Navigating the tipping point

A tipping point in society offers sudden and dramatic change. It can be an idea whose time has come, or a critical mass of circumstances whose timing will not be denied. We’ve seen such tipping points in Aotearoa, in the language movement and Matariki, as Tainui Stephens writes.

 

We navigate tipping points in our lives every day. We know, for instance, that going beyond a certain threshold of activity could be disastrous. It’s why we don’t spend all our money, or speed recklessly on the roads. No one wants to tip over into poverty or death.

The much bigger tipping points that we all face right now include those that affect the climate. We know that pollution and global warming beyond certain levels will doom life on Earth. Rampant fires, floods, and famine are only the start.

Tipping points are also political, with cascading consequences.

One morning recently, we all woke to the news that the USA, Israel’s best buddy, had bombed Iran. Some of the biggest bombs ever invented had been hurled at facilities alleged to be developing nuclear weapons. I felt a sense of dread. After decades of conflict between Israel and its neighbours, was this a military tipping point? Had two of the most powerful nations on earth and one of the most bellicose reached a threshold that would escalate war in the Middle East? Would that tip over into a global economic crisis? Would China and Russia get involved?

The American president is an abominable showman who claimed, with no evidence, that the mission was a total success. After his triumphant headlines, for which the attack was created, leaders of nations scrambled to bow before him. The threat of war passed. The chief of NATO called him “daddy”.

Conflict can tip over into war when autocratic leaders, often covering up their own misdeeds, try to stay in control. They rely on rhetoric and the politics of fear to intensify existing problems that, according to them, only they can resolve. Such leadership requires scapegoats to take the blame — those who are different because of their skin, soul, or sexuality. Beings from a lesser tribe. The “other” becomes the enemy.

I once visited the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp just outside the city of Weimar, Germany. The original commandant had been fond of animals, so he built a zoo right next to the camp. He wanted to make an insidious point, which became clear to me as I walked along the camp perimeter. To my right were the rocky remains of the bear enclosure. To my left, on the other side of the barbed wire fence, was the crematorium. SS officers would show their families the bears and monkeys on this side of the fence, and the Untermenschen — subhumans — on the other side. German children of the Nazi era were raised with the idea that there was such a thing as inferior races.

Camp staff who abused the animals were severely punished. I was truly spooked to be in a place where empathy for animals was evident, but not for fellow human beings. The prisoners could see the zoo, too. Perhaps the last thing some battered souls saw before they disappeared up the chimney was an SS officer talking to his son and pointing towards them.

After World War Two, German philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” The Holocaust was believed to be a tipping point in our inhumanity. We’d glimpsed into the final abyss. Leaders of a horrified world said: “Never again!”

But it didn’t take long for new concentration camps and new killing fields to emerge. Cambodia and East Timor in the 1970s. Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Iraq and Syria in the 2000s. Right now, in Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank, genocidal actions, if not official policy, are a common byproduct of clandestine and overt wars waged by the righteous.

Other tipping points in life are far less fatal but no less consequential. An accumulation of positive intent and energy can suddenly change our world for the better. At a certain point, we might finally fall in love, or land on our feet with hard-won success.

Over the span of history, inventions like the wheel, the printing press, and electricity were tipping points that marked sudden growth spurts in human development. AI and quantum computing are the next thresholds that will lead to new explosions of knowledge.

We have our own political tipping points here in Aotearoa.

I was proud of David Lange as a Kiwi politician. Not long after the gastric bypass surgery to deal to his obesity, he spoke at the opening of the Mataatua marae in Māngere, Auckland. I saw his humour and humility in full display when he regaled us with his own tipping point story.

Before his operation, he said, he’d been flying on Concorde. He was approached by a steward, who asked: “Mr Prime Minister, would you like to visit the cockpit?” “Most certainly!” said he. Thrilled by the invitation, he goes to the front of the plane, where he chats with the captain about how he steers the skinny supersonic jet. The captain explains: “When I want to turn right, I turn the steering yoke to the right. When I want to turn left, I turn it to the left. When we ascend, I pull it back.” Lange then asks: “What do you do if you want to descend?” The captain says: “We invite prime ministers into the cockpit!”

The marae exploded. Empathy oozed out of him.

A few years later, Lange and his government would disappoint by allowing their empathy to lie with the rabid forces of the financial markets. They broke a pact of social concern and connection with the people. They weren’t forgiven and were dumped by the voters.

At every election, I turn up to a church or school hall to vote. I appreciate the chance to choose our leaders. Over decades of election cycles, I’ve seen the pendulum of national (and international) politics swing from left to right and back again. In time, each side discovers the difficulty of delivering on easy campaign promises. In time, each side shoots itself in the foot — thanks to bigotry on the right, or hubris on the left. A tipping point at the extremes of either is always reached, and the pendulum heads back the other way.

It’s not just Americans who suffer the mood swings of their unprecedented president. Most countries have substantial numbers of people who are repelled or inspired by the poisonous politics of the US. Thanks to their technology, online platforms, and stories, we’ve long viewed and flavoured our own lives through the prism of the American project.

Planet America, it seems, will not be denied.

Well, neither will we: Te ao Māori.

A tipping point can also be an idea whose time has come. An idea that takes advantage of the gathering tides of possibility. An emphatic green light for inevitable action that leads to sudden, dramatic and exponential change.

One of the most powerful ideas we’ve fought for and cherished over the last 50 years is that to be Māori is a very good thing indeed. That idea led directly to the revival of te reo Māori. The language movement was the tipping point that changed Aotearoa forever and for the better. Along with the reo came all the beliefs that define us as children of the land, stewards of each other, and active participants in the times.

Our struggles have been existential, and they’ve focused our minds. We’ve deployed the humanity of our protocols to shape our actions in a modern world. We know the power of trust that comes from face-to-face encounters. We activate our empathy by respecting the mana of the individual and the collective. Ritual shows us how to do that.

One example is Matariki, the Māori New Year. The celestial celebrations in the depths of winter give the country the chance to come together, to share food, to offer thoughts for the year gone and the year to come. Pākehā appreciation of the tikanga has been immediate and widespread. Wishing star trees are everywhere.

Matariki is one face of a new tipping point of Māori capacity and capability.

Māori are nearly 20 percent of the population. Our people are mostly young and have a high birth rate. The Pākehā population is older, with a declining birth rate. Statistics from 2021 show big increases in support for the Māori language. Nearly a quarter of Māori claim te reo as a native tongue. Most New Zealanders now support the Māori language, its teaching and its use in our society.

International research suggests that once 25 percent of a population change their mind about a social norm, like opposition to gay marriage, then the rest of the population will eventually buy in. They may not support the change at first, but mostly they don’t want to get left behind.

“Māorification” and “ethnic creep” are pejorative terms used by bloviating politicians and media blowhards to diminish the entirely organic growth of the Māori world and the cascading impact our thinking and actions are having on this society. The peddlers of such insults (and they’re hardly alone: they have constituencies) are wishful thinkers. They choose to betray a lack of empathy in their pitch for relevance.

But they’re too late. Those tides of history aren’t stopping anytime soon. Navigation is our thing.

 

Tainui Stephens, of Te Rarawa, has been fully engaged in the film and television industry since 1984, working with a range of genres and content. He is particularly attracted to compelling Indigenous stories that critique and celebrate the human condition. Tainui lives in Ōtaki with his wife and fellow filmmaker Libby Hakaraia. Together, they and a small whānau team run the Māoriland Film Festival.

E-Tangata, 2025