• We must protect, not endanger, keiki • On violence and terrorism • Show me the evidence of your conspiracy theories • Climate change is our fault, our responsibility We must protect, not endanger, keiki I am 100 percent supportive
• We must protect, not endanger, keiki • On violence and terrorism • Show me the evidence of your conspiracy theories • Climate change is our fault, our responsibility
We must protect, not endanger, keiki
I am 100 percent supportive of Chris Schaefer’s letter published Sept. 4, “KIUC calendar endangers keiki.”
Poor keiki.
We must as a community do everything in our power, in our voices to achieve an awakening in favor of our children from all the predators, past and future.
Leonie Dabancourt
Kapa‘a
On violence and terrorism
It is not religion, but the religious preoccupation with an afterlife for the “self” (religiously sanctioned selfishness), which leads to terrorism and other acts of violence.
Primitive versions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike view life as a contest between insiders and outsiders, good guys and bad guys to win an eternal victory over death for the self.
Religious theories of an after-life often promise that both the faithful and martyrs who have “deprived the self,” or sacrificed their bodies for their particular beliefs, will win them back when their particular god brings them to their particular paradise.
This provides solace to martyrs, freedom fighters, terrorists and “insiders” who remain preoccupied with eternal survival for themselves and their own kind.
There is a “Reality” about us that is enduring, eternal, endless, immortal — something in us and supporting us that makes us aware of that Reality, and desirous to know more clearly what it is all about.
Our awareness of it is encoded both in our genes and in the essential workings of our brains. More than mere wishful thinking or naive religious hope, it is part of our make-up.
Young children long to discover crawling, walking, running; adolescents long to be included in special relationships; young adults long to become mutual participants in projects larger than themselves.
When no longer willing to settle for being protected by our self-centered homemade plans of protection and salvation, “grown-ups” develop a longing for a more intense existence, a greater sense of participation in life, one permeated with a comprehensive and transcendent meaning, one with a compelling passion for something beyond and larger than life and the “self,” something that leads beyond terrorism and violence.
Within each of us is a desire to live in the context of an ephemeral safety net of Timeless Reality.
Robert P. Merkle
Koloa
Show me the evidence of your conspiracy theories
All this mumbo-jumbo about chemtrails, pesticides, conspiracy theories, etc., cracks me up.
I can just picture a general authorizing the drop of toxic amounts of barium over a house he resides in with his wife and kids. Then the government is going to bite the hand that feeds it, and poison the taxpayers who foot the bill instead of testing on a country who wouldn’t survive without our support.
Finally, the world’s population is going to become unsustainable in the next 100 years, but I don’t see mass extinction of anyone anywhere. Nobody is dying that wasn’t already slated to pass. I see unbelievable rates of procreation and extended years of existence due to technology.
Somebody please point out what I’m missing. Show me the dead, show me the sick, show me something to back up your story.
By the way I did Google it, and there are two sides.
Joseph Lavery
Kapa‘a
Climate change is our fault, our responsibility
Mr. Burns, you make it hard to engage in a public debate when you make up facts and liberally misquote me. I know that no matter what I say, you are beyond convincing.
The only reason that I wrote my original letter or am even responding right now is because there are many reasonable people who may be reading The Garden Island who are not aware of the facts behind anthropogenic climate change.
To repeat the gist of my last letter: the UN IPCC report states that the planet is warming, humans are causing it, it will continue to get worse as we continue to emit CO2, and the changes will be disruptive to society.
Nearly every scientific agency in the world has endorsed the IPCC report and not a single agency has published a dissenting opinion.
While climate scientists are doing their best to figure out what the effects of a warming planet will be, we need to do our best to figure out what we can to do stop them from occurring.
We can’t look at climate change as an isolated issue. It is just one of the many symptoms of a sick planet. And it’s not evil fossil fuel companies or greedy politicians who have brought us this far. It’s each of us as individuals. It’s our culture, our economy, and our priorities.
We are bringing the planet down a perilous path and when we get to the end of the road there will be no turning back.
Luke Evslin
Kapahi
