I haven't written on this blog for awhile. Instead, I've been participating in discussions over at this crazy website called "Reddit." Looking at my logs, I realize I'm not getting any visitors besides bots and the occasional spammer. Publishing for a readership of zero people seems to make little sense. However, I have noticed that I've gotten a few important life opportunities for myself, because the blog acts as kind of a résumé - it shows who I am to people whom I've just met.

A lot has happened in my life in the past six months. I was in Florida visiting my sister for Christmas. Then, I went to Hawaii in February.

In Hawaii, I spent a couple weeks with my brother, nephew, and extended family at Kauai resorts in Poipu and Hanalei - and then took off on my bicycle touring the islands. I spent a week more on each of four island - Kauai, the Big Island, Maui, and Oahu. It was a really intimate way to see the islands. I certainly saw a very different Hawaii than the tourist brochures advertise. It was good that way to be able to see the social systems and attitudes of real people. It's interesting that I saw it as being kind of an opposite place to Canada (which I visited in the summer of 2010). In Canada, everything looks like the USA on the surface - but underneath, people are powered by entirely different attitudes and approaches to life; in that way, I imagined Canada to be kind of like the sci-fi concept of a parallel world. In Hawaii, things seem very different on the surface, culturally - however, underneath, it's all Americana. It's even more American than the mainland in some ways. There's so much social drama there. It's fascinating.

People go to Hawaii with this quintessential American ideal in mind of "living for the weekend." They go there to relax and take it easy and enjoy life in that way. However, without a work ethic, their houses all become terribly dilapidated. I've never seen a place in the USA where most every property is just so run down. I see, further, that this environment they've created for themselves becomes a thing which confuses these people - and they start really resenting rich tourists who come through - developing a class struggle mentality. In reality, they could all be living in beautiful houses, if they would have the northern-European work ethic where people putter around their house every day in their free time, fixing things, cleaning things, painting things, etcetera. Those activities don't take any money, to speak of. It's my first taste of something I think they call "tall-poppy syndrome" further across the ocean, in Australia. From what I've heard, there's a similar social zeitgeist in places like Central America... or warm places that the British go to be tourists in Africa (I'm not trying to minimize the true problems of poverty in non-Western countries - but the systems of a person's life are very complex, and money flow is just one small part of those systems).

It's funny, because in my part of the world, in temperate North America... we have these four seasons and I always am saddened by wintertime, because we Anglos have this habit of becoming more reserved and insular in the wintertime. I would have thought than in a land where summer is year round - like Hawaii - people would actually have a developed a healthier year-round social rhythm. Sadly, however, I see that it's not the case.

I'm kind of scouting out universities where I might want to finish my bachelor's degree... and I was very disillusioned with the University of Hawaii on Oahu. The buildings were dilapidated... and a lot of classes were being held in very run-down "portable" classrooms. There was a newer campus area for the U of H in Hilo which was better - but it was very small - definitely a community college size school. It seems to me as if Hawaii really doesn't have much of a tax base. I noticed that even though the cost of goods over there tended to be higher than the mainland, the total municipal/county/state sales tax was only like 4% or 5% which is a rate unheard of in the USA. I kind of think that Hawaii has a libertarian economic streak to itself - people don't like paying taxes and so all the public infrastructure is pretty run down.

Geographically, Hawaii was an amazing place. The island of Kauai has a dry miniature Grand Canyon in the west, and then the wettest spot on earth in the mountains of the east; it's ringed with tropical beaches, and has lots of picturesque rivers and waterfalls. I visited the black sand beach of Waipio on the eastern side of the island. You have to walk down a very steep paved road to get to the beach (most vehicles aren't able to drive it). It's an incredibly aesthetic experience. I was with a guy I met at the hostel, and we decided to hike in to a waterfall which is some distance away from the beach. It's fun, because you have to walk through the river again and again on the way up there; the trail was wiped out years ago in a series of mudslides.

The more wealthy areas of Hawaii are culturally very similar to the Rocky Mountain tourist town where I live. While on my bicycle, I thought about what it would be like to live on Maui... and I realised that it's so much like where I live now. If I was ten years younger, I might have chosen to make Maui my home rather than the Rocky Mountains. At this point of my life, however - it's kind of like "been there, done that." I'm looking for different horizons.

One fascinating thing about Hawaii is that it's culturally very much related to the west coast of the USA. It's as if every little town represents a subculture of a kind of people you might see on the West Coast. Eugene Oregon has an outpost on Kauai called Kapaa. Centralia Washington has an outpost on Kauai called Kekaha. Marin County California has the outposts of Kihei on Maui and the Kona coast on the Big Island.

A lot of personal insights came to me in Hawaii. I learned a lot about myself. But this post is already getting quite long, and I won't share all these things, today.

I finally decided to break down and pay a little money for a service which allows me to watch New Zealand television over the web. This kind of completes a virtual world tour I've done in the past few years of immersing myself in the television media from various other English-speaking countries. I'm glad to see my ideas confirmed - that New Zealand does seem to be the wonderful place I've been thinking it was.

I've seen these very stark differences in character between our sibling anglophone countries around the world. And it's even given me a lot of insight into myself and my own country to see how things are done abroad.

In a word, this is how I would characterize the national discourse of these different English-speaking countries:

• Britain is about reason
• Canada is about rationality
• Australia is about caring
• New Zealand is about idealism
• the USA is about formula/recipe

It's very important that people see the differences in national character of all of the different countries where one can live. Particularly for my lot - the intuitive intellectuals - it's very hard trying to make a go of it in the USA. The USA isn't a place where people discuss the why and the how. When a person starts discussing things on this level, he'll be facing social hardship really quickly. The USA is a place which makes its intellectuals into eccentrics, nerds, and introverts. It ostracizes its smart people - not intentionally - but just because of how people are accustomed to seeing their world, and living their daily lives.

Barack Obama is a shining example of a successful intellectual; he's learned how to hide it. He never discusses things at face value in interviews. Instead, he knows how to tell people what they want to hear. Therefore, he remains in good favor with the American people... where people like Margaret Atwood or David Suzuki or Dennis Kucinich or Noam Chomsky (or the countless other university professors who teach humanities-related subjects) never fare that well in the USA.

Not only does the USA have formulas for business, but it has moral, social and political formulas. Foreigners often decry the amount of religion in the USA... but it's really not true. It seems to me that nations like Australia are far more religious than the USA. However, the USA has moral formulas that may indeed be misguided at times. Why has the USA gone through these dramatic debates about communism, and homosexuality, and prohibition, and abolitionism and child labor, and civil rights? Because of moral and social formulas that people have a hard time setting aside.

At any rate, I agree with what Jon Stewart said yesterday at his "Rally to restore sanity" in Washington DC. I think intellectuals in the USA need to pipe down a little bit. They need to stop waging these verbal wars of antipathy. If they would look around them at the world a little more, they would see that the world is bigger than just the USA. Even if they see their own elected government officials as being clumsy and foolish - there are other options out there for places to live - other (more sensible) governments to live under.

There is a saint who is the President of East Timor. This country seems to have enjoyed peace and good relations with Indonesia in the past ten years since it won its independence from Indonesia. The man is very wise and caring, and is very pragmatic at maintaining this neighborly relationship with Indonesia. And central to this, is the forgiveness of people who oppressed East Timor between 1975 and 1999.

The interviewer here, is cute... but is rather malicious and headstrong in how she wishes to press the president for vindictive policies to "punish" those who hurt the country. She somehow doesn't see that these kinds of policies could easily return the region to a violent struggle struggle between the two nations.

The first segment of this broadcast, can be found here.

My affections have shifted from Canada to New Zealand recently. If you in the northern hemisphere and don't realize it, it's summer down there right now. I have no idea why they don't change the date of Christmas down under. The celebration would lose a lot of its meaning and poignancy, in my opinion, if it wasn't accompanied by cold dark weather and short days. After all, it was originally a pagan celebration of the winter solstice.

Anyway... I want to share the gold mines I've found when it comes to New Zealand internet media.

First of all, let me share a new zealand tourism video with you. That island nation has its hopes wrapped up in tourism for a main industry. This really tugs on my heart strings, because until now, I've chosen to live in a tourist/ski/college town in the rocky mountains. Tourism is a great industry for a town or community, because it changes the zeitgeist. If people agree that something or other powers their economy, their attitudes will shift accordingly. One of the most repugnant places I've ever lived was in a town which had a paper mill as the main employer in town. People start dreaming up all kinds of ways to justify the pollution it puts into the air, and excusing the health problems that folks have who work in the timber industry for long periods of time. Tourism, on the other hand, is something that makes people realize that they need to smile at their neighbors. They need to develop a warmth about their character. It also makes them value and understand children more - because tourism is a form of adult play.

Radio new zealand is the public radio organization on that island nation. The audio streams work perfectly well, when listening from north america.

TV new zealand is a great source of video. Unfortunately most video streams are blocked for north american viewers. There are a handful, however, which are posted on youtube. And of course, if you get a show name, you can usually find that new zealanders have posted episodes of it onto youtube as well. It's important to have film to watch at first, because it can be difficult for north americans to understand the kiwi accent when they first hear it. The way I would describe their dialect would be to say that it's like a color photograph that's been desaturated. There is less richness in the vowel sounds, and everything seems to gravitate towards the long or a short i vowel sounds. Studying foreign anglophones make me appreciate the north american english dialect all the more. I think that we in the usa should be more proud of these things like our vowels - a e i o u, and less proud of things like our military, and our flag. There really are unique and wonderful things about the usa. But patriots rarely recognize what they are.

A tourism video advertising new zealand.

Watch the film.

I have had a penchant in recent months for studying Canada. I have lived in the usa my whole life, but I remember having a fascination for Canada in my youth, and I have recently discovered many good audio, visual, and textual internet resources for keeping up with current events up north. One thing that I've been very impressed with is how rational Canadians are. There are laws about public discourse which make it so that journalists have to portray events honestly, and they have to be aware of their effect on society.

This reminds me of the many stories passed about in our society about the head and the heart. The usa is more like the heart - people value being spontaneous, they act based on their feelings. Canada is more like the head - they think things through carefully.

One thing I'm seeing about the Canadians who I see on the television feeds I can pick up through the internet is that they often look very worried - their faces are contorted with consternation. I understand that an ethic of rationalism might put a person into the mindset where she or he feels that she has to reason every decision through in real time. And worry becomes a part of that person's life, only because it seems rational to predict negative outcomes, and to think through all the possibilities.

I have had a habit of delving into much intense thought. But I also have learned to feel carefree about things.

So I have some advice ;-)

The best way I can explain this, is to ask you to look at the mind with me. People often wrap up all of the things one experiences and endeavors in the mind into overbroad vague words like "thinking" or "intelligence." However, in order to truly understand our own minds we have to look more specifically at the various activities we do in them. Now, human beings fall into different personality types - and the optimal way a person uses her or his mind will be different, depending on her personality. One should look and study the people you admire most - how do they seem to be using their minds from moment to moment, in different situations, and at different stages of a conversation?

We can separate the task of reasoning out, and see that reason is a thing which anyone can do - no matter how confused they happen to be, or how slowly they seem to be thinking that day. Reason is a process of weighing ideas, of looking at cause and effect. It can happen over a brief time period, or an extended time period - it can happen all at once, or it can happen in different sessions.

Now, of course mental habits are more general, and not specific to any thought or feeling, or any one sort of idea. Mental habits are the structure which you have laid out in your mind for thinking about various things in various life-circumstances. One practices these things and hones them, and from then on they flow fairly easily and automatically. Smooth thought does not happen by virtue of an ethic of careful reasoning, but because of a person having developing good daily mental habits.

To go futher here, I would have to fork my little essay and deal specifically with my own ethics when it comes to mental habits - ethics which are shared by many people of a similar personality type. However, I'm not sure how constructive that is, however, because I would most certainly offend people who would esteem an entirely different flavor of mental technique.

So I think I'll leave this blog entry in bite-size form. That's probably wise, given my fondness for the kind of language I use when I write.

The synopsis of what I'm saying, to put it simply, is that mental discipline leads to a carefree attitude. Your mind is either your prison, or your playground. And one has to be deft with it, in order to be happy. And this deftness I'm talking about has nothing to do with the ability to reason, it has to do with the ability to think smoothly from moment to moment.

A guy named Matt from Seattle, who used to be a video game designer in Los Angeles and Brisbane Australia decided to go off on a few round the world trips, and filmed a dance of his as a form of travelogue. The latest one is very professionally done, and quite inspirational. If you have a fast internet connection, I would recommend that you go and view the high resolution version; there you can see the faces better. If you want to hear what Matt has to say about his adventure, you can find it here

For those of you with very high speed internet connections, this is an excellent short documentary on a group of folks who went from Montana to Mongolia to help rebuild a buddhist temple which had been destroyed in the years of the Soviet influence on the region. It's a very heartwarming story.

Preview 10 megabytes (mpeg)

Full film 124 megabytes (mpeg)

By the way, elsewhere on my website, you can find a list of films which this group - TerraVideo - puts out and it is updated regularly.

Touch the title text to watch the film.