Hearthstone

P.O.B. 817

Hilo HI 96721

fourninenine@yahoo.com

Dear Sirs,

I am an undergraduate at the UHH, my Major is Anthropology, and my main interest is the Design of Ecologically and Socially Sustainable Community. I am interested in finding ideologies that would support establishing of ecologically and socially sustainable communities. I would appreciate if you would read the following and see if you could help me in any way. I will be interested in any constructive input.

With the increasing degradation of the world’s environment and with the decreasing quality of life of most of the world’s humanity, it is only a question of

time that really effective and really sincere solutions for the problems of the world will have to be sought. The most expedient solution to the most of world’s problems would seem to stop creating problems, and start undoing the damage done in the past. The simplest and easiest way to accomplish this could be for humanity to strive to live in harmony with the ecological processes of the Earth and in harmony with the social processes – to live ecologically and socially sustainably. The knowledge and the means for doing either are mostly available, and if not available, such knowledge would have to be found. There is already a fair amount of knowledge of ecologically sustainable technologies. However – as of now, there are only a few philosophies that would foster ecological and social sustainability, and state so explicitly. Maybe there are such explicitly stated philosophies still surviving in cultures that used to live in harmony with their environment and in harmony with other peoples, and maybe those philosophies could be used in the present day need - the members of the now dominant global cultures are in many cases many generations distant from when those cultures might still have been living in harmony with their environment and in harmony with other peoples, and have, by now, no memory of those distant times.

I understand that there might be many sustainable (ecologically and socially) ideas in the indigenous Hawai’ian culture that are implicit, however – are there any ecological and social ideas in the indigenous Hawai’ian culture that would be explicit, so that it would be, perhaps, possible to transfer such ideas into other cultures, most importantly – into the now prevalent global culture, without the need to transfer the whole of the indigenous Hawai’ian together with those ideas?

Thank you, sincerely – Mr. Jan Hearthstone.

P.S. Please, would you forward this message to anyone who you feel would be willing to send me their reactions? Thanks, H.S.