Some thoughts on crossing the Pacific

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Passing across the sky, in some places directly over our heads, the sun draws a natural line across the sky. The line means time, change, and direction. The apparent movement of the sun is caused by the passing of time, and is ofcourse an illusory result of our Earth spinning on its axis. Sitting mid-Pacific I notice the amusing reversal of the traditional cardinal directions as conceived by Europeans. Observed from here the sun appears to rise over America in the east, and the sunset occurs in "The land of the rising sun", over China in the west. This fact underlines the anachronism of East and West.

Here in Hawaii it is noticeable how blurred are the lines between cultures, especially in the light of dominant themes such as capitalism, globalisation, and militarism. A third of the population is of asian descent. The rest are a mix of native Hawai'ian and Polynesian peoples, a minority of African-American and native American peoples, and a majority of European/American peoples. One is unable to discriminate people by the colour of their skin in this environment; for example choose an asian face from the crowd and that person is just as likely to talk to you in all-American parlance as a caucasian, the caucasian may indeed be a tourist from far afield and speak to you in an Eastern European language. That same asian face you choose at random is just as likely to belong to a person born in Hawai'i, as to a bona fide Korean national (who happened to be schooled in the Midwest, which is common). So this multiculturalism extends to all walks of life and not just accent, but to knowledge of baseball, of history, and to political and religious beliefs. You can't make any assumptions if you pick somebody truly at random.

In my view Hawai'i is a colony, and the familiar story of colonial imposition is retold in Hawai'i every day; from the disproportionate numbers of Hawai'ians on minimum wage and sleeping on the streets, by the power-brokering of the United States Marine Corps and the US Navy in Hawai'ian politics, to the elitism of large corporations running golf courses and agricultural plantations, you can tell who is in control, and it's the usual suspects. One man owns the entire island of Lana'i, the sixth largest in the Hawai'ian islands. He is a business colleague of Bill Gates, who was married there in 1993 and who was rumoured to be interested in the purchase himself. For those of you who are aspiring to be Hawai'ian kings or queens, the figure was in the region of $675 million.

The East-West Center was founded in Honolulu in cooperation with the US Government to establish cultural and technical exchange between asia and the americans, exploiting Hawaii's perfect location for such a development. After all, with so many persons of foreign descent living in one place, the opportunity to share is great (and the threat of organized opposition is even greater). Hawai'i has ofcourse been a flash point in Asian-American aggression in the past, due to its strategic location in the ocean, and will continue to be a target as long as the militarism of nations continues. Hawai'i is also a location where big business from both sides of the ocean meet to make a profit. There is certainly an economic struggle reminiscent of previous military encounters, though the line between opposing sides is not so clear. After the attack on Pearl Harbour the Japanese people living in Hawai'i (which was not part of the United States at the time, as it is important to remember) were sent to mainland America to be detained. The likely opposition in today's economic struggle are not so easily identified. Businesses span the globe and their shareholders, directors, board-members and chairmen, are taken from many nations, just as their customers and patrons live in many different countries. The development of capitalism worldwide produces billionaires and ruling capitalist elites from the unlikeliest of places, take Roman Abramovitch the Russian as an example, at the time of writing his luxury yacht is touring the Pacific, mooring in New Zealand by the way. Who knows how many of these 'self-made-men' will emerge from the markets of China or India, cruising the Pacific in search of investment opportunities?

The future certainly holds the potential for great things in Hawai'i, for both the old and the new peoples. But is this future going to consist of a military balance between colonial nations, as it has been before? Or perhaps a capitalist paradise, a fairground run by corporations that transcend national boundaries, would this kind of cooperation protect the Pacific from the recurrence of war? It is impossible to say. One thing is certain however: as per usual, the greater part of this future appears to lie beyond the influence of the Hawai'ian people themselves. Just as the sun rises over America and travels toward the great Asian continent, so the balance of power passes overhead, beyond reach. Only by fighting tooth and nail have any indigenous people ever succeeded under colonisation.

When France detonated thousand's of pounds of nuclear explosive on the tiny Bikini Atoll, the indigenous people there were manipulated, exploited, and ignored. The native people of Hawai'i are also particularly disenfranchised by the economic, ecologic, and military development of their islands by colonial nations. Not to mention the Tahitians, Samoans, Tuvaluans and Nauruans, whose home, the ocean and its islands, is under invasion. If these proud peoples are to have any influence in the running of their neighbourhood, then they must continue to organise and demonstrate, as the Tahitians have done recently by achieving the successful overthrow of the incumbent French president in elections there.

"No one takes a walk under palm-trees with impunity"
Gotthold Lessing