Mauna Kea debate reflects difficulty of reconciling values

A diversity of voices are expressing different ways of understanding the identity and meaning of Mauna Kea.

What is at stake is significant. The challenges concerning the proper allocation of value to places, creatures, and human enterprises are local and worldwide.

One approach to meaning is strictly empirical and scientific. Mauna Kea is a material object resulting from geological structures and processes of the Earth. It has no intentions, does not care about anything, and has no intelligent super-powers possessing good or ill will. Although it can have many different uses, human social practices have no meaning for it. Its unique placement and height happen to make it suitable for astronomy. Because this will benefit human knowledge, the "best use" principle should determine its fate.

There are at least two other important ways to identify the mountain. A culture which develops in proximity to such a place finds itself dependent on and affected by its functions over time. The members will try to establish meaningful and beneficial relations. Its value to them and their understanding of their status will significantly determine their system of communication, practices and ways of living.

Such environmental realities can take on a sacred status which, quite reasonably, need to be revered and protected. Direct involvement, repeated over time, expressed in various activities, provides access to such meaning. Nature and culture become integrated. A threat to one is a threat to the other.

A third orientation finds value in nature itself. Humans have a reduced place in the much larger context of natural occurrences. This holistic or ecological perspective is empowered by the realization that not only are environmental things precious because they are unique and often irreplaceable or because they are the condition for the achievement of value for all other things and creatures, but they are valuable in themselves.

Recognizing nature as a non-human-centered but interdependent support system grabs attention and bolsters not only the singular value of things, but the interrelated worth of the processes contributing to a good life and a well-functioning planet. The natural world is our expansive "body" (household, homeland). It deserves knowledgeable and respectful attention and protection.

This third approach overlaps a traditional Hawaiian value system, without any grounding in its cultural history, while finding value in pretty much everything, not just specific sites and communities. It shares with science a dependence upon detailed empirical data, but it does not succumb to science’s lack of concern for inherent value in nature nor to a literal interpretation of ancient attributions.

The present challenge is to find ways to respect these different systems ("cultures"), their languages, methods and applications. Properly honoring Mauna Kea should involve those with a history of experiencing its power over time, historians and naturalists familiar with the complex wealth of the local environment, and those advancing the frontiers of cosmic exploration. Each should be at the forefront influencing social and legal decision-making on this matter.

The process of transforming limited and conflicting understandings into a more sensitive and wiser fabric of meanings — of realizing aloha ‘aina — is a present and ever-ongoing task. Alteration and adaption of individual and communal heart, mind and policies to meet the conditions of the time are always incumbent upon those who care.

Depriving ourselves of such resources of meaning diminishes the limits of our humanity, of what the world is and can be for us, of what we are and can become in the world.

Our different heritages can continue to open the rich resources of our partially explored embodiment, self and cultural identities in the world.

Don Blakeley is an emeritus professor of philosophy living in Honolulu.