example, most Kiwis take speeding laws and drunk driving offenses very seriously. In a recent online, community chat group, one person alerted the group to a speed trap they’d noticed (police waiting to catch speeders). Others in the group quickly jumped in, demanding to know why the person reported the trap in the first place. A person shouldn’t be discussing the trap with the community, they said. People should just drive the speed limit. Furthermore, the person reporting the trap was not helping the community, they were threatening it. This was a commonly-held opinion on the chat board.

Beyond speed traps, drivers in New Zealand should be ready for routine, random checks for breathalyzer tests. There’s no need for police to have cause to stop a vehicle. The random checking is an accepted protocol, and can apply to anybody (more about “anybody” later). The practice is considered to be sensible and reasonable by most citizens. The legal driving limits for blood-alcohol are much lower here, too.

Americans might not like any of this.

On the flip side, Americans would probably like flying domestic within New Zealand.

It’s hard to imagine, but nobody checks ID at airport security, and you can bring whatever you want on board as long as it’s not too big or heavy. Got a few bottles of water or wine to carry on? As you please, if it fits overhead or beneath your seat. Anything short of live ammunition or caustic chemicals is good to go. And the whole thing is easy as pie, too. Want to show up just 10 minutes before boarding and get straight to the gate?¹ Go ahead. Everybody in-country has the same privileges, even a visitor from anywhere.

In a country where people behave responsibly and respect the laws, this is how it works. Imagine that!

Given the different values of community and fairness vs. individual, it should be no surprise that the views on gun ownership are different here, too. Kiwis are thrilled to have you own a gun if you’re using it to help contain the introduced, wild populations of stoats (a kind of weasel), deer, rats or possums. Please, get yourself a gun! Traps are not always enough.

But carrying weapons to use against other citizens? No dice. After the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, New Zealand rapidly enacted significant gun reforms, banning military-style semi-automatics and establishing a buyback program.

Meanwhile, we know the stance of many in the US. Limitless Sandy Hook-like mass murders are clearly a fair and reasonable price to pay in exchange for unlimited individual gun ownership. In the opinion of many. The sacrifice of accepting restrictions is just too much for many of us to consider. It’s not reasonable, for many Americans.

It is said that everybody has a price, but that’s not strictly accurate, for all people and all subjects.

Health care is different here, too. They have both public and private health care in NZ, so everybody is fully covered, but if you want quick action on elective care, or otherwise want more choices, you can buy private insurance too. It seems like a reasonable combination to the local populace. And it helps the community for everyone to have solid care.

The Rule of Law being so well respected here also means the political climate we now have in the US is unimaginable to Kiwis. In New Zealand, the principle that no one is above the law—including members of Parliament and the Prime Minister—is firmly established. The concept of immunity from wrongdoing is firmly rejected here. Unacceptable thinking.

There is also a different political structure, where Parliament has more control than our US legislature, and there are several meaningful political parties. Their structure fits their culture of fairness and community impact being the top priority, as contrasted with the desires of just one political party dominating another. In their debates, candidates are apt to agree with each other on various points onstage, if a point is considered to be “fair".

I’m not prepared to relocate here for a number of reasons. But there are many things to like in this place, including the lack of anger and divisiveness.

It’s not that there aren’t areas of disagreement among the people of New Zealand. Of course there are. We’re all human. You’d better not report those speed traps in certain company!

But it’s hard to overstate the cultural difference when people omit vitriol, personal attacks, and the need to create “others” as enemies in their daily lives. The Kiwis fought to the death in WWII; don’t assume they are wimpy pacifists. They fought by land, sea and air in North Africa, Italy, Greece, Japan, and the Pacific. There have been plenty of global heroes.

But you can also guess which side they fought for, and what they fought against.

So again, while I’m not ready to move, there is plenty of appeal here.

And besides, the seafood is excellent! The wine is solid enough if you choose carefully, the lamb is mouth-watering, and they have surprisingly good chocolate.

If nothing else, access to good chocolate is something we should all be able to get behind.

Until next time,

P.S.: photo descriptions below²

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Limited Edition Prints for Sale

This is an Extremely Limited Edition of prints for the series called Seas and Skies. I’ll make just five 16x24” archival, Numbered Prints (and two Artists Prints), each with associated certificate of authentication.

*Closing Curtain is Sold Out*

Bring peace and joy to someone’s 2025 with these. And yours, by the giving.

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1. After bag X-rays, although those are trivial events because there are no lines. And I need to restate that I’m talking about domestic flights here.

2. Sequentially, the included images are:

• Morning weather at the beginning of the Hooker Valley Track to Hooker Lake

• The Tasman River as seen from a wildly bouncing suspension bridge on Hooker Valley Track. By the time I captured this image the skies had cleared, less than an hour after the first image. I had to bend my knees to provide some mitigating shock absorption and shoot at a very high shutter speed to get it all crisply in focus. Tricky but doable.

• Moeraki Boulders, another surreal thing in New Zealand.

• Fur seal adult having a word with a pup.

• Yellow-eyed penguin. I have photographs from the wild too, but this is from a rehab center.

• A tern with a lunchtime snack at the hike around the Katiki Point Lighthouse

• A trap for stoats and rats, which eat bird eggs and baby birds. Historically, settlers brought deer and rabbits (among other things) to remind them of Great Britain and also for hunting. Without natural predators their populations exploded. Then to deal with rabbits they brought stoats and possums (the rats just hitched rides). The birds here had never experienced land predators and are much easier prey than rabbits, so it’s a problem. Volunteers all over the island are trying to help. The deer have been largely contained, and there is now a thriving venison business with deer ranched in pastures. The meat is wonderfully tender and mild, so there’s that. Meanwhile, the rabbits are everywhere.

  

  We did see a stoat finally, and plenty of possum traces. Apparently now, while there are about 5M people and 25M sheep in the whole of New Zealand, guess how many possums? 35M. That’s right, thirty-five million.

• Deep fog atop a trail in Nelson Lakes National Park

• Fur seal pups that were playing together and stopped for a pose near Katiki Point Lighthouse. Well over 100 feet above the ocean, they climb a higher than we might expect.

• Variable oystercatcher with a clam. There are plenty of mussels for them here, too, and mussels are featured in many restaurants.

• Not pictured: Whittaker’s chocolates, which are in every grocery store and shop. I would describe them as being the confection that Cadbury wishes it could become. Especially their milk chocolate versions. They also offer excellent dark chocolate bars which better suit my personal tastes.