"My friends think just because we live in Hawaii, we live in paradise. ... Are they insane?"
Those lines, as spoken by actor nonpareil George Clooney, helped my fellow Nebraskan Alexander Payne collect another Oscar this year, for the screenplay of his film "The Descendants."
Clooney's character, Matt King, goes on to list the everyday ills that beset Hawaii, which, he tells us, are much the same as those afflicting people on the mainland: cancer, infidelity, homelessness and the rest. That is doubtless true. But, oddly for a shrewd lawyer and landowner who has lived his whole life in the ambrosial isles, he fails to mention that Hawaii is crumbling under the blows of cultural and environmental devastation.
Don't worry: this is not a late-breaking film review. I liked the movie, and I have no quarrel with its focus on family conflict. But all the same, having just returned from Hawaii, I'm here to tell you that it's shocking to see how how science and religion are playing out in "paradise."
The science is simple: climate change and development are killing the islands by inches. Warming, acidifying seas are bleaching the coral. Ever-stronger storms and foolishly placed seawalls are eating the beaches. More than two-thirds of Kauai's beaches are under threat. On Oahu, a quarter of them, gone. Near my brother's home in Kailua lies one of the most beautiful stretches of beach on Earth, but in the five years since I last visited him, half of it has sunk beneath the waves.
Ah well, you may sigh with a Gallic shrug, beaches are for the pampered bourgeoisie. But there's more: Rising seas are swallowing low-lying islands. Untrammeled development and invasive species have made Hawaii the epicenter of the world's unfolding ecological disaster. Only two of every 10,000 acres of American soil lies in Hawaii, yet one-third of all our endangered species struggle for survival there.
You might think that if the very land under your feet were threatened with catastrophe, rescuing it would be your most urgent concern. And so it is, for some Hawaiians. In 2007, a state-commissioned panel released a high-minded plan for sustainability. Some nods to self-preservation have since been nodded: free charging stations for electric vehicles, for example, along with a few wind turbines, are now emplaced. But the fact remains that the vast majority of Hawaii's electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, so the gesture is, well, a gesture.
Where does religion enter in? At the very heart of the matter. Traditional polytheistic, animist Hawaiian religion had everything to do with sustaining life on the slender arc of land that was home to the kānaka maoli, or Hawaiian people. Of course, like all religions, it was multidimensional and more, but there can be no gainsaying that it conferred on the chief a responsibility to negotiate favorable terms with the forces of nature so as to assure prosperity of his people. In return, the chief got to live in comparative luxury. Unlike the pope or president of the Latter Day Saints, however, he was liable to be overthrown if the forces of nature did not cooperate. It was faith with accountability.
Then, the missionaries showed up. As Mark Twain wryly observed, these sanctimonious busybodies labored hard to make the Hawaiian people "permanently miserable" by stamping out their religious culture, traditions and beliefs, and by "telling them how beautiful and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there."
Since then, Christianity has crushed the remnants of polytheism. Those who have the deepest roots in Hawaii have succumbed to the missionaries in far greater numbers than the newcomers. All over Oahu, I saw "HE>i" bumper stickers on old pickups. (Decoded, it reads, "He is greater than I.") On the Big Island, a native street preacher on a corner in Hilo hollered and shook his Bible at passers by. To find native Hawaiian religion (safely tucked away in the arms of history), you have to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center -- owned and operated by the Mormon church.
What native Hawaiians have traded in for is a religion that, though it varies in its particulars from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon, unites in its focus on the hereafter. Who cares if this world goes to hell, so long as you go to heaven?
In fairness, I must add that the churches to which native Hawaiians today belong aren't entirely indifferent to this world. But for the past two decades right up to the present day, their number one earthly priority is to fight gay marriage.
It's a losing effort in the wrong fight. For if old-time religion continues to share a political bed with the Denier Industry, future Hawaiian beach weddings will have to be conducted underwater. That'll confound the Holy Controllers: Who can tell the sexes of a couple dressed in wet suits?
Follow Clay Farris Naff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/claynaff
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However, I am ready for our culture to move past any and all religious ideology, and embrace what science has to offer the islands. It's time to get past foolish superstitions that limit us.
I've always had a huge bone to pick with these "missionaries". What they perpetrated on our own Native Americans, for instance makes my blood boil.
Their bigoted "Christian Values" gay agenda has fomented into the "kill the gays" bill in Uganda, for instance.The RCC has encouraged the spread of AIDS in Africa, because of their lies about condoms and birth control. When Haiti suffered that horrendous earthquake, they sent BIBLES. Some of them tried to repeat what they did to our own Native Americans, by trying to kidnap Haitian children so they could harvest more converts with indocrination.
Any wonder why I'm not a fan of the missionaries? If you still wonder, see here:
http://wp.me/p1FCGk-8X
One example: how tough was it to know that running your energy system on Indonesian oil was a short term solution? Why was there no outcry? Ultimately, because too many Islanders don't have 'skin in the game'. They've become renters in the Islands they once thought of as home.
Life will find a way, whether it's polar/grizzly hybrids in the north, or peregrinating coral colonies in the sea. Once man and all his life-killing creations are out of the picture, equilibrium will be restored.
The dinosaurs had this planet for millions of years, and they didn't screw it up. We've only just hit our stride as planet destroyers. We've only been around in this form for a few thousand years, and we're closing in on our second big die-off, one of our own making. Wheee! Buckle up, children!
It's gonna be an E-Ticket ride for the next generations. Protip: don't put old, fat, rich white guys in charge.
Wait, this does not sound like a happy ending to the tale.
Kamehameha fixed it up, stopping the priestly murder and abuse of his people. Later it turns out
the especially charm- and humor-less missionaries that showed up in Hawaii put some of it back in place.
Further proof that superstitious nonsense damages lives.
Wasn't till the greedy, humorless Great White Fathers arrived that it all started going downhill.
So if you need someone to blame, you will need to look elsewhere. It has now been many years since I last visited the islands, so your report weighs heavily. Continue to tell your story, but please find some other devil than the missionaries.
While I would not impute bad motives to all missionaries, there can be no comparison of the early Christians, who were virtually powerless in society, and missionaries who accompanied the colonial powers of the West. They were, on the whole, arrogant, smug, and utterly contemptuous of the "primitive" cultures they encountered.
Are things different today? I would say yes *and* no. But that's another story.
Regards,
Clay
I am aware of and admire Diamond's work in COLLAPSE. Still I see no need to romanticize primitive cultures, unless one has an axe to grind.
I was also surprised when talking to people involved in a survey of these coastal areas that neither group of pollutants, human waste nor Ag chemicals on their own had the same destructive consequences but when combined, destroyed the coral areas.
This human activity added to the general climate change and warming of the oceans has put world wide coral reef systems in grave peril. No coral = no fish = no fish eaters. It is not just polar bears and seals that are in trouble, it's us!
For the record, though there is controversy over whether Stalin was an "atheist" throughout his life, the truth of the matter is that being an atheist had (or has) anything to do with being a evil individual and he didn't do any of his horrible deeds in the name of atheism.
Stop with the straw man comments, they make you look uneducated.
Hawaii has it real bad- and the main money play thing is land and militarism.
I would like to go on record and say I disagree.
Flip side of what the missionaries accomplished.
Let's be honest here, a little more specific even, the ecology of Hawaii was doomed when Homo Sapiens stepped off the boat.
What did they accomplish? Pretty much destroying a culture.
I guess that was what they set out to do.