Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
Yes, after all; Haoles brought them all the scourges of civilization, like medicine and education and transportation and electricity and a non-feudal system of government.
Who would want any of that when they could be living an idyllic life in a grass shack eating fish and poi by firelight?
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I'm not really up with Hawaiian history but I have heard similar ideas expressed sometimes about our local Maori culture. Maori tend to be poorer than those of European descent so they have the usual problems with alcohol and crime you associate with that income bracket. They also show up more in our welfare dependency stats.
But, here anyway, the argument doesn't work too well. Maori used to be cannibals and used to keep slaves and they didn't have modern medicine, democracy etc. But, when the English first arrived here they (in other parts of the world) kept slaves and there are some odd sailor stories around that time that suggest cannibalism wasn't always off the agenda. And their system of government, while not feudal, sure wasn't recognizably democratic.
The Europeans signed a treaty with Maori and Maori promptly set up successful export businesses. At that stage English medicine was pretty crude and Maori traditional methods were not much worse. Their social welfare system was probably better and their literacy rate was definitely better than the English settlers, Naturally no one had electricity or any mod-cons then.
Subsequent developments were either imported or developed here. Radio, for example, was invented by an Italian, not one of the English settlers. Our social welfare system was developed here by a government elected by both the settlers and Maori (we had universal suffrage very, very early). So it was a joint development, or it would have been except that the English stole most of the Maori land, trashing their export industry and condemning them to poverty.
It's an issue we've been working on the last few decades but it takes a lot of fixing, especially since we're all quite out of the English settler mentality.