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In 1995 I was hired as the Communications Manager for the new office of the Health & Disability Commissioner. I was now a highly-paid civil servant. It was a not entirely agreeable and often bizarre experience.

The office politics could become toxic, perhaps inevitably with a CEO with an out-of-control ego. Further stress arose out of the politically correct environment, with far too much time wasted on Maori ceremonies that were meaningless to most of us. We had a kaiwhakahere, or Maori affairs manager, in the form of Moe Milne. That made good sense as the health status of Maori in New Zealand is well below that of the general population. I liked Moe, a thoroughly good sort who taught me a great deal about the iwi (tribes) and hapu (subtribes) of the areas we visited. At the time and to some degree even today I could point at any location on a map of New Zealand and tell you which iwi held tangata whenua status (hegemony) there. I learned a lot of te Reo, necessary because both Robyn and Moe were women so on marae I was the one who had to respond to the mihi (greeting). We also learned a number of Maori songs which I enjoyed because I love singing and Maori is a beautiful language for song.

Not so agreeable was the fact that Robyn had arranged for a Commissioner’s kaumatua (elder), an elderly Maori of no particular distinction whom, when special occasions called for it, we would fly to Auckland or Wellington and put up in a hotel so he could deliver a speech which only Moe could understand. He showed no interest in us as people and happily toddled off after getting his cheque. Whenever we hired someone new, a frequent event in the first year, they would be presented with (or subjected to) a powhiri (welcoming ceremony). Both I and Tina, the investigations manager, were particularly vocal behind the scenes about the absurdity of welcoming a new non-Maori staff member with a powhiri attended by over-whelmingly non-Maori employees when the traditional Kiwi cake and cup of tea would have been much more welcome. What rankled most was the hypocrisy entailed in the karakia. Tina and I and various other staff members objected bitterly to having to bow our heads in prayer as civil servants in a supposedly secular state. This was enforced religious observance in an office that had been set up to define and protect people’s rights, an odious farce.

Then there was the Treaty of Waitangi workshop, conducted in the Wellington office by a milquetoast with a huge bone carving dangling from his scrawny neck. Tina, myself and others curled our toes and gritted our teeth through a day openly designed to underscore the irredeemable inferiority entailed in not being a Maori, garnished with a liberal serving of imposed guilt. Of course it achieved the exact opposite effect. Tina was a middle-aged woman with a lifetime of experience in the health service who suffered fools not at all. I admired her courage in saying exactly what she thought of the so-called workshop when the ‘facilitator’ outlined a map of New Zealand on the floor and told everyone to stand where they had been born. Those who had been born outside the country were supposed to stand some distance from the map, driving an egregious point home with a sledgehammer. Tina flat-out refused to participate. I took part reluctantly but my patience was almost gone.

Next we were instructed to take our positions on the spot where we or our ashes would be buried. I returned to my seat. Challenged, I simply declared that I would not be buried anywhere because I would certainly not tolerate such a thing while alive and had no intention of dying.

“But you have to die someday,” came the predictable objection.

“Sorry, but to indicate where I supposedly wish to be buried when I have no such wish is absurd. Besides, in my culture such matters are personal and private.”

Tina and a couple of the braver souls actually applauded. By the time the farrago of misinformation and brow-beating ground to a close no-one was happy. Moe, Robyn and the milquetoast could see that no hearts had been won and the usual feedback session that closes most workshops was silently dropped.

Working closely with the Department of Health and to a lesser degree with Te Puni Kokiri and the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs brought home the disturbing realisation that New Zealand is losing its status as a secular state. It is no exaggeration to say that the Treaty of Waitangi has become an object of worship in the offices of the bureaucracy. It was quite common to enter an office and see a huge framed image of the Treaty draped with flags, flowers and Maori symbols. Certain self-evident truths, for instance the fact that New Zealand has no indigenous people, that every single one of us is descended from immigrants, could cost you your job if spoken aloud. A peculiar version of Maori traditional culture was being enshrined as the official religion, that version being the state of Maori culture and beliefs as it stood in, say, the year 1890. Christian prayers, obviously not an historic component of the original culture of the Maori, played a big part. Our being forced to sing a Christian hymn such as How Great Thou Art at an office event would have rightly provoked an outcry. But translate it into Maori and suddenly we were obliged to join in.

Such a slant celebrates colonialism as much as Maori culture. If you give it a moment’s thought you must acknowledge that if this country were to truly honour the authentic culture of the Maori we would hold annual tribal wars – with real weapons. We would allow utu (payback)as a defence for murder. In fact there actually are quite sizeable and significant organisations living out the true culture of the Maori: the Mongrel Mob, Black Power and the Filthy Few, among others. They not only embody the drawbacks to society resulting from gang activity, they also hold fast to the values of family, of tribal loyalty, of territory. No wonder they attract so many young Maori.

Don’t get me wrong – I personally enjoy participating in Maori cultural events. I loved returning the mihi in the Maori that Moe taught me. My family has a multi-generational association with Ngati Whatua o Orakei, a treasured privilege. But enforced submission to any culture under the threat of losing one’s job and the abandonment of the strict secularity of the state are evils that must be called out.

At this point I could very easily launch into a diversion on the appalling erosion of personal freedom in this country. We have more laws and regulations allowing various officials to enter our homes than any comparable democracy. We allow the police to stop us from going about our business to perform any check they please, be it a breath test or to check that we have paid our road tax. No other first-world country I have lived in would tolerate such a thing. I believe I understand the reason for this national lack of spine: it is because we have never had to defend ourselves, never had a revolution. We remain only loosely attached to a freedom that we have never had to defend.

Writing the second book of my autobiography, I have just covered the year 1975 that I spent in Switzerland. Visiting in 2017 I found it changed, much for the better, but back then it was grimly conventional, horribly judgemental of any deviation from their iron-bound social norms. I remembered a poem I wrote at the time and had long forgotten.

Komm mit mir und mit mir schlafen
Im ein alt hotel am Freidrichshafen.
We’ll drink stolen wine from stolen glasses
And laugh at the füdeliburghers’ arses.
I will bring you traffic signs,
We’ll rip up the tickets, won’t pay the fines.
We’ll sit in church in our dirty jeans
Reading pornographic magazines.
And then we’ll walk for miles and miles
Past military tulips, synthetic smiles.

Let me tell you a story. I was 19 years old, in Sydney Australia and in a very bad way. What follows is an extract from my unpublished autobiography, Before I Forget. I was in the grips of a familiar but profound depression and had just found myself incapable of turning up for my soul-crushing job at the Redfern Mail Exchange.

…

We were drinking a cup of tea, talking about it all and what I could do, when there was an urgent knock on the door. They weren’t holding at the time so Gary just opened the door to let in a guy called Martin, sweating heavily and looking weird in a suit, white shirt and tie he had obviously scored from the Salvation Army shop. He was carrying a leather briefcase.

“Do you want some acid? As much as you want. I’ve got ten thousand trips in here and they’re all going into the harbour. The cops are on to me and I have to ditch them.”

Was he nuts? The cops were onto him, he said. We could hardly load up on his surplus acid. If he was right they might come barrelling through the door at any minute.

“Nah,” said Gary. But I wouldn’t mind a trip.”

“Me too,” followed Jill.

“Hell,” I said. “It can’t make things any worse than they already are. I’ll have one.”

And right there you have one of the most calamitous misjudgements of my entire life.

Before I get into what happened next, I have to ask you to believe this bit. I don’t know what you’ve thought of this account so far. Maybe you believe some of it, maybe other parts you take with a grain of salt. Take your pick, it’s a free world

I went mad. I lost contact with reality. I had already been turning over in my mind the profoundly unsatisfactory nature of mere verbal communication. The un-sameness of shared experience. When I taste that orange, do I have the same experience that you have when you taste the other half? How can we ever know? I knew I was strongly red-green colour blind, so what I called red or green had another meaning that others did not share. How much more of that was there? Maybe, I suspected, all of it, a horrifying thought.

When I use a word that word is imbued with a lifetime of associations, cultural and personal assumptions, connotations; the result is that in absolute terms that word, perhaps most of the words we speak, actually mean something different to me than they do to you. Communication is a rough approximation at best. We are alone, islands, stranded in our own unique take on experience. Separate. At least, that is what I believed at the time.

That concept crossed from abstraction to reality on that acid trip. Across a table from Gary and Jill that seemed as wide as the Sahara, I ceased to understand them. They showed worry as they looked at me. But what came out of their mouths was gibberish.

And it didn’t stop, not for days. Oh, I came to understand speech again, but I had fallen into psychosis. I had difficulty distinguishing between the animate and the inanimate. I heard voices. And of course, I thought someone was following me. Them. I didn’t know who they were, but they were shadowing me, scuttling my attempts to regain safe shores.

Here’s the interesting bit: I knew what I needed to turn it off. Opiates. Don’t ask me how because I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. It wasn’t the craving of the habit I didn’t yet have. I could feel inside my head that the place things had gone haywire was exactly where the opiates hit home.

Over the next couple of days I spent the last of my funds on taxis, calling on anyone who might be holding. A single shot would do it. Of course I looked like shit, spooked, was probably not making a lot of sense. No-one was going to give hard drugs to someone in that state even if they had them which they probably didn’t. Who knew what it might do? Maybe I wanted it to OD, to top myself. One guy, nervously, told me he had a bit of hash, maybe a toke would help.

Two tokes and I was right back in the worst of it. Hearing voices saying things I couldn’t understand. I started trying to call home from phone boxes. I would pick up the receiver, hear the dial tone, dial 0 and suddenly it would cut off. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t make toll calls from Sydney phone booths. Or maybe I needed to put money in first. I never got that far because I knew what was happening. They were watching and cutting the lines. I saw them moving out of the corners of my eyes but when I looked straight at them they were gone.

Finally a thought occurred to me: Kings Cross Post Office. They had phone booths inside the building! They wouldn’t be able to see me, know I was in one of them calling Mum. I knew the post office well, and they knew me, because we all used it as a Poste Restante mailing address.

I approached the counter to ask to use a phone for a collect international call. Yes, of course, the woman said. But you’re Mr Hegan, aren’t you? My antennae crackled. Oh shit! But there was no use denying it. Yes. Why?

We have a telegram for you. She gave me an envelope with a telegram in it. It read more or less as follows:

WHAT HAS HAPPENED STOP ARE YOU IN TROUBLE STOP CALL HOME AT ONCE STOP TERRIBLY WORRIED STOP MUM

If you believe nothing else, believe this. Elaine knew. From twelve hundred miles away, my mother knew I was in some serious trouble. Later I would ask her if Gary or Jill had called her, though I didn’t think they had her number. No. She just knew, woke up with the stone certainty that something really, really bad had happened to me.

This is not a new story. Ho hum. Sure, mothers sometimes know when their kids die or are seriously wounded on distant battlefields. And all that. But what does it mean? People tend to place such occurrences in the realm of the spiritual but I believe, no, I am certain, that it is down to an as yet unknown realm of physics. There is a whole level of interactivity going on in this world that we haven’t started to think about. Frankly, I think there exists something I call the Field of Influence. It would explain the Pauli Exclusion principle. This is what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’ and refused to believe in but was demonstrated conclusively by Dr Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and his colleagues in 1997 when they showed two photons seven kilometres apart acting instantly in concert. No energy loss. No information transfer. Not at the speed of light. Not faster than the speed of light. Instantly. Of course, if the two objects were connected, say by a piece of absolutely rigid string, you would get that instant response. Well, they are. It’s just that we have not yet divined what that string consists of. Apparently it can stretch all the way across the Tasman Sea.

Now here’s what bugs me. Ask physicists how this can be and they will look away and mumble about how busy they are. Science isn’t even dialling that number. When it does, and gets an answer, the world will change as dramatically as it did when Einstein scribbled Σ=mc2 on his notepad.

A field as ubiquitous, as universal as the electromagnetic spectrum, as gravity and the strong and weak forces. It might even lead to Hawking’s abandoned Grand Unified Theory. It might be a function of dark matter.

Hello? Anyone?

More than half a century later, now, they just might have found it.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/495563/scientists-at-fermilab-close-in-on-fifth-force-of-nature

Exciting times!

PS For the record, 24 hours later I was back in New Zealand where I knocked off a pharmacy on my first night. One shot of morphine and I was fine. Not high – just normal. It needed only the one. I had flipped the switch I knew was there all the time. They now know that the opioid receptors in the brain play a role in schizophrenia.

PPS I am looking for beta readers of my autobiography, covering the first quarter century of my life. The 50s, 60s and 70s. Shipwrecked. Jailed in Thailand. Smuggling drugs. I was a Buddhist monk for a while. A junkie. A stowaway. Santiram you say? Yawn …

Leave a comment and I’ll be in touch.

Question: Why is Covid 19 so infectious? Answer, because of the so-called ‘furin-like cleavage site’ on the spike. This consists of an amino acid sequence grouped arginine-arginine-alanine-arganine. When this contacts the mucus membrane of the human respiratory system it basically burns a hole in it and the virus is in. This is not present in the naturally evolved version of the virus which killed three shovellers of horseshoe bat guano who died from it but gave it to no-one. You virtually had to be swimming in it for it to infect you. The new, deadly spike was, according to a professor at National Taiwan University, Fang Chi-tai “unlikely to have four amino acids added all at once.” Natural mutations were smaller and more haphazard, he argued. “From an academic point of view, it is indeed possible that the amino acids were added to COVID-19 in the lab by humans.”

When his talk was publicised he recanted and the university removed it from its server for “certain reasons”. Academics who advance the thesis that Covid-19 could have been the result of a ‘gain of function’ experiment in China are likely to see their careers stall and lose grants, in spite of the fact that the Wuhan lab of world-wide fame was involved in gain of function experiments on horseshoe bat coronaviruses.

Consider this: the nearest horseshoe bats to Wuhan are seven hundred miles away. They are not, as we were first given to believe, sold in the Wuhan wet market. So for the natural origin theory to be true, the virus had to mutate in a bat population, infect someone and then instantly die out because no-one else in the vicinity caught it at that point. Then the infected person had to somehow get to Wuhan without spreading it along the way. How likely is that? But Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute, whom Scientific American dubbed ‘the bat woman’, regularly harvests viruses from that distance bat colony and transports them to her Wuhan lab.

Looked at objectively, the human-made hypothesis seems much more probable, but no-one wants to say so, indeed the chorus of denial is loud and global. Why all the academic fear?

Because the world is scared of China. Our politicians bend over backwards to avoid offending The Middle Kingdom, and with good reason. Although China’s fall to the condition of a broken victim state, walked all over first by Western Powers and then Japan in the two hundred years prior to the mid-20th Century had more to do with its inward-looking sclerotic administration than external influences, Chinese global policy is almost openly vengeful. The country lost its face and it wants it back. If a minor South American country, for instance, engaged in world-wide open theft of intellectual property and imprisoned and oppressed whole sectors of its ethnic minorities it would at the very least be ostracised on the world stage and quite likely corrected by force. Not China. No-one wants to step on the dragon’s tail, especially when that dragon produces so much of the manufactured products the rest of the world runs on. Not when it is a huge and growing market for almost every country’s products.

This is changing. Slowly the democratic powers are starting to face the fact that Russia and China are becoming increasingly dangerous and sooner or later we are going to have to do something about it. Preferably later, much later. As our attitude becomes more realistic the so-called ‘lab-leak hypothesis’ is starting to see some air. Note the nomenclature ‘lab-leak’. No-one except those who in the next breath will tell you about Bill Gates’ microchip in the vaccine will suggest that China might, just might, have deliberately released the virus. No scientist or politician who wants to keep their job will say such a thing. I have not seen the possibility mooted at all in any medium. Unfortunately, we have to at least consider it. If they did it, we need to know. Time to wheel in the old Latin tag Cui bono? It means ‘Who won something?’or more literally ‘For the good of whom?’ and is a time-honoured way of looking into a complex or obscure misdeed.

Under Xi Jinping, who is looking more like Mao Zedong every day, China wants grow stronger by weakening the rest. Look at its artificial islands in the South China Sea which it now claims as sovereign territory – military territory. A vast fleet of its factory ships plunder the oceans at the expense of everyone else and the planet. Now imagine how the Central Committee might have reacted to a proposal to release a killer respiratory virus that would cripple democratic economies around the world but inflict only minor damage on a country that did not have to bother with personal freedoms, that was able to track and trace with very high efficiency because of the absence of concern for individual liberties, that could throw a cordon around a whole city and enforce it, that could mass-disinfect whole suburbs. Can you see them nodding and smiling? I certainly can.

Covid-19 has been a body blow to the economies of countries that China smiles at but considers enemies, as well as serving as a demonstration to their own people that their system is inherently stronger and less vulnerable than the effete democracies of the West. If it was an accident, it is one that has served Xi Jinping’s agenda fulsomely. Cui bono? China.

Consider this, for a closer. When the outbreak occurred, Shi Zhengli, lead researcher on horseshoe bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab immediately suspected that the outbreak was the result of a leak of something made in her lab. She describes how, terrified, she “checked her records and found no exact matches.” Phew.

Well, no, actually. No ‘exact’ matches, for a start. So one of her colleagues might have given the virus the last tweak, acting under the orders of the most powerful people in the institute, which would not be the head scientist, Zhengli. Not in China. The real head honchos would be the party cadres charged with keeping everyone in line, as in every sensitive organisation in that country. Or, more simply, they told her what to say and she said it.

I believe, for reasons which seem to me obvious, that Covid 19 was produced in the Wuhan Institute. I am not saying and do not necessarily believe that the Chinese government deliberately released the virus. One argument against that is the location – a covert release for the purposes I suppose would have made more sense in the vicinity of the bat population. Deliberate release is simply a possibility we need to keep in mind and we sure as hell need to be prepared for the next one.