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22 
Love thy neighbour?
Kiwis are by their very nature imbued with a pioneering spirit of self-reliance, hard work, and the desire to achieve a better life for one’s self and family.
And only when, after years of toil, tenacity and luck, these colonial dreams are finally realised, can Kiwis look forward to spending the rest of their life defending their success against the pitchfork-weilding angry mob of their fellow countrymen, whose own ambitions – for reasons of either circumstance, laziness, or misfortune – have been snipped a little lower down the stem.
This thinly-veiled, pack anger at the few bright stars who are able to poke their heads above the parapet of New Zealand’s otherwise level-playing-field, egalitarian society, is known as Tall Poppy Syndrome. And we practically invented it.
It should not, however, be confused with Tall Puppy Syndrome (Fido Horribilus), which is the canine abberation graphically illustrated in The Hound of The Baskervilles.
Some argue that Tall Poppy Syndrome is not in fact broad resentment at other people’s success, but is rather a levelling social attitude, designed to deflate the pretensions of those who take themselves too seriously, or flaunt their success without due humility. But, since I mostly cut & paste that last sentence from Wikipedia to pad out this article, I’m going to dismiss this theory as bullshit.
And although a similar attitude does exist in other parts of the world, they do tend to be whiny, underdog countries like Scotland and Netherlands, which is a particularly dour bag to be lumped in at the best of times.
It would appear, however, that the people of more cock-sure countries where the leaders have larger balls – Heads of State with bulging, football-sized scrotums, like President Obama of the USA, Gordon Brown of England or Angela Merkel of Germany – are comfortable with the success of their fellow citizens. If anything, it motivates the fulfillment of their own personal goals, and is even described in more positive terms like Keeping Up With The Jones’, which sounds more like a light-hearted off-Broadway play, than a fake pseudo-medical condition.
So, until such time as New Zealand has the confidence to either a) build a global colonial empire and impenetrable class system, b) start two world wars and a holocaust, or c) get rich through slavery, it appears Kiwis have just learned to accept that even the relatively modest economic, sporting or artistic successes possible in a country of this size, inevitably comes with the baggage of a lifetime of being labelled ‘a bit of a try-hard‘. Either that, or, like 999 other Kiwis every week, they go somewhere where it doesn’t.
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Come on guys. Don’t you recognise irony when you see it? Check out the Rich List some time all you defenders of Tall Poppy beneficiaries of unbridled neo-con capitalism (ie. Corporatism/fascism) and you’ll see that very few of the recent fortunes have been socially productive and contributed to the wealth of NZ. Most of our richest executives (of formally public owned companies and the paymasters of our politicians) have acquired their wealth with outsized pay packets and stock options from the sucker shareholders and by convincing their employees to work for less than $14/hr (before tax), all aided and abetted by a series of Labour and National governments and a bunch of white haired free market idealogues in The Treasury
[...] profit driven organizations, what drives the tendency to swell? I wonder what part the so called ‘tall poppy’ syndrome will play and how this will affect the efforts of Auckland’s reformation. It seems that in [...]
Wonderful page and simple to understand description. Could I link this article on my site.
It has made my day reading these posts. I get tired and frustrated by semi-literate Gorons attempting to convince me that their crude ignorance is better than my knowledge. I hope one day we will celebrate success in this country instead of conformity to a stereotype that never existed in reality. Your “down to earth, hard working Kiwi joker” is about as real as America’s “city on the hill”. I’m not a “cookie-cutter” Kiwi and never will be. God bless Ngati Try-Hard
It made my day reading this comment. Thanks Mike.
Whats to say that New Zealand isn’t a whiny underdog country.I also think that most Kiwis are try hards and always try to compare New Zealand with much bigger and powerful countries such as the US , England , Australia and Germany but in reality they are nowhere near thier wealth and status. The reason why “Tall Poppy Syndrome” is more prominent in New Zealand compared to other countries is because New Zealand is a tiny little hole of an island at the bottom the South Pacific with a tiny population of narrow minded locals of which most havn’t even travelled within their own country and when they do, their eyes open up and they never come back because there are bigger, better and more advanced societies out there. I have to say as an immigrant growing up in New Zealand I can’t say that I’ve met too many friendly New Zealanders.
There is of course a major problem in New Zealand when it comes to Tall Poppy Syndrome in that you actually don’t have to progress very far until you become one.
$32K a year average income, means that a large proportion of the population is getting some kind of government assistance in the way of accommodation allowance, family support, benefits of all different types, supplements on childcare, the list goes on and on. That’s just pathetic, what a bunch of losers! What about earning your own way without all this assistance? The standard way of getting somewhere in New Zealand is to walk to WINZ and stick your hand out. Earn enough to not need this and suddenly you are a “Tall Poppy”.
Even walking down the street dressed in a nice pair of trousers, nice shirt and well polished shoes can easily cause you to have abuse yelled at you. Dare to have nice car and some f**kwit is almost guaranteed to key it. Buy nice things and some jerk is almost guaranteed to try and steel them off you. And dare to earn a good income and a large proportion of it will be stolen by the government to feed the socialist handouts. Dare to do a good job or work your arse off and get somewhere and you will get ripped to pieces. The result, most New Zealanders are pathetic at what they do, but that’s ok because the country revels in it’s mediocrity.
In terms of shopping. I LIVE in New Zealand, and I do as much of my shopping online, and from other countries as possible, it’s cheaper and you get better service, even from the other side of the world. The local shops haven’t got a clue. Where this idea comes from that New Zealanders are friendly, and hard working I have no idea. I’ve found them on average to be lazy, incompetent morons, who simply can’t be f**cked with anything.
I can’t wait to get out of here, and go to a REAL country, with REAL people, who don’t have their heads so far up their own arses about New Zealand being so wonderful when it is such a shithole of a country.
Oh, but of course the scenery is nice. Pity that’s all New Zealand has to offer.
The sad truth is, there is no “REAL country with REAL people”. Tall-poppy syndrome may be a tad more pronounced in NZ but unfortunately wherever you go you’ll find that people are “lazy, incompetent morons, who simply can’t be f**cked with anything”.
(coming to France I discovered an attitude that, even as a New Zealander, I would describe as “Not-my-problem”, almost across the board).
Go to countries where people are unashamed of their success and you’ll find that Tall Poppy Syndrome, or Resentment-of-the-rich-and-shameless-by-the-poor-and-the-lazy Syndrome, is just as common, with the exception that the rich-and-shameless spend more time rubbing their wealth and success in everyone’s faces. This of course only encourages more resentment.
I agree! I was born in New Zealand and sadly have grown up in New Zealand and by default I am a New Zealander. I love New Zealand’s landscape, scenic beauty etc but I hate the people. I’ve never had a good boss or a fair salary and all of my extended family members suck and are selfish and difficult to get along with. They are not supportive and only do what benefits themselves. Most New Zealanders are drug addicts and boozers and they are always congratulating themselves. You can’t talk to them about anything intelligent because they all seem to possess an IQ of around 70-90? I’ve resigned to accepting that the best thing to do is keep to yourself?
Ignore or delete this, wrong box sorry?
Yeah, definitely wrong box, mate. You and I seem to be talking about completely different things (after all I’m saying it’s the same EVERYWHERE, not just NZ).
Still, no harm done.
Phoenix, you sound like an idiot.
Why don’t you take your hard earned money and f**k off to some other, far better country and stop bad mouthing your own!
Far too ignorant to see the NZ is beautiful, and obviously a ‘glass half empty’, cynical reject.
Dick!
Thank-you Em for posting your reply, you have managed to give fantastic examples of a number of things mentioned in my original post.
You are obviously resentful of people with money, admit openly that there are far better countries than New Zealand and even manage to mention the scenery.
You even have the attitude of the typical tall poppy cutter, trying to insult as way to try to make yourself, and your country, look better. But, in this case you fail miserably, all you end up doing is demonstrating the typical “head up your own ass” attitude that is so prevalent in your country.
Thank-you for your encouragement though, I see no reason to change my opinions of New Zealand, New Zealanders or alter my goals to leave, I will as you say take my “hard earned money” and go and contribute it to some other country’s economy.
As I said before thank-you for supporting my original post, you have managed in a few lines to actively demonstrate many of the traits I had already mentioned.
I agree! I was born in New Zealand and sadly have grown up in New Zealand and by default I am a New Zealander. I love New Zealand’s landscape, scenic beauty etc but I hate the people. I’ve never had a good boss or a fair salary and all of my extended family members suck and are selfish and difficult to get along with. They are not supportive and only do what benefits themselves. Most New Zealanders are drug addicts and boozers and they are always congratulating themselves. You can’t talk to them about anything intelligent because they all seem to possess an IQ of around 70-90? I’ve resigned to accepting that the best thing to do is keep to yourself?
This attitude is very broad and ingrained in NZ society across the board. You just do as you’re told and don’t ask questions. People are not trained to analyze things here. This is very self-limiting for growth, and since people don’t TRY HARD (customer service really stinks here, but people have come to accept poor service) so how can it ever improve? Coming from a customer service oriented organic farm from the USA, I am flabbergasted at the lack of attention paid to potential customers in shops, and have walked out of my fair share of retail establishments. (granted, I take note of the good ones, and I return ONLY to the places offering good customer service. If everyone expected this, perhaps this society could get somewhere. For now, it’s frustrating as ever to be an achiever in this country. People are downright mean. I emigrated to NZ two years ago, and the people have not been friendly – not in the least. Unfortunate really.
Depends on your definition of customer service – I have family who just moved there and while they had sales teams hovering around them like buzzards right up to the counter, the moment their money was spent the service turned to shit. Okay, we’ve got their money. NEXT!
They waited weeks for a bed that got sent half-way around the country because the cheapest truck was “just going that way”, not to mention the bed was missing essential parts when it arrived. And they found this was the case pretty much everywhere they shopped.
Even an American friend who recently swore by US customer service said that calling up ten times and swearing never to shop there again was just par for the course.
Maybe it is, and maybe he got what he wanted, but that’s not good customer service. Calling up once and asking politely should be more than enough.
Fact-check time…
“whiny, underdog countries like Scotland”
“more cock-sure countries where the leaders have larger balls – Heads of State with bulging, football-sized scrotums, like … Gordon Brown of England”
Might be worth noting that Mr. Brown is not the prime minister of England at all, he’s the head of the whole UK (England, Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland). And not to mention that he’s a Scot as well…
I shall sack my fact checking team. They obviously don’t understand the importance of accuracy in satire.
It’s academic anyway. In three months time, Gordon Brown will be the Prime Minister of nothing at all.
Goodbye Caledonian Mafia, hello Eton Old Boys club. Good luck with that. Should make the poll tax look like a bank holiday.
This how I would put it.
-Some argue that Tall Poppy Syndrome is not in fact broad resentment at other people’s success, but is rather a levelling social attitude, designed to deflate the pretensions of anyone who does not want to be a complete cock sucker. .
Anywaz.
Ta again
Actually was not that bad about 1999 in Auckland, we actually use to like success a bit.
To tell you the truth I’ve found the Ockers the worst for tall-poppy syndrome. Maybe not in Sydney or Melbourne but beyond in the REAL Australia definitely. Not that NZ has anything to be proud of. And at least the Ockers don’t celebrate mediocrity like us Kiwis have in the last decade.
And call me a crackpot but I place a lot of blame on the sports and sports broadcasting community promoting (for profit) mediocre NZ sports teams despite their failures like our Cricket team. And instilling more in more in progressive generations an Australian or Irish styled sports obsession. They try and drag up the profile of people who just aren’t performing.
I think you’ve misunderstood what the term ‘try-hard’ means though. It might be a put-down for success in Auckland but where I was from it was something to knock shallow wankers with, the sorts with tall poppy syndrome.
At least that seems more honest. Here in America, we give lots of LIP SERVICE to our alleged high achievers. Often then we find out that they got that “high achievement” through cunning brownnosing, cultivated bullshitting and often plain old LYING. Meanwhile the actual innovators are often not sufficiently socially savvy to have avoided being taken for a ride by the “vampire” I just described at the top of this post. And are left to die of no health care while their innovations are taken over by milquetoast “managers” who unfortunately run the idea into the ground because they never really understood it.
I suppose you could call it the “Mushroom Syndrome”.
So here the poppys are allowed to grow tall … but if you look closely you may realize they are standing on the corpses of the real producers. They may not even be real poppys!
Well said Selwyn! Well said! Although I do agree with that bit from Wiki about the levelling social attitude – I see that all the time here.
I’m quite happy to say I’m a try hard.
I am a try hard.
Cheers
Isaac