Sunday, March 18, 2007

I'm Learning the Blog Thing

I have written on my exploits and travels before. This blog thing cannot be that different. Everyone back on the Mainland hang-on, this will get wild. I have been thinking about Blogging my antics in Hawaii for a while. I am sure other people are out there writing about the Big Island, but I think they may be writing for the tourists, or worse, some white privilege, patriarchal, nationalistic vision of Hawaii. Something that belongs to others, under their ideological constraints. There is a depth to Hawaii that is insulted by those post cards of a beautiful girls in a grass skirts. Only this is merely the inspiration for the attitude of what I plan to write herein. Allow me to narrow the focus. 

The multitude of religions here, made it hard to push a single religion as dominant or definitive, therefore their political power basically canceled out while the ornate ornamentation is akin to an obnoxious car commercial. In contrast, we have two indigenous mammals on the Islands, a bat and a seal, we once had many species of birds, but invasive species wiped most of those out. We have small reptiles and large insects, it gives the invasive feral species of cat and mongoose something to do when they're not eating the birds along with the rats that can climb palm trees for more than just the eggs.  All this makes the hidden, the out of sight, like the sea life, the most interesting aspect of Hawaii for me to explore.

I write for people who want answers, perhaps the answers I have mined from critically assessing objective evidence anchored to the world around me. What it is like to live and play here? What do palm trees have to do with philosophy? What is it about living in the playground of the world that informs my understanding of the rest of reality? What does driving on the roads that are shared with many people from all over the world say about my sociological interests? The conflicts, contrasts, and commonalities between indigenous peoples and colonists, locals and migrants, the capitalists, the imperialists, the fascists calling themselves neoliberal, or the oxymoronic neoclassical, anarcho-capitalists and rightwing libertarians--yes, narcissism now has its own brand ... of Pampers.

I will write about what I think I see in the world that bothers me. I will write about those topics that I think should bother everyone else. Hawaii brings many cultural concepts into stark relief. I write about the big questions that have such embarrassingly simple answers. I write about topics that take four big words and hyphens to delineate. Use my superpower to take complex subjects, reduce them to components, rebuild them with a respect for evolutionary processes, and simplify the relationships within the networks of universal truth. 

A downside of Hawaii is that the distractions can be insurmountable at times, but I will give this endeavor the attention it is due.