YIKES!! CMP
Quote:
According to Bill Barnfield and his spiritual beliefs, he would also say you are wrong. So ask Bill, you seem to respect him.
What!! Now your gonna drag me into, Politics, racial strife, and Religion!! There better be a God out there, cause I am gonna need all the help I can get! HA! HA!
I love Hawaiians and the Culture. But I think the real issues transcend all that has been discussed here so far. That is why there is disagreement among people here, when they are really more on track with each other than they know. These kinds of issues polarize people way to easily and for way to shallow of reasons.
No one wants any less success for Hawaiians than the Princess wanted. Yet they all fight over how to achieve it. I grew up on the edge of an Indian Reservation. I have seen the tragedy of subjugation and its effects on American Indians, Blacks in the South, Whites in the Coal Mines, Plantation workers in Hawaii and Hawaiians in their own homeland.
Whenever you subjugate people, you deprive them of their individuality and a way to freely and responsibly express it and eventually even know that they have it. This creates a kind of posttraumatic syndrome that leaves a wasteland of lost and devastated peoples, unable to find their way back. Subjugation relies on the depravation of individual rights and self esteem. Do that long enough to any group of people and what you will get is a whole race, culture or nationality that is now lacking in creative thinking, personal motivation, wisdom, common sense and abilities to compete and fend for themselves in a socially responsible way, such that they will be able to dig themselves back out even if set free of the subjugation.
Look around. This is why there are Terrorists, Gang Bangers, poverty and whole countries like North Korea, thinking they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves from phantom enemies.
Advanced cultures and civilizations, always override lesser civilizations. Sadly this generally happens in an abusive way. I am not saying this is good, just that it is reality, and is the historical record of thousands of years. Right or wrong it is how it happens. Those who don’t want this to happen must prepare themselves so that it, not only doesn’t, but can’t.
If Aliens arrived on our planet tomorrow, civilization as we know it would end. The likelihood that their more advanced culture would override ours is pretty much 100%. And we would inevitably become secondary citizens in their world. This isn’t a racial issue, a nationality issue, or a cultural one. It is about how well the underdog civilization prepares itself for this eventuality, even when they can’t see it coming. This takes tremendous leadership skills and great faith in those leaders. Because the new always overrides the old, the only thing that can prevent this is for our civilization and culture to be at parity or above the new alien one that is thrust upon us. If we could equip our people, well in advance, to know what the aliens knew and to be just as good at it as they were, we might have a fighting chance. In fact, if both sides understand this, there wouldn’t even be a fight as both will see the parity that exists and the value in cooperation and growth for everyone.
The Princess had incredible wisdom, way beyond her experience and age. Because of this, she understood the principle stated above. Her Will and Trust wasn’t so much to prevent the changes but rather by Educating the people in her culture and civilization, to bring them up to the equal of any civilization that might attempt to override hers.
Frankly, I don’t think anyone after her, really understood this and therefore, used her trust to aggressively educate, equip and train those in her culture such that, they couldn’t be displaced by any group, race or nationality. In fact, if done correctly, they would have been reasonable equals to all. Just like the USA and Canada. Or England and Australia. Or Japan and South Korea.
People have to be free. And they have to be free long enough to learn and recognize and fully enshrine the idea that……. they can do the right thing and have it all work out to their own best benefit in the long run.
It is a simple concept be very hard to follow. If they have been subjugated for too long, this truth is very hard for them to even see and the result of this is the birth of anti social behavior in an effort to “get ahead”. When this bad conduct is actually esteemed by even small groups of people, the larger culture is in big trouble. Just look around. You can see it in countries, ghettos and white trash trailer parks. It is racially inclusive and knows no national bounds. When it becomes cool to be bad as an excuse for not understanding how to choose otherwise, peoples are in big trouble.
On of my favorite quotes is…
"The whole world loves a maverick and the whole world wants the maverick
to achieve something nobler than simple rebellion."
–Kevin Patterson
We all love a rebel but there is a very fine line between the rebel hero and the rebel Villain or Victim. These roles are very fluid and it is often hard to recognize what role different people are really playing and why. If the rebel shifts to the Victim side it easily sets up a “Victim” mentality and soon a whole culture, that says “there is no hope or any other way out”, will happily endorse fighting the “man” because “the man” is holding them down. Truth at this point becomes almost irrelevant as the issue is more about being on the politically popular side, then the side that can really fix things and make them better. So even when the original subjugation ends, people will often “self subjugate” themselves and their brothers, and continue the abusive paradigm that they are most familiar with.
This then sets up a powerful polarity. With the side full of people most needing to find a way out, being the very side that culturally teaches their people in the very ways that prevents them from recognizing, that way out. And the side knowing the way out, being seen as the bad guys (the man), who are intentionally preventing others from being able to access that way out. This is a point of huge trouble in the world. And those who have made a success out of perpetuating this confusion like Arafat, aren’t about to let it change even though their “cause” is 180 degrees out of wack.
Bernice Pauahi Bishop invested her whole fortune in trying to prevent this and reverse it where it had become entrenched. She knew that it would be the ultimate downfall of her people if they weren’t at parity and began to view themselves as helpless Victims, under the “thumb of the man”. If we were to have had a chance to talk to her, one on one, I don’t think she would have wanted anyone, regardless of race, to lack in understanding of where the “way out” was. And while I am sure she would have wanted to first equip her own “Hawaiian Children” she would have never neglected any other children that needed help to find the way out.
I bow down to her wisdom and to her commitment. I am deeply saddened to see our prisons so full of Hawaiian’s struggling to find “the way out”. And it further breaks my heart that these people, often with the biggest hearts in the world, weren’t smart enough to avoid their own downfall. I don’t know all the answers and I am all for Kam School delivering quality educations to Hawaiians so that they don’t get caught on the wrong side of the polarity.
As a Christian I understand the “power of faith” that Pauahi clearly wanted to have as a major part of this transformative process. She understood the traditions of the great learning centers of the Nation, where Christian teachings were an integral and necessary part of their educational curriculums. She clearly had more in mind here than what is being implemented or realized. I don’t know how to fix that one, but without it, her goals will never be met regardless of which students they let in the school, be they only Hawaiians or not.
So Hawaiian’s are fighting over what is mostly a racial issue with huge significance to them but lending to greater polarity, while Pauahi’s Will specified even more strongly, that the teachings at the school should be DEEPLY Christian based and produce the fruits that this “faith based” educational system is capable of. It is hard to imagine in this context that she would have cared if some non-Hawaiians were also the recipients of this educational experience. So while I empathize with this current and difficult prospect of non-Hawaiians attending Kam School, I am much more troubled about the spiritual consequences of her Will not being followed.
