Even before Barack Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the “Birthers” had raised this country’s awareness that there was something different about our new President beyond the obvious. Their claim was ill-founded, but they were right to some extent. President Barack Obama was raised in the Hawaiian Islands that comprise our 50th state. Many who live in the continental United States insist, not without cause perhaps, that he is a foreigner. Indeed, some U.S. citizens have asked me ask what language we speak in Hawai`i and some U.S. tourists ask Hawai`i residents if they’ve ever been in “the states.” This is not mere folly. The island culture of Hawai`i is quite different from that of the continental United States. As a Caucasian transplant to Hawai`i, living and working among ethnic Hawaiians for 16 years, I offer a hard-earned experiential understanding of some reasons why Obama is such an enigma for so many of his countrymen.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Obama embodies a lifestyle that is, in fact, foreign to most of the people of the continental United States. Although he moved to the continent as a young man, I submit that he continues to manifest what Hawaiians know as aloha in his world view and modus operandi - even in the vitriolic environments of American politics. It would do us no harm to gain an understanding of aloha and how it influences Obama’s policies and governing style. That exercise would add another dimension to our evaluations of the purposes and effectiveness of his performance. Is aloha in the White House an asset or a liability?
“Aloha” has as many connotations as “Love.” Parsing the word, "Alo" is "front," "presence," "face;" and "ha" is the breath of the spirit. We might paraphrase it literally as “spirit presence”- a respectful, open-hearted way to greet someone, bid them farewell, or to court a beloved. While modern Hawaiians greet with kisses as other cultures do, Hawaiian traditionalists express aloha with "honi" in which two people put brows and noses together, inhaling and exhaling , sharing one another's breath of the spirit. Honi can be very brief or, in deep friendships, a longer, more intimate exchange of spiritual energy. Nonetheless, because of how and when the word is used, it is usually understood as “hello”, “goodbye,” or “love.”
Aloha Is Cooperative
But aloha is not simply a word; it is an intrinsic island mindset, an island way of life that predates contact with Christian ideologies brought by the missionaries in the 1820s. Hawai`i’s aloha stems from the Polynesian temperament and traditions of most of the South Pacific island nations. Polynesian ancestors voyaged among all the Pacific Islands of the Polynesian Triangle (New Zealand, Hawai`i and Easter Island) and even to the North American continent on double hulled sailing canoes. As voyagers, their acute powers of observation and attention to details in their natural environment enabled Polynesians to navigate by traditional indigenous methods of wayfinding through a trackless, unpredictable, and unforgiving sea.
Constantly adjusting the canoe’s course, sails, and lashings to changes in winds and waves bred strength, humility, gratitude, and a great respect for natural forces and processes as they worked tirelessly to achieve harmony, safety, and success with primal elements.
What they learned as they adapted their minds and bodies to long voyages, is that change is a constant, traditional wisdom is sacred, knowledge is survival, sensitive attention is crucial, tolerance and forgiveness are essential, and no decision or set of sails is appropriate to all circumstances. Pragmatically, when you have to share a canoe, or later, small bits of land in the middle of a vast ocean, with other people, whether you like them or not, you know that co-operation and stewardship of resources are matters of survival. That may be why one Hawaiian friend explained the core values of aloha as respect, responsibility, and obligation.
Hawaiians seldom define or discuss aloha. They teach by example and demonstration. The children learn both skills and aloha by observation, participation, and being corrected when they err. Thus the habits of aloha are absorbed viscerally, un-self-consciously. This makes for a lifestyle of great subtlety based in a sensitive, subconscious mind-set that is first and foremost relational. You know that you cannot control others, but you can offer your best so as to avoid making others uncomfortable or creating enemies. Once a word is spoken it cannot be unsaid and words can do irreparable harm to relationships. Therefore, you approach all people with respect, warmth, openness and hospitality, trusting that they too live aloha. If they respond with belligerence, you know you have to focus on the aloha before you'll get anywhere with them. Compromise is a given as you instinctively and persistently work toward win-win solutions, knowing that anything less will come back as a problem, or, worse, endanger the entire enterprise. But the captain’s sacred trust is to mind the safety of his canoe and his crew so even compromise has that tacit limit.
The Hawaiian archipelago is blessed with rich volcanic soil and an hospitable climate year ‘round that provide an abundance of nature’s edibles and create a culture of generosity. Before the days of sugar plantations and the exponential growth of rapid transportation in the last century, the islands’ resources were plentiful. They were both augmented by and limited by their ocean boundaries, and were preserved under sound stewardship. Resources were systematically shared, with careful deliberation about collateral damage and long-term consequences. There were times every year when the reefs were not to be fished so that the fish would be plentiful for the rest of the year. The royals taxed their people in produce. Since land was not owned but awarded by the king, a chief could lose his tenure if he was not a successful steward or hoarded his bounty. As with voyaging, this situation required great attention to the forces and cycles of nature so as to work with them and maximize productivity. Hawaiians speak of this as aloha aina, a spiritual relationship with the land. It has very practical ramifications.
The Hawaiian word for “foreign,” “foreigner,” or “introduced” is haole. “Ole” is the word for “no” or “none.” Coupled with “ha,” it designates someone or something that does not share the spirit. In Hawai`i, the Polynesian spirit of aloha has been augmented by Oriental traditions of humility and respect brought by the first immigrant laborers to the sugar plantations. Those cultures blended well. But since the early days of contact with western Europeans and Americans the word haole has come to refer specifically to Caucasians. Given our conquest of the islands and the indigenous population, it usually has a decidedly negative connotation. But, in spite of how relentlessly we haoles have colonized and commercialized the Hawaiian Islands, often compromising precious resources, the culture of aloha is still discernible, available and adoptable by those whose spirits are receptive. You do not have to be of Hawaiian blood to be “Hawaiian at heart.” The young children of Hawai`i have been taught to include haoles and visitors of all ethnicities in their aloha by addressing even unfamiliar adults as “Auntie” or “Uncle” – a manifestation of the indigenous understanding that we humans are all related, all interdependent – all family.
Capitalism Is Competitive
In contrast, most Americans are used to the vast resources of a whole continent, resources rich enough to support the expansive and competitive enterprises and lifestyles of our capitalistic economic culture. We feel free to use our resources willy-nilly, with no pressing need to think of collateral damage and long term consequences. No wonder some scoff at Obama's efforts at stewardship, at his habit of listening to disparate points of view, at how long he takes to make decisions, at how he changes his mind as new information becomes available or an unforeseen consequence rears its head. He acts as if we are indeed our brothers' keeper, as if everybody deserves a fair shake and a fair share, as if we’re all in this canoe together. Some Americans, especially our impatient 24/7 media, see him as dithering, waffling, lying, breaking promises and ineffective. The truth of this is in the eye of the beholder, but Obama is acting from the aloha that shapes his personal integrity and intellect as he struggles to meet a veritable parade of crises. He must serve many masters with an eye to long-term consequences, political realities, global interests and natural forces that he cannot control, while always protecting and promoting our national interests and security. He must do so while constantly being advised, analyzed, critiqued, criticized, misunderstood and/or deliberately misrepresented by some of the quarrelsome folks whom he seeks to serve.
The Disconnect
Those of a competitive, entrepreneurial/capitalist mind-set are particularly frustrated by Obama’s unfamiliar style of governance. The kindest of them find him too nuanced, too intellectual, too naïve; others see him as weak and deviating dangerously from their business needs and ideals or as disappointing their ultra-liberal aspirations. But as more and more of our lives have become globalized, as nations of the world have become more and more politically and economically interdependent, might not Obama's intrinsic, relational aloha provide an appropriate base from which to assess and attend to the needs of our nation, our global interconnectedness, our neighbors, and our planet? Isolationism is impossible in today’s hyperlinked world and we see daily lessons that unmitigated competition is unsustainable, but we are slow to learn.
As Obama calls for civility, common sense, bipartisanship, stewardship, and right sharing of resources, culturally aware Hawaiians can recognize his work as analogous to that of the captain and navigator of a small canoe on a constantly stormy ocean. We are indeed one nation among many on our small blue planet in this vast universe, and we have a proud and fractious crew in our canoe! Hawaiians can sympathize, in amazement perhaps, when they see the leader of our great nation assaulted by slanderous disrespect, entrenched special interests, histrionic rhetoric and intransigent positions that lack the cooperative, husbanding principles of aloha. We continentals do have our own versions of caring for one another that surface in times of natural disaster or community projects and flavor some of our more cohesive neighborhoods and many of our farms, but as a culture we usually assume and uplift private interests and individual freedoms over community needs and obligations.
Change or Be Changed
Because the planet, our interconnected international politics and our interdependent global economies are manifesting unpredictable changes that are disrupting our assumptions, our property, and our very way of living, it is becoming apparent that we simply must be involved with one another in mutually beneficial ways or our separate failures will drag our global economic and social infrastructures down to ruin. We find ourselves over and over again sharing resources asymmetrically in response to present or imminent local and global catastrophes. With so many of our companies spread around the globe, pulling back to take care of ourselves in isolation would be impossible. If there is no turning back and calling everyone home, would a more proactive and planful approach to this global enmeshment be more effective and preventive and less expensive than our present, reactive, crisis by crisis approach?
As a global leader, captain and navigator of the lead canoe, Obama”s cultural background of aloha reinforces the personal convictions that motivate him to act in ways that encourage other nations and leaders to take on a greater share of responsibility. This has been his stance regarding the wars he inherited in Iraq and Afghanistan and what he has done with Libya. He strives to take the bully out of the bully pulpit, has relaxed some of our intrusive tendencies, and required other first-world nations, the UN and NATO to take on the privileges and costs of global leadership. He must also work unduly hard to get our overly-politicized Legislature to work on the nation’s well-being instead of playing partisan brinksmanship. He persists in working on this “step up and cooperate” strategy, much to the confusion and frustration of those who don’t understand and/or don’t see the writing on the wall about the need for changes in the way we operate at home and abroad - especially those who fear losing our grip on world dominance or their jobs in the Legislature.
Peace Work
Hawai`i has the world’s most ethnically diverse and racially mixed population successfully sharing small bits of land in the midst of the world’s largest ocean and making public jokes about racial stereotypes. Getting along takes work and we work at it. We offer aloha to members of all branches of the armed services even as we protest against the increasing militarization of our precious island acres. Although one of our major religions objects, we deplore gay-bashing and seek civil rights for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered folks. In gestures of apology and forgiveness, Japanese tourists, transported on American tour boats, drop flower leis on the sunken wreckage of the USS Arizona and there is a shared memorial to our tragic sinking of the Japanese fishing school’s Ehime Maru at a waterfront park in Honolulu. Solemn bells are tolled at the yearly commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as observed by silent multi-ethnic participants. Since 1976 we have been reaffirming our once denigrated Polynesian culture as a growing fleet of voyaging canoes sails among the many Pacific Island nations. In a year or two, the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s Hokule`a will undertake a voyage of peace to carry aloha around the world.
Few Hawaiian locals are aware of how different is their assumptive world until they go to the continental United States or other countries that do not manifest aloha and notice something missing or different. That is often the first time that their implicit customs become explicit in their lives. With and without his conscious intention, Obama manifests this cooperative, peace-making island heritage.
Hawai`i’s subtle culture of aloha is totally unique, as omnipresent, as subliminal, as fluid as the sea that engenders it. It is no wonder that Obama brings his family back to Hawai`i every year. Because I crave it myself, I venture that Obama’s spirit needs that dose of aloha to sustain him and help him be President of all of the people of the United States and a leader in a world in which diversity is the norm. Obama has embraced the racial identity of an African American, but he is, in fact, a bi-racial, bi-national product of Hawai`i and its culture of aloha.
But Can It Work?
This multifaceted aloha, then, is the “foreign” quality that Obama brings to the Presidency that so often baffles, disappoints, and frustrates people of the continental United States. And, like it or not, understand it or not, we’re stuck with aloha in the White House for now. Is that a good thing or disaster? Do we want it or will we reject it? Indeed, can it survive? Shall we work “no holds barred” to get rid of Obama, as many pledge to do, or shall we send him Legislators who understand cooperation and compromise? In a little more than a year aloha could be gone from the White House. Will we have gained anything, lost anything, learned anything from it? A thinking electorate matters more that the most eloquent speech. What do you think?
The Politics of Aloha by Abby Freeborn is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. For permission to use, contact myfrenab@yahoo.com
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