Place ~ Subtext, Underculture, and Sense of Entitlement

A Place
Hawaii Island estate at Puako 

This morning, my daughter Alexandra posted a question: What makes a place a Place? My answer to her was pretty easy, it being between two people who are not only mother and daughter, but most likely united in the ultimate Tribe that spans lifetimes:


Every place has the potential to become a Place, every hot and dreary stretch of earthly desert. What it takes is being cared about with deep purpose.

A Place
You might recognize it as columns in an iconic Waikiki hotel

One of the most valuable of life lessons for me
as to place is what I will call the underculture of livability.  Much is made of the cost of living and the proximity of standard western cultural amenities when evaluating the livability of a place. These tend to be how many museums there are, how many cinemas, whether there is live theater, how many restaurants and of what quality, what the educational level is of the standard demographic. That kind of thing. And at the same time, we are in an age where all of sudden, we as the western world seem to be waking up to the fact that everyone is in fact not of the same mind as we are.  For many people in the world, livability is about other things. Here in Hawai'i, it is about the ocean and the people, and the land being born. It is about being the piko, that place where the earth is connected to the heavens, where we as people watch the universe beyond our planet, from Mauna Kea. Here on our island, a culture has been reborn, complete with music, dance, language, art, celestial navigation. We who live here have our feet in two worlds, one being the past/present, the other the present/future.  At our very best, we embody that coexistence longed for in the world at large. Our feet are on the newest ground on the planet earth, our minds connected to the worlds beyond this one.

A Place
Lifeguard station at fabled Makena on Maui

Wherever we live, there is subtext. The subtext tends to happen through our experience of the underculture. This is almost a vibrational thing, that appears here in Paradise as the rumblings of the disgruntled. We know these people. They are unhappy, nearly always because they feel some other people have taken something away from them. Sometimes they are able to get a lot of play because they identify their personal angst with past wrongs to their culture. While past wrongs are a sad and shameful thing, to address them by doing everything possible and kind to make today different is key. Most of us who choose to live here today do so with with responsibility to the land or aina, and our neighbors, and a sense of deep purpose. We honor this Place.

Which brings me to this: Believe it or not, there are selfish and greedy people who are drawn to this island today. The land has been taken already, so they cannot practice the big land grab to become wealthy. They are stuck with doing what they can in a more personal predatory way. They behave very similarly to one another. They offer up their services or their commodities and wait for people to come. They ensnare the people who trust them with promises on various levels and then they perform abysmally. In the end, they will come back on their patrons and demand thousands of dollars in reparations. They will practice all levels of deceit in order to prevail. Now this is something that I never encountered in California, but have several times here. It is the single largest detractor from livability on this island paradise.

A Place
Mauna Kea Observatories 

Here we are in a time where reviews are everywhere. If you interact with people, chances are there is a review page for you. On there, many who cross your path will write whatever they see fit, and you are stuck with it. Your only hope is that overall you are perceived as excellent. One of the marks of the predatory business type person is they have no social media presence whereby their performance can be judged. They are not found on Yelp. They are under the radar.

If you do find them with social media connections, what you will see is more likely to be a Go Fund Me page or a multi level marketing scam than anything having to do with them personally. If they have a business page, it will differ from the service in which they want to engage you. They may have a cause, something that on the surface may seem altruistic, but scratch the surface and you will see it is monetized, and the money is flowing to them, not to their cause.

When you first meet these people, they almost cannot open their mouths without explaining to you how very special they are, or their place is. You will find they are giving you an impression that they are the only show in town.

These are those whose sense of entitlement is their guide. We are accustomed to seeing it with the wealthy and privileged, but it exists right there with the middle class too.

These are the traits of selfish, entitled people. If you can spot them before you engage fully, you will save yourself grief:

They are quick to turn to conversation from the reason you have contacted them onto themselves. At first this may seem natural, as of course you want to know all about what they have to offer. However, they will pepper their discourse with why they are so special.

When you ask for references, they will resist. They will probably tell you this is the first time they have offered this service, or venue, or commodity. You are their first customer. But if you pry, you will discover they have had many business dealings, and if they insist on protecting the identities of their customers, run away! They are hiding from you the very truth you need to know.

If you engage them in discussion about their competition, they will be quick to tell you they do not really have competition. Whatever they are offering you is so special you must take them up on their offer or you will regret it.

And most obvious perhaps will be the double standard they force adherence to - you must follow their rules, and there is no quid pro quo. They will disrespect you by not keeping appointments and not even telling you they will not show up. They will make empty promises.

I have written this in an effort to come to terms with this juxtaposition of the culture of entitlement planted like an invasive species here in this amazing place, this Hawai'i. It most likely exists everywhere, and it is so prominent in my experience on this island because we are such a small place with such distinct boundaries.

We each and every one of us have flaws. My beautiful friend Kristin has shown me that if we practice gratitude and compassion, that goes a long way toward mitigating our personal lacks. As does the practice of forgiveness. Here in Hawai'i, that is called ho'oponono. We each and all bring to the table a willingness to accept one another, and to let go those attitudes that bring us unhappiness. It must be mutual. Those who practice the ethic of entitlement have no interest in forgiveness. They are wary of the concept. They will claim they have been so thoroughly wronged that forgiveness is not an option. Perhaps at the farthest extremes of the spectrum of human experience, we can understand this attitude, but for the exigencies of everyday life, it is simply one of the faces of selfishness.

Thank you for taking the time to read these thoughts. It has been cathartic to write this out, and perhaps it may be of value to others to help avoid the disappointment and expense of becoming entangled with people driven primarily by their sense of entitlement.

The last image I will share is of my most personal sense of this place, my Hawai'i, my home, my Place.

Aloha oe'

orchids in the rainforest atop Kilauea
the place where the earth is being born

all images have been romanticized through the magic of digital manipulation
the first four more so than the final one

The Dream, the Dragons, and Necessity

We each have persistent themes in our lives. Why that is may have something to do with what the search of our soul for whatever it is the soul needs. Sometimes I think that once those particular needs are satisfied, the reason for the life of the body is over, and maybe after that you get a vacation from needs, a sort of retirement from those necessities.

I came to a tropical island seeking that solace before my time, and that is either another story, or part of the story at hand. There be dragons here, so clearly it is a part of this story.

Here is a short backstory on what has proven to be one of the most persistent themes in my life. I had graduated from the university, and times being as they were, finding a job that made any use of my degree proved so very difficult where I lived, in the Bay Area, that I "gave up" and took any old job. I felt defeated, but at least I would be able to pay the rent and buy groceries. What I did is not important - what mattered is that it made no use of my education. What also mattered is that in no way did I consider that this was the end of my career path, or that school had been a waste. The waste was the nothing job, better however than nothing at all.

At the time I lived in a house with four other people. There was Michael, already a published author, Bryan, a jewelry craftsman who worked with cabochons and silver in a casting shop, Boingo, who turned out to be a serial rapist, but no one knew until the police came for him, and Chaya. Chaya was my true friend in the house, and Bryan was her boyfriend. Chaya crocheted. She crocheted all day long, and smoked. She smoked a Marlboro cigaret every fifteen minutes. She drank water. She used chapstick on her lips as often as she smoked.

Chaya's crochet work was marvelous. She was in my world the ultimate Bohemian artist. She created for herself alone, wearable art, that she draped upon her stylish boy-like frame when we walked about in town. Bryan had his own room, as each of us did, and did the cooking for the two of them, except when Chaya made stuffed cabbage leaves. Chaya did not drive anywhere because she could not drive. It seems it had never been necessary for her to learn.

The source of Chaya's income was her step father, Gregory, a Hollywood producer. Whenever her mother Barbara and Gregory came to town, they took us (Chaya and me) out to dinner. It was always someplace extra fancy, and we listened to their stories.  Sometimes I would drive Chaya to LA and they would take us out again. For reasons Chaya never disclosed to me, Bryan was never along on any of our dinner dates or LA excursions.

There were times that I asked Chaya if she did not feel humilated relying on Gregory to support her, and she shrugged. If I mentioned her reliance on Bryan, she blew up in an anger cloud and days would go by until she agreed to speak with me again.

Last night in my sleep, I was at a party and Gregory was pouring drinks. He spoke some to me about Chaya, and her lifestyle. He was now supporting Chaya's daughter as well. We drifted our separate ways, and it came to me I could learn something from Gregory, as I too had daughters who were not able to support themselves adequately, or seemingly take care of their worldly needs. I followed Gregory out to the parking lot, where he was having trouble with his very large car. He was trying to park it on a hill without using the emergency brake, and ended up parking it on its side so it would not slip down. He crawled out through the window, and then lay down on his own side. I was alarmed that he was like an elephant, and he gestured to me to take his pet dragon and look after it. The dragon was a lot like my dog, docile under the right conditions, or not, so I handled the dragon and stroked it on the side of its head and felt that love you feel for certain beings that are yours. I indicated his dragon would be well taken care of, and then I asked him what he would have done differently. Gregory looked at me in surprise, and raised his eyebrows. "It is not a matter of what you would have done differently. We all do what we do, and the important thing is to find peace with your decisions. Do what you can do. Know that you did what you could."

In many ways, Chaya was very much like my mother. I determined not to be reliant upon others, and yet, my dearest friends have often been women who were taken care of through the largess and love of those around them. The dragon is the child who grows up to be the adult who demands that others feed it. Gregory and I are of course more alike than not. We followed our dreams and were either snagged or willingly entangled in the needs of those whose dreams had everything to do with taking from others, convinced that others had what was rightfully theirs. Gregory gave willingly and joyfully, never considering himself to be anything more or less than the comfy cushion of no needs that could not be met, when it came to money.

From a socially conscious point of view, there is a tangle here of needs and excess that my subconscious mind is seeking to address. When we love our dragons and vow to take care of them, our dragons are peaceable. Otherwise… those dragons are forces we cannot control. And those dragons sometimes demand far more than we are willing to give. Chaya never reached that point with Gregory - he was a bottomless well, and she was not greedy. But what do you do when the dragons demand a mountain? What do you do when you remember you are also a dragon, and the wealth is increasingly concentrated with only a handful of people, and they are nothing like Gregory?

Between Authenticity and Identity

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you." 

 - Margery Williams The Velveteen Rabbit

As an apparently utterly caucasion child growing up right next door to a cosmopolitan metropolitan city, I used to mourn my lack of color. In those early years I longed for something larger than myself to belong to, a group of people easily distinguishable from the rest of us, and possessed of a heritage of dance and costumery. I felt fate had consigned me to the heap of the least interesting people on the planet. 

And yet, because I was lucky enough to grow up in the time and place I did, with parents who were educators both by profession and by having absorbed that role as self, I had the great good fortune to complete my undergraduate education at one of the finest universities on earth.  While there, the world opened to me. I could study literally any discipline, drill down to the core of existence if I so chose. And I chose philosophy, social science, psychology; what makes us the way we are, how we interact, why we do the things we do. 

And all that time, I continued to search for who I was. Why was I here? Where did I fit in? Did I have any talents at all to offer up to the world, that justified my existence? I participated in the political world around me. It was rich. By the political world, I refer to the movements of all sorts growing like weeds in the grass. There was the new wave of Christianity surging forth as surely as the daisy chain wearing flower children with their peace signs. There was the anti - war movement. there was People's Park, the taking back of land owned by the university for the use of street people who had come to our university town because it was in some ways the center of action seeking equal rights for all, amongst other things. 

Time swept me along on its inevitable tide, and as I grew into my skin, and my focus became more allocentric, I became my own true self. It was a thing that happened to me. 

Now, I am living in the midst of a culture seeking identity. Hawaii, look at yourself. Kanaka maoli, look around you. We are a diverse people. We bring the richness of many cultures together. When I came to this island, I fell into a culture steeped in aloha. The fact that my skin is light and freckled, my build medium light and my hair thin and yellowish did not seem to matter to anyone. Although I wasn't concerned as I once had been about such things, it was so fine to feel so welcome. The spirit of aloha included me in everything I chose to pursue, whether hula and lauhala weaving or body surfing and snorkeling. There were people everywhere who welcomed me, and they were all my people, whether we looked something alike or not. And the culture! We have hula kahiko in the park, Sondheim and Rogers and Hammerstein in the theater, Cyril Pahinui and Amy Hanaiali'i, Jeff Peterson and jazz at the Blue Dragon, living history at Imiloa and traveling the globe via Hokulea and the voyagers.  This diversity is the authenticity of Hawaii. It is undeniable. It is time to honor who we inarguably are - a mixed people at the frontier of discovery beyond just ourselves. 

Hawaii has become what it is today through what has happened here, on this land. Hawaii has been chosen for certain roles in the world by outsiders. Truly Hawaii, everyone came to you from somewhere else. For yourself, you have chosen being a host to people passing through as your main enterprise. Astronomers seeking the best location for viewing what happens outside our own world have chosen Mauna Kea. What has happened to Hawaii is an identity has formed as home to an array of observatories whose role is critical in a community that spans the globe and includes universities and countries who have chosen to participate. Astronomy is about the elusive concept we call world peace. By its nature it is about cooperation and equality. 

Why the Mickey Mouse ears, then? We choose our personal expression based upon our unique sense of what matters. For some, the happiest place on earth is represented by a mouse with round ears. For others, maybe a hammock on a tropical beach at sunset comes closer…  For some, there is a fervent desire to bring back one's ancestral home, as a vibrant living identity in the present world.  Meantime, the diversity represented by Hawaii is an expression of the evolution of humanity, and that combined culture is most manifestly expressed in this island's contribution to space science. With the evolution of that science here on this island, children growing up here will have the same amazing opportunities I had in a privileged enclave when a first rate university education did not cause a life long monetary debt. We are lucky beyond imagining to have such an opportunity at hand on our tiny island.

The identity of Hawaii is expressed in the diversity of those peoples who make it home. Hawaii's spirit of aloha has caused it to rise up as a place where people from everywhere feel the love of inclusivity, the human warmth that expresses itself like the tropical breezes that bring our scented air in welcome to all who step onto our land.  

There is no need to declare that the voice of Hawaiian authenticity objects to the expression of space science on Mauna Kea.  Yes, if your true authentic self seeks identity in a culture of Hawaiian sovereignty, put your energies there. But do not deny those who share this island their rootedness and cultural and yes, scientific expressions of belonging to this place. The true authentic warrior does not need to identify an enemy, an other, but emerges as a powerful manifestion of truth of being. We all belong to this place, and this place, to us.