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If Hawaii was the base cradle of Western Civilization- What would Hawaii be like today. What pathways might they have taken and what experiences may they have encountered and to what effect would these encounters had in Hawaii when brought back to share on the mother Island?
Would Hawaii still have the same culture it has today or would things such as Madam Pele been laid to rest thousands of years ago and replaced by much more profound experiences with their travels about the world?
Any ideas on what Hawaii might look like today if their pathways extended about the world after calling Hawaii their home?
Just remove current westerners from the picture a moment and throw them all back into the Stone age and slide Hawaiians around the globe instead.
Any thoughts?
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Rock walls might have been more prevalent around the world.
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kind of hard to imagine. Hawaii has no resources in metals or energy. With out the iron, copper, tin and gold and the means to work these materials into tools would any kind of advanced technical civilization developed?
No matter how thin you slice it, its still balony.
No matter how thin you slice it, its still balony.
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Hawaiian Exceptionalism ? Nature over Nurture?
Is that the impetus to these musings ? I'm afraid you're plowing a'a here. There is (obviously) nothing intrinsically superior in the genetics of those identified as Hawaiians over any other human group. There is little in the culture today that suggest any rigor in maintaining status quo, the culture is a borrowing one; religions, polyester, tinned meats and new starches (in abundance), tahitian moves at Merry Monarch, and political philosophies from Marx to von Mises. The culture I see in East Hawaii, and statewide as well, is one that seems more East than West in it's underlying ethos, irregardless of the (seemingly superficial) embrace of Christianity. Therefore I would speculate that they would not have been able to maintain whatever cultural purity they began with, just as what happened after contact.
This is consistent with what actually happened to the Sumerians sometime in the millenia after grains were domesticated and before Greece was ascendent, beginning what we now call Western culture.
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they would not have been able to maintain whatever cultural purity they began with
The religions, cultures, or nations which try to maintain cultural purity generally don't have very good track records. In fact, they usually end up as cautionary tales, at best.
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves
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Being that Hawaiians were master navigators due to their environment.
Hawaii would have been a colonial power and the rest world would be better for it. imho
Geographical / cultural determinism debunked in the 40' and 50' as racist.
Every so often, fascists / evangelists / cultural determinists want to dredge it up to make themselves feel superior .....
"Manifest destiny" used as an excuse to wipe out the indigenous folks residing in the west. The Brits used the same ploy in India.
It been proven over and over again - latitude, skin color and cultural values has no relation to I.Q. if that is what you are looking for.
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Bullwinkle,
No... LOL not at all racially oriented or about I.Q.'s. This is about loss of culture through such expansionism. The dominating culture loses itself in the process and the final determination; what would Hawaii as a culture be today should it had taken that route? Cultural issues are not about race or I.Q.
Each culture has a story of how it became and each experience alters a culture. A culture that reaches across the globe becomes diluted within the experiences that brought it there and no longer retains what it was before stepping forward.
To make the statement that the world would have better off for it is to ignore those things necessary to become that entity. The world could have been better off or worse off, we cannot assume to know that outcome because of the complex dynamics involved in such an adventure.
Cultures are not fixed personalities they change over time.
