REFLECTIVE INSIGHT #018 - FREE YOUR MIND: THE CHOICE BETWEEN BABYLON AND TE ŌHANGA MAURI

The Choice is Ours

We often talk about "the system" as if it’s a faceless machine we can't control. But our ancestors and the prophets had a much sharper name for it: Babylon. As the song says, we need to free our minds from a way of thinking that keeps us as slaves to a broken system. In Taitokerau, we are at a crossroads. We have to choose: do we stay in the "Leaky Bucket" of Babylon, or do we finally build Te Ōhanga Mauri?

The Babylonian Way: A Leaky Bucket

Babylon is a system built on a big mistake, the idea that we are all separate and should just grab whatever we can for ourselves. In the North, we see this in the way we trade our logs. We send 61% of our raw timber away to the other side of the world. We are sending our "energy" away, and in return, we get paper money that we immediately spend on imported goods. This creates disorder. It leaves our roads broken and our families struggling, while the real wealth is built somewhere else. It is a system that takes our life force and leaves us with the waste.