DISCONNECTING FROM COLLECTIVE GUILT

The well-known Māori sense of collectivity has its roots in our worldview that we are connected with all things, are sustained by those connections, have a responsibility to maintain them, and wear the consequences if we don’t. 

With this worldview our tūpuna populated and managed an entire hemisphere where 80.9% of the space was comprised of open ocean.  Our collectivity clearly worked well for us.  Then the Crown colonised us. 

Today, instead of enjoying a general sense of collective greatness for any in-group achievements, Māori are more likely to feel a collective sense of guilt for any in-group failings. 

To illustrate, when the news broke in July 2012 that an unknown Kaitāia man was being investigated over numerous child sex abuse allegations, did one single Pākehā spend one single second hoping that the alleged offender wasn’t a Pākeha?  Probably not ay.  Yet I and many other Māori breathed a collective sigh of relief when it turned out James Parker wasn’t Māori.  What an unhealthy response to a truly collective tragedy!  It needs to stop.

Collective guilt is a psychological condition that results from “sharing a social identity with others whose actions represent a threat to the positivity of that identity.”  Many post-Holocaust Germans suffered it to a degree.

Victor Frankl (1905 – 1997) was a psychotherapist who lost both parents, his brother, and many relatives, in that Holocaust. Shortly after his liberation, he composed a stage play “Synchronisation in Buchenwald” full of psychological insight.  But nowhere in it did he blame Germans collectively for what the Third Reich had done to their fellowcitizens. Instead he affirmed that guilt can only be personal and can only be healed by a concept he called the “Will to Meaning,” in which all humans are motivated to search for, find and fulfil the meaning of life. 

Long before Frankl, Meringāroto of Te Aupōuri understood this concept when she responded with these words to her Te Rarawa husband’s stated intent to destroy her people, “Hutia te rito o te harakeke, kei hea te tauranga o te kamoko e ko?  E kii mai koe ki ahau, he aha te mea nui? Maku e ki atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.”    

And long before both Meringāroto and Frankl, a man named Jesus looked down from the tree on which his oppressors had crucified him and pled, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”  Different paradigms, same principle – collective guilt is unnecessary and unhealthy.

I don’t blame Pākehā collectively for the wrongs that the Crown has done to their fellowcitizens. Engari, kei whakapohehetia koutou; kahore te Atua e tinihangatia: ko ta te tangata hoki e rui ai, ko tena tana e kokoti ai. 

From now on, as I fulfil the meaning of my own life, I will enjoy the collective greatness of all my peoples.  But I will no longer do collective guilt for the actions of any one of them.