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.