What we are witnessing is the final phase of the disenchantment of Maui.

The power of nature has been diminished. The magic and mystery of the nature gods are no longer perceived or understood. The sense of belonging to a place, an island-splotch of land, of being part of a living organism is gone.

All proper relations between the various kingdoms of nature have been altered, corrupted, ruined or eliminated. Everything has been commodified, privatized, poisoned and, to a large extent, denatured. Maui has lost its mythology, its sacred metaphors, its reverential contexts, and the wonder of its special, once hidden places of power.

The latest to arrive miss the enchantment the least. They expected less, are  sensitive to less, are less imaginative and have come for totally different reasons.

 In a sense Maui is a dying organism now beset by hosts of various microbes and insects. We little creatures are rummaging and scavenging all over her, leaving little life in our wake.

Of course, those who were most in harmony with Maui, and who preserved her and themselves longest while here, have been diminished in number and culturally deprived of wands and wonder.

The machines and technology we brought, the materialistic way of life, the self-absorbed and self-referent consciousness and the spoils of our delight, are magic spells of another kind. These spells do not cleanse, unite or enchant the minds, souls and senses of men, as Maui once did. They rather deaden and delude the spirit and imagination of man, and remove him even further from his place in nature and nature in himself.

- Raphael O’Suna,   Haiku