Making the Biggest Difference

Many contemplating "retirement," are scared out of their wits that they won't be able to secure competent and trustworthy "caregiving," when they get to that point in their lives -- without considering for a moment, that first thought should go to "doing it yourself," as one's best option.

That is to say, that first and foremost, before resorting to another's help -- one should make every attempt to improve their own efforts to "care" for themselves, and thus make themselves better -- in the many facets of that meaning.  The biggest difference, is that one has a vested interest in getting better -- and not getting worse, and therefore, more dependent on that "help" -- which then becomes a self-aggrandizing momentum of its own, resulting in utter and hopeless, irreversible dependency.

That is as much conditioning (learned adaptation), as absolute physical necessity.  The outcome depends on one's initial, as well as subsequent responses -- predisposing eventual outcomes.  Many on encountering an obstacle in their lives, will be discouraged and defeated, while a few will be determined to overcome those obstacles so that they do not become a handicap or disability -- but rather, their own unique adaptation, despite the general rule.  Many world champion athletes, actually come from that backdrop -- of needing to overcome their arthritis, polio, deformity, and disability -- to become the best in the world at that performance and activity -- because their whole life hinged on that inflection point.

They could accept defeat -- or find another way, even if they had to create/discover it themselves.  That's how the great discoveries of the world have been made -- as well as the great discoveries in every individual life.  It's not the discoveries scientists make for everyone -- without exception, but the discoveries every individual makes in the course of their own lives, that matters the most.  That is what makes the difference in every life -- the discoveries and decisions they make in their own lives.

The mass manipulators will say that is not so -- that one has no choice in the important matters of one's life -- but to go along with the masses, and do what everybody else is doing -- because there is no exception and choice in these matters.  It's almost as though Nature had designed that as a test -- to eliminate the weak and unconfident, for only those of immense and unshakeable confidence, could prevail in these challenges against convention, conformity and tradition -- so that there can be no exception.

That is how the status quo is continued -- even as much as it is problematical, and produces the well-known problems, that have never been successfully challenged and solved before.  Nobody has broken beyond -- to challenging and shaking the paradigm at its very roots and assumptions.

The best care cannot come from another -- because no other has a greater vested interest in that outcome.  It is one's own life -- and cannot be sacrificed for another, or expect that another will sacrifice theirs for one's own -- no matter what they say to convince one otherwise.  To do so, would be foolish, and one would not expect a fool to serve one better than one could themselves.  Like in every other case, one would employ themselves, to assure they are hiring the best, the most capable and honest -- and that would be themselves, if that were truly so.

A Matter of Life and Death

As I pointed out when I first proposed "hands only chest compressions" to the CPR instructor (Fire chief of Seattle back in 1990) -- eliminating the need for mouth-to-mouth contact during the era of AIDS, and other unknown causes of death -- chest compressions is also breathing, and therefore doesn't need to be taught as a separate component.

The varying of the chest volume causes air to move in and out of the chest cavity -- which is breathing, and particularly important, is expelling the air out of the chest cavity, rather than blowing air into the lungs when it is partially full because the constant atmospheric pressure (15 lbs. psi) will automatically fill the lungs when the residual air in the lungs is evacuated by compressing the chest.

On the release of that pressure, the atmospheric pressure will automatically fill the lungs, and once that state has been achieved, there is no advantage to blowing more air into the lungs -- because that is just moving air into the windpipe -- and not the lungs, and is the reason hands only can be more effective, in that it doesn't disrupt the chest compressions -- for doing something that doesn't need to be done -- wasting valuable time, effort, and is the great deterrent for innocent bystanders getting involved.

Always, the first thing one needs to do when there is no pulse or signs of breathing is to call 911, and then when waiting, since the person is already effectively dead, doing the chest compressions is the best thing one can do to pump blood to the brain.  Learning this, can all be done over the 911 call -- and once learned, is a basic understanding of respiration and circulation that one should not forget and need costly annual recertification to learn -- which is another racket entirely.

Obviously this can and should be taught in schools and every opportunity to do so -- and doesn't require advanced training in brain/heart surgery and all the gimmickry the industry that has grown around it would like people to think is required to do anything -- including and especially their money-making certificates.

It's just that the schools have never taught anything very well and clearly, and believes "education" should not include vital lessons in life and death, but reserved only for academic (useless) pursuits -- dividing the world into increasing specialties and knowledge -- having no relevance and relationship to any comprehensive understanding of life.

Making the Weak, Strong

The problem with making the competitive model the basis for individual lifelong (health) improvement, is that its purpose is not to make the weak, strong, but to simply eliminate the weak from further participation -- which is disastrous as a public health program.  So there is no mystery why the prevalence of obese and inactive individuals living substandard lives is so alarming.  That is the whole purpose of those competitive activities -- to derive and identify the one winner, and not to help the billions of others by confusing the issue, with their continued participation.  Then the judges have to "find the needle in the haystack," rather than see only "the last man standing."

And while that can be an amusing thing to do, it's not real helpful when the purpose becomes keeping as many people "in the game" as possible, so that they all don't end up warehoused waiting to die from an early age -- as many view their lives now, beginning even during their 20s -- before they have even hit their prime and peak.

The reason we have "education," is to make the ignorant, informed and educated about things that should matter, and not just to eliminate them, so that we teach only the smart, and then proclaim we are the greatest teachers in the world, and know what we are doing -- because the only "student" remaining, knows more than all the rest.  Then the danger and threat to society becomes what happens to the overwhelming rest -- and not that there is just one champion who will live life for all the rest -- as the pharaohs, emperors and kings of a much more primitive time.

Hopefully, we no longer condition people for living in such a world, when only one winner can live the fullest life -- but that possibility, exists for everyone in that society.  Then truly, we can see how far we have come as a civilization -- in that everyman now, can live as well as only kings could live in the past, with literally virtual access to everything -- limited only by their ability to find the needle in the haystack of information, marketing and propaganda.

Thus the real function of education, is to ask first, why is one learning what is being taught, and not simply because that is what everyone is being taught -- with never a question, "Why?"  In this way, the first can often be last -- in learning all that can be useless, counterproductive and destructive, because they are too willing and eager, to jump the mark for a quick start and advantage -- thinking it is just enough to be at the front of the pack, before asking where it is going -- as it often is, to their own destruction.

That is the competitive way, and not asking the right question, of what makes the weak, strong?  You can never come to the right answer, by not asking the right question -- but when one asks the right question, the answer is there.  Many are not even aware they are asking any questions at all -- so sure are they that they know what they are doing -- until they can't, because of injury or unbearable pain or discomfort warning them they should stop.  The body is wise in its intelligence to recognize that -- despite all the advice and encouragement otherwise.

But when everything makes perfectly good sense, there is no such resistance and objection -- because it is not crippling, but enabling and empowering -- and one would not do otherwise, because nothing else makes more sense to do -- if one still does anything at all.  Most people are actually advised not to do anything until and unless they consult with "professional opinion" (over one's own senses) -- which they can rely on to be dependent for the rest of their lives -- as only fit to follow another's orders, including and especially their own well-being, keeping them weak and dependent forevermore, and getting worse, with every passing year.

That is what we too familiarly recognize as the "aging" and "disabling" problem that is the epidemic of these times -- that the weak simply get weaker, all their lives, with no hope of a recovery and turnaround.  That is just the "normal" aging process, these experts will proclaim -- and for that, they will always be "there" for us, and never the possibility, that we will ever be strong enough not to need them.

Then society goes into a hopeless downward spiral without end, as the only possibility, in that people can only get worse, and never better -- and then want to get worse, faster -- to get even more aid and so we get to the current health care crisis of increasing, endless resources for the dying -- rather than the living.

The Will to Overcome

At some point in every life, they choose to give up -- which at times, can have even greater survival value than choosing to fight -- against insurmountable forces.  At times like that, one is wise to go with the flow, rather than face a certain obliteration.  It doesn't matter how great a swimmer one is -- in the face of a tsunami wave; one should just run as fast as one can to higher ground way beforehand.

So choosing when to fight, and when to flee, is a key survival skill -- as is assessing when to give up entirely, and then to battle on, when it can make a difference -- and not just being in vain, so that one eventually regards every undertaking, as futile and hopeless.  That is the utter despair of one's existence -- that one can make any difference at all, in anything one does -- anymore.

If one is young and obviously able, such desperate acts are often the test, that it really does matter what one does -- and life is not just a video arcade game of "virtual reality," that blurs into the rest of one's life and desires.  If one is of advanced years, we often dismiss that erosion of confidence and competence, "normal aging," which more than a few, are now starting to question, if there is anything "normal" about it -- or whether that is merely a carryover of the previous life that was notably "short, nasty and brutal," and the life we were conditioned for.

But when that life changes, many of the older, are not reconditioned to live in the new age -- in which all the young usually are -- unless they have these throwback "educators," who believe that what education was good for them, is also inviolably good for the newest generation -- and the new should be indoctrinated into the old, rather than the old into the new.  And that is the crux of the problem in every age and generation -- when the differences grow greater, as well as people living longer.

Many look like they shouldn't even be alive, yet they are -- but largely hidden from view because that is not what we want to recognize, as where most of our health care expenditures are producing.  It is much more costly, to keep the dying living, than it is to support the living, and their obvious will to live and overcome whatever obstacles stand in that actualization.  They have a life of their own -- that transcends every other life to support and control.  They are not simply dependent on all the others for their life -- but create it for the many others.

That is what is overlooked in the thinking that all must be equal -- no matter what, as the supreme principle of the universe -- to which every other consideration must be subservient to.  Some things matter more than others -- which the most observant, label as "significant," and of greater significance -- than everything merely being the same, or equal.

Unfortunately, in the government schools of political correctness -- that vital understanding, is lost and overridden, in favor of what the bureaucracy has determined we all must believe, repeat, and propagate -- as the business of citizens, to make all subservient to the will of those who determine that for everyone else. But that absolute and tight control, breaks down when change (of the information/understanding) is too rapid, for the controlling agencies to maintain a tight rein.  That happens when there is a massive sea change -- like a hundred tsunamis, when everything that was previously thought (taught) to be true, turns out to be false -- and even those formerly in control and supervisory positions, are swept away with those changes.

That's what we see happening now -- in the aging paradigm of these times.  Increasingly many, are not aging in the traditional pattern, but a distinctly different life form is emerging, and manifesting itself.  That is the story of the evolution of life -- even while the current reign of the dinosaur, seems absolute and eternal, but nothing lasts forever, even in the minds of men.  Shortly it is written, that it was always that way.

But it was just the challenge and triumph of its own time -- and that will change again.

Improving Means Changing

Many people who want things to improve, also want them to stay the same -- not realizing the contradiction.  Either things can change (get better or worse), or they can stay the same -- which is getting worse, or they would not have the desire for improvement -- because things would be perfect as they already are, and one would want to repeat it eternally.

George Orwell in his novel "1984" coined the perfect word for holding two mutually exclusive and contradictory thoughts at the same time -- as doublethink -- making any thinking actually impossible, and the negation of any other.  But people fall in love with their own self-image -- while expressing the desire to change and improve.  Those who always and easily change and improve, are getting better, while those who cannot change, must get worse -- because they are not responding to all the changes (information) in the present moment (environment) -- but only to their thoughts of a generalized, ideal moment that may never have existed, but has become indelibly fixed in their minds, of what reality is.

Thus they think that their actions and responses are entirely appropriate -- while everybody else around them, will wonder what alternate universe they are living in.  What they are responding to, is not apparent to anyone else going just by the obvious and visible -- to everyone and anyone else.  It is a world (reality) that exists only in one's thoughts -- of a world that never changes, grows and evolves -- and so is dying, because that which is not sensitive and constantly adjusting to its changing environment (reality), is for all practical purposes dead -- even before they are officially pronounced so.  They are dead to the world -- to the life and changes taking place all around them, even as much as they spend their lives trying shut out all that around them -- as though that was ever an intelligent thing to do.  Thus, life beats and batters them down -- in the familiar aging process..

But it doesn't have to be that way -- if one is sensitive and aware to all that is going on around them -- and within them, so one is the entirety of life itself, and not one perpetually at odds with it -- attempting to impose their will upon all the others.  That would obviously be a futile task -- and the negation of one's own, in thinking it is to suppress all the others.