Blind Ambition

Highly competitive systems often favor those who are the most ruthless rather than those who are the most good (best).

That is the problem of places like Hawaii -- where now, the only way people think they can win, is to lie, cheat and steal.

Eventually though, you have nothing but a culture and society that rewards and promotes that -- and all the good people leave.

And so everybody remaining preys on everybody else in a final vicious cycle -- until people become desensitized to the brutalities of people getting battered in the streets and every court decision is an outrage and violation of all one's sensibilities.

Generally, the best and the brightest see these things and refuse to cooperate and play these games. It is the very mediocre types who think they are the best and the brightest and think they will win at these games not worth winning -- because they don't know any better but to conform to the established pattern.

That's what the great heroes of cultural lore do -- transcend the present rotten establishment and create something better -- and not like the countless technocrats, think that it is just enough to rise to the top of a rotten system.

That kind of striving is worthless -- but seems to be the problem of life in Hawaii anymore. It's sad and hopeless.

So it really doesn't matter who is on top -- as the fact that such a society really needs to be challenged at its very premises in this day and age, with all we know about human institutions and behaviors -- instead of maintaining the old feudal and tribal ways, and primary concern of who is at the top, and then, how ruthless they are to remain there.

That's what the regimes of Saddam Hussein were essentially all about -- or Al Gore's presidency; If he could not be at the top, that he would do his damndest to see that nobody else could be, nobody else could have the prize he coveted and thought he was destined for.

That is the sickness of ambition without talent, ability and insight.