Your Health IS Your Wealth

No matter how much wealth one has, it means very little if one doesn't have the good health to enjoy it all -- other than paying a lot of other people to make them well -- which is not the solution, but the problem.  Ultimately, every individual is responsible for the greatest health they enjoy -- and not their medical care (health) insurance -- that is designed ideally for catastrophic bad health.

The other ideal, is never to need those services offered by others to "heal" oneself, but in the course of one's life, learns of one's uniquely own vulnerabilities, as well as strengths, that if developed fully, distinguishes them as one of the most remarkable persons of the times -- if not the defining personality of that age.  That sounds very grandiose, in an age in which people are indoctrinated to be like all the others -- as the mark of their achievement -- that they know as much as anybody else.  But implied in that, and unstated, is that one should not know what everybody else does not know -- which is the academic, or political correctness, by those who self-appoint themselves as guardians of what humankind must know -- usually for their own prominence and ascendancy over all the others.

That desire for prominence and dominance is a primal instinct beyond the impulse to serve all others first, and is often confused as serving everybody else, when it is obviously serving only their own -- which they feel is a selfless, nonprofit endeavor and organization, because their own cause, is above everyone else's -- exclusively.  So the challenge of civilization at any time, is to merge those two impulses into the whole, and not increasingly the partisan, or even, bipartisan points of view.  Two half-truths, will not make a greater whole truth -- but begins with people who are nonpartisan from the beginning, even though the glib will insist that man's very nature is to be partisan, rather than the whole of that society's consciousness.

This being whole, is the greatest marker of health -- that one is fully and totally developed and functioning optimally in every facet of one's existence, and not being limited and distorted by all one's various limitation, afflictions and disabilities.  In the matter of disabilities, we often come across those rare individuals who have managed to overcome them in developing even greater abilities to compensate for their vulnerabilities so as to make others unaware of their handicap, because they have turned it into an impressive advantage.

That is often the great motivation and inspiration for the development of great skill and abilities -- that one wanted to, above all else -- even if nobody else cared, or thought it was possible.  What is important, is that one thinks it is supremely important, and nothing could be more obviously true, in the observation of human appearances and behaviors.  There are populations that distinguish one by their ailments and disabilities, and other populations, that distinguish individuals by their proficiencies, even though they may be harder to categorize and identify -- because they may exceed an observer's abilities to judge those capacities with any competence.  Thus, it takes one, to know one.

Only an intelligence that presumes itself to be greater than all the others, can attempt to create a criteria for determining the intelligence of all the others -- which obviously, must place themselves at the top -- or they could not say with authority, that one is more intelligent than all the others.  But when an intelligence exceeds that of the observer, the observer then, is the observed.  That is always the supreme intelligence -- in anybody, and in all bodies.  That is total awareness.

Unfortunately, the whole thrust of contemporary society is to make one less aware, rather than more, because those partially aware, or only of their partisan view, are much more manipulable, manageable and easy to convince of what the promoters would want us to believe -- for their own agendas and self-promotion above all the others.  Thus every individual has to take it upon themselves, not to be the pawns in somebody else's games, have their lives defined by all the others but themselves, and wondering why they've ended up in such a horrible and futile existence and fate, that those they trust, tell them that is the only reality possible for everyone, as just another statistic that will predetermine their outcome.

So if one can see through all that -- as the self-fulfilling prophecies that don't have to be that way, it is quite conceivable to avoid the fate, others have predetermined for them -- and become the master of one's own existence, beginning with one's own health.  But it must be the attention at the very beginning, and not the end, when it is too late to make any difference -- but to be a cash-cow for others promising to make them well.

Why the Fuss?

Romney just said what everybody in America knows to be true -- that the least productive people in society are going for a free ride on the most productive people in society.  The rewards should go to those who are the most productive rather than those whose "needs" are infinite -- and consuming whatever resources the rest can produce.

I was sitting in a class on maximizing such benefits -- and the presenter confided that they needed to get as many healthy people who never need to see a doctor -- so these morbidly obese and people with outrageous medical expenses (conditions) could get them for free, and never have to do anything to ensure their own health.  Meanwhile, they pointed out that these health care providers also were playing the same game of maximizing their benefits from the health insurance programs.

"Health" was never brought up as big picture objective -- only playing the medical insurance game, and those who played it the best, allowed themselves to have no quality of life -- so they could max out on everybody else.  That's the fundamental problem.  You have to lose to win -- in such a society.

While Social Security may be tied to the wages most people earned while working, the same is not true for its handmaiden Medicare, which simply pays off those with the greatest medical expenses -- and not those with the greatest health -- which a healthy, vibrant, prosperous society would do.  Instead, such people are victimized, if they haven't been before.  Often unmentioned, is that people can pay for their own medical expenses as the need arises -- something that is no longer possible with the health care mandate that one must pay for the medical expenses of everybody else instead.

Health is the best health care insurance -- that has to be addressed first, and not last, or as an afterthought.  Health is the normal state, and not the abnormal one -- as it has been made into.  The presumption now, is that nobody would be alive, if it weren't for extraordinary medical care to sustain life -- when life goes on for most of it, who never see a doctor or veterinarian -- and when they are too sick and weak to carry on, nature takes its course.

People will die; all life will die -- and the best one can do while one has that precious time alive, is to attain the greatest health they can -- because that is also their happiness and prosperity.  And we haven't thought about that in a long while -- that there is a positive side to life, and not just the negatives that we have to prepare ourselves to embrace -- as the inevitable.  And when there is no quality of life anymore, one has to make one's peace with the world and leave it -- and that has been a value of religion, that helps us to accept that time when it is upon us.

But the nonreligious person has a more difficult time with that because they cannot imagine that life can go on without them -- but assuredly it has, even for the mighty Pharaoh -- who thinks then, that he can take everybody else with him.  That is a great part of health -- the acceptance of dying and death also, which is loss.  Those who can not lose well, can never win -- because they are too afraid of losing, to ever play the game of life well.  And so all their days, are haunted by their fears, which makes anyone sick, crippled and deformed, and no amount of medical care will ever cure.

The Ending of a Dream

Despite all the bad news, some people are actually doing better -- because they've adjusted to the new realities -- that people can't have it all, and have to make hard decisions about what they really value and think is important.  But those are the same realities for everyone -- and not just one class of people, or one party, thinking they can all have "more than everybody else."

There's always enough for everybody to have as much as everybody else has -- but everybody, can't have more than everybody else has -- and be the top 1% they think they are now entitled to as the "middle class."  That obviously shows they have no idea what those numbers mean -- and if they did, they would have realistic expectations and a better appreciation for what they already have.  And that is the real lack in this society at this time.

That is the perspective the new successful people of this time have embraced -- the leveling of the playing field, rather than the old society of a "middle class" above the rest.  That change is a very subtle one -- from the expectation that one hopes to be better off than everyone else, who they believe should be having the hard jobs at lower pay -- than they believe they are "entitled" to.  That is the well-deserved ending of the middle class dream -- that allows the poorest to also live that full social participation as well.

So now all the props that enable those class distinctions and divisions have gone away -- and the poorest, with government aid, can share in that mainstream lifestyle, but there isn't enough so the middle class, can all be the top 1%, as they believe is now their entitlement.  There just isn't enough government money to go around.  There is enough to help the poor live a middle class existence, but not enough, for every middle class person to live the fantasy retirement of unlimited travel, vacations and luxury they think they're now entitled to.

And that is the ending of that middle class dream -- after the houses they expect to appreciate faster than the economy (inflation) to support the lifestyle they've grown accustomed to expecting (demanding).  That doesn't continue forever.  But if one has built up a life of enduring values, those values remain with them, in times of plenty as well as times of lean -- because one's entire life is not simply built on one's income or net worth -- as many think ensures them a happy and successful life -- "forever after."

It's not so much that the United States has fallen, as it is that the rest of the world is catching up -- and feel they are also entitled to that prosperity -- as the modern technologies make more widely available and possible.  But the expectation that one should always be ahead of everybody else, is an unsustainable one -- that can only be attained by maintaining an unfair advantage in perpetuity, that becomes increasingly apparent to all. 

The ending of that dream, allows the new realities to come increasingly into focus -- of a better life for all, and not just for a few, in relation to the many (masses), which they think they are not a part of -- as one of the favored "middle class," which has always been a euphemism for those aspiring to be above the rest -- in their visions of personal upward mobility, vis-a-vis, all the rest.  That's also the union mentality of endless class division and warfare -- each thinking only of their exclusive self-interest, and their particular clique.

Society cannot move ahead as a whole, but each faction merely wants to get ahead of the other, in the proverbial zero-sum society.