All That Has To Change

"The hope may be for educational excellence, but the reality will be about fighting to survive."

-- Richard Borreca, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, September 23, 2009


Excellence begins with survival. That's how they get focused on turning a bad situation into a good one -- and not, "How are we going to spend our time and money at Disney World?" That's NOT what education is about, but has been what the DOE has offered in any discussion on "excellence."

Surely it must be obvious to the people of Hawaii that if a turnaround does not BEGIN with the schools -- of demonstrating the ability to make a bad situation good, it won't be happening anywhere else, and why should we pour more money down the drain in that way to rid ourselves of the wealth created by those who are providing for survival at the most basic level.

I know the image cultivated by the media and politicians has been of an unlimited Pina collada society watching sunsets and whales in the background, while ignoring and denying the fact that the homeless and dispossessed are growing more numerous all over the Islands -- because they don't have the basic skills of survival.

at such times, you have to get back to the basics, and really CHANGE Hawaii, and not just commission another study to talk about it -- at Disney World, or even Waikaloa.

You look at the societies that are really eartness at improving their society -- like an Iraq, India, China. They're not focused on creating more high-paying jobs for themselves as "administrators." They're cleaning their own toilets, mopping their own floors, growing their own food -- as working models for success in a difficult world, and not as in Hawaii, providing for the bureaucratic lifestyle we've become accustomed to.

That has to all end if Hawaii is to have a viable future, and not become the next Nauru Republic of the Pacific.

Places without a lot of resources (sand, sea, sun doesn't count), have to become even more resourceful than places rich in them. That's how Japan for many years was able to drive the world -- and Europe also rebuild itself from total devastation.

But Hawaii's always known only the good life and so its people are utterly unprepared to create their own wealth not handed to them because their so-called leaders told them all they had to do in life was to put out their begging bowls.

All that has to change.

The Real Health Care Crisis

Obviously, health insurance is not the answer -- if an overwhelming 75% of those with medical bankruptcy, had medical insurance.

Health insurance leads to poorer health rather than better. That's what the recent large population sample protesting more government programs gave us an unusual look at. The crowd was largely a normally healthy looking people who take care of their own medical bills in realizing that health was their best insurance -- and not prepaid medical plans, as is usually displayed by the more typical public service union workers -- who are invariably overweight and out of shape to a much greater extent than the general population.

One of the greatest examples of this, is this paper's editor who is a 300+ lber with the muscle tone of a human jelly fish. That is the rule when people have the best medical insurance and think that it will ensure their health -- providing for their own health rather than abdicating to the health care system to provide that for them.

There's a deliberate distortion that those in poor condition with medical insurance, are subsidizing those in excellent health without medical insurance -- because they rightfully note that they seldom get sick enough to justify the insurance over actual costs. They assess that they cannot afford to be sick and so don't allow themselves to deteriorate to vulnerable susceptibilities -- and such people reward themselves with their own good health without having the need for excessive insurance as a fixed cost, and so it is really the case that they greatly subsidize the poor health of those who drain the health care resources by maintaining chronically poor condition, and even thinking they aren't getting their moneysworth if they don't consume more than their premiums.

A small percentage consume a disproportionate amount of those resources -- because they don't assume personal responsibility for optimizing their own health -- and unless one addresses health first, costs are infinite.

The Problem with One-Size Fits All Healthcare

Hawaii's (America's) problems are not so much the lack of health care as the lack of healthy lifestyles which are very evident and on display that if people don't take care of themselves, it is very expensive for other people to take care of them.

That is a culture of dependency and codependency, which becomes cost-prohibitive, as it then requires ten people to maintain one. Such societies go into irreversible death spirals because ultimately, it requires thousands and even millions, to sustain just one.

Then you have such people as the pharoahs who require that everybody else, exists for the sole purpose of serving the only one that matters. In Polynesia, those are the chiefs and kings -- for which everybody then is expected to sacrifice themselves to the One.

We see it in the coming of the Messiah, the Anointed One, as the New York Times and its surrogates will proclaim "him" to be.

In such a society, the citizens will no longer be encouraged to drink the Kool-Ade, but it will be forced down their throats, because the dictators know what is best for everyone else.

The Final Solution, is to finance and fix a system that is flawed in that way -- because it diverts all the resources from alternatives that don't create these problems -- of which society's ultimate products are sickness, disease and injury -- and not its cessation. That would be regarded as tampering with individual's rights to be less than perfect and wholesome.

Children at an early age want to be healthy -- but it is the example of teachers who are not healthy themselves, who lead them to believe such deviations from healthy embodiments are preferable and excusable -- because they have no idea what they are talking about, though their certificates and degrees may be many.

What is needed is for instruction on better and more healthful living as the objective of that education and conditioning, and not just knowing more things while failing to manifest the value of that knowledge.

Yet that is what everything has become in a hopelessly fragmented and bureaucratic society, in which the whole is less than the sum of its very expensive parts, each having no idea what its relationship is to anything else.

One has to define the issue of "Health" before one can meaningfully discuss what meaningful and beneficial health care would be -- or it means tossing unlimited more money for a system that isn't working just to perpetuate that status quo. That has been the missing link in these discussions.