Improving "Paradise"

What Hawaii needs most and could create the greatest value, are shade corridors -- which then make it possible for most people to walk or bike anywhere comfortably, because the lack of shade, is what makes most people dismiss such an idea for even short trips.

One of the chief appeals of rail, are the stations, because they provide this shelter of shade, which the present bus stops, most often don't -- which is the reason, many will not wait in such hostile conditions to use that system.

The advantage of the industrialized communities and nations of the temperate areas, is greatly due to their mastery of their climate, which is invariably being able to stay warm in the cold.

The tropics, and warm areas, have never had to consider that primal engineering and organizing challenge of optimizing their environment, and so lack the fundamental skills of resource management to advance their societies as it grows into cities of greater complexities.

What these largely traditional societies of the warmer climates have largely failed to consider, is that warm climates can be optimized even beyond that achieved in the great cities of the temperate areas -- as their fundamental great challenge of living in those environments, in order for them to organize and work industriously, rather than being discouraged by the danger of heat exhaustion and stroke. In this way, warm is a greater threat than cold is, because one can expend more energy to stay warm, while those who work hard and strenuously, in warmth, run the danger of overheating.

And so many people raised in these conditions, disdain and avoid hard work, as something only those on the lowest level of society would do -- and those who reach the highest levels of society (government), have learned to pass onto others. Eventually, everybody "wises" up to do as little as possible -- while demanding as much compensation they feel they are "entitled" to -- by largely knowing how this game is played.

Recycle the plastic bottles into the mesh netting that provides shade as a basic industry, instead of shipping the garbage far away to be buried. Compost everything that is organic -- including and especially paper. One would think that an island community would be among the pioneers and leaders in recycling -- instead of having no idea what to do with managing their own waste and creating resources that improve the basic conditions for going even further.

Shelter in Hawaii is also this major consideration of creating shade -- just as the greatest threat to the people of a earthquake devastated Haiti, is the lack of water (also a limiting factor in Hawaii, and just relief from the constant -- when all their buildings have fallen down, and they had previously deforested their island.

Even the "homeless" in Hawaii know that is their requirement for shelter -- not to be constantly baking in the sun. Then once one has pioneered these technologies for optimizing climates in warm areas of the world, there are huge markets and populations that could from these advances -- especially if there is a future trend to global warming.

The Problem with "Liberals," "Progressives," and Other Enlightened People

The greatest crime in this day and age, are those who presume to speak for everyone else -- as demagogues and tyrants have always done.

MLK Day makes YOU feel uncomfortable -- but not those NOT demagoguing the war between the rich and the poor, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, black and white, incessantly and relentlessly, while claiming just to be an innocent observer and being the "devil's advocate," which surely you are. That's why those prejudices and hatreds are kept alive and given fresh fuel daily -- instead of simply living the new greater consciousness without first insisting we relive the past.

If you are sincere about solving these problems, then you have to see the world wholly -- without those preconceived notions that there must be these problems -- and that way, is the only way to see things, which is the problem. You create the problem so that you can be the "genius" who solves it. And that is what most of the old mainstream editorialists do, as well as many other so-called, self-proclaimed do-gooders.

But the essential problem, is projecting your own biases, prejudices, hatreds, ambitions, and limited understanding, on everybody else, who are not that way at all. And that is what you, and many like you who reflect this mentality ought to consider -- that everyone else is not as prejudiced and limited in their thinking as you presume them to be -- and that is the creation of a better world of understanding -- and not creating the divide in the first place, between the rich and poor, black and white, regressive and progressive.

If you replace "I" everywhere you use "we," you will see the real person YOU are -- but project everybody but YOU to be.

You can never rid the biases and prejudices in somebody else; you can only rid the biases and prejudices by seeing and owning them yourself -- instead of projecting them onto others and beating that (d)evil, which is really the great problem in this world.

It's Not Perfect, But It is A Good Beginning

Of course the strong unions, lobbyists, more ruthless don't want across the board cuts: they want to eliminate the weak to their increased benefit, and that is why the money that should go to education goes to educators and bureaucrats, and not the students -- because after paying their salaries and benefits as a priority, there is no money left, to actually hold classes.

It's the same with all the other pretexts for creating high paying permanent jobs for all their relatives.

Professors who can't get jobs at Harvard, teach at the University of Hawaii, so why are they demanding to get paid as much as their "peers" at Harvard?

Education should be done very differently -- for almost no cost and manpower, just as most adults continue to learn now -- because there is information and other educated and informed people everywhere -- and not that education is about going through kindergarten, first grade, etc., to provide job security for those who are already obsolete, and need to do what NEEDS doing.

When a society starts handing out guaranteed lifetime jobs to their own relatives, that is a sign that a "democratic" society is on its way out -- and a revolution and reshuffling of the pecking order is needed and imminent. That's not coincidentally the way it was before the American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions -- which were caused by these permanent inequalities that made many more increasingly desperate, and open to new ideas of a leveled playing field once again. That doesn't happen in a society determined by seniority, privilege, rank, the status quo -- while eschewing merit, effort, productivity, initiative, individual responsibility. Obviously, we're getting closer to that tipping point as long as the economy does not resume its prosperity in short order.

Injustices are tolerable as long as they are regarded as temporary -- but when they persist too long as a permanent state of inequality, then the dynamics and rationale change. When all the money in a society is permanently going to a self-designated few, less is available to everyone else -- obviously. There doesn't seem to be any hint of a turnaround in this consolidation of wealth and prosperity in the public employee unions only -- while the masses are encouraged to suffer just a little more to sustain their regular expected raises.

The thoughtful and thinking people are the first to recognize those injustices and if they cannot change them and think there is no hope for doing so in the immediate future, move to greater prospects, which is why people immigrate to the United States in the first place. But some states are more equal than others.