Here’s a provocative message received from a reader who uses the name, Compare and Decide. I’ll let it speak for itself.

I don’t read Civil Beat any more. Every couple of days, I visit their site, but I usually don’t read any stories. If I look at a story, I read the first couple of sentences and then scroll down to the comments, which are usually pretty awful and uninformed, but which give a sense of what the public is “thinking” (if you can call it that).

I have not read the Star Advertiser for maybe five or six years. Your blog is my only reference to news in Hawaii. I click on it several times a day, and read the comments. I never watched the local news.

I now read the BBC online, maybe for the past year. Also, I have recently gotten an online subscription to the NY Times. That’s really satisfying. It’s global, but it also has real depth of analysis. Local news from any society is really kind of repulsive.

Interestingly, this growing disinterest in Hawaii on my part goes back several years ago to my cancelling a local bank account and opening a national online bank account. All of a sudden, I experienced this reorientation in my perspective, like I did not live in Hawaii. Or, rather, I felt like a part-time resident. Strangely, it felt like a bit improvement, like an expansion of horizons. That is what life is all about, expanding our horizons.

When Donald Trump visits a state, he tells the locals all about his business interests in their state, and how that investment makes him feel like a local, too. He is lying, I am sure. But when I become slightly less emotionally invested in this locality through something as small as cancelling a local bank account, it does point out how our practical interests shape our perspectives. We have a social position in the world which gives us our bias, and this is based on our economic placement in that world. There is an intersection between economic self-interest and the psychology of the unconscious that has not been adequately analyzed.

When the actor Richard Chamberlain moved to Hawaii, it was a big deal in his life (or so I was once told). He really got into this Native Hawaiian spirituality. Maybe it even saved his life. It seems like a lot of celebrities who retire to Hawaii are recuperating from life in LA. LA has a way of eating its children. It is said that the only way to survive working in LA is to live outside of LA (if one can afford it).

But after the Great Recession, like so many folks, Chamberlain had to go back to work. Suddenly, he was shocked that there are no jobs in Hawaii. “There is nothing going on here,” he said. Actually, the only thing going on is the growth of renewable energy, and one gets a sense that with its rapid change and complexity, it confuses the local establishment. So a tranquil, provincial society is a nice place to retire to because there is not much going on, but all of a sudden that can be a big problem.

But there is something else which might disturb retired outsiders who idealize Hawaii, which is small-town pettiness. When they do go outside of their small bubble of comfort, they encounter ignorance, pettiness, cruelty. One of the problems for a reporter is getting caught up in that silliness, because that is really all there is going on.

I did not read your article on the Dung sisters (whoever they are…). But there is the risk in local reportage of slipping into the gossipy ways of the locals, even in the course of an effort to show how petty the locals can be (which is what I expect your story set out to do).

Ian Lind, please return to hard news, like renewable energy issues.

Here is an article on peak oil (declining oil production). By 2022, there will may be no more fracking, and conventional oil production and exports are expected to decline in majors like Saudi Arabia. That does not necessarily mean that there will be a global economic crisis because the world has been moving away from oil since the 1970s, a trend that has been accelerating (declining or ‘peak’ oil consumption). The one exception is air travel, which relies on kerosene from petroleum, for which there is not yet an alternative.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/what-happened-to-peak-oil

This is very relevant to Hawaii.

I just read this article which claims that it is expected that in one year from now, 80% of Puerto Rico’s population will be infected with the Zika virus.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/health/zika-virus-puerto-rico.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

That is very relevant to Hawaii. But the local media is not going to run this story. You could shoot off a one-paragraph post on this topic.

Ian Lind, think globally, act locally!