Blessings for Learning to Live from What the Land and Sea Can Provide
September 6, 2022
Dear Hawaiian Nation (and those who are Hawaiian at Heart),
It is the Hawaiian Ancestors who greet you again today. Today we speak about the nature of the current paradigm in which one is imprisoned to mortgages or rent causing you to work sometimes many jobs to provide for one’s family or life. Most humans desire to be free, to live in freedom, going where they wish to go, and doing what they wish to do. Freedom has become equated with Democracy in the West, which does indeed create a civilization that may be considered free from the stand point of the above description of freedom.
Current Heavy Work Ethics
However democratic societies are also prone to enslaving the masses with heavy work ethics. Working 9 to 5, 5 days per week is the work ethic in the United States, with 2 weeks’ vacation and a few holidays throughout the year. In Europe it is a little different with many countries having a month holiday in July or August and several additional “health weeks” over the course of the year. However, is this really freedom? Can you really be free if you spend more time working than doing what you really would like to do? This the Hawaiian Ancestors ponder.
In our time, there was not the current work ethic that has caught on fiercely on the islands in present time. In our time, the day was spent in many ways, including fishing, gardening, harvesting the food for the meals, making poi, building a new boat of Koa wood for transportation, weaving new mats and baskets, or preparing for a feast, and creating the clothing or jewelry for a special occasion. All told we worked no more than 4 hours per day at providing for the community and in collaboration with one another.
Locals in Hawaii today often work two jobs to pay the rent or mortgage and buy the food. Working two jobs is worse than only one, for now there is so little time to do what you want that there is great deprivation that the body and human feels over time. Working two jobs is a form of democratic imprisonment. Two jobs become necessary with the high cost of rent, housing and food on the islands. This is also so for many living in other places who are also Hawaiian at heart. Recently, during their visit to Kauai, Asur’Ana and Per caught a headline in one of the newspapers that stated that American earnings were up, but not due to raises, but due to households choosing to hold two jobs to make ends meet. The pattern of democratic slavery is catching on now in other parts of the US when perhaps in times past this was not so. Does it really need to be this way?
No Time to Take Care of Children
There was a time on the islands as well as in the US where households could survive upon a single income leaving one partner free to raise the children. Time must be rolled back to the 1950’s or earlier both on the islands and upon the mainland for this to be so. One parent could work and the other stay at home and there was enough to pay the rent, mortgage and put food upon the table, and buy the clothing and other life necessities. Perhaps those of a single income were not wealthy, but there was enough. And there was freedom to spend time with one’s family. Read more