Wednesday, February 23, 2011

What's Wrong with Government (Workers)

For most of the history of this country, public service (government) was what people did for the benefit of the whole community, and so people volunteered a few years to serve this public good.

But then some wanted to make this service their exclusive career path -- and so rather than allow everyone to participate and contribute in this manner, they began to make it exclusive -- and create all the barriers to public service to reduce the gene pool, and thus became more technocratic and bureaucratic, which turns off a lot of the truly public spirited people.

And so now government has become the self-serving of government employees putting themselves first -- and so there's no money "left over" for what government was originally intended for, which is to serve everyone, and so the weak are the first eliminated -- so the government workers can maintain lifetime, secure positions beyond the median for the rest of society -- but of course, the unions will have their people deny that is so.

So the media becomes a propaganda machine for the unions (government workers), and the disinformation and misinformation is propagated by the rank and file, who know this is wrong, but think that democracy is the tyranny of the most ruthless -- to control the public opinion.

Nowhere is that more true and evident, than in "education," where a small group of homeschoolers dominate the spelling bees and science fairs because they are taught by people who really care about them -- and not because they know how to play the education career path game. We live in an information culture -- and it really is difficult not to learn, if one simply allows it, just as the best and the brightest already come to school with that advantage. Education is not a labor-intensive function but an intellectual capital one -- requiring only the best.

We don't need 50 departments of education and 500 schools; we need only the best -- and broadcast that. Then that money is free for what truly needs to be done.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

You Have to Start Somewhere

Budgeting is like dieting -- you have to start somewhere, and not maintain the attitude that nothing will make a difference because everyone will end up dead anyway.

Small changes add up to big changes, once they actually get underway, so the ploy not to do anything, is never to do anything at all -- except talk about the big changes, which of course, has never made a difference.

It should be obvious to most intelligent people by now, that the old information propagation institutions should in fact be shrinking, and disappearing altogether in the future, much as the other information propagation institutions like the publishing business have already experienced -- with the downsizing of 90% of the bodies that used to be involved -- because that function has become integrated and mainstreamed as what everybody does, rather than just a few specialists.

Everyone has to become their own teacher -- and not that there is a teaching profession that can only do that, just as health has to become that way also -- what everybody does, and not just what the health care professionals do.

But predictably, just as the "strategy" adopted by the old publishing businesses to circle the wagons tighter, that just locks out the talent on the other side, which then becomes their greatest threat and enemy, and they become a cultural dead-end, with no prospects for survival because they didn't reinvent themselves and recruit new talent to remain at the leading edge, but are stuck with all the dinosaurs of a previous age.

One always has to adapt to the present realities -- as the only meaningful reality, and not speculate on all those future scenarios that will probably not materialize in that way -- but becomes the fantasy, or paradise people choose to live in, while denying the actual realities.

That mentality is reflected in all your arguments of "devising a flexible strategy to adapt to change," which is really an excuse and justification not to change at all, and not to address the obviousness of the present situation -- because somehow, far in the future and fantasy, it will all make sense, because nothing that you do now, makes any sense at all.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Is There No Other Way?

A rare, but increasing few, don't age in the traditional and familiar fashion -- and it doesn't occur to most people that they are "old," because they seem uniquely ageless and healthy. These are people who have gone beyond Maslow's concept of highly-actualized people, to create a whole new possibility of life that didn't exist before. These are the people society should be studying -- and not those in the familiar deteriorative (dysfunctional) conditions and fashion -- which is increasingly where our resources have been going, and is unsustainable.

Most of the deteriorative conditions are usually dysfunctional behavioral responses -- that need to be recognized as such, and then maintain that vigilance the rest of their lives -- whatever the different challenges arise. When people just give in and give up, and decide they cannot change or would rather not -- but the world must change to accommodate them, death then moves in for the kill.

Fortunately, we live in an age when the opportunity for that revitalization were never so auspicious -- in that we now have the tools to access all the information, research and intelligence that exists, without all the "control freaks" getting in the way, and insisting we have to pay them exorbitant tuition to learn any of it. That's how the world has changed for the better -- and is available to those who are merely open to it.

But the old conditioning and way of life, was the struggle against each and every for primacy and dominance over all the others, which ultimately destroyed everyone, including themselves -- until they realized that instead of using their intelligence against all the others, they can eliminate the barriers that separate them from the total intelligence, which is the greater life that all the visionaries have previously spoken of.

But it is possible in this life -- and not just imaginable in the next. What more important thing does one have to do -- especially in retirement, than create (actualize) this better life -- for themselves, as well as the generations to come?

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Why Banning Plastic Bags Is Not a Great Idea

Obviously, a ban on plastic bags doesn't hurt a Costco, or even a Safeway -- where people do their regular shopping, and know beforehand, what they're going to buy.

But a ban on plastic shopping bags would impact the marginal mom and pop operations, at which people are not expecting to buy, but would be willing to look around, and see if there are bargains too good to turn down. In those cases, they would not be carrying their reusable bags with them, because those would be impulse purchases -- or discretionary expenditures, or purchases of opportunity.

All that would be cut out or dampened. It hurts places like the Dollar store -- where people may go in for one specific thing, and end up buying 10-20 things -- without having their reusable bags on them, because they didn't expect to find so many good bargains -- often coming on foot, bus, and bicycle..

It hurts the Goodwill stores, the Salvation Army stores, the consignment shops -- all those businesses teetering on the brink, all those businesses these liberals and progressives are whining about keeping the Walmarts, and the megastores out so that these businesses can't stick around -- but they won't support in any meaningful fashion.

And if you're tired of seeing all the litter, then once a week, take one of these plastic bags and go around the neighborhood and wherever one is not personally responsible for and pick up the trash until that bag is full -- as one's personal public service project. If everyone did just that, the community would look like Disneyland. That's what it takes -- and not passing all these idiotic laws that really don't get to the root of the problems -- as these people decry the waste of resources -- as they drive around with all their toys and containers in their SUVs to demonstrate what conscientious, considerate, thoughtful and well-intentioned people they are.

All that shows no understanding of what it means to be conscious and aware of anything.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

The Primary Function of the Brain is One's Health

Many people would find that statement an extraordinary thing to say, and a few, would even think it to be an extraordinarily dumb thing to say, because in their worldview, everything is unconnected to everything else, so one's health particularly, is independent of any, and especially, the sum of the parts. That is how disconnected they are from their own body, to say nothing of their disconnection from the rest of the world. To their mind, nothing that is happening inside it, has anything to do with what is happening outside it -- and everything they do, and think, is to reinforce the separation of one thing to any other.

And so it is not surprising, that "bad things" just happen, with increasing and predictable regularity, in their lives and all around them, and there is nothing they can do about it, because nothing is related and connected to anything else. This unhealthy worldview, is the perfect prescription and prediction, of great calamity in the world -- beginning with such individuals. So it particularly pleases them, to hear that those who have believed otherwise and taken great care of the fine details , meet of some unforeseen disasters despite their careful considerations and preparations, while failing to see the successes of those responses, that limit any damage, or often, make it seem like a non-event.

Thus one has to be impressed when a major earthquake, typhoon, flood, and fire occurs, and no lives are lost or impaired, because the collective intelligence and culture made it so -- because that is what intelligence does, and not simply play more elaborate mental games -- to distinguish and separate oneself from the rest. That is the integrative nature of intelligence -- that it becomes integral to all that is happening, and not something apart from it.

In this way, the greatest manifestation (intelligence) of the brain, is the health of that individual, and the environment they manifest around them -- and not the scores they achieve on IQ tests, but in the actual living of life itself. So when one hears of the latest study that shows that intelligent people are more attractive than less intelligent people, that would seem to be a self-evident truth -- that one would use their intelligence, to be more attractive -- as a manifestation of intelligence, just as producing a great work of art, a sublime insight, a great piece of music, and themselves, as their greatest work of art.

That would not be vain and stupid, but actually, a real achievement, of their greatest possibility (intelligence) -- and not the denial that such things should ever matter to an intelligent person -- or that there should ever be the valuing of one thing over any other -- including health over sickness and impairment. Such people will use their "intelligence," to construct elaborate arguments that that is so -- while really intelligent people, will recognize that it is a waste of time to try to convince such a person otherwise, and let events and consequences take their course, of teaching them otherwise -- because one could argue endlessly with those who have no other point but to create and prolong such arguments -- as though that was an intelligent thing to do, and a mark of intelligence.

So it is not surprising, that the mind that is always creating these divisions and resulting conflicts, invariably suffer these consequences of seeing everything as unrelated and unconnected to everything else, while those who recognize and maintain these connections and relationships as well as possible, seem to become masters of the environments they live in -- rather than to always be in struggle and at odds with everything and everyone around them.