Ancient Hawaii - Worlds Apart

Ancient Hawaii, by Herb Kawainui Kane:
WORLDS APART

MOMENT OF CONTACT
Collection of the Kauai Marriot Resort

When the british expedition under captain james cook arrived in Hawai'i, differences of world view and logic between the two cultures often made actions which were perfectly rational to one group seem bizarre or incomprehensible to the other. Hawai'i was not unique; throughout the world, wherever the emerging modern European culture collided with a culture rooted in a primal past, the same gulf of misunderstanding existed.

As the myths of Polynesia reveal, the lives from which these stories arose were radically different from our own. But only nine centuries earlier Cook's Viking ancestors, whose Danelaw conquests extended from London to Scotland, were of a society essentially similar to that of the Polynesian Hawaiians. Students of Greek mythology and the Homeric tales also find striking similarities in Polynesian traditions-the same gifting and endless feasting as affirmations of status, the same clan loyalties suppressing feelings of individuality, the same ruling aristocracy of hereditary chiefs (hero in Greek, ali'i in Hawaiian). In Norse, Greek and Polynesian tales we find pantheons of gods reflecting human frailties as well as virtues. From native cultures throughout the world we hear the same stories with differences caused by different environments, a sameness which mythologists see as expressive of the nature of humanity.

If Cook's men and their Hawaiian hosts interpreted each others' behavior as strange, it was because each side viewed its world through different lenses. The disparity between European and Polynesian customs and attitudes had evolved from different basic premises about the universe and humanity's role within it. For example, after Cook tried to kidnap the Hawaiian king as a hostage against the return of a stolen-or impounded-boat and got himself killed by the king's bodyguards, and after an uneasy peace was restored, a Hawaiian asked the British when Cook might return, and what might he do to them. The question, taken by some Western scholars as evidence that Cook had been seen as a god, is simply explained by the Hawaiian belief in ghosts as spirits with powers of retribution. Different concepts, different lenses. By their own perceptions and reasoning the Hawaiians of Cook's time were intensely practical, as their survival in an environment without metals demanded. Today, bewildered by the logic of a culture radically different from our own, seekers of convenient explanations too often surround their perceptions of ancient ways with a romantic aura of mysticism and magic that never existed.

Europeans, heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian beliefs, saw the universe as two separate spheres, natural and supernatural, under one supernatural male creator, with selected humans (Christians) below the Supernatural in the hierarchy but elevated above, and given dominion over, Nature (everything else in the Universe, including other peoples). Such dominion logically included rights of conquest and exploitation. The journals of Western explorations from the 15th century well into the 19th century show that Europeans enjoyed the conceit that native peoples of other lands might see them as superior beings, if not as gods. Native awe at European technology was misinterpreted as recognition of an innate European superiority.

We look back on "the Dawn of Humanism" as a flowering of philosophy, the arts and sciences. More to the point, it was the individual's awakening to self awareness, and an emerging middle class striving to win, by purchase or politics, rights by which an individual could attend to his self interest. It was discovered that investment in science, technology and exploration could produce new inventions, new markets and greater profits.

After Galileo and Newton, the Western world view would be forever changed, with no turning back. When Cook reached Hawai'i, Europeans, in their "Age of Enlightenment" were beginning to replace their mythology of the past with a mythology of the future.

At that moment, individual rights incomprehensible a few centuries earlier were being asserted by the American Revolution as "self evident" and "inalienable." Individual rights expressed in initiative and self-service imparted a dynamism and audacity to Western culture that less resilient indigenous cultures could not withstand.

At that moment, individual rights incomprehensible a few centuries earlier were being asserted by the American Revolution as "self evident" and "inalienable." Individual rights expressed in initiative and self-service imparted a dynamism and audacity to Western culture that less resilient indigenous cultures could not withstand.

Theirs was a universe of opposites-light and darkness, male and female, heat and cold, wetness and dryness, hardness and softness, growth and decay, roughness and smoothness-none of which can exist without its opposite.

Apparently there was no concept of the supernatural as a sphere separate from Nature. Polynesian religion was so integrated with life that no separate word for it was needed. The original creative spirits were their natural ancestors, as well as the progenitors of everything else in the universe. Humans and all other life forms were related by a common ancestry. The multitude of spirits of ancestors, of the forest, ocean, winds, mountains and volcanoes were viewed as natural rather than supernatural. If we take "god" to mean a supernatural being, the term mistranslates akua, which means a being of immense power, whether a spirit or a living person. Revering the original creators as their ultimate ancestors, Polynesians would have found the modern idea of a conquest of Nature to be incomprehensible, patricidal, and certain to bring terrible retribution from natural forces.

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