Generational Accretion
June 25, 2020
By AHNZ
As each Western Generation (eg. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials,..) comes of age they begin to mark their territory by memorialising their attitudes and deeds onto our landscape. After an event, such as someone’s death, a battle, a war, a discovery, a road, or even a decision, there is frequently an occasion marking it with some permanent reminder. A statue, monument, a tree, a plaque. In this way, a cultural fossil layer builds up that will outlast the lives of the Generation that accreted it and transmit itself to following Generations.
Eg. Zealandia monument in Auckland (image left) was unveiled by the Victoria League in 1920 to remember “The New Zealand Wars 1845 – 1872.” A one Civic and (Civil) War Generation remembered by another Civic and War Generation.
Eg. Between those two Civic-War Generations came another, the Boer War Honour Culture who were not backward about coming forward with their own monuments to remember their own deeds. These memorials included the Hokitika Town Clock (1903) and the Patea Boer War Lamp (1901) that was up and running before that war had even ended!
Eg. Robert Godley’s statue in Christchurch (1867) was placed to remember the city’s founder and his Idealist Pilgrim Generation by first generation of Cantabrians born and raised in the new country (such as Robert McDougall.)
Eg. William Rolleston’s statue (1906) was placed by the first Dignity Culture of the C20th to remember the Dignity Culture leader who had guided the above first generation through their era
Eg. This plaque in Cornwall Park (left) was placed in 1935 by people now long dead in order to help protect Auckland’s trees. By 2020 these trees were under threat from The State!
Even as the living defend the legacy of our dead ancestors, here are the monuments of the dead pitching in to help out. We’re covering them, they’re covering us. I read somewhere recently that culture leaves no fossils. This plaque also demonstrates that this is untrue!
“Society is a partnership of the dead, the living and the unborn.”- Edmund Burke
[Note- these fossils include movies and songs too, not just statuary and plaques]
Maori Generations are quite aware of the power of physical monuments and architecture but choose not to create them.
“Like all the Maori works of art, these erections are entirely composed of wood, and other perishable materials; and owing to the humid climate, and the custom of never repairing these sacred edifaces, they soon rot, and fall to pieces.”- Ref. 1844: George Angas Jr; AHNZ
When we find archaeological fossils we treasure them and preserve them. A T.Rex bone, dragonfly in amber, or clan of the cave bear rock art is never attacked or wilfully destroyed. We study it, we keep it, we protect it. Not so the fossils of ancestors whose streets, houses, and names we still share with them. Their monuments, their efforts to be with us still, beyond the grave, often become inconvenient. They get under foot and accidents will happen. Sometimes fire accidents, sometimes vegetation, sometimes even kamikaze truck accidents.
Only Ozymandus thinks a monument will always last. The Great Wrong War (WW1) Generation planted a record number of monuments along with the annual mantra into our minds: “We will remember them.” But we don’t. All things pass. The monuments our ancestors leave for us are just a parting gift¹, an echo of the work they did during their time among the living that it’s up to us to continue. Rather than re-invent every solution and adaptation they puzzled over, our old timers wanted to offer us a head-start. Our monuments are an open air national library of people, events, and attitudes for us to draw from and improve upon.
Sadly, our monuments have been treated cruelly as I write this. In Hamilton the statue of Hamilton was torn out to appease the mob. In Marton, Captain Cook has been encased in a protective box. In Auckland, George Gray has been despoiled with blood-red paint. In Invercargill, Wisdom remains in a body bag. The offence of these ancestors of ours is apparently that they didn’t come far enough fast enough.
Actually, these C18th and C19th men did make remarkable progress if you consider the Generations who came before them rather than those who were to follow.
“What did you want him to do in his first term back in 1912? Be a David Lange, Norman Kirk, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, Michael Joseph Savage, Billy T James, Marilyn Waring, Meng Foon all rolled in to one? To achieve 100 years of progress and attitude adjustment all in one go?
“If Massey, Hongi Hika, Te Rauparaha, Marmaduke Nixon, Edward Colston, and Bully Hayes did not anachronistically embody the reforms that Millennials take for granted in 2020 do we have to wipe them from history? Tear down their names and statues, throw them into rivers?”- Crimes of Past Eras; AHNZ
How typical of our current mainstream, the Millennial Generation, not to take the world as they find it and work to make it a better one. Instead they tantrum and moan that our ancestors haven’t already done it all for them.
“Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole that he’s in” – Dylan
Rather than a Generation that builds, the Millennial Victimhood Culture is furious it wasn’t all done for them. And they take their revenge on their absent parents by inflicting iconoclasm upon them.
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1 Some frosting on top of their Generational Diagonals; Diagram forthcoming
Ref. NZ memorials register map; nzhistory.govt.nz
Image ref. Egalitarianism, Jesse Forgione; Facebook
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