The "Fast" Solution

From time to time -- if one is looking for paradigm changing new ideas for problems that simply grow out of control despite the conventional and popular "solutions" that merely perpetuate the problem and make it more lucrative -- one runs across something that rings true with every other truth one has encountered before, and then everything makes sense -- rather than seeming to spiral completely out of control despite all the conventional efforts.

Throughout intellectual history, that has always been the case -- that the great minds all become focused on the same problems -- because that is the threat of the day that threatens everyone's survival.  So naturally, not just one person comes up with a solution, but many arrive at the same conclusion, which one articulates better than all the others.  Such a person is Dr. Jason Fung and his outreach via the social media rather than the traditional mainstream media, promoting his ideas on the age-old practice of fasting for most of the conditions that have been exploding out of control -- which is obesity and type 2 diabetes -- which are the problems of abundance, affluence and overconsumption.

That is actually not unique just to these times -- but other times as well -- but historically afflicting much fewer.  Those were the problems of the kings and pharoahs -- rather than the multitudes, which didn't have to deal with such "problems."  Theirs was largely the problem of scarcity and inaccessible to most.  But now we live in a world of tremendous accessibility to all the goods and services the world produces and makes available -- which requires a completely different set of survival and proficiency skills -- particularly choosing wisely from everything available.  Because if one does not successfully manage these resources, one will be overwhelmed and buried by all of it.

So more than ever, successful individuals, have to choose wisely from the overwhelming, to a very select few -- because indiscriminately eating all one can eat, will kill them as surely as we are seeing presently -- which is not just the normal course of life and especially, "growing old."  That is not the only, and inevitable way it has to happen -- for most, if not all.  The future life can be something else -- but requires a necessary shift in course because of the new realities -- as the world changes from time to time.  That is life -- and how we adapt to it.

Of course it is harder for people who have been conditioned to think they should never change -- and change again -- as many times as it takes, to get it right.  That probably, is all one's life, and those no longer changing with the times, are predictably having an increasingly difficult time until all their processes shut down -- from the failure to adapt.  One does not need to have an advanced degree and training to do that -- for all the challenges of their daily living.  It is simply enough to pay attention and be aware of what is happening -- and not misled by the popular knowledge promoted by the various self-interest groups claiming that jurisdiction and expertise -- while the situation spirals out of control. 

And that was the situation for most of the affluent societies in the world -- this lack of discipline and restraint -- that was becoming "unthinkable" in the world of abundance and convenience.  Instead, the media (marketing) messages, encouraged unlimited consumption -- as though there were no adverse consequences.   In order to get that message out on commercial media, one had to generate massive revenues -- with those particularly susceptible, being those who spent time on such exposures -- while only a few could remain immune -- because of their discipline not to, and disinterest.  But the masses were tuned in by default -- and thought that was the extent of knowledge and possibilities.

That's how social media had a tremendous advantage -- if they could ever break through  the self-imposed trivia, many were conditioned to believe as the only thing possible.  They thought that anything truly valuable, had to be monetized to be justified -- and validated.  But the world is far more than commerce -- and commercial considerations.  That is particularly true for the rich and prosperous -- and not just more of everything.  There is a point at which the quantitative reaches a critical mass and transforms into a qualitative difference.  It is not simply more but entirely different and better.

Then the struggle to understand the incomprehensible ceases -- and gives way to a new ease in understanding -- everything.