Back to the Good (Bad) Ol' Days

People forget very quickly, that the reason they voted Linda Lingle to the office of governor of Hawaii, was that the Democrats did nothing when they were in full control -- and now they are back in full control. Sometimes, the people get the government they ask for and deserve -- which is that their goverrnment workers do nothing, while receiving maximum compensations for doing so. (Do we expect them to work for free?)

But then, nothing ever gets done -- and the problems and difficulties pile up again, until finally, the voters turn to the alternative -- out of sheer desperation and exasperation. But how soon they forget -- suffering as they are, from short-term "newspaper memory" -- which is that anything you read is true, until the next day's edition, and then anything that was said before, never happened.

So those who can remember beyond that each day, play an invaluable part in a sustainable society, because they can recall clearly, what happened yesterday, and the day before -- and can see that pattern of today's arbitrariness, and purchase of today's reality. This is what is called, "cultural memory," or history, which is not something that is rewritten daily, by whomever pays the bill today -- which is the buying of the news, or the truth, and that is the only truth they know.

Unfortunately, that is not the only truth they have to live with -- that will haunt them all their days, and is clearly visible in the bloated masks their faces have become -- that is the distinctive "look" of the people of a culture -- for those of any other, and especially to those, trained to notice such things, as the true indicator of the health of individuals and societies, let alone their relationships to one another.

Even more easily forgotten, is that Hawaii's most recent deep malaise, was not definitively overcome until the response President George W. Bush to put an end to the arbitrariness and cruelty of terrorist attacks that thought that they were protected because they represented no official country. The resulting security, caused a return to success and prosperity that nothing in their education and socialization prepared them for -- except to undermine it, so they could be successful coming from the bottom again, knowing how they did it the last time.

But the last time is not the present time -- and so solving the problem of the past, is not likely to solve the problem of the present -- as many who think history and experience merely repeat themselves, think. That is not an understanding of cause and effect but merely, a new conditioned (compulsive) behavior, having very little to do with the present situation -- and so merely doing the same thing over again, produces no satisfactory result (response).

And that was the situation Hawaii was at when I returned in 1998 -- and the rest of the country went on to boom, while Hawaii prided itself that it did not.