What Is This World Coming To?

If we had all the money in the world, this is what we'd do -- but we don't have all the money in the world, and so we have to make choices, which difficult in the beginning, becomes easier with practice and discipline.

I doubt many will miss not going into the state library building and actually seeing the archives of great documents of the past, so that closure impacts few lives, but there will undoubtedly be the few, and especially those whose jobs it is presently, to maintain that their continuance is essential for civilization itself to exist.

Far more difficult but even more necessary are the far more employees to continue the status quo of the past based on sheer manpower -- and do things more efficiently than have ever been done before, or thought possible -- like education/information processing, health care, social services, in which it was thought that the expenditure of money was its measure of success, rather than the new world concept of efficiency and better outcomes, including evolving beyond liberal notions of progress.

The liberal notion of progress, curiously, is largely the idea of preserving and perpetuating the past, as though they had discovered everything possible to discover, and discourage everybody else for looking beyond THAT known.

So the problems of lack (unlimited) of funding for symphony orchestras and universities, are not an indication that musicians and educated people are becoming increasingly rare, but actually that the "problem" is one of overabundance of musicians and educated people -- beyond those traditions/status quo of exclusivity and hierarchic control, in which they have to compete with a much larger pool of talent.

Talent means there are no guaranteed lifetime jobs once one has achieved the proper initiation and designation by a self-chosen few who keep themselves at the top until they die and promise then, that everybody else can then have it all.

Instead, people rightly regard that they have as much right as long as the old system of privilege, doesn't exclude them. Those were the old turf wars, now conducted mostly by the self-serving associations and unions who would like everybody else to know that if they want to learn, they have to go through them, or if one wants to be healthy now, they are the ONLY options, and we have to pay them first, before any other expenditures we might deem necessary.

The High Cost of Living

We always see these teachers inviting everybody else to do their work for them for free -- as though they weren't being paid very generously relative to every other way they could be struggling to earn a living in Hawaii. Perhaps they should tag along with the farm worker or fireman -- or even computer programmer, waitress or janitor to see if they could even survive a day -- actually doing something difficult besides praising themselves in the newspapers incessantly as the only deserving people in society.

You pick 'em -- for all those easier jobs you think you could be earning $100,000 you think you are entitled to, including of course, running for the governor. But you actually have to run for the position -- and not just feel entitled to the position and pay.

The high cost of living affects everyone equally and not just teachers, and in fact, the major reason for the high cost of living, are the insatiable demands of public servants demanding something for nothing.

Of course the "brains" behind these talking points are the union leaders who tell them what to say -- as though they thought of it themselves, and we haven't heard of it before, as though they think sheer repetition of lies, make them true. Chief among these lies are that we cannot have a "democratic" society unless they vote for the "Democratic" Party -- and dismiss any notion of any other alternatives, and especially the Republicans -- which they brainwash their members to believe means, only for a few "rich guys" who deserve to have all their money taken away from them.

These mythical "rich guys" turn out to be all the poorer guys -- put together so they can afford to pay these unionized civil servants more than most people make because they are not organized to pursue their own advantage regardless of the common good. That is basically the constituency of the "Republicans," and not the armies and conspiracies of the rich. And so as one reads the opposition to the collectives of the unions, there is no lockstep political correctness repeated day after day unquestioning by their union comrades at the media outlets.

They know how to play this game utilizing the old mass media to their own benefit -- but something new has come into being in the alternative media that promises to at least level the playing field of information and communications, and it is this leveling of the playing field, that often lowers costs to zero -- because that is the cost of obtaining that information now, rather than having to pay these tollkeepers who have secured these monopolies for all time.

That is the old status quo, that they don't want to see end -- even if it is to the greater benefit of society, and allows everyone to move forward. So there is quite a bit of this tension -- to maintain the dysfunctional status quo that sucks up all the resources needed to solve the very real problems of today.

When half of a society has college graduates, one can become educated just living in that environment, and no longer needs to create an artificial world for learning. Learning is now a part of everyday living, and not just for students and young people. Doing so, drives down the cost of living because people now have the alternatives of solutions that actually do the job and work.

Do We Really Need Teachers to Learn?

The fact of the matter is that one does not need teachers to learn but only a culture and environment that encourages people to learn on their own -- whenever they really need to.

That is the evolving reality of the Internet as well as other socializing networks that used to center around the schools -- but now is accessible to everyone, any time they choose to access it and know about it.

One no longer has to go through these tollkeepers who insist they have to be paid a hundred thousand dollars before they'll teach you anything -- as though they knew even a hundred dollars of information worth knowing -- that isn't available for free.

That's what it means to live in the Information Age -- and not in the old medieval societies in which the universities were the only place to access information and instruction. Now, it is pretty much available to those who just wish to have it -- and know those simple skills, rather than cultivating the old culture of costly dependency on others.

The great problems of these current times is the prohibitive expense of depending on others -- for that which one can provide better for oneself now that it is possible to do so. It begins with education teaching us this dependency -- rather than promoting self-sufficiency and independence, which are the basic tenets of a society dedicated to freedom.

That is the only thing a good teacher does -- teach one how to learn on their own, and not the many people who have nothing other to teach than that they are the teacher -- regardless of how much they know and facilitate the learning process. Nowadays it is to get in the way and make the basic impulse to learning, a difficult and arduous task -- so that one doesn't want to learn.

But healthy human beings want to learn -- as the major of their health and purpose for being, which they naturally do unless they are twisted and perverted not to. And that is the great problem in Hawaii -- people who don't want to learn -- anything, ever again. Why do we need schools to produce that kind of citizens -- just so we can pay the teachers even more.