Archive for October, 2014

There's a serious buzz on campus. The election season is in full fury. From federal to state to local there is a frenzy induced news/social media cycle trumpeting  a broad spectrum of candidates, causes, ideologies and odds. There are buckets of propaganda induced blood flowing in the streets of credibility. Enough so that decent folk might just think there's something awry. The more relevant question might be, is there anything identifiably correct about all the hootin' and hollerin'? I mean correct by way of consensus and the will to work out existing difficulties. I mean correct by way of right and wrong meeting at Krispy Kreme, going into insulin shock and having a good old laugh over ever having disagreed in the first place. Or are both sides so anchored in their views that the concept of sailing off into the sunset has faded from memory and been filed in a tattered old folder called "forget me not", to be hauled out when the dust kicked up by lawsuits, settles. There are dollars lurking everywhere. Dollars controlled by a spectrum of individuals as polarized as the world has ever seen. Dollars poised and ready to defend any position, buy any outcome, fix any election and rewrite history for the sake of market share. Dollars mustered from the every day person to mount a meager defense in the name of truth and fair play and the kind of equilibrium and abundance found in the great dining hall at Hogwarts. This is no longer a process that yields outcomes so much as continuances. It is a process that encourages chaos and dissonance. In nature, this process is called decay and the role it plays is to displace that which has served its purpose and turn it into the food that nourishes a new generation of life. All the posters and banners and t shirts and hats and speeches and feelings of community and "heat" generated in the name of all that we believe serve to catalyze the breakdown of wrong headed wasteful thinking, of mind numbing ill conceived propaganda. This process has become one of skirmishes in the realm of undermining "authority', accented by willfully pulling away from a system that is gasping for life and willing to give little back. We are largely on our own and priorities must reflect that. Locally, the most visible issue has been the gmo debate involving, here on Maui, an attempt to create a moratorium on the testing of herbicides and pesticides on seed crops until such time as they are shown to be safe and pose no risk to the life of the land and its people. Common sense? No brainer? Those who grow the seed and test the 'cides seem to think that the e.p.a. as well as state regulators have the situation well in hand and that we should bugger off. So much so that they have spent very near a cool eight million american greenbacks to convince and guarantee us that all heck will break loose if we make the disastrous choice of passing this insult to farmers everywhere. In other words, their buck does not stop. Common sense is not welcome here. They're feeding the world and tired of your pissing and moaning about it. Fortunately the move toward labeling gains momentum with each lost ballot initiative and eventually the tide will turn as the issue of whether we have a right to know what is in our food breaks the "Duh" barrier. But the money will continue to flow because people must not know. They are burying themselves under the sheer weight of their Chutzpah. Very much like the person who, after having killed his parents, throws himself on the mercy of the court for being an orphan. As the tipping point draws near and what appear to be a series of events already underway, creating  globally catastrophic scenario's from climate change to pollution of land, water and air to runaway radiation there is a very real draw toward tossing the towel and just kicking back and watching the movie unfold. An old hawaiian saying comes to mind which goes; keep that which is good, and that which is not, set aside. Chinese proverb that fits the times; best time to plant a tree, twenty years ago. Next best time, now. Find your tribe. Dig in. Now is never. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace. Jp