Op-ed: Future shock: Fear of the future is shaping our political discourse

Kent Duston is a neurodiverse Boomer living in Tāmaki Makaurau. He studied political science in the 1970s, voted for Rogernomics in the 1980s, opposed Ruthanasia in the 1990s and was a Green Party member in the 2000s. He now runs a consultancy business focused on wellbeing and social investment.

OPINION: Back in 1970 a seminal book was released – Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler. Decades ahead of its time, the book predicted individuals and whole societies would start suffering from “too much change in too short a period of time”.

Toffler suggested that the onset of faster and faster change would lead to a fear of the future and a loss of people’s perceived connection to society – and coined the term Future Shock to describe the impacts.

Looking at our political landscape as we head towards the 2023 election, it’s easy to see how Toffler’s predictions are taking concrete shape in the New Zealand electorate.

Whole political parties are now intent on winding the clock back to some previous era, when the solution to every problem could be found in lowering the top tax rate or being ever-tougher on crime or building a road.

And it’s easy to see the appeal. For some people, there’s definitely been far too much change to assimilate; the weather is going haywire, cars run on batteries, LGBTQIA+ people want equal rights, there are pandemics and lockdowns, and much more.

For these people, it can feel like the world has been tipped off its axis, and there’s a pervasive feeling of instability.

The solution proposed by a variety of politicians is pretty much the same – it’s just a matter of returning to an earlier and simpler world, where kids were only taught maths and English in school, there were two genders, and Te Reo Māori was a quaint language for tourist brochures rather than road signs.

Like too many political visions, it’s seductively simple and completely fictional. It’s a harking back to a world that never existed.

There’s also the minor question about which decade we’re meant to be returning to. ACT seem to like the mid-1980s, the halcyon days of the neoliberal revolution, when the public sector could be slashed to the bone, tax rates savaged and the stock index at the NZX rose in sympathy with our race wins at the America’s Cup.

It’s hard to see any difference between the policies of David Seymour and those of Roger Douglas, despite the 40-year gap.

National seems intent on looking back even further, to somewhere around 1968. Suburban sprawl was a force for good, cars were a sign of affluence and needed plenty of new roads, and we all grew wealthy from farming.

The party’s policies look like they’ve been hammered out in smoke-filled meeting rooms of the nation’s relentlessly ambitious 1960s Progressive Associations.

And then there’s NZ First, whose policies bear an uncanny resemblance to the Ministry of Works-powered regional development projects of Rob Muldoon, only with Winston Peters firmly tilting the wheel of state hither and yon in response to the fickle winds of a fate that only he can see.

All this is entirely puzzling to the realist end of the political spectrum.

The policies of these parties are dealing with the world we live in: the Greens want to sort out what are doing about emissions and equity and the fact that 30% of New Zealanders now rent a house. Te Pati Māori wants to address inequality and make sure everyone has a roof over their heads. TOP wants an economy that serves people, rather than the other way around.

At this end of the political spectrum the parties are all aware that we sit in the shadow of genuine challenges: the climate is changing, the cyclones are real, the cost of living is crippling and our inequality is among the worst in the world. They can’t understand why voters aren’t lining up at their door.

But the reason is right there in plain sight, hiding in the title of a book more than 50 years old: it’s Future Shock.

For a decent segment of the New Zealand electorate, the future is arriving too fast with too much change, and they can’t make sense of it.

So they’re turning their backs on the problems and the headlines, looking to solutions in the past, hearing the siren call of politicians who are busy pretending our biggest issues are potholes and ramraids, not heatwaves and cyclones and poverty and food shortages.

So the stories from the past have become a source of comfort when the news stories from today are a source of anxiety.

Kent Duston: “The solution proposed by a variety of politicians is pretty much the same... a matter of returning to an earlier and simpler world... a world that never existed.”

Of course, we can’t vote our way out of a future that’s arriving whether we’re ready or not. We can’t legislate our way out of a climate that’s changing or a society that’s evolving – we can only prepare and innovate and adapt.

But that’s a hard message to hear for people with future shock – and one which the progressive end of politics has yet to find a way to communicate to the many New Zealanders being swayed by visions of the past.

- The Press