Just Saying So, Doesn't Make It So

The great casualty of the mainstream mass media, is their insistence that their saying so, makes anything the truth -- or they wouldn't have said so.  They believe there is no higher truth than whatever they say, no matter what they say -- because they are the self-proclaimed arbiters of that truth -- and they got it from others self-certified to know, even if they do not understand anything themselves -- but have learned through their mass communication courses, how to seem like one does.


It's very annoying for those who actually and really know what they are talking about -- to have to listen to the self-proclaimed authorities on the subject matter they have chosen to define as their own turf and jurisdiction -- especially in those fields where the truth is self-evident to most people, without anyone having to tell them authoritatively what to think.  So usually what these self-proclaimed experts do, is to create fields of expertise, that never existed before their creation of it -- as though that were of singular great importance of itself, and not in the context of any real world experiences.


In that manner, they can proclaim what they know as being "brilliant" because it is unintelligible and not self-evident except to a special group of people indoctrinated to all see the same things as brilliant -- even if no others can see that also.  And so bureaucracies and hierarchies are created and maintained, to ensure that everyone is properly indoctrinated (educated) to see things the same way -- and never to challenge that authority, because that is not what everyone is entitled to do.  Only a self-selected few, can do all the thinking for everyone else -- and the job of the mainstream mass media, is to see that everyone else does think that way -- as their specialized role in the great social machinery.


It doesn't matter that what they say and know, has no basis in fact or experience -- just that they "know," what everybody else does, even if it isn't true -- because that is not their business to know or determine, but only to follow the directives of those in authority.  And somebody is always in authority besides themselves, and what their own senses are telling them -- because they think the rules override the realities for which those rules were created to simulate.


Those can be fatal errors when one presumes that they have the right of way and are safe to proceed -- without first verifying that presumption with the actual realities of traffic conditions.  That is the most obvious situation there can be glaring differences between what one thinks -- and what is actually happening.  Those are most of the problems in the world -- the separation of thought -- from the actualities of reality in our daily lives until one is no longer effectively functioning in the world most do -- but only in their thoughts and memories of the world cut off from the verification of the senses.


One almost expects that among the aged -- as the great problem characteristic of the problems of aging -- but also is a problem of those at any age, who are effectively disassociated and disaffected from their own awareness of their environment and context.  Such people argue that they are "right" and should assert their rights, even at great danger to their very lives, safety and equanimity -- thinking in their minds, that they are in a duel to the death, with every person and thing they encounter -- which ensures that one day, they will be -- prematurely and disastrously, which should be the conditioning to avoid.

"The King is Dead, Long Live the King"

One of the important and essential functions of any organization and institutions, is to train and prepare their successors, and if they don't do that, they've failed miserably in their mission and purpose -- and probably never realized it in the first place, and shouldn't have been hired the first time -- let alone making the same self-aggrandizing mistake over and over again.

That seems to be the essential problem of these organizations and institutions -- run for their own self-aggrandizement and gain -- rather than for the good of society as a whole.

People in the public service particularly, should be clear about that mission instead of thinking that everybody else exists for their own exclusive benefit(s) -- as their "public service."

That's why "education" particularly, has become exclusively about more money, benefits and less work for the teachers -- and nothing about the good of the students, and what the students want -- as though learning (the students) is the problem.

That is the quality missing from "public service" now because the unions have made it a purely self-serving, self-aggrandizing fiefdom -- to perpetuate themselves permanently at the top of the hierarchies and bureaucracies -- and to become more inbred with each succeeding generation who have never known any other way but doing it that way -- "as it's always been done before" -- instead of the better way that is always possible, but not done because they've never done it before, or allowed to think possible.

That's why organizations and institutions fail -- and lose their meaning and purpose for which they were originally conceived -- to eliminate and not perpetuate and enable dysfunctions, crime, ignorance and the appalling disregard for the welfare of everybody else -- in thinking that society and its institutions, exist for their own exclusive benefit -- rather than the general, greater welfare of the whole.

We've just moved the kings and nobles down to every level of the bureaucracies -- and so nothing can be done anymore, but to enrich these few -- as the function of government.

All The Brains Leaving Hawaii

Anybody who has been following the rise of Civil Beat in Hawaii may be aware that most of its original staff have already departed for better futures on the Mainland. That should tell us more than any article they ever wrote -- that sometimes one has to pull the plug on what isn't working, personally, if not organizationally, and institutionally. That may mean, as Ayn Rand's heroes did in Atlas Shrugged, of just waking up one day and walking away -- from the battles they fought so hard and valiantly at, for that cause they really believed in and drove them all their lives. Then one day, without much fanfare or explanation, they simply go on with their lives somewhere else, were the difference is like night and day.

It is no secret that the cost of living in Hawaii, is very high -- but not just by 40% more, but by four times more! -- if one uses the benchmark of housing costs, that is most people's largest and fundamental expense. That is to say, that an apartment that one could rent somewhere in the United States, will cost one four times as much in Hawaii -- if one could even find a comparable equal.

But in many cases, one simply can find a cinderblock/Quonset hut, weed-strewn yard for half a million dollars anywhere -- but in Hawaii, because the speculation and distortion has gone too far. The original speculative excesses, were the proverbial swampland one could buy in Florida -- over a hundred years ago. But around then, people started moving to California for those lands that seemed too good to be true -- but actually were true to a great extent. And that's how California became the land of dreams -- until supplanted fifty years later, by Hawaii, and the dream of Paradise.

But now California is also double the cost of living elsewhere -- and the great frontiers, have moved inland, where people have been outmigrating for the last fifty years -- so that famously, the great Midwest, is there for the taking -- for those who want a better, more affordable life. Those have always been the conditions that produced the great migrations -- from the homelands that people had come to believe they could never leave -- but those who did, mostly found a better life -- than the hopeless (homeless) one they could only foresee.

Fortunately we now live in an age where the specifics of where we actually do live, are less important -- because of heating, air-conditioning, and communications (the Internet), make life pretty nearly everywhere, uniform -- so all we need to know about a community, is that they have a Costco, WalMart, Home Depot, etc., to know that we can live life at the universal standard. And if the price of electricity costs five times as much as it does in Hawaii, then it might actually be cheaper to pay for heating and/or air-conditioning -- than living in a tropical climate of slight variation -- but always being just a little too warm and humid than is optimal, and what one pays for in heating/air-conditioning an environment not exactly to one's tastes. but the fact that a lot of people live there, is an indication, that such a community, falls within a tolerable range of human adaptation -- which would mean as little as the inconvenience of putting on a jacket for at least part of the day. One simply has to expand the range of their adaptations.

Those are3 the considerations one has to make in whether to continue a life homeless, on the beach, or move from Hawaii, and actually be able to live on their Social Security (disability) checks -- as is possible in many communities with a much lower cost of living. Of course, that is not likely to be San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Monaco, etc., but probably many places that the "rich and famous" don't want to be -- which is not all that bad. But one has to value those places individually, because nobody is hiring a lot of marketers, bloggers and freelance writers to entice one to move there -- and buy into the already greatly inflated housing markets, that have long become prohibitive to the native populations.

The best they can hope for is to inherit those properties -- which is also a cause of great friction among family members all with the same idea/financial plan. That is the underlying tension in Hawaii -- while the current "greatest generation," lives to unprecedented longevity, so that the inheriting generation is already too old, and may in many cases, be actually outlived -- because theirs is a more stressful life -- of waiting for that better day, and not making it happen for themselves.

That kind of life, is "Waiting for Godot" -- or waiting for some other, or event, to change their lives and make it all meaningful once again. But in the meantime, they just waiting and bide their time, because that is what they are told to do -- and that is Paradise, and the only life they can ever know.

But inevitably and invariably, a few people leave and get to the other side -- where they realize that life is not so terrible since leaving "Paradise." That is the legendary story of the human condition -- and how it begins anew.

Government As the Solution and Not the Problem

A community volunteer library is a good example of privatizing government services based on real demand and the community's willingness to support it by providing the manpower. You just send the associate head librarian over to West Salem for technical/administrative know-how and let them recruit volunteers for all the functions -- from among the sizable retired, unemployed, employed, school children and others who would like a civic, non-partisan, non-political correctness involvement, which there is a hunger for.

We have a notable successful example of this at the Keizer Community library, where on any given day, there are as many volunteers as users. Because of the rapid evolution of information technology, which a library is really all about, everyone now is a librarian (archivist), as well as teacher -- and those former institutions of frontier America, should evolve into a much more comprehensive community center and information exchange -- rather than remaining the specialized institutions of the past.

That's what we're seeing as the great challenge of these times -- when money is directed to maintaining the institutions/architecture of the past, so that nothing is available to fund the temporary organizations to meet the challenges of the present -- as the labor unions (lobbyists) think government exists only for their members' exclusive benefits.

If we truly value those services and organizations, that's what people we place their time, energy and money into -- rather than having to be coerced from them to support a entitled few. When the newspaper editor and the school teacher might have been the only one's with an (high school) education, it was obviously because education wasn't valued highly, but now when most adults have a college education, the young can pick it up by osmosis and living in an information society -- so in fact, education (socialization and indoctrination) becomes unavoidable, and those who don't want to improve, are mostly the mentally ill.

These are the people will need to have special education/services for -- while taking advantage that the majority of the community are qualified to perform those duties and tasks -- if the labor unions (lobbyists) don't try to prevent most people from doing it -- because they want to.

This is how government becomes the solution rather than the problem. Heck, you can probably even have the mayor run it as the preeminent volunteer organization -- or at least chair the board. Government belongs to all the people -- and not just the self-serving government union workers and their lobbyists.

The "Impossible" Job

The solution for high stress (burnout) jobs is high turnover -- so that we have a constant new supply of enthusiastic people, and not just people hanging on until retirement, and fearing to start somewhere else.

We really have a built in solution in unemployed/unemployable veterans the newspaper wrote about recently. The prisons, police and firemen are natural jobs for them to transition (decompress) into -- if we didn't have all those union rules and protocols restricting the labor pool -- to prop up salaries and benefits for those with the most seniority doing the easiest jobs. Instead of compensating these burnout people more highly to keep them at these jobs, they also need to be moving on and relieving the school teachers who are burnt out from controlling their "impossible" charges.

That really is the underlying problem of labor throughout this society -- the many people who remain in their jobs because of their seniority, rather than their enthusiasm and passion at what they do. And that kills every organization and society -- that loses sight of its reason for being. Government is for the people -- all the people, and not just the government workers. Education is about learning -- and not just lifetime job security for "teachers" who don't want to teach -- and only teach that bitterness, resentment and demand for even more for doing less.

That is what our society has become -- rather than one that works, because it realizes that is what they are there for -- getting paid a lot of money for doing, and not just lobbying for more, as though that was their only job. So we have to make it easier for people to get into and out of jobs -- rather than creating these needless barriers to entry and exit -- just to keep full employment at the human resource departments and the unions, and maintain the status quo of these problems.

"Trips Abroad Bring Awareness"

I think the author misses the whole point -- of what she should have learned in her travels -- that "middle class" Americans are the "rich," and not merely deploring the rare (mythical) "rich moguls" they blame for all the great inequities in the world, while claiming that all they have, is merely their own "middle class entitlements." It begins with themselves, and not only some others -- that they can bear witness to the great poverty in the world, while thinking it doesn't mean them -- foremost.

That 50% of the population has a much greater impact on the world than the 1% ever did, and that is why it is so troubling, that they take no responsibility for the problems of the world -- as they demand even more at their salary negotiations and lobbying, which is all the media has become anymore. At the great bastion of liberalism that the universities have become, I'm certain the public relations director receives 2-4 times the median income in the US, which places her in the top 20% at least -- who then point accusing fingers only at the 1% as though they are not part of that inequality -- and are actually the greatest defenders of that status quo.

Thus, in the recent arguments against the 1%, the middle class likes to blur that distinction between the 20% and 1%, and the middle class, as the "poor" in this country -- which they are not. So their rhetoric of protecting the middle class as the poor, is really the defense of the injustices of the educated "privileged" -- such as this individual is -- but she doesn't think so, because she thinks it is somebody else who gets even more.

But those people in the 1% don't get it because they're on a "career track." That kind of wealth and income is only achieved through extraordinary circumstances and conditions -- or we'd all be pursuing it, as a clearly established "career path." But the other 50%, is clearly delineated and institutionalized as the justification for inequalities and inequities that are deemed "proper and politically correct," because they confirm what one already wishes to believe -- and not to awaken any awareness and consciousness to her than to advise all other Americans with more money than they know what to do with, that they should visit the barrios of the world and see what she did, and be glorified in their own virtue.

Just the other day, there was a "liberal" editorial advising Oregonians that if they don't want to have a ban on plastic bags, they should go around and pick up these bags -- without the even better thought, that the author would do society a much greater service than instead of banning such useful containers for those who don't drive around in SUVs with all their reusable bags (the poor), if they would contribute that labor for society themselves. As anybody who has done so, one notices that those bags and litter doesn't immediately reappear the next day, or even after a week, but remains there because nobody does anything but to complain that somebody else should -- and that "somebody else" is anybody but themselves, who challenge why should they do anything.

As we see in the countless editorials which are the problem, people divide themselves into the virtuous and enlightened (aware) and the evil "others" -- which is the violence in the world, and never the (re)solution of anything. Rather than dividing themselves into liberals (enlightened) and conservatives (evil perpetrators), every individual has to see both aspects in themselves -- and own the problems individually, and wholly, and not just project and point to the 1% they claim is responsible for all the inequities and injustices in the world -- that they are just duly reporting as "fair-minded" and "objective" self-righteous citizens.

That would be an awareness worth noting -- and writing about.

How Do We Solve the Problem of Education

It is the teachers' own union that spreads the belief and fear that teachers are worthless people and if it wasn't for the union, they would be working at minimum wage jobs -- instead of the delusion that they would be stepping into the CEO of some Fortune 500 company -- from their remedial education classes. The world doesn't work that way -- but the greatest error, is their belief that they are getting paid way less than their comparable peers -- who they believe, are the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies.

But even the beginning teachers, already get paid more than the MEDIAN income for all workers. Essentially, they get DOUBLE the median, because the typical starting salary is about $37,000, and then when you add in health and other nonworking compensation (which is the total compensation), they're up to $60,000 -- or double the median, which means they are in the upper 25% -- to begin, with a guarantee of lifetime employment and pension -- unlike most of the people who will have to go through several jobs in their lifetime, and at times, stretches of unemployment.

Generally, greater risk is required to obtain greater returns -- and very few can be guaranteed consistently high returns, except in the Madoff and Ponzi schemes -- of "guaranteed 8% returns." The actual guaranteed rate of return is what the bonds or Treasury notes are paying, which is currently 2-4%, while those who get more, assume the risk of also losing -- and not the assumed guaranteed 8%. And this is the kind of knowledge, and education, sorely needed by the young people, instead of the dysfunctional perceptions of people who think they are the lowest paid people in society -- while actually they are among the most privileged but ungrateful of that fact -- because most of these people have known nothing else but to be students all their lives (told what to think), rather than actually learning on their own -- which is the tradition and skill of all the great teachers, and not just people learning to pretend to be.

Children and students are usually perceptive of this, and give teachers who don't have that confidence and real mastery in their subject matter, a difficult if not hard time -- which is not cured by more teacher training and infinitely more money thrown at poor teachers while the union keeps the competent others out to prop up such high salaries way beyond their real value.

If one watches things like the National Spelling Bees, they are invariably dominated by the homeschooled teachers, who though comprising a tiny fraction of the population, virtually shut out the larger population schooled by the union public school teachers demanding more because their students are getting worse, and frequently hopeless under their tutelage. This should be sufficient evidence that simply throwing more money at "professional" educators, is not the answer, because that gets us the people who are only in it for the money, and not because that is truly what they love to do. That's what a real teacher would do -- even if all the jobs were paid the same, or even not paid -- as the homeschool teachers largely are. these are the people who should be getting paid to take on a few other students -- because they have proved their abilities, rather than creating the catastrophe that is the public school system corrupted by the unions (trade associations), leaving no resources for society to move beyond endless remedial education.

Teachers shouldn't have lifetime sinecures but should be rotated among the population at large for a few years and move on -- and in fact, should only begin teaching, after they have done something else to become real teachers (as well as students), and not just the union/education school certified kind, who know nothing but learning for its own sake -- and not any real world applications. We don't need to learn the medieval/traditional education (curriculum) but the real world one, which all people love to learn rather than are learning because it's always been done that way before -- and forcing them to learn that, which is the "compulsory" education and its well-known failure to create lifetime job security for "professional educators."

We need to move on from that dependence towards the new possibilities of people learning to teach themselves whatever it is they need to know, or want to, and if they need help, asking their fellow student prodigies, what they know and how to learn that -- instead of being taught by the least able adults, because they are in-charge.