I need taro-py

i'm departing from my ongoing road tale for this post. this one really is a rant! last night there was a meeting where michael moore's video 'capitalism, a love story' was shown, with discussion to follow, on what i thought was meant to be an exercise in building the best-case scenario for a new nation. hawaii (the nation, not the state) has the opportunity to actually create something out-of-the-box and truly life-affirming and aina/kai/wai-friendly. i made the mistake of thinking that people want to go there. and in a sense, they do, but not right now. maybe later, when some of the pressures are off, or as soon as this other thing is done, or as soon as obama is able to do something useful and not corporate-driven, or as soon as... well, you get the picture. this was the hardest thing i've ever had to do, primarily i think because i made some assumptions up front (silly me) that everyone was fed up. but even though some will admit systems failure on the part of governments and corporations in terms of the rest of us, the truth is that the system hasn't failed for many others, esp. those in control of resources. so what i had hoped would have approximated poka's idea of discussion within the 'dream state', all i heard was how to fix the abysmal mess we're all in, rather than how to create something that might work better. everybody's got their two feet in two worlds. i admit i'm there, too. i have a job that i need to keep myself in a house and food on the table. the job isn't too bad. i get to do what i want, mostly. and some people are impacted positively by what i do. but the university, like all school systems inside the 'system', is failing to meet the needs of the future, of a world that hasn't yet owned up to how ongoing use of diminishing resources robs young people not even born yet of things they need to survive (read: clean air, water, healthy food, shelter, basic stuff). the university system helps us to be what the system needs us to be (read: just another brick in the wall).

back to the meeting: the film was good, interesting, and the wrong one to launch a discussion about 'what next'. might have been better to show something that impressed on people why fixing the system wouldn't work, why it would be impossible to fix a system that is not necessarily perceived as broken. because truth is, it actually does work very well. and that's why no one is excited about planning for survival 'after' system failure. it won't fail, even as the banks go bust and the unemployment rate is up to 50% and houses are empty while people live on the streets or in parks. the system is doing what it was designed to do. no systems failure unless you're on the receiving end and have nowhere to go. i feel like a crazy person thinking about all this and wondering why no one else thinks it's important enough to address now.

one other thing i learned from last night's meeting was that people inevitably go where it's comfortable to launch resistance. no one seems able to do two things at once--resist and plan. resistance always seems to take precedence, and the planning part goes down the tube. and it makes people feel like they're doing something, so they feel better. it was depressing for me to talk about the need to get the philosophical stuff down first, and build that thing we want (whatever it's called) on top of it, knowing that everybody was giving me looks like 'what?'. how come no one notices that the needs of the individual is something that underpins societies that are selfish? societies that steal, make war, cause harm to its own members? societies built on self-interest and short-sightedness? what about the needs of the group? what about respect and caring, sharing and responsibility? what about aloha and aloha aina? if we laid that down as foundation, and built on top of it, what would we get? certainly nothing like what we have now! so the rant is because we never got there. we never had the discussion. and we may never have the dicussion, especially if activist types, which most of us were, don't want to go there. there is a certain amount of comfort and status in being at the top of the activist movement inside the system that currently exists, the one i think is in system failure. we don't know how to step outside and take a good, hard look at who we are and what we are doing.

i think i should retire. this is turning out to be far more difficult than i had imagined. and it's lonely, too. and i'm too old.