The Beginning of the End

Anybody paying attention to the local discussions in Hawaii have been aware for a long time that things are not working well -- but they keep electing the same “leaders” to prevent any improvement, and so there is no wonder why things are failing, but now, nothing seems to be working anymore. The mistaken presumption is that things “have to” work -- because we simply want (demand) them to, rather than that anybody has to do anything to actually make things work. We think we are owed that just for being alive and breathing -- that somebody else should be taking care of us, and we should no longer have to do anything ourselves, because we have reached full seniority rights to do nothing but tell everrybody else how to live.

When a whole culture (society) thinks the same thing at the same time, it is a prescription for certain extinction -- which nobody will stand in the way of preventing. Societies and cultures have a right to die when they no longer serve a purpose for which they were conceived -- which is to improve one’s chances of survival in a perilous world of unexpected challenges. But those cultural responses, cannot just be entirely arbitrary and capricious, because eventually, the bulk of choices that do matter and make a difference, disappear and leave only the arbitrary and capricious -- to rule the day. Then, there is no organizing principle or sense of order, and everything is chaos and anomie.

That is a confused and dysfunctional person’s idea of paradise -- that nothing makes sense anymore, and they are no longer inhibited by order and the laws they engender -- and that there is a reason for doing things, and not just everyone doing their own thing -- as it is in a :mental” ward.

Heaven is where everything makes sense and is connected to everything else -- in a unity of purpose and economy; hell is where nothing makes sense and nothing is connected to anything else, and everything disintegrates as soon as one gazes upon it. Societies can have that design and purpose -- but they will not last long. They must give way to more powerful missions of organization and purpose.

One can’t just build a railroad where nobody lives thinking that someday, somebody will. Even urban planners should realize by now, that often, the best laid plans of mice and men go astray -- and they can’t simply make things happen the way they envision because they wish it so enough and think it is a good idea. Other unanticipated forces come into play -- and why the natural history and evolution of progress frequently surprises those who think the future will simply be the past repeated.

Some things happen that change the course of history and development -- not unexpectedly. Many see it unfolding before catastrophes are revealed in their full-blown majesty and warn that things must change or there will be the inevitable consequences. As long as they are spared, they think such warnings and misgivings are untrue -- and further abuses are warranted. Finally, everything is pushed beyond the limits of recovery and becomes unglued -- and there is a plunge into total and unrelenting meaninglessness and purposelessness.

That is the will of the people, until they decide they want something other -- but those who desire order and steady purpose, have moved on to find it, rather than contracting the same despair of everybody else -- that it doesn’t make a difference, and so one needs only to do whatever one can get away with -- as the only law in that society, that is not long for this earth.