mary's musings

Comfort zones are perfect incubators for ignorance and bigotry.     On good days I am entertained by those who find comfort in the “law”.  On other days I am reminded that the law is often an ass.  Laws do not exist for the betterment of the lives of the majority.  They exist to control the antics of bad people. Take for example, dog control bylaws which did not evolve to enhance the lot of responsible dog-owners.   They evolved to deal with bad dog owners.   Most dog owners are good.   Only a few are not, and thanks to them, good dog owners are imposed upon – no longer by the bad dog owners but by the laws that have been created to deal with them.   This is called “Catering to the Lowest Common Denominator”.   A serious side effect of it is mediocrity. Recently I was entertained and then incensed by a letter to the Taranaki Daily News from someone espousing his interpretation of the Local Government electoral act and its process to establish Maori wards for Local Government in

 Of all of the things a girl was required to learn in order to get the ticks that would get the qualification that would demonstrate some ability to toe the line that would get the job; few things have stuck.  One concept that did however, was the great uniqueness of New Zealand artists during the early 1900s, whose main idea of what was happening in the rest of the world came from what they could glean through correspondence with their European counterparts.   Accordingly, many forms of New Zealand art from that era of our evolution, portrayed a freshness and originality of creative thought undemonstrated by other disciplines during this period in our nation’s history.   What the artists of that time were able to create was unadulterated by any actual view of what others were doing.   Photography was still in its infancy and so they were obliged to create, based on what they were reading, discussing, and imagining, rather than what they were seeing. This strikes a chord with me.