Ilaisa Futa Helu was a maverick Tongan intellectual who founded ‘Atenisi University, where my parents taught. Until recently, it was one of the only places a Polynesian could get a university degree besides the University of the South Pacific (outside of Australia and New Zealand). I knew Futa as a kid and had one opportunity to see him two opportunities as an adult. Helu was the underdog of Polynesian intellectuals and is probably remembered more fondly than he was accepted during his life. There is a film about him called Polynesian Ark, as if he was the carrier of a certain kind of Polynesian, well, intellectualism.
Epeli Hau’ofa
How offer is possibly the most famous of all Polynesian intellectuals (with the possible exceptions of the Samoan writers Albert Wendt and Sia Figiel – but the latter is now been charged with the murder of Carol Sinavaiana Gabbard, sister of Senator Mike Gabbard). His concept of “our sea of islands” is extremely well known – the upcoming issue of Hawaii Review, for example, has this as its theme.
Haunani Kay Trask
Trust is certainly among the most controversial on this list. She in many ways lead the growth of Hawaiian sovereignty movement into a mass movement. Her book from a native daughter was called a masterpiece by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple. She set the foundation for the ways we think about Hawaii as a feminized and colonized territorial space. Although she was in favor of federal recognition, she is most famous for saying “we are not American!” At ‘Iolani Palace on January 17, 1993.
Noenoe Silva
I am mainly restricting this list to intellectuals who are not currently practicing, but Silva is a very senior professor at this point and has produced two major books on Hawaiian political history, and, not insignificantly, Hawaiian intellectual history. Although Tom Coffman’s Nation Within captured the shock value of the petitions against annexation, which were a result of her research, her academic treatment of the same topic, Aloha Betrayed, is one of the most taught books on Hawai’i in university classes. More than a decade later, she followed this up with The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen, a fairly groundbreaking look at Hawaiian intellectuals of the late 19th century, including Joseph Moku’ohai Poepoe. Having Silvea as my dissertation advisor, I was challenged to produce research which would have an impact outside of academia alone, and for more than theoretical reasons alone, be impactful. I think I did that.
My daughter has an all-day choir practice and it makes no sense to go home so it looks like I’ll be drifting through H-town today.
First, I hit up the hip new spot. The vintage furniture store is a warehouse full of mid-century modern furniture and antiques. It has an absolutely gigantic photograph of a stark naked lady lying on a painting. The message is supposed to be something like: we always see nude people in paintings but here’s one in “real” life, that is, in the photograph, on top of the painting, in the photograph.
The place is full of hipsters – one is singing old blues songs on a kind of karaoke system, but still taking himself seriously. To be fair, he’s quite good. The hipsters complement each other on their “fabulous” and “killing” outfits, but don’t complement me. They seem to be getting ready for an event tonight. For hipsters. I shan’t be going.
I read my latest Murakami book until they turn the music on too loud.
I drive to Jellies. Sheriff Norm is there. He’s been there since statehood. Their business model seems to be buying hard-to-find media and just holding onto it for decades until the right sucker shows up and is willing to pay top dollar. No one else has such a business model, so they soldier on by finding the cheap rent. (The next day I’m thinking of the sheriff and there he is, walking on the side of the road in Kaka’ako.)
I go to Goma Tei in Waikiki for noodles mainly because that’s what the characters in my book would do. I vaguely pretend I’m in Japan and it’s cold outside and this somehow makes the noodles taste better.
Catching it in the corner of my eye, I suddenly veer left in my car and pull into Village bookshop. I buy Thomas Hardy, two plays by Chekov, a Hawaiian history book (John Papa I’i) and three Peter Gabriel CDs, including Shock the Monkey.
I also grab some other stuff that they wouldn’t sell at THE Bookstore at the big mall – some antiquarian books in French. (I don’t speak French but I have the English version and figure I can read them side by side).
After that I go to Kewalo Basin. It has a sea wall where surfers jump into the ocean and paddle out a little ways to catch smaller waves that are well-formed. Here you can sit six feet from the ocean and feel the spray as it hits the wall. there are benches and I can read and drink coffee. I used to see my friend here but he quit surfing because he didn’t want to police the lineup no more.
I read Murakami for a while, but there’s this guy – a kid really – who’s kind of lurking about. Vaping. He’s smaller than me, but he looks like trouble. Like “here comes trouble!”
He seems to be watching me out of his side eye, like maybe he wants my bench or something. He walks over to the sea wall and very self-consciously takes a drag from his vape pen, pretending he’s interested in the ocean. Back of mind I know he’s not, but it doesn’t register and I don’t think much of it. Just a subtle, sneaking suspicion. Way in the back of my mind I wonder if he’s waiting for it to get darker – it’s sunset now.
But I don’t want to appear to be a sissy and leave, so I continue reading my book – Murakami’s After Dark – and occasionally look up while sipping my decaf. I’m here to look at the ocean so it’s all pretty nonchalant. (Or so I think).
He “casually” moseys on back toward the parking lot and is at this point behind me. Then I feel him rushing up toward me from behind but I’m too slow to react. I feel a knife in my side – no (and my mind is moving very quickly now) – it’s a sharpened screwdriver.
“Gimme your fucking money!” He yells right in my ear. There are people around but they’re a ways off and don’t notice yet.
Instinctively, I grab the screwdriver and he seems to panic for the slightest moment, thinking I might know martial arts or some shit like that. But he immediately realizes – probably by the look on my face – I don’t. I should work on my poker face, I think. All this happens in an instant, less than a second.
“I don’t have any cash!” I blurt out.
“Bullshit! I heard change jingling in your pocket!” He’s been watching me much longer than I thought.
I reach in my pocket – there are a lot of coins. “Throw it on the ground!” I do as I’m told. But at this point the surfer uncles realize what’s going on and start to call out “Hey!” and rush over. They’re strong but not fast.
He’s not even able to pick up all the change before he runs off and jumps in his beat up, and likely stolen, old sedan of an indiscriminate color.
The uncles check if I’m ok. I have a small red dot beneath my rib cage but am otherwise unscathed.
So I get back in my little SUV full of books – they literally fall out when I open the door. I pick up my daughter. She never asks this, ever, except tonight she says “What did you get up to all day?”
Productive people run out of time eventually and nearly always leave an unfinished project behind for us to speculate over: how would this have turned out if completed?
Many don’t know that the portrait of George Washington on the dollar bill is a cropped, unfinished painting. This shows the impact that even unfinished projects can have. I have a major unfinished project: my Hawaiian history textbook, though, I swear is very near completion! But the very long time it’s taken to write this book made me think about unfinished projects and how people who are passionate about their work don’t retire. Rather, they tend to die with a project incomplete. We don’t always think about this, so I thought I would make a list of such projects from luminaries who can’t be charged with being flaky because they’ve created legendary works. They simple ran out of time.
Some may have seen the television show Sanditon on Masterpiece/BBC. But this show was completed by BBC writers. Austen died with the novel unfinished. (There’s even a season 2, where the writers take off in a direction Austen was unlikely to have done).
It’s somewhat understandable that Kafka would have had unfinished works. He had a hard life, health problems, was never a full-time writer and seemed to feel he was heading toward doom. Hist story The Hunger Artist gets into this. And he was probably right: all his relatives were killed in concentration camps. He wanted his works burned (though it’s debated how much he really wanted this). We have Max Broz to thank that any of his works survive.
Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality
Foucault gave us some tantalizing glimpses – nay, more than glimpses- of what this multi-volume work would have looked like. Volume 1 was released, but in one of his College de France lectures, he says that this project was started with a bunch of dead ends. He died prematurely of AIDS in 1984 at about 60 years old (when there were no treatments) and probably would have done some of his best work later if not for this. I still marvel at the comprehensives of his work, in the sense that it is all part of one meta narrative (which ironically, postmodernism is squarely set against, Foucault was one of its precursors).
Much of Leonardo’s output could be called unfinished because much of it is plans for inventions that were never built. I went to an exhibit in New Zealand in which they built many of his designs and they are surprisingly and consistently workable.
Malcolm X
Perhaps not a book, but Malcolm X’s life work was unfinished in a sense because he took a hard turn toward the end of his short life. This turn was away from the militancy of the Nation of Islam and toward a more inclusive form of the practice. Civil rights leader James Farmer felt that Malcolm X would have joined the civil rights movement though he was previously set against it. When Farmer commented on the change in Malcolm X after his pilgrimage to Mecca and asked why his followers seemed unaware of the change, he replied “because when a leader turns 90 degrees, he turns alone,” meaning that such changes have to made in a slow arc. He was only 39 when he was shot in 1965.
Rubellite Kawena Johnson – Kumulipo
To bring it home: I’ve noticed that almost none of the scholars who worked on Kumulipo were able to fully complete their projects. Johnson, who is still alive in her 90s, published Kumulipo volume 1, but the second volume never appeared. To this I would add Theodore Kelsey, who never published anything on the chant despite being one of its experts. And my mother, Leialoha Apo Perkins, who published two volumes of a journal on Kumulipo, but virtually nothing else and the journal is very hard to find. My mother left a large amount of unfinished works that I’m trying to cope with. The only fully completed projects on Kumulipo are Lili’uokalani’s translation and Marth Beckwith’s The Kumulipo. One could be brought to believe that Kumulipo doesn’t want its entire story told!
My top ten films, all time* {first draft, no order, add urs in comments!} I put out this list on my group Building an Intellectual Culture, but without descriptions of each film.
The Mission
I worked on a film (screenwriter) about missionaries and native people, but I have to admit it doesn’t compare to The Mission. Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons play two opposite types of colonizers who reconcile but ultimately cannot reconcile the colonial project itself. Repentance is a major theme here.
The American
George Clooney in his best performance depicts the precise movements of the assassin – push-ups in the Italian hotel room, cleaning the rifle with efficient movements. But the assassin falls in love and amid themes of lights at the end of tunnels, it all leads to the final scene which I imagine many missed the meaning of.
Ascenseur pour l’échafaud
Alright, it’s melodramatic but it captures the aesthetic of film noir so perfectly: the texture of the black and white, the thriller-mystery plot … but it probably would not have made this list with the one-night session soundtrack from Miles Davis that makes the film iconic.
Breathless
Every film has borrowed from this one – to the point where critic Bob Green says there’s nothing left for it to give. The new film Nouvelle Vague by Richard Linkletter can bring a new appreciation of a perhaps overwatched film and it’s rebellious production by director Jean-Luc Goddard.
Bicycle Thieves
For me this film showed how communities band together when an injustice happens, like the theft of a bicycle. Father-son relationships and shame also feature prominently here.
The Matrix
People exist who call The Matrix a documentary. But anyway, the scene where Neo wakes up in his pod and looks down at the endless row of pods filled with people/batteries is a singular scene in cinema (in my humble opinion).
Mulholland Drive
The film critic for Honolulu Weekly didn’t get this one when it came out. Mullholland Drive scolds us for our superficiality, which Hollywood both exploits and is the Mecca of. The transformation of Naomi Watts in this from bright, optimistic, if naive aspiring actor to burned out husk is remarkable.
Vertigo
It’s interesting that in the film, a character mourns the loss of the old San Francisco, because the film itself depicts what for me is the iconic period of the city (I lived there briefly). When Jimmy Stewart is just driving around the town with the film’s jazz soundtrack, that alone makes the film worth watching. The plot is the icing.
Tree of Life
It’s hard to describe this film at all, but Terrence Malick spent years collecting the images that give us the sense of its grand scope. Superclusters and such. Brad Pitt’s finest performance holds its own against Jessica Chastain’s amazing debut(? First I’d heard of her).
Death in Venice
If longing is your thing, this is the film. The efforts a failed composer goes through to attract a mere glimpse from a beautiful boy… Said boy was cast and called the most beautiful boy in the world – there’s a documentary about him.
Honorable mention:
Citizen Kane
Nothing can be added here to the praise already afforded the greatest film of all time, in the view of some critics.
Brazil
Mostly my first Political Science professor recommended this, and I still feel that it says some important- about bureaucracy and modernity.
Empire Strikes Back
The second Sci-fi was my favorite film growing up and I can’t let go of it. The concept of the used future was something I intuited even back then.
Barry Lyndon
I wrote about this thanks to Prof Mike Shapiro – Kubrick reproduced paintings, who static nature represents the lack of social mobility that Ryan O’Neill’s character comes up against.
400 Blows
Jules and Jim
Here we see the boredom with modernity, even during perilous situations.
The Red Violin
This got a bad review when it came out due to “lack of character development” but the violin is the character and it has quite an arc here.
The Trial
Like Brazil, it more starkly aesthetic in its black and white, Wells lighting – few have matched it. Of course I’m partial to Anthony Perkins and his frustrated victim of the state and the law.
Kafka
Again, like Brazil, but with one of my favorite people, Jeremy Irons, who strangely resembles Kafka himself. There’s a small surprise here worth the wait and the watch.
The Good Shepard
Matt Damon definitely underacts here, but the cast, Eddie Redmayne and DeNiro rounds out the experience, compensating for Damon. A good one if you want to know about secret societies and government agencies.
Waikiki
I already wrote an extensive review of this film, which the director Chris Kahunahana seemed to appreciate – an excerpt:
I spent a sleepless night trying to process the visual feast I had just consumed; a feast equal parts brandy, which goes down smooth and razor blades that tear up your insides. Visually, Kahunahana shows us what film can be again, that it can slow down and it doesnʻt have to be an unwatchable two hour punch in the face by Marvel characters.
Burning
A new addition, based on a Murakami story, “Barn Burning” but made by a Korean director.
After the opera Kamelehua, I happened to run into Tiffany Lani Ing, author of Reclaiming Kalākaua, and we had both had the same thought: “This is something Kalākaua might have done!”
The storyline follows the life – and secret mission – of Timoteo Haʻalilio, envoy and minister plenipotentiary for Kamehameha III tasked with gaining recognition of Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty from Britain, France, the US, and less-known: Belgium.
Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III
Nālani Kneubuhl – I was involved with her play on Prince Kūhiō – was listed as “librettist” – playwright of the opera. Herb Mahelona not only set the story to music but did the translation into Hawaiian. The play was about 75% in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, nearly 25% English and one song in French (when Haʻalilio is in Paris).
At the political climax of the story, Kauikeaouli, in military dress, raises his hand and says – sings! – the very famous line “Ua may ke ea o ka āina i ka pono” (correctly translated, finally!), across the street from the statue of the king in the same gesture, wearing the same clothes. Iʻm not sure if people realized this.
Statue of Kamehameha III at Thomas Square, site of the restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1843
I, for one, sat there in the audience amazed that I was watching a Hawaiian opera. Iʻm a fairly regular opera goer, so I have something to compare this to. Kamalehua was in my view, basically on par with operas one might attend: I myself have seen Carmen, La Boheme, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aida, Lucia de Lamermoor and Rigoletto. It doesnʻt quite have a show-stopping piece on the level of “Toreador” from Carmen, but few operas do and the duet in which Kauikeaouli and Haʻalilio declare their brotherly affection is quite beautiful.
This opera would not have happened at this level without Quinn Kelsey, called “the greatest Verdi baritone of his generation.” The opera had three Native Hawaiians – two were from the Kelsey family (Blythe Kelsey plays Kuhina Nui Kekeuluohi). And while Kauikeaouli was not played by a Hawaiian singer, the dialect coach did a great job with these singers.
Patrick Makuakane – a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient – provided dancers, who combined hula with a touch of modern dance in an absolutely sublime combination. They were joined by chanter and Kumu Hula Kailihiwa Vaughn-Darval, daughter of Palani Vaughn. Kumu Hiwa to us (she is the Kumu Hula of St. Andrews Schools where my wife works and my daughter is her student), is a first class dancer and chanter of the old school. “Aunty Nola” Nahulu (again we know her through our kids’ participation in Hawaiʻi Youth Opera Chorus) directed a great choir and, if Iʻm not mistaken, played one of the aliʻi who, in spirit, attend Haʻalilioʻs tragic death along with the angel of death.
Hawaiʻi Opera Theater CEO Andrew Morgan said that the opera would be brought back in about three years – it was a packed house. This one is a must-see, donʻt miss it when it returns to Blaisdell Concert Hall. Morgan also made a special shout out to Kauʻi Sai-Dudoit, without whoʻs research this opera would not have come to fruition.
Ned Blackhawk won a National Book Award for his groundbreaking history The Rediscovery of America. It begins, more or less, in New Mexico. Whilst there (my oldest went to, and graduated from University of New Mexico with a degree in Theatre – go Lobos!), it struck me that the history of interactions between the Spanish and Native Americans there (especially Pueblo) predated what we think of as American history. That is to say, before Plymouth Rock. Blackhawk calls the 1680 Pueblo Revolt “arguably the first American revolution!”
My aforementioned oldest kid, Noe Field-Perkins, played one of the brothers who led the Pueblo Revolt in the play of the same name at Santa Fe Playhouse.
Pueblo Revolt, directed by Tara Moses, won Best Play, Best New Play, and the other actor Bradley Lewis, a Pueblo himself (it was a two-person show), won Best Performer in a Play, in New Mexico. (Noe was nominated and got eighth in the voting in this category).
Hereʻs how Blackhawk describes the revolt:
The playwright of Pueblo Revolt, Dillon Chitto, a Pueblo raised and educated in Santa Fe, said that the revolt got scant coverage even in the New Mexico history course that high school students take in the state.
At about 7 years old, Noe asked me “When can I be on PBS?” This came out last year on PBS New Mexico:)
Rather than writing on one book, Iʻll go over here the several books that occupy my reading time. I tend to reading small bursts of 20-30 minutes, but two or three times a day, and what I read depends on whatʻs sitting there at the time.
I recently bought Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America, and am amazed by how well-written it is. Rewriting American history is no small task, but one balks at the exclusion of native history that Blackhawk brings in. (Blackhawk is Western Shoshone from Nevada, a nation which M.T. Kato has famously noted is the most bombed nation on Earth – nuclear testing in this case – with over 1000 nuclear tests).
I’m on an advisory board with the well-respected Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History tasked with improving the teaching of Indigenous history within US History. This is what made me buy the book. I almost bought, and will buy soon (I had it in my hand!), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, along the same lines but over 10 years old now.
Blackhawk won a National Book Award for his book on the same day as Craig Santos Perez, who has guest blogged in these pages of the Umiverse – they took a selfie together!
Iʻm reading yet another Murakami novel, his newest: The City and its Uncertain Walls, but it hasnʻt completely grabbed me yet as his other books did despite an interesting premise: a couple who “lives” in an imaginary walled city which preoccupies and distracts them from the mundane life in modern Japan.
Iʻm reading, piecemeal, Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, which is interesting in its lack of self-importance and its navel gazing as philosophy. He interweaves Latin passages with the dexterity of a sage – but he was, after all, the intellectual locked in an ivory tower – he was literally writing in a tower on his estate.
Finally, Iʻve been working my way through Abraham Maslow’s second-most famous book: the Farther Reaches of Human Nature, a kind of proto-Integral theory (along the lines of Ken Wilber, who certainly drew from Maslow). His more famous hierarchy of thought – from remembering at the base to creating at the pinnacle – has occupied my thoughts as I work my way through the semester with my students and wonder exactly whatʻs going through their minds in terms of the content I teach (history and environment these days).
Haruki Murakami noted that the Japanese transliteration of Kafka – kafuka – means alternately “possible” and “impossible,” and noted that he could do a lot with that. He also let on that he started the book Kafka on the Shore with only the title and went from there.
Kafka on the Shore might be described as “magical realism,” in which magical flutes and fish raining from the sky are inserted into the mundane, in some ways, existence of the 15 year old protagonist Kafka.
Haruki Murakami
A runaway, Murakami lights the imagination of all bibliophiles with the idea that his hero will runaway to live in a library. Because the imagery is so metaphorical and the book has a Freudian theme, we can assume that Murakami means something like a library of the mind. And indeed, Kafka often does not know when he is dreaming or awake in this library.
His alternative hero is “dumb” and can’t read. But he wasn’t always so: part of the book is military reports from the WWII and occupation period, during which something like chemical warfare was conducted on the Japanese population (in Murakami’s story at least) and the dumbness was the effect of these chemicals.
Between impossible happenings and the unlikely collision of these two protagonists (Murakami himself at different ages and different phases?) the story unfolds to a more climactic ending than Murakami’s typical plot. Recommended.
On the day of the overthrow, I had the last word on the overthrow and where we might go from here
Aloha kakou,
I wouldn’t be speaking here today if it weren’t for the fact that on January 17th, 2012, the Honolulu Star Advertiser failed to mention anything about the overthrow. But people – Hawaiians – they know the date, January 17th, and it so happened that in December 2011 I had started a little blog and I wrote a short article on the overthrow which hundreds, and eventually thousands ended up reading. That little blog which started as a joke – it’s called the Umiverse- now is nearing 300,000 views, that’s about how many Hawaiians live in Hawaiʻi. I mention all this just to point out that there is a strong desire to learn our history- a desire that is not being fulfilled by schools nor by the media – and that is my message today – the first part at least, it’s a simple one: honor the history. And this is a duty of Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians alike who live here.
I’m on the board of the Hawaiian Historical Society which goes back to the time of Lili’uokalani and we try to do just that – honor the history – and I can tell you that we have our work cut out for us! It’s a bigger task than our board of 12 can do and so it really lies with all of us to make this happen.
I think of the history of our movement and the fact that several generations now have given themselves to it: staring with Kekuni Blaisdell from the WWII generation, the Baby Boomers like HaunaniKay Trask, George Helm, Poka Laenui, Liko Martin, Lynette Cruz and the Protect Kaho’olawe Ohana, Generation X, with people like Keanu Sai, Laulani Teale, Millennials like Kaho’okahi Kanuha and now the younger generation is coming to the forefront – many of them were here at the palace yesterday. It’s been a long road but if you saw the opio yesterday you would be optimistic as I am.
Liko Martin at ʻIolani Palące, ca. 1970s
The second part of my message today is one that occurred to me when I was trying to find a new way to talk about the overthrow, which we’ve been examining and reexamining for over 30 years. So this deals with a part of my life that many don’t know about: even those who know me might not know that while half of my growing up was here in Hawaii, the other half of my youth was spent in the South Pacific in the Kingdom of Tonga… and the opportunity arose for me to travel back to Tonga less than 2 months ago for the first time since I was a teenager.
Tonga celebrated the 150th anniversary of adopting its Constitution (1875-2025), which was based mainly of the Hawaiian Constitution of 1864
Some of you may know that Tonga’s constitution is heavily based – word for word in many cases – on the Hawaiian Constitution of 1864. So it is as if Hawai’i’s constitutional monarchy lives on in a way in Tonga – they still live under this constitution, in a way that is not perfect but it is functional. There is basically no homelessness nor any serious hunger there even though their economy is one 250th the size of Hawaiʻi’s.
So this new way of looking at the overthrow is to think about what was lost at that time. One thing that was lost was Constitutional Monarchy, which I can tell you is an imperfect system, and it was replaced with another VERY imperfect system. In 30 years of my studying forms of government and political philosophers studying them for 2000 years we know that the perfect government doesn’t exist. But what’s needed is a constant vigilance – not to get the result you want (there’s been far too much of that recently) – but for a legitimate process. It’s really the process that matters in the end. (Think about it: every country has a left and a right..)
It was not lost on me that on this day of the overthrow I have the last word on the overthrow. And so I thought deeply about what that last word should be.
We were wronged on this day, the US has admitted that much – but it was 133 years ago. It may be time to turn our sights from the grievance towards solutions. Of course that work is already ongoing.
Lili’uokalani (source: Hawai’i Archives)
It was an outsider, a Swiss – Niklaus Schweitzer – who has lived among us a long time who wrote in his book Turning Tide that this movement, our movement (right here) is “evolutionary rather than revolutionary” – some may disagree with that characterization but all he meant was that we have been building the infrastructure of the Lahui within the existing structure. Perhaps it’s time to really focus on this building while still respecting the history.
I think of all that has been built since the first of these gatherings in 1993: the Hawaiian-focused charter schools, the burial councils, two more Kamehameha campuses, Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at UH Manoa, a PhD program in Hawaiian studies at UH Hilo, recently a new Kaiapuni- Hawaiian secondary immersion school in the Ewa Moku, the Malama Honua worldwide voyage by Hokuleʻa, and many, many ‘Āina-based programs.
We know what the solutions are: we need to educate ourselves and educate our own. We need to build viable and sustainable economic systems. This is sometimes called civil society- whatever the future of the Lahui may be, it will need organizations inside of it- of the kind that will do things to make life better but that the government won’t or can’t do. On the note of economics, how much do we really need in the way of material possessions? Is what we really need objects – things – or is it dignity? I can tell you that Tongans don’t have a lot in terms of material possessions but they unquestionably have dignity. Building, rather than waiting, could bring dignity – something to be proud of. When we were PhD students together, Keanu Sai said to me – and I haven’t forgotten it: “It’s easy to destroy, it’s hard to build.” We know what to do but knowing is not enough – it’s the act of building that matters.
I said Iʻd come back to the Tao Te Ching, but there is so much in these 81 verses, I thought Iʻd focus on a topic: leadership in this case. The text brings up the question of ego in a leader:
When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised.
If you don’t trust people, you make them untrustworthy.
The Master doesn’t talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, “Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!”
This is not the model of leadership we practice in contemporary Western society. If you think about the process of campaigning, it consists of bragging about yourself – and at times bashing others – for about 9 months straight. A normal person does not do this, much less a “master.”
“Truly inspiring leaders get results by their own example: They encourage others to be responsible and do the right thing, but not by proclaiming and bragging about their unimpeachable management.” — Dr. Wayne Dyer.
In Polynesian societies, where I have spent much of my time, bragging about oneself is something that simply isnʻt done. People do have egos, but they either wonʻt boast of their traits or accomplishments or they find clever ways to boast without boasting, like saying that someone else said they were awesome. But never directly. All this suggests weʻve lost our way in our pursuit of leadership.
