Always wanting more — the fight over Mauna Kea

© 2019 Peter Free

 

02 August 2019

 

 

Greed is, I suspect, is the morally deadliest of all sins

 

The fight over Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano is a good example of how avarice, no matter how prettily dressed, is destructively ugly.

 

I chose this example because it pits supposedly "holy" science against indigenous people. The latter of whom want to prevent another astronomical observatory from being built on their sacred mountain.

 

The thirteen eyes on the stars that are already there, are enough in these Hawaiians' view.

 

Science-oriented though I am, mine too.

 

 

Our planet continues to vanish under the press of greedy humankind

 

Nothing is ever enough.

 

Growth, according to most people, is a necessity. Seemingly forgetting that if you grow enough, you eat everything up.

 

So it is with Mauna Kea.

 

Why is okay for the Great White Fathers to subjugate the allegedly sacred mountain to their destructive whims — and not okay for those who see the peak's religious and ancestral merit to preserve it in a more natural condition?

 

The latter group honors the forces that put it there, and the former seeks only to use the mountain to its own, objectively questionable rationale.

 

After all, if one cares so much about creating a new astronomical observatory, one could just as easily tear one of the 13 others down and build a new or different version.

 

This alternative is not particularly mentioned because each of the existing observatories has its own set of self-entitled claimants.

 

This is the elites' version of "not in my backyard, let's take yours" thinking.

 

 

The moral? — Greed is greed

 

Calling something progress — or science — does not change its usually fundamental, "consume at all costs" color.

 

The hullabaloo over Mauna Kea shows where the money is. A penchant for looting is (almost always) on the side of the destroyers.