Conformity (Consensus) Is Not Reality

No matter how many "experts" they get to repeat it, conformity of opinion, is not the same as reality.

In the previous age of mass media, that was what was important -- to get everybody repeating the same thing, as though that was enough to make it so -- even if the results in reality, could not be verified, but people were advised they needed to believe harder, and do it even more. That used to be the only game in town -- and so those who could buy up all the mass media, propagated their world view, as though that was true, because that was the only thing people ever saw, and even the freelance writers were paid to confirm.

Writers don't get paid for writing the truth; they get paid for writing what somebody else wants them to write -- as though it were the truth, and how they got to that point, was the tricks of the trade in convincing people of what they wanted them to believe. This is especially true of law and politics -- that whoever is most successful at propagating (propaganda) their truth, controls the offices and institutions.

That's been true the whole history of civilization -- as Plato noted in Socrates' dialogue -- on the difference between reality, and the shadow on the wall -- most people mistook for reality. The shadows were the manipulations to convince one that the "appearance" was the actuality -- which is the beginning of the divergence of thought from the reality -- which is not simply an opinion, and who can control opinion most completely and ruthlessly.

And that is why although more people than ever before try to attain and maintain their optimal health and condition, fewer than ever before actually achieve it -- because they simply have the wrong understanding of what it takes to achieve that, and not that people have to believe harder, and spend more time and effort achieving it. No amount of effort with the wrong understanding, is going to allow one to achieve the same results of having the right understanding -- with very little effort and resistance.

That is true with everything in life -- especially and particularly true of conditioning to attain and maintain one's optimal shape and conditioning. No amount of only working the heart harder and faster, is going to cause all the other muscles of the body, to actualize their best condition and shape. One has to actually effect and articulate those possibilities with the muscles one actually wants to shape in that manner -- and nothing else is possible!

But one doesn't have to do 600-800 specialized exercises (movements) to work all the different muscles of the body -- if one understands that effecting movement (contraction) from the furthest extremity (insertion) at the head, hands and feet, requires the engagement of all the supporting (connected) muscles back to the point of muscular origin of the muscular structures back at the heart -- which is conveniently designed and evolved by nature as the greatest efficiency of purpose, form and function.

In realizing this, the heart is not the lack of functioning in the (human) body, but rather, the lack of the skeletal (voluntary) muscles, in pushing blood back towards the heart -- which is why exercise (movement), produces a healthful effect. But simply working the heart harder, is the major reason most people don't want to exercise -- in this conventionally prescribed manner, and even if they persist, achieve minimally satisfying results to persist as a lifelong, nearly effortless, rational practice.

If You Want To Make Somebody Do Something

If you want to make somebody do something, the best (easiest) way to do it, is to make it as easy as possible to do it, and not increasingly more difficult -- until people just give up and no longer try, or even think about it.

Unfortunately, that is the track education, or the learning of anything, has taken -- because it provides more jobs for teachers (professionals and experts, etc.), and not that that would be the best way to do anything, much less, learn how to do it. Eventually, as we're now seeing, it requires more and more expensive education, just to do nothing in particular (the unemployed).

Meanwhile there is a lot of good that could be done -- but goes undone, because all the money is tied up in this "education" for no particular purpose -- except to provide lifetime job security for the teaching professionals. The fact of the matter is that we don't need more education and more highly paid teaching professionals, but could get by with less -- because most of the people are already educated so that one cannot help but be educated by living in such a society (environment). It is a learning culture -- and not the medieval one that needs to be reinvented every day to justify doing what we've always done before.

If anything worthwhile has been done, it changes the world, and society -- and most would have to admit, that the world has changed greatly even while they were fully awake for the last 20 years -- unlike the Rip van Winkle of legend who awoke after a sleep of 20 years to find the world changed.

For the last 20 years, even those trying to keep up with all the latest developments, found themselves woefully behind every curve -- because progress did not wait for their approval to go on without them. Of course that is very disconcerting to those who would call themselves "leaders" in those societies they demand everybody else follow behind them.

Thus the major function of such leadership, would be to defend the status quo, and not disrupt it by suggesting that the new leveling of the playing field at which everyone begins as a beginner again, is fair and just. They want their more than everybody else -- as what they think they are entitled a lifetime to, with no further discussion. And so those problems and inequities cannot be solved and examined because they are sacrosanct. But those are mainly the problems of the institutions and not the greater progress of humanity -- which simply marches on without them.

http://ThinkingDifferently.blogspot.com

APEC: Occupy Honolulu

What the protesters from the Mainland could not do, the government of Hawaii (Honolulu), has done for them -- effectively shut down the whole island -- in scenes reminiscent of 9/11, when Waikiki became a ghost town, even abandoning the beaches. It was promised that APEC would bring more business to the businesses of Honolulu -- and not that the roads to everywhere, would be closed and barricades piled high -- to prevent the people from having any contact with the nobles from elsewhere, who for their part, would be spared the sight of the unseeming and unsightly.

What would the world think, if they saw people living on the sidewalks -- instead of the fabled resorts of Paradise that might entice them to buy at least a timeshare of The Rock? That would be a bad business indeed.

So imagine how much worse it gets when the streets are torn up indeterminately and arbitrarily to build The Rail the length of the urban core? But by then, most of the businesses will have given up -- and only the retired and wealthy will remain, along with the campers expressing their First Amendment rights to occupy the sidewalks.

Honolulu is a good place to occupy the parks -- and disrupt business as usual. No ka oe.