Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Musings: Throw a Bone

Every now and then, the Planning Commission throws a small bone to we the people who care about this island — and not in terms of how much money we can make off it — to keep us from sinking into total, abject despair.

Yesterday was such a time, when the Commission voted against giving Inter-Island Helicopters a permit to land at a waterfall. It wasn’t just the denial that was significant, but the reasons as reported in The Garden Island’s coverage of the meeting: landings are noisy, offensive operations that should properly be confined to industrial-zoned areas; the impacts can’t be adequately mitigated; and the applicant’s promise to remove invasive species rang hollow.

Equally significant was the Commission’s willingness to go its own way, despite both a staff recommendation in favor and planning director Mike Dahilig personally arguing for the permit using the kind of smarmy, waffling language — “nothing is 100 percent compatible or incompatible” and “there are curves on the use that can be implemented in order to make this use compatible” — that serves to remind us he is an attorney, not a planner, regardless of his job title.

Moving on to other, related issues, someone left this comment on Monday’s post, which addressed a bill that would allow bingo on Hawaiian Homelands and how gambling has caused some culture clashes on native lands elsewhere:

Just how does one avoid being poor if all you do is subsistence farm/fish? Same old Joan, glorifying 1750 without bothering to address the reality. Nothing is stopping OHA or the Bishop hoard or any of the other Alii trusts from spending to put Hawaiians on their land except that the royalty new and old have no real interest in anything but themselves. No wonder they're Republicans.

Although the comment makes a false assertion that requires correcting — fulfilling the mandate of the Congressionally-created Hawaiian Homelands program is not the fiscal responsibility of any Hawaiian organization or trust, but the state — it caught my eye because it allows me to make a point about how we as a society define wealth and poverty.

It’s been on my mind ever since I read this in an article and ripped it out and tucked it away on my desk for future use:

The word “prosperous” meant “according to one’s wishes” long before it meant “rich” and it has long-standing associations with magic.

Using that definition, a person who is able to make his/her way in the world through the self-directed, self-sufficient means of subsistence farming and fishing is indeed far more prosperous than someone who is striving to accumulate cash and stuff in a hated/evil job, trying to beat the odds through gambling or a functioning as a pawn in that house of cards known as the stock market.

Or as I noted in a piece I wrote a while back and published as the very first post on this blog:

Prosperity isn’t even a word in the Hawaiian language, Ka`imi said. It’s an entirely Western concept, that idea of making good in a way that sets you apart from others; accumulating possessions with an eye toward achieving status; attracting money and material things to be stored up, hoarded.

But there is waiwai, she reminded him, the word used interchangeably for water and wealth, and she’d experienced it herself at Aliomanu, just recently. Walking to the beach, after a month of heavy rains, she’d noticed naupaka leaves, plumped and swollen; ironwood needles, a tender pale green; springy moss, clinging thickly to gray pohaku.

The red soil had darkened deep brown with a surfeit of wet; heliotrope seedlings had sprung boldly from the sand.

It was suddenly all so rich, so plush, so luxuriant, that drought-parched patch of east Kauai coastline, restored to vibrant life by rain alone.

That’s when she saw with her own eyes, she told him, that waiwai truly is wealth. Because everything in that moist scene was so lushly abundant, it seemed wholly ludicrous to value anything more than water.

And you can call the rain, he reminded her. You can evoke the water; you can turn the trickle into a torrent. Isn’t that prosperity?


Just a little something to bear in mind now that, as Business Week reports:

[t]he stigma against conspicuous luxury seems to be fading further, says Sherif Mityas, a partner in the retail practice at management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. For those who can afford it, "it's en vogue to spend money," he says. "They don't need to hide their luxury anymore."

Perhaps they’ll even throw a bone to the 9.4 percent of workers who have no job — and no subsistence hunting or fishing, either.

15 comments:

  1. if an environmental impact statement was produced noting the impacts to be mitigated and a economic feasibility study were presented, and the law allows it - then a denial would be abitrary.

    good for the Planning Commission.

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  2. heard the owner verbal threatened one of the opposers. bad karma

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  3. Why disparage the good work and direction of the Planning Commission by referring to their good judgement as "throwing us a bone"? Do you think this will encourge them to throw more bones to the unappreciative? We should mahalo and malama these commissioners and encourage them to continue with their independence and good judgement.

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  4. "It’s an entirely Western concept, that idea of making good in a way that sets you apart from others"

    And denial of that opportunity to the maka aina by the Hawaiian overlords was a good thing?
    How does that help an individual reach their potential.

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  5. "It’s an entirely Western concept, that idea of making good in a way that sets you apart from others"

    Somebody shoulda told that to Kamehameha I! (IOW, that's a bogus statement).

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  6. "It’s an entirely Western concept, that idea of making good in a way that sets you apart from others"

    That's why everyone in ancient Hawaii wore feathered capes, had numerous wives, houses on various islands and their fill of pork and moi.

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  7. "Prosperity isn’t even a word in the Hawaiian language, Ka`imi said."

    Ka`imi is wrong to state that the word doesn't exist in the Hawaiian language. Look it up in the dictionary, it does. In fact, there are several words in the Hawaiian language to describe prosperity and to prosper.

    prosper
    Hoʻowaiwai, lako, hoʻokūʻonoʻono. Also: pōmaikaʻi, pono, lālāwai, kūloaʻa, polohuku, pōkeokeo, koʻū.

    What is different now from then is a values system that was dependant on the health of the natural world and resources that enabled "wealth" to be enjoyed. The word waiwai - reduplicatd from wai (literally fresh water) describes literally, "an abundance of fresh water"...that enabled for healthy crops, healthy communities - pertaining to mankind and all living entities on the land AND in the sea. This ideal began to shift and change with the arrival of Westerners to Hawai`i. They brought with them a different values system that was measured with money and the acquring and controlling of the land and natural resources for the building of their personal success and wealth.

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  8. "the acquring and controlling of the land and natural resources for the building of their personal success and wealth."

    Another standard Hawaiian trait. Controlling land allowed the chiefs to control food production and resources and build armies to defend those resources and prosper!

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  9. Things white people do: romanticize indigenous people. when they think they're reaching out to something authentically non-white, what they're actually doing is conjuring up a fantasized, stereotypical, and romanticized version of something that's only supposedly non-white.

    In many cases, because this conjured-up version of another culture is so false and self-serving, and because it's so distant from actual non-white ways of living and being, the result is, just for starters, an insult to the very people that the white romanticizers thought they were "honoring."

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  10. Many of the words in the Hawaiian dictionary were made up to express Western concepts and were not used prior to that. The dictionaries were written by the missionaries.

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  11. Not all the dictionaries were written by the missionaries.

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  12. The rose colored glasses must be welded on.

    Pre contact Hawaii was no different than most feudal societies. A few at the top had the best of everything and the rest made it possible at the risk of their lives.

    Romanticize subsistence living all you want but I'd like to see you live the life a few years first. Funny how the few of the "Give it Back" crowd I've met always seem to view the situation as a way to direct the money in their direction. Not a way to return to some noble savage living off the land happy crap.

    No question the Alii Trusts are under no legal obligation to do anything. But if you wish to talk about who got the most out of the land, that narrow crowd would be pretty high on the list. Where's their moral obligation or dare I say noblesse oblige to help their people a bit?

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  13. " A few at the top had the best of everything and the rest made it possible at the risk of their lives."

    Sounds like 21st Century America!

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  14. Things white people do: romanticize indigenous people. when they think they're reaching out to something authentically non-white, what they're actually doing is conjuring up a fantasized, stereotypical, and romanticized version of something that's only supposedly non-white.

    The one time it would actually be interesting to hear Dawson's take on something, he's totally AWOL.

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  15. " A few at the top had the best of everything and the rest made it possible at the risk of their lives."

    Sounds like planet earth and any society of humans at any time.

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