I work in the public service because I want to serve the public. But right now that just doesn’t seem possible.

Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz

Help me Hera, please.

I’m a public servant. And honestly I could probably just end my email there and you’d understand. It’s been a shitshow lately of all the media stories about how our only value is propping up the local economy, let alone thinking about all the uncertainty and change and redundancies happening everywhere.

But this is my problem – and I know I’m not alone in it. I’m in the public service because I want to SERVE THE PUBLIC. I really want to make the country a better place for our most vulnerable people. However, the government of the day… does not. And more than that, it seems management doesn’t either. In meetings, they’ll use disparaging language about the population we are supposed to serve to the point where it’s clear they actually loathe them. Nothing I can do has any impact. It all feels so completely hopeless. I need to pay rent and look after my family, so quitting isn’t an option, unless I have somewhere else to go. But if all the people like me are driven away, things would get even more dire.

It’s such a bind that I don’t even know what kind of help I’m asking for. An inspirational speech perhaps? I know I am lucky to have a job right now, and that means I have money I can donate to various places in attempt to cleanse some guilt at being so useless. I do the things to make my brain function properly like go running and get sunshine and talk to my dog. This is not depression rendering me non-functional – it’s the state of the world. So what do I do?

Public Servant 

Dear Public Servant,

I feel like I’m constantly having different versions of this conversation, and the answer is never that satisfying. When you tally up the current evils of the world, any kind of motivational advice has the flavour of a stale platitude, like an ancient barley sugar that’s been gathering dust in the corner of someone’s handbag for the last 20 years.

I feel like this question gets harder to answer every year. It’s hard to watch our current government create distraction after distraction, while systematically and dispassionately dismantling every hard-won public good, like a team of rogue asset recovery specialists stripping the country for parts. 

It’s equally hard to hold out hope that a change in government will fix anything. As this country swings back and forth on its lazy political pendulum, it’s difficult to get too excited about voting for the “one step forward” party, knowing the “two steps backwards” party is always just around the corner. It gets harder to accept, as the stakes get higher. There’s more than just progressive urban infrastructure on the table. I worry a lot about the fate of our kids, who will be forced to eat the enormous non-biodegradable Tupperware container of shit we’ve left behind. 

You asked for an inspirational speech, and this is not it. 

I think there are two parts to your question. How do we fight to improve the collective well-being of the people and planet around us? And how do we stay sane doing so?

The questions, I think, are intimately related. Turn the dial too far one way and you’re too numbed by despair and horror to do anything productive about the situation. On the other hand, you can’t meditate your way out of a genuine existential crisis. 

The answer to the first question – how to fight against mendacious self-interest and cultural fearmongering – is just as complicated and simple as it always has been. The easy answer is to act in opposition to the principles you despise. Solidarity is the antidote to individualism. Generosity is the antidote to selfishness. Love is the antidote to fearmongering. Action is the antidote to despair. It means embracing protest, collectivism and charity. It means taking courage from the struggles of the past. It means having a sense of humour, and from time to time, indulging in a little strategic bullying. Excluding the last clause, exactly the kind of solidarity you’re unlikely to find in your average government workplace. That doesn’t mean you should quit. You should continue to serve the public to the best of your legal ability and fill in the gaps elsewhere. 

And what if that doesn’t work? If we were able to glimpse into the future and discover our best efforts were not enough?   

I think for me, it wouldn’t change anything.

Honestly, I kind of think we’re doomed, but I love this stupid world anyway. In the words of Mark Leidner, “the river is deep, and fast, and it drowns many people, but I still love it. I still love the river, I told her. But I do not love it because it is deep, and fast, and drowns many people. I love it because it runs behind my house, and I have lived above it forever.”

Personally, I think there’s a radical kind of peace to be found in accepting the worst. Nihilism in a major key. I don’t think it makes you a defeatist if you refuse to be defeated by it. My reasons for living remain unchanged. The beauty of the world. The people I love. “Kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas.” The pure mystery and chaos of it all.  If we’re walking on the roof of hell, gazing at flowers, we might as pick a few daisies on the way down. 

You don’t say what part of the public service you work for so it’s hard to give specific advice on your job situation, but I do think that no act of kindness or protest is ever wasted. It’s hard to overstate how much the right gesture can mean to the right person on the right day. Many lives have been saved by a stranger on a bus, offering a tissue. That’s not nothing.

If our grand vision of a socialist utopia fails, and all we have to offer one another, as we plummet down the great elevator shaft of the future, is a little empathy, humour and grace, it’s still worth offering. It may not rescue the rare frogs from the brink of extinction, or solve the climate catastrophe. But I have to believe it’s still worth it. 

If you can’t find a way to live in spite of them, you can always try the Tony Hoagland method, of living to spite them. 

“But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.”