Friday, August 22, 2008

For Those Contemplating Life Elsewhere

Welcome to the Big Island.

Fully 99.9% of the world lies outside of Hawaii, and so if one wants to know as much of the world as possible in one’s lifetime, they have to leave the Islands for a while to experience that — more than a week in Las Vegas, which is not really indicative of the rest of the world but is a tourist trap like Hawaii.

I think a fairly small percentage of those leaving Hawaii are attracted to the East Coast, while much of the West coast might as well be Hawaii — with all the ex-Islanders living there, but really, they’re all over now.

Pretty much WalMart, Starbucks and McDonalds has standardized life across America and the rest of the world now apparently — if the Olympics are to be believed, and so it is becoming increasingly easier to live wherever the living is best — for where one is at personally.

The troubling thing about Hawaii is that it is insular like a lot of small town communities anywhere in the world — except that in these small towns, they don’t usually insist that the rest of the world has to come around and recognize that it is the greatest place on earth — or “paradise,” if you pardon that expression.

In Hawaii, a large part of what paradise means is “fitting in” in to a rigid social (political) hierarchy (the status quo), and if one stays around long enough, they’ll eventually reach the top of seniority and be next in line to replace one of Hawaii’s two US senators — or move on elsewhere and discover what else there is to do in life.

And then there is the great equalizer known as the Internet (www.) -- which makes it possible to live anywhere and everywhere in the world now -- wherever one is. No matter where one is physically, their email address and even cell phone number need not change, and practically all communications take place over those networks now.

The new meaning of community are just those who want to "subscribe" to that community and input/output. It could be sports, politics, travel, writing, photography, Hawaii. Geography is no longer what defines anybody's personal universe, and it may even be possible to belong to every community, as a global citizen.

They're probably not ready to issue those passports yet -- but they don't have to, because those boundaries have already been transcended and obliterated -- for those living on the cutting edge of world society (consciousness) now.

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