Moving Out of the Vog (Fog)

The distinguishing feature of life in America, has been its mobility, and the story of how people willing to move elsewhere to better conditions, have been richly rewarded for doing so -- rather than simply resigning themselves to a fate their ancestors lived before them that those feel is their unescapable destiny.

Those are my first impressions upon reading the story about how the fumes from the volcano on the Big Island, have made life increasingly unbearable for those who remain there thinking the forces of nature will relent -- rather than their having to move.

And as miserable as life has been on some days, "there is no conclusive scientific evidence that it does longlasting harm," when all that life has become is smelling, tasting, eating, touching, thinking the fumes and dust from the volcano -- is the only life they have known and think possible for themselves.

While it is kind of sad that a few think nothing else is possible or even permissible, that is not untypical of the personalities and culture in the Islands that make it possible for the mass majority not to see their impending doom -- even with all the warning signs that they should consider all (any) alternatives than resigning themselves to their unpleasant lives, even while calling it "paradise."

The facts just don't bear out the conclusions. If it smells like hell, looks like hell, tastes like hell, you have to get the hell out of there -- and move to a place with air that smells good and healthful, because life has become untenable there.

The same can be said for the onerous high cost of living in the state now -- that ensures a life of deprivation for all but the wealthiest who have gotten it from somewhere else, since the possibilities of generating such wealth locally, are well nigh impossible, unless one of a rare exception of self-made success. While such things are possible under all conditions, some places are more favorable to those outcomes -- and that is what one should be determining as a place to relocate, and then further enhancing as the successful adaptation of their unique lives.

Those are the realities most people are moving into now, everywhere else. It is foremost, a state of mind, and not the state determined for everybody else -- by a chosen few who know better for everyone else. That is one vision of "paradise" -- that it is created by The One, for everybody else.

That is the mentality seen so often in the pages of the newspaper in which person after person demands that all the rest of society, must change to suit them -- rather than that they should waste any of their own precious lives, adapting to the world as it is -- or finding and living in a better one. No, their vision of paradise, is that everyone has to change to suit them -- or everybody else has to live their lives in the same way to suit them, and nothing else, should be possible or permissible.

What if everybody thought their lives could be better? Wouldn't that be disastrous for society (the social order)?