In Deborah Hill Cone’s return to the Herald column she referred to “handcartism”, the obsession that society is going to hell in a handcart.

I was relieved when I discovered renegade neuroscientist Loretta Graziana Breuning who claimed that at university you have to sign up for “handcartism”, the orthodoxy that society is going to hell in a handcart.

Handcartism forces young people to embrace a depressing outlook or be socially shunned.

It’s not just a young person or university phenononom. It’s also prevalent in politics and on blogs.

Being a rescuer feels good and being pessimistic is considered clever.

Political handcartists are not as pessimistic as they tend to think they are clever enough to succeed in getting enough support to save the world.

“Being a rescuer feels good and being pessimistic is considered clever” sums up a common impression of how Greenies see themselves – they preach pessimism, but promote themselves as the saviours.

Green handcartists don’t seem as pessimistic as some, for example blog handcartists, because they have faith in their ability to rescue us. This could be because the Green Party has a degree of success with significant support and a number of MPs.

The Greens keep preaching the imminent end of the world unless their radical policies are followed – these policies are very socialist but of course Greens are far more clever than all the communists states that have falied.

Handcartists can be seen across the political spectrum.

Winston Peters has a handcartist tinge, seeing himself as the wise old rescuer from all our political woes.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) : New Zealand First has got news for Sam Lotu-Iiga and his nervous backbench mates, and it is all bad. The end is nigh.

Look, this Government is not going to survive 3 years. It will not make it until the next election, and this is why. It is totally dysfunctional—totally dislocated.

The Conservative Party also preaches a need to return to the good old days of a moral society (ignoring the extensive immorality in societies for yonks) – what they really yearn for is a return for a return to much wider subservience to a few men, especially priestly types. They think Christianity is the only and whole solution to everything, but don’t want to openly show their Christian aspirations.

I’ll look at blog handcartists in a separate post.

Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D., is a Docent at the Oakland Zoo, where she leads tours on mammalian social behavior.