As we turned the corners of the channel, the views of Auckland changed and New Zealand’s largest city go larger and larger. Since 1995 when New Zealand ‘shocked the world’ winning America’s cup in San Diego, and Auckland became to host in 2000, Auckland has just exploded into a relative metropolis given the small size of the country and its 4.5 million people.
Auckland’s population is said to be around 1.4 million and I sense its changing values and ever increasing alignment with the highest level western ideals is causing some ‘values conflict’ with more traditional New Zealanders.
I’ll delve more into this in a future blog relating to New Zealand’s ‘REAL elite nation’ status as a rare member of sub One Point Zero club of nations. Exploring how long term sustainable that club membership is given these inevitably changing values in the increasing pursuit of higher Western Success.
In many ways but for totally different reasons, I put New Zealand and Switzerland together as countries that just ‘get on’ with what they see they ‘have to do’ for themselves, and ‘Just Do it’! Both seem to do it in a way that is ‘their’ unique way but seems also one that is inspiring and has many ‘values lessons’ for ‘the rest of the world’, yet they aren’t trying to change the rest of the world!
Clearly New Zealand and Switzerland are almost at the opposite ends of the One Point Zero scale, so in linking them above it’s not about that but more of a low key, yet strong almost independent clear identity and value system, that fits with their unique needs.