Growing Up In Hawaii

Many people who have grown up in Hawaii and gotten to know that environment and reality as the only one they've ever known, literally discover whole new worlds of possibilities and realities when they do leave the Islands and experience life elsewhere -- usually on the US mainland, and are shocked to learn that the cost and quality of life can be twice if not four times better -- which is to say that a $500 apartment outside of the major big cities, would be a $2,000 apartment in Hawaii, and everything else maintains that multiple, so that low-cost quality products widely available for reasonable expense elsewhere, are the commonplace of American life -- but not in Hawaii.

That is the cost for living in the most isolated place in the world -- for a major population center. That is the reality of that existence, and not that they are "entitled" to pay the same prices as those living in mid-America, while also receiving the pay and compensation of the most competitive labor markets they find in other lists.

Isolation from those realities, deludes people into thinking they have a right to choose whatever fantasy scenario they want to convince themselves they are entitled to, because they are "out of touch" in that way, and thus can make up whatever composite reality they want to compare their present situation to -- as how things "ought to be." But in the meantime, the only things they can afford are "free," and so there is great demand to make government make everything free in this way for them -- because they cannot afford to buy anything on the free and open market.

Undoubtedly, the sky, sea, mountains, fresh air and warm temperatures are free -- but for everything else, one will have to pay very dearly for, and the selection and availability are cost prohibitive locally. That is the great equalizer -- but also what limits the divergence from the average and mediocre. That is the unique culture of Hawaii, that might also be its great curse, and limiting factor, and why those who far exceed the normal, have to eventually leave the Islands for environments that reward greater divergence from the average.

In his seminal thoughts on civilization and society, Plato recommended in his Republic, that while a democracy was not the ideal, it was a breeding ground that would allow the possibility of excellence to emerge -- but that excellence could not transcend or change the possibility of rule by the mass and mob -- over the best and the brightest.

Rather than that conformity being enforced by brute force, it is more likely to be enforced even more effectively and absolutely, with a cultural demand for conformity that is enforced at every level by the union enforcers at every level of opportunity for doing so -- beginning with the public school teachers, on up to the political parties and the media, which is not surprisingly, union and "Democratic" codependents and operatives almost exclusively -- while vehemently maintaining their "objectivity" as (journalism) "professionals" -- as though that was all that is necessary to make it so.

At that point, it becomes very difficult for one growing up and living in Hawaii, to escape the force and weight of that thought and culture towards unquestioning conformity to the one political/social correctness that becomes an inertia against change and divergence. What is, becomes what will be -- in a hopeless spiral of despair, because that is the union message by which they hope to lift themselves above the masses -- while claiming to be the downtrodden masses themselves.

Such a form of government and social organization, is actually an oligarchy, or oligopoly -- or rule for a privileged few, calling themselves "Democrats" or the "people" -- while thinking they alone are "entitled." What they think the rest of the population is entitled to is not their problem -- as long as they get theirs first.

And that is now all they care about.

The Genius of Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin is smarter than all the mainstream media combined.

Most of the mainstream media thinks inside the box, trying to categorize everrybody into left and right, liberal or conservative -- instead of creating the new ideas and life of the future -- outside of the box!

But that's all the old media minds are capable of -- pigeonholing and stereotyping everybody into the old categories -- so that they don't have to think beyond that, where really all the action is.

That's why the mainstream (mass) media has become increasingly irrelevant -- and are now the rearguard of thinking and developments in the world, rather than the shapers of the dialogue. They simply exploit the old prejudices and antagonisms.

They still think it is enough just to set the public up for the controversy and argument and then retire to see the rest of the people bludgeon each other to death -- as proof that they still have the power to control the mass thinking, and thus that is their value in the marketplace.

But the leading edge thinkers have moved beyond that waste of time -- perverse entertainment for the terminally bored, and useless diversions that suck up all the existing energies that prevent bold ideas from obtaining the energies and resources it needs to morph into a greater reality.

Sarah Palin's withdrawal from the mass media's game in which nobody can win but the mass media (in that perverse way), and breaking free from that control of the mass (mainstream) media minds, is the genius foretold in the writings of Ayn Rand in "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," in which the most productive and brilliant minds of the time ask, "Why should we be subject to the abuse and control of the mediocre (mass) minds trying to impose their limited understanding and view of the world, as all that has ever been, and ever will be possible?"

So the genius of Sarah Palin's "revolt" is moving beyond the media's singular preoccupation of dividing society into the left or right, liberal and conservative, and consuming all society's energies and resources in these unproductive activities -- so that we can move beyond into the world of greater possibilities that haven't been imagined and articulated before, and certainly won't be in the writings and pronouncements of the mass media pandering for an audience in their traditional and conventional dysfunctional ways -- of creating the divisions, arguments and hostilities.

That is the genius of Sarah Palin: she is an authentic person in the mass media world of artifice and contrivance -- and why they hate her so and have to reflexively destroy her. She's real, and it makes it obvious that they are not. And she refuses to play THEIR game.

The Most Expensive Price of All: Something for Nothing

The greatest economic lesson taught in the schools in Hawaii, is the desirability of getting something for nothing -- as in getting paid to do some work, and then once paid, the workers go home or goof, demanding more for them to actually do any work -- since why should they after they've gotten paid?

And nobody can fire them -- because nobody else is allowed to do that work, by their friends the lawmakers. And so of course, the price for everything, is exorbitantly high -- and there are no alternatives, no choices other than what the ruling party provides them -- or not, once they've already collected the money.

The lawmakers and public workers pride themselves on their ability to get something for nothing -- and so that defines the standard of value and exchange in the Island culture -- everybody hoping to get something for nothing, over the other guy, who they are convinced has unlimited money, and should as a public service, have as much of it taken away from them as possible.

The other guy is somebody nobody anyone has actually seen or met -- because they live in magnificent castles on the other side of town where they hire people who haven't learned to fight back -- and undermine the efforts of the "greedy" and "ambitious people." These people always seem to want to do something -- to change and improve things, rather than let the other guy do everything. Such people, they have concluded and been taught, don't know how it is done around here -- that no honest, self-respecting person would be caught dead doing anything -- because if they did, how could they create more high-paying jobs to do it? And so the work must NOT get done.

Such is life in paradise.