What Does It Mean to be the 99%?

The most important fact is that $27,000 is the median income -- which means half make more, and half make less -- and that is TOTAL income, and not all the games the unions play telling us that their BEGINNING salaries are only $35,000 (those with seniority get twice as much for doing the same job) -- not to mention the $20,000+ they receive in addition for medical insurance, pensions, nonworking compensation -- to which they confuse the matter further, by pointing out that the median HOUSEHOLD income is $49,000, which means that there may be two or more workers in that household -- or that they adjust for inflation as though only themselves are subject to it -- rather than everyone equally -- which should make that consideration moot.

So once we get past all these attempts to deceive and manipulate, $27,000 is the standard of living at which most people have as much as most other people have -- despite the protests of the government workers that they deserve more than everybody else because they've sacrificed themselves by not being the richest -- and so we should pay them as much as the top 1%.

Once people have as much as most others, they can be considered to be doing quite well -- as they are in the upper 50%, and not comparing themselves to the top 1% because that is not meaningful -- to the average person, just as it would be unfair for the average student to be compared to the top 1% in IQ or student achievement, or world-class athletes for that matter. Many of the rich, or 1% in anything, did not get there only because of greed and ambition but because of exceptional circumstances beyond their own control -- such as being gifted, or born into a rich family.

But once people have the median income, what largely differentiates people, is not more money, but their individual ability to spend/invest it well, and make the most of what they have -- which requires the ability to discriminate the essential and significant.

The Secret of Health in Longevity

If you're in the habit of overtraining, the body will want to take as much time off to recover as possible -- until eventually, it just doesn't want to overtrain at all anymore. And the solution for that, is not more overtraining -- but creating a brief routine that one will always do daily because one never overtrains and exhausts their recovery ability -- which is an increasing problem as one ages.

Surprisingly, that only takes about 5 minutes daily -- to fully articulate all 600-800 muscles of the body, if one initiates that movement at the extremities of the head, hands and feet -- that all connect and contract back to the center of all the muscular structures at approximately the heart. But generally, most exercise programs move anything and everything but the head, hands and feet -- and thus are ineffective at accomplishing and articulating that efficiency and economy of motion, but instead, conditions the body to move as inefficiently and uneconomically as possible in the misguided rationalization that such movements burn more calories -- because they are inefficient and require the most calories.

World-class athletes are always the most efficient in movement at their respective activities -- and not the most inefficient -- for no good purpose and effect. So essentially, the entire thrust of conventional fitness programs is totally misguided -- to actually produce injuries and dysfunction. We go to performances, to witness the difficult made easy, effortless and joyful -- and not every movement to be painful, laborious and requiring increasingly more effort -- which is the conditioning and education of the schools, gyms and other institutions -- with the predictable result, that the more energy and time people put into them, the less they get back in results. And that is deliberate -- as though that was an intelligent thing to do, or how one wanted to manifest their fitness.

That is why most older adults are out of condition, or never engage in "exercise" anymore -- with the predictable disastrous effects, and so they have no way of reversing the deteriorative process -- because they think the only way to do it, is to overtrain, recover -- and then stop entirely.

So even prescriptions for exercise among the elderly, is essentially the same as for the young people -- to do 30-60 minutes of overtraining 3-5 times a week, instead of the tolerable every day for 5 minutes that can accomplish those articulations fully if they are well thought out. In this manner, one can continue exercising every day of their lives to the last -- while maintaining improvement because they never overtrain and exhaust their decreasing recovery ability.

I'm one of the few people over 60 who is essentially in the same condition I was at 20 -- because I realized that the limiting factor was the decreasing recovery ability as one aged -- that one has to adapt to, instead of what most athletes/exercisers stubbornly insist on throughout life, of forcing the recovery ability to adapt to their workloads -- which will not happen, as though wishful thinking made it so.

When one understands that limit and relationship throughout life, one can maintain optimal condition and conditioning throughout life -- with minimal effort, discomfort and injury -- and one is always in condition, rather than the yo-yo pattern of overtraining and stopping completely 2-3 times a week, that then becomes 2-3 weeks at a time, and then one falls out of it completely -- as many former great athletes do, or like Arnold and Jack Lalanne, don't maintain the condition they formerly did -- despite still exercising as much.

So the key is, how can one look like one is in top condition -- even if one doesn't do as much to attain or maintain it, which is the deteriorative process -- of exceeding their recovery ability. A lot of people think that in order to build muscles, resistance is necessary, rather than that the alternation of the contraction with relaxation itself, is a pumping effect that increases the circulation to that area -- particularly important to maintaining the vital sensory organs located in the head, hands and feet -- which is the weakness of the human body that doesn't actively engage them as the focus of a movement strategy.

When the human body breaks down, it is at the extremities of the head, hands and feet -- and not at the core, where the circulation is already adequate. That is the problem of Alzheimer's, diabetes, congestive heart failure, arthritis, etc.

Making Exercise Easy

Any genius' great contribution to society, is that they make the inaccessible -- accessible to many others, and not just keep all that advantage just for themselves.

And so the great wisdom of great intelligence, has always been to make the difficult and hard -- easy.

That was the genius of Steve Jobs, while the dominant cultural trend at that time, was to maintain data processing (computing), just for the few professional I(nformation) T(echnology) professionals -- and at its height of dominance and power, required all the information to have to flow and be processed by their their (mainframe) computers, administered by a few self-selected technicians (professionals) -- to be the One Thing everybody had to know.

So up to that time ('60s), the monolithic (monopoly) power, always made it more difficult to access the computers and the information therein -- until the young heretic represented by Steve Jobs, challenged the rule of Big Brother, as the only option there was -- and would be forever more. That was not the only rebellion and revolution of its time, but is a fitting and well-documented emblem of its time -- and age, that with his passing, asks the question, "Whither now?"

But even geniuses do not grow up in a vacuum, but are the product of their time and age -- of which many others are also seeing the "writing on the wall" in the fields of their own interests -- because all things are connected to everything else. Obviously, the music of that time underwent a revolution that more people were aware of -- because more people plug into those interests -- while art was only beginning then to merge into life, as the integration of form with function -- that many credit the iPhone/iPad with being this manifestation/synthesis of art with technology.

The new paradigm, is making it easy -- and not harder, to access information, music, health, etc., and not in the old mode, of making things harder -- which implies costing more time, energy and money, to the benefit of the new priests and gatekeepers of their time, and those who wish to be, and always remain so. But the lesson of history, is that nobody stays on top for ever -- but that epochs and ideas come and go, and that flow is the rightful process, evolution and progress of life.

We can choose to become more aware of this or not -- but now it is easier to do so.

The Video: Understanding Conditioning II (Making Exercise Easy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1mMH98uObQ&feature=youtu.be

http://ThinkingDifferently.blogspot.com/

A Few Words About Nutrition (Hawaii)

The most significant book ever written on nutrition, is Roger J. Williams, Free and Unequal -- which describes the biological basis for human individuality. His work was not well-received by the stewards of political correctness -- who wished everyone to believe that everyone was identical and interchangeable -- because it suited their mass media/mass educational model of "one size fits all," rather than the more accurate observation, that people really are different -- fundamentally.

That is true down to the foods and environment one will find optimal -- as well as hostile. About 25 years ago, I recall reading a book that claimed to be the first written on the subject of "lactose intolerance," which most of the world's population suffers from -- rather than experiencing milk as the "perfect food," those advocates (industry) promote it to be. Others will promote an all-vegetarian diet for everyone -- as the optimal human diet, which your own experience tells you is not true for you.

That is reality, and not any amount of studies (usually underwritten by the self-promoting industry), that tells us this is true for most, if not everyone. Unfortunately, if you give people enough money, they will say anything you want them to -- especially in Hawaii (because the cost of living is so high that a person does what somebody will pay them to do -- or they'll find somebody else who will). But that is true elsewhere too -- to a lesser extent, because people are used to and aware of more options -- than the only choice they are given.

So each individual has to discover for themselves uniquely, what is the optimal diet for themselves -- rather than simply being told what to think, or the generalization of what is true for others, or even most, but not necessarily for oneself.

That is the importance of the longstanding advice and wisdom, of "Knowing oneself," in this very personal and individual way -- which is unlike and even antithetical, to the mass media/education way of the "experts" doing all the thinking for everybody else -- as if they had that perfect knowledge, which is usually only what somebody else told them to think and accept as the unquestionable truth.

When one embarks on that quest and journey, one discovers the world of actuality and reality -- and not just the world of illusion and confusion, in which nothing seems to work, despite all one's "knowledge." That is the beginning of the freedom to know what really is -- and as one discovers and gets to know that truth, things miraculously work as they should.