Dr. Art Whatley: Culture v. the Planet

“One gallon of gas is equivalent to 25,000 human hours of effort…No wonder we are addicted!” ~Dr. Art Whatley, Professor of Management and Program Chair of the Master of Arts program in Global Leadership and Sustainable Development.

                 Yet again, our Thursday evening anthropology class was presented with the honor to have another brilliant guest speaker.  It was evident that Dr. Whatley empowered the entire class with his passion and his knowledge about how the dominating culture of the world is suppressing the planet.  During the past 200 years after the discovery of fossil fuels 250 years ago, this Western industrial culture has crept up on nearly all cultures and pervaded the world’s way of life.  250 years ago, the world looked unlimited.  All the oak trees were cut down to build ship and explore the world.  The foundations of our Western culture were built with no limitations. For over 400 years, indigenous people in each country have been trying to battle the dominant ways that go against their entire belief systems. 

                Although the beginning of Dr. Whatley’s lecture seemed only to be filled with doom, all of the unfortunately realities had to be put into perspective.  Our world must put the reality we have made into perspective before we will be able to even begin undoing this reality.  We must identify the heart and origins of each major problem.  Among the inconvenient truths discussed was the agricultural revolution, a topic not new to the class. Because we can feed more people, we can make more people.  The world’s population just reached 7 billion people who all need to be fed and who all, instinctually, will reproduce.  It is all of these 7 billion people’s genetic structure to fill every space possible and to use every resource possible.  And humans certainly have shown they have all the power necessary to do this.  It is our evolutionary, biological predisposition.  However, one could say that a strong, sound, and educated human mind can defeat this instinct.  Even a sound spiritual foundation or religious belief system can teach people the value of being frugal with how we consume our resources, how we should be charitable, and the importance of land conservation.  Disappointingly, we are feeding the world’s growing population in an inequitable way.  Dr. Whatley emphasized how “we cannot have sustainability without social justice”. 

                The dominant system the US has adopted made the country the biggest consumer society on the planet beginning in 1980.  America’s leaders have an unconscious addition to economic growth.  But the politicians and business people don’t want to talk about this, even though the world is screaming.  Sometimes I feel that many of these people are simply in a deep denial.  As Dr. Whatley put it, “Ask any economics professor if economy is more important than ecology, and their answer will be, ‘No, society and nature are subsets of the economy’”.  This has become the dominant system in our education system which has made people ecologically illiterate.  Kids and people know about economy than ecology.  At least the 20 young students in our anthropology class know that the undeniable scientific truth is that the economy is dependent on the planet. 

                It is going to be up to us to utilize our people power to overcome the power of the greedy people so that we can work to reverse the completely inverted system.  This is just now starting to happen with the Occupy Wall Street movement.  I found it quite compelling when Dr. Whatley talked about how an annual earnings of $15,000 is actually the threshold for happiness.  We must move away from the system of our industrial economy which takes, makes, and wastes, to a sustainable system that borrows, uses, and returns.  We must teach systems theory and its ideas of limits, feedbacks, and overshoot.  It is indeed possible to sustain human life without harming the planet while being happy and comfortable.  Fortunately, there is a minority of companies whose missions and objectives are to produce zero waste in their industrial processes.  Thankfully, people are taking their own initiative to live in a sustainable way in their personal lives with their diets, purchases, and how much they travel.  

Sweet Home Waimanalo

Unfortunately, I had to miss anthropology class this Thursday, Oct. 13^th, because I had to sing with the International Vocal Ensemble at the induction dinner for the new president.  So this week, I will blog about the field trip that our class took a few weeks ago to Waimanalo. 

It was such an honor and a great treat to be welcomed to the several-acre farm beautifully settled directly at the foot of the Ko`olau’s.  I cannot remember the last time I had the opportunity to stand outside and not hear the noise of the highway.  The stillness was almost eerie to me and is something that I will forever remember about this sacred space.  I will always remember the sincere Hawaiian chant from my fellow class-mates asking for permission to enter onto the property that Kevin Vaccarello leases from the government.  Kevin’s lecture and welcoming us into his home and his restaurant was a truly eye-opening experience.  Even though his mission is something that I have been studying for several years now, actually seeing it put into practice with so much genuineness spoke to my mind, my heart, and my spirit. 

In his lecture, I could see that Kevin has such a strong mind that he rarely puts to rest.  His in-depth ideas about how to evaluate environmental, socio-cultural, and socio-economic problems were arranged into quite complex models.  While the one of the main answers to solving many of our world’s problems is seemingly straightforward (people must only take what they need and leave the rest), it is necessary to be able to evaluate and diagram how society, the environment, and the economy interrelate so that problems may be more easily understood and acknowledged.  He emphasized how one of our greatest modern problems is that our economic system gives so much weight to externalities.   In a truly sustainable system, the concept of externalities shouldn’t even exist as it is erroneous and dishonest to assume that there are unlimited resources.  Kevin showed us how the studies of psychology, biology, ecology, sociology, and anthropology go into depth in evaluating the non-physical and physical components of individual and collective concerns. 

And at the end of his inquisitive lecture filled with multifaceted intellectualism, Kevin stopped.  He stopped to remind himself of the fact that what truly matters in life is the spiritual health of one’s heart and soul.  A society is healthy when its individuals wholeheartedly abide the divine laws of the universe which happen to be very basic.  He showed us how the spiritual realm encompasses all aspects of life.  When the richest and most glamorous businessmen are not honest in the careers, their whole life is miserable.    

The following week, our entire class and any of our friends had the honor to go to Waimanalo to see that it is possible to run a successful business and live a life of true abundance while being honest and frugal at the same time.  Kevin lived on land hundreds of times more beautiful than anyone with their monstrosity mansion in Kahala.  And the land and the spirits on that land accepted him because he is there to only do good.  I know that the love, warmth, and welcoming provided by the land and the spirits was felt by every student that set foot onto that property. 

Our adventure continued on into the evening at the quaint restaurant, Sweet Home Waimanalo.  It was the first time that I ever ate food that was grown on the rooftop above me.  By far, was it the most delicious produce that I have tasted in Hawaii.  When Kevin told us that every couple weeks, only 500 square feet of roof space would produce 20 pounds of greens, I know many students were inspired.  It was a sweet feeling to see a compost-bin, let alone a recycling bin at a restaurant.  Yet, at the same time, a feeling of dismay shaded my spirit.  It boggled my mind that Kevin is one of the only people on Oahu that dedicates his life to this way.  I couldn’t figure out why more people don’t have green gardens on their roofs.  It would be so much cleaner, cheaper, tastier, and certainly, more nutritious than shipping our food at least 5000 miles from the mainland or other countries to our plate.  I couldn’t figure out why more businesses in our beautiful island state didn’t provide recycling bins to their customers. 

Nevertheless, I must remember how vital it is to focus on the progress that has been made.  Five years ago, I know a field trip like this would have not been possible as there was not a strong environmental studies program or a business like Kevin’s.  Five years, and a change for the better.  I change that hundreds of students will see in the next few years.  A change that thousands of costumers see every few months.  It can be done, and thank God, people can now see it with their own eyes!

Poka Laenui in Hawaiian Justice

It was such an honor to be in the intimate classroom setting and have Mr. Poka Laenui passionately speak to us about how societies are constructed while showing us how this relates, in essence, to the Hawaii Sovereignty Movement.  His reading of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s eloquent speech about how religion relates to society was so fitting for the introduction of his presentation.  This inspired me to research more about Tutu’s humanitarian efforts in South Africa and other parts of the world throughout history.  Tutu’s words made me want to learn more about his political views surrounding modern world issues such as poverty, minority rights, and environmental concerns.  In the last year, I have been blessed to be presented with many powerful leaders that share the same belief system as me.  Studying these figures helps me to further justify my belief system and become a better student and leader, myself. 

I am so blessed to have the opportunity to pursue my education in Hawaii.  I remember my first month living in Hawaii.  So many strange things happened to me that are unexplainable.  Not until the last year have I been able to understand these incidences.  I remember running through the forest in Kaneohe near the Pali Golf Course.  Growing up in the middle of the nowhere in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, I have always had an inviting and intimate relationship with nature.  But when I was running in Kaneohe, I didn’t feel welcomed by the soil, the trees, and the ferns.  The birds would just ignore me.  This was completely foreign to me.  The only thing I could do was tell them, “I am here to learn to do good for the world…to help you.  I am not here to be dishonest or to live a frivolous life.  Please, please welcome me.  Let me see the beauty of Hawaii so I can be happy.”  Soon, I felt welcomed, thank God.  But there were still some places I would go that would literally make me vomit.  Three years later, I found out that these places were where graves were dug up by huge companies and put in shoeboxes for storage. 

 Immersing myself as much as possible in the traditions of the Hawaiian people, especially Hula, has allowed my relationship with the earth to grow tremendously.  Carefully observing the relationship that people of Hawaiian descent have with the Western world has fascinated me as much as it has saddened me.  I have always found myself drawing a parallel between the situation in Hawaii and what has happened with the indigenous culture that I am most familiar with, the Lakota Nation.  There are parallels everywhere ranging from the Christianization of the locals, to the new, cheap, unhealthy diet of salt and sugars, to the sedentary lifestyle, to the poverty, to the environmental destruction, to the racism, to the alcoholism, to the Westernization, to the materialism.  Because the story of the Hawaiian people has been kept from them, many cannot help but assimilate with the Western world.  Fortunately, their ways are making a comeback, and people are adopting them back into their lives with great pride. 

Although I still have much to learn about the history involved with the overthrow of Queen Lili`uokalani, the US military occupation of the islands, the annexation of Hawaii, and the US government’s role in the islands since then, I know that what was done was wrong and that something needs to be done about it.  What should be done and how this should be carried out has always baffled me.  Poka Laenui has so far, presented the most reasonable steps to attain justice and bring the Hawaiian people a peace of mind. 

Laenui’s model of the formal system in Hawaii and the rest of the US which specifically emphasizes domination, individualism, and exclusion (DIE) revealed so much truth so simply.  Things were really put into perspective when he revealed to us the informal system in Hawaii which upholds `olu`olu (being comfortable with), Lokani (community), and Aloha (inclusion with a sense of humanity and compassion).  The acronym for `Olu`olu, Lokani, and Aloha is OLA, which means life in Hawaiian.  Somehow, both of these systems exist simultaneously.  Yet this does not negate the unfortunate fact that the DIE model has become dominant in these beautiful islands.

In order to change from the DIE to the OLA model, we must first recognize DIE and all that it entails.  The transition from DIE to OLA is one of the main objectives that the people behind the Hawaiian sovereignty movement are fighting for.  First Hawaii must go through the process of decolonization before any true contentment and reparation can begin.  Laenui’s steps toward appropriate decolonization certainly made a lot of sense.  The first step is recovery and rediscover.  If, in this case, the true Hawaiian culture is not recovered and rediscovered, the years of colonization and its ways that have become engrained in society will just continue.  The second stage is the mourning phase; this society is more than justified to mourn for the story of their people that has been kept from them.  But society must move on to the dreaming phase and explode the system from the inside by revealing the truth.  Great consideration has to be given to identifying the deep values we want to live by in Hawaii.  Consensus then must be achieved.  All of these steps will prepare the society for appropriate action.  I truly hope that one day, all races can come together and bring Hawaii the justice it deserves.

ISHMAEL - Plot, Themes, Favorite Quotes

PLOT:

The story begins with a young man coming across a newspaper ad the read: "Teacher seeks pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person."  Even though the young man, who is the narrator of the story, initially reacts to the ad with disgust, he later decides to respond to the ad when he reminisces about his youth during the 1960’s children’s revolts.  When he arrives to the place of learning, he finds out that his teacher is a gorilla named Ishmael.  Ishmael and the man take part in a dialogue throughout the entirety of the novel.  Ishmael teaches the student a story of how human beings have become captive prisoners in their own civilization and culture.  This captivity is analogous to Ishmael’s life that is spent in physical captivity in zoos and circuses.

Ishmael describes how two cultures have subscribed their entire being to certain ideologies. Ishmael emphasizes that a culture is defined as a people enacting a story and doing everything in their power to make the story come true.   A majority of the dialogue concerns the ways of the “takers” and how they came about and why their way of life is not sustainable.  The takers are the majority of the world’s civilization, which the narrator also happens to be a part of.  Takers consider themselves “civilized”.  The taker culture originated in the Near East about 10,000 years ago during the Agricultural Revolution.  Takers believe that man has dominion over the earth and is here to continue to conquer the world.  Man should do everything in his power to assume the responsibilities of the gods. In the takers’ efforts to “bring about their view of paradise” to the world, man spoils and destroys the world because he is flawed.  

The alternative to the “taker” culture is that of the “leavers”.  Ishmael doesn’t discuss the story of the leavers to the extent that he talks about the takers.  The leavers are the people of all other cultures that are thought of by mainstream society as primitive peoples.  Ishmael named a few specific leaver cultures, and they happened to all be small indigenous cultures throughout the world.  The leavers acknowledge that their purpose on this planet is no more important than that of all other biota.  They believe that they have no dominion over earth and no reason to believe that they should take on the role of the gods. 

Ishmael believes that man has reached the pinnacle of evolution because the takers do not acknowledge the fact that they actually belong to the world rather than having unlimited control of the earth.  Takers believe that that they are superior to all other species.  Man is at a standstill because he is stubborn and doesn’t allow for true growth.  But if man were to live in a manner in which he succumbed to the hands of the gods, man would be exposed to the conditions under which evolution occurs.  Ishmael states , “…man became man by living in the hands of the gods.…by living the way the bushmen of Africa live; by living the way the Krenakarore of Brazil live...Not the way the Chicagoans live, not the way Londoners live….For three million years, man belonged to the world and because he belonged to the world, he grew and developed and became brighter and more dexterous until one day, he was so bright and so dexterous that we had to call him Homo sapiens sapiens-- which means he was us."

The book ends when Ishmael’s pupil goes to the circus to save him, but upon his arrival, he found out that Ishmael had died.  The last conversation between Ishmael and his pupil concerned the importance of educating people about the stories of the takers and the leavers.  Ishmael gives his student this responsibility.   The man remembers when Ishmael said, "Teach a hundred what I've taught you, and inspire each of them to teach a hundred."

 

CENTRAL THEMES:

Daniel Quinn chose to use the biblical story of Genesis as an analogy to represent the historical phenomenon of manifest destiny throughout the world.  The story of Genesis is used metaphorically to represent the relationship between the takers (represented by Cain) and the leavers (represented by Abel).  Ishmael states,

“The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to survive. The Leavers are the endangered species most critical to the world - not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is more than one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet."

The story of manifest destiny continues to occur 10,000 years later.  To this day, takers continue to pillage the land that belonged to the leavers for thousands of years.  In doing this, the takers pillage the leavers’ cultures all in the name of spreading their religion and putting the land under cultivation for food, water, and precious minerals.  The world now only utilizes five out of the several thousand crops for our main food sources.  Consequently, the agricultural peoples have decided what organisms to displace and destroy.  Water and minerals have also been displaced and destroyed all in the name of frivolous abundance.  In essence, the takers’ revolution was a revolution against the leavers’ story. 

In spite of all the presumed control takers have over the earth, Ishmael teaches his student that there are immutable laws that cannot be broken.  Unlike tax laws and the commandment, “thou shalt not kill”, which can be easily broken or changed by a vote, immutable laws are natural ecology determined by the physics of the universe and can’t be broken.  A culture that doesn’t follow these laws will not survive in the long term.  It is clear that the takers consider themselves to be exempt by these laws.  This lifestyle has continued and has been adopted by a majority of the world’s population.  Even though this lifestyle has occurred for a relatively short period of time in comparison to the millions of years of human existence, our world is now experiencing intensified environmental crises more and more often as our lifestyles contradict the immutable laws of the universe.  Ishmael states,

"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”

FAVORITE QUOTES:

Human Passivity Regarding Environmental Issues:  “What have people been told that keeps them from getting excited, that keeps them relatively calm when they view catastrophic damage they’re inflicting on this planet? …. They’ve been told an explaining story.  They’ve been given an explanation of how things came to be this way, and this stills their alarm.  This explanation covers everything, including the deterioation of the ozone layer, the pollution of the oceans, the destruction of the rain forests, and even human extinction – and it satisfies them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it pacifies them.”

Reparation to the Environment:  “The problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the world.  And in spite of all the mastery we’ve attained, we don’t have enough mastery to stop devastating the world – or to repair the devastation we’ve already wrought.”

The Taker Paradox:  “…famine soon becomes a routine condition of life in many parts of the Taker Thunderbolt – and the Takers have to pedal even harder and more efficiently than before.  But oddly enough, the harder and more efficiently the pedal, the worse conditions become…”

Putting time into context and ironically placing the blame on human nature:  “Man lived harmlessly on this planet for some three million years, but the Takers have brought the whole thing to the point of collapse in only five hundred generations.  And their explanation for this is what?...Not that you Takers may be doing something wrong but rather that there is something fundamentally wrong with human nature itself.”

At war with the earth:  “We’re not destroying the world because we’re clumsy.  We’re destroying the world because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it.”

Simply put: “…If you start taking more for yourself, then there’s got to be less for someone else for something else.”

Different types of agriculturalists: “…there are semi-agriculturalists who grow a little and gather a lot.  And then there are near-agriculturalists who grow a lot and gather a little. 

 

Need of Inspiration:  “They need more than a vision of doom.  They need a vision of the world and of themselves that inspires them…Stopping pollution is not inspiring.  Sorting your trash is not inspiring.  Cutting down on flourocarbons is not inspiring. But thinking of ourselves in a new way, thinking of the world in a new way…”

Prison: “…it should be noted that what is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.”