Divisions

Living down at Alii Villas for a year, I had the experience of listening to the jack hammers that cleared the way for Alii Lani. I work from home, so I heard this for some long daylight hours, six days a week, just like all the other tenants, and just like the folks using those tools. One of my neighbors, driven to illogic by the persistent pounding, blurted, “It should be against the law to make all that noise.”
“How quietly do you think our building got made?” I countered.
“Well, yeah, but… this is enough now. They don’t need to keep building.”
And so the sentiment goes. It may be a deep down gasp when we realize that another subdivision is going in. It may be a deep down belief that this was our ancestor’s land. Along with these thoughts, we add curiosity about the new homes, and consider hopes for our children to live somewhere nice. Next comes the bewilderment at how it grew to this.
Let’s look at the way our race (human) does these things. My kids are a good example. With two bedrooms for three children, having dibs on a room didn’t work. They had to hash out arrangements and discuss options. If they hadn’t all moved to our new house on the same day, I guarantee you that somebody would have claimed a room solely on, “I was here first.”
Using “getting here first” as a basis for ownership is problematic. It includes the idea of getting here, which hints at everybody once being the new guy, even if that was way back when. Obviously, treating the new guy as we want to be treated doesn’t work when the new guy just comes in and takes over. In the same way, a new takeover doesn’t repair an old takeover.
Because the American nation has a penchant for taking over, we solved how to do this (with each other, at least) a bit less bloodily. We now require the new guy to use money and the old guy to want the money more than his dibs. I have no comment on the system’s problems. I only wish to say that this is now how it’s done, and can be done by a determined anyone.
The point of such a discussion is to say that we all want our children and grandchildren to live well. Determining rights to livable places based on any sort of dibs will harm more people than it could help.
I love open spaces, likely we all do. There’s nothing like time in the wilderness and places of profound silence. Sometimes I get to enjoy them. All the time, here or there, I am connected with all creation by more than blood. We share the air. I am also connected with the earth by more than gravity. In the words of the Desiderata, we are all children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, and we have a right to be here.