The Urgency of these Times

The homeless (hopeless) situation in Hawaii is the urgent challenge of the times in Hawaii -- which is just being ignored and denied, hoping the problem will solve itself or just go away.

That is the problem resolution skills taught in the culture (schools) of Hawaii to only solve the problems of one hundred or a thousand years ago -- hoping that history will finally repeat itself and they'll know what to do, because the education is not preparing to meet the challenges of the present.

That is a totally useless education -- designed for the 19th century, when very few people were educated and informed -- which was also the great opportunity for the newspapers and book publishers of that time, who are now failing to respond to the present, and only hoping their glorious past will return, and they can once again become influential and important people.

Instead, all the money is tied up in those obsolete jobs of which the federal employee being paid over $100,000 to do what doesn't need doing, is just the most obvious example -- of which somebody (probably his lawyer or publicist) is trying to sell as his great "public service" -- like all the teachers teaching an education that is failing their students.

All that money is reserved for solving problems that should have been solved one hundred years ago -- but is just perpetuated, so there is no money available to solve actual problems of these times, and they don't want to learn anything else, because frankly, their education doesn't allow them to either.

Because obviously, the function of government is to solve the great problems of the present -- whether that be terrorism, an environmental catastrophe, homelessness, and joblessness, and the greater lack of meaning and purpose of what is worthwhile and what is just going through the motions and getting paid for a sham.

People don't know what to do except what has always been done before -- even though the world has changed so drastically as to pose a whole new set of problems that now need to be solved -- and not just perpetuating the old institutions, as they lobby for even more funds. The present reality is that many children come to school now with the education a person took a long time to acquire previously -- because they didn't have those resources of all the information, and to all the knowledgeable people in the world, as they do as a fact of growing up in these times. Not being informed, is almost an impossibility -- and one has to learn new things daily, and not just for 12 or 20 years, and then need not learn anything more but can then just teach for the rest of their lives -- and lobby for more as their primary function.

The future under those circumstances is indeed bleak -- because you need to free up all those government workers doing what no longer needs doing, to do that which is urgently needed to be done NOW -- which is best said in a previous letter to the editor in the Honolulu newspaper a few days ago (June 5, 2010) by one of the most perceptive minds in the Islands among the many who are ignored in favor of the mass media manipulators who convince people that the reality is the opposite of what you are actually experiencing.

Roxy Berlin:
"It would be reasonable to establish a temporary tent city for Hawaiians on some Hawaiian Homelands property, where people could live within the law, develop a community, share cultural values and have a center for education and social services."

Present day Hawaii is not unlike Iraq and Afghanistan -- which has to rebuild their entire countries from scratch, into the modern world, and not simply build more elaborate palaces and monuments to commemorate their great traditions of the past, which they vainly hope will return them to the heights of glory and civilization.

Bullying Is Not Leadership

One of the unfortunate consequences of growing up in the Islands, is the conditioning (education) imposed that bullying and intimidation makes anything right, or might makes right, and the majority rules, no matter -- and if you can push the other guys off the Pali, that makes you king, and worthy of doing whatever you like to everybody else -- just like the wild animal programs also justify.

Most people come to think therefore, that simply voting on the "rightness," actually makes things right, regardless of whatever consequences may otherwise occur. There is nothing higher than popular (public) opinion, and who controls that thinking, rules. That's what they call "Democracy," that once you vote, you give up all further rights on the matter. And so they are very eager to force a vote as soon as possible, and have the matter done with -- so they can do whatever they want to do.

But first, the people must be silence by allowing them to vote, because once they vote, they lose interest and think they have no further right to say anything. But the fact of the matter is that one doesn't relinquish their right to hold on to their own thinking -- despite what the majority has voted. That's what individual rights are -- the right to be an individual, and to hold onto what one believes to be true.

The importance of this is that many things thought at one time to be true and inviolable, turn out not to be on closer examination and the test of time. That's how truth evolves, and doesn't stay the same forever, but becomes a better truth. People in time, become more free, as well as healthier, and so they live better, longer lives. It is because they live better, that they live longer -- rather than vice-versa. One wants to live a better life longer, but doesn't care about living a worse life, longer. In Hawaii, that often means living the same day over and over again, without improvement -- thinking any change is for the worse.

People growing up outside of Hawaii, don't appreciate this mindset that is the culture of Hawaii -- but is understood by everyone growing up there, as unmistakably and indelibly true. They just don't want to talk about it, or can only talk about it in a joking manner, and never allowing themselves to take such talk seriously, about changing anything. That would be taboo -- the unthinkable. No, the old ways must be repeated in every generation henceforth. That is the unspoken, inviolable tradition of the Islands.

Why then, did Hawaii for so overwhelmingly for Obama? They knew that as a son of Hawaii, when he spoke of "Hope and change," everything would remain the same.

Why Do the Teachers Need Tenure?

In the medieval ages and feudal times, people worked at one job all their lives, and everybody stayed in their place (caste).

What is distinctive about democratic societies in the truest sense of that word and not just being enchanted by the words, "Democrat," "liberal," "progressive," but with no idea of what it means to truly have freedom and choices, is that the most successful, evolve through many jobs -- often starting from the most menial and insignificant, to being the head of an entire industry -- starting from their garage.

Most of the people who are tremendously successful in that way -- didn't learn what they know in the schools, but had to leave the schools to create the knowledge that never existed before -- and not as education professionals think, that is the only things that can be known.

And children taught by such people, never learn how to learn on their own -- but only what is "taught" to them, which is the failing of the current education system, in which the students don't learn what has not been known by everyone before -- and to go no further, because they fear the unknown -- like their teachers obsessed with their own insecurities, and therefore, wanting that permanence of never having to learn any new skills, because they don't have that skill -- which is the whole significance and meaning of a worthwhile education.

Education should have a high turnover rate of everybody going through and passing on their knowledge of what they learned in the real world, on their own, and not just what somebody else told them to accept the truth, which then becomes the limits of fearing to go beyond, and so you have no creative people but just union drones wanting permanent entitlements for not doing anything.

The most important lesson a teacher can teach is learning how to find out -- and not just given the answers by someone else, in their own education (indoctrination) classes.

To learn is the most natural instinct and function of human beings, and not that they would never do it if they were not educated to do so -- and that is why the most gifted, often come into schools and then have that passion for learning, drilled out of them -- for desiring to learn on their own. And that is what the present education system does -- for the best and the brightest, who should be teaching their classmates -- just as they'll do in the real world, if they were perverted to think that is what they must not do.

Child prodigies should teach their insight into the fields of their genius much more productively than a mediocre adult will -- and then even suppressing a child who surpasses them in that understanding, instead of recognizing and honoring it. And so there is this wastage of human talent and ability, so that a few mediocre adults have their own job security and never have to learn anything new themselves.

The good teachers don't need tenure; the poor ones do.

The good teachers have something invaluable to teach, and they will always be in demand.

That's how it works.

But if one has nothing to teach, then of course such people are vulnerable, and they are tormented by the students and so they have to be promoted to educational administrators so that they don't have to go back into the classrooms. But you don't need everyone in the system to be that way.

Life in the Post-"News" Era

With virtual information at our fingertips, is it necessary to have the "news" now -- or increasingly, what the powers that be, and hoped always to remain so, wish us to know? But first, they have to establish their credibility that what they offer is vital to know -- before supplementing those essentials, with what they merely want us to know (advertising and "public service" announcements).

Increasingly, that has come to be dominated by what the special interests were highly motivated to want us know to entice us to begin or continue patronage with them, particularly the political parties, government worker unions that lobby tirelessly for increased funding for their own benefit in the guise of doing it for everybody else but themselves, in addition to the overt promotions and marketing done by enterprises hoping to increase their traffic, interest and business.

The latter, would be the new, while the former, would be the old, reported as the "news." The familiarity story now would run along the lines that the school children are now doing poorly and falling behind (despite the traditional solution of being in school), so what is now needed, are even more people, at increasingly higher salaries -- because the present solution, is not working, but in fact failing.

Obviously, the simple solution would be to find a new solution to replace the old one, and not simply add on to the old one, and then when the new idea didn't work as well as hoped (any new idea will work as a novelty and the enthusiasm it generates), then more will be added onto what is not working well, and so of course, one is doing so much that doesn't work, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish what is working from what isn't any longer, and the whole process seems pointless and random, except for the frequency of our affirmations, that that is the most necessary practices to continue -- beyond questioning.

So when there is a disruption to those continuities, there are moments to reflect, what are essentials to that task, and what no longer needs doing -- and may actually be integrated into other functions implicitly, and so has become redundant and unnecessary.

In previous times, change and innovation was so slow (or at least our awareness of them was), that what we learned in those times, could usually be the truths that would serve us our entire lifetimes. Then the pace quickened with the newspapers, and then the news -- until finally, we have virtual information when something new is merely what we haven't personally learned about yet.

Not that it did not happen already -- but that those who bring us the latest, greatest thing happening, haven't themselves gotten around to discovering that, and reporting that as the valuable thing to know, but instead, tell us increasingly, what is unnecessary to know because they can no longer determine the useful from the useless, and have become victims of their own propaganda.

Don't Start Believing Your Own Lies

"Can't help if good journalism favors Democrats. They are the party of the people and Republicans are the party of the rich and powerful. This is no secret and nothing new, and part of what newspapers do is balance the power. Or it's what they are supposed to do."

Who are the rich and powerful in Hawaii? When you have one party virtually controlling all the government and institutions of Hawaii -- you can't say that there is a mythical "rich and powerful" other than the Democratic Party and the unions.

And that there are no rich and powerful to create jobs, opportunities and industries, is why the economy is imploding.

But at least you're admitting the bias in the news reporting that has brought about the current situation. Why do you think the news should be even more biased against the Republicans to maintain a balance of power?

It's because of this gross imbalance that there are no employers but endless lines of unemployed employees. Don't start believing your own lies.

A large part of why the newspapers are failing, not only in Hawaii, but everywhere else in the country, is because they became an extension of the Democratic Party/unions in this country, and with stagnant and shrinking revenues, you can't keep increasing the pay for the membership, without the enterprise having to drastically reduce their numbers. It's not going to compute in any other way.

And now the unions have taken over the government, in which they've already begun to price their membership out of the market -- because the newspapers had become a quasi-government institution, or least wanted everybody to think so. In their own minds, it was the job of the newspapers (journalists) to oversee the government -- as some self-proclaimed "Fourth Estate," above and beyond the other traditional three of the Church, nobility and peasantry of feudal societies.

In the modern state, those divisions start to disappear -- as well as the division between the worker and its owner; the worker has to own their own work -- and not just think they can produce a supply without a demand. That demand is always for value -- and not just what the worker unilaterally decides they will produce -- and that the people have to buy.

The most familiar of this model, is the exploding cost of education -- in which the "professionals" in this field, determine how much everybody else (the citizenry) needs -- for endless job security and compensation to themselves -- as an end in itself. That too, is unsustainable and will persist. You can't have everybody employed to teach, and nobody to ever produce any other product; that's also true of the health care industry, in which increasingly, it requires more people and resources, just to care for people who will never be productive again.

Those models are not sustainable, and have to be supplanted by new visions of society and being, which at first seem very disruptive, to those whose major function is to perpetuate that status quo. That's what institutions do, as long as they can, until it is no longer possible.

Then things must change. That is the way of the world.