Representing Mike Hu, District 21 (Waikiki-Kapahulu)

Money Isn't Everything (the Only Thing)

2012-01-30T08:22:00.001-10:00

"Supporters say it would give professors a greater say in the direction of the university and in how money is spent."

Actually, it would give the union president the exclusive say in the direction of the university and in how the money is spent. The university professors would surrender their right to speak for themselves -- which is what they are voting to do. They would lose all rights to speak for themselves in any matter -- except to their union president.

For a group of people already at the top making 3-5 times what the average citizen (who pays their salary) is making, is actually undermining the much more valuable right to speak as their own sovereign entity. And then like the lower school teachers, they will complain tirelessly and mightily that they have no say in designing how education can be conducted -- because they voted for the union president to do all their thinking and talking for them henceforth, and the only right they now have, is to carry the signs and repeat what the union president tells them to do -- demanding even more money and benefits than the other citizens have.

Once you're making considerably more than the median, the greater benefit and value is whether one becomes respected in their own right for speaking for themselves -- rather than to become like all the assembly line workers allowing their union president to do all their thinking and talking for them henceforth.

What did they become university professors for?

Government of the people, by the people, for the people

2012-01-19T06:42:00.000-10:00

Every revolution in history was against a few government workers who thought they should have their jobs for life -- despite the fact that many had no ways of securing a livelihood at all.

Many wanted and expected George Washington to be president for life -- but he rightfully thought that 8 years was enough, and the country was better served if more different people got a chance to "serve." That was the original concept and strength of public service -- that as many people as wanted to, got a chance to be a part of government -- instead of establishing a permanent, exclusive bureaucratic/technocratic class who demand that they are entitled to their sinecures for life.

That's why people are no longer as excited and involved in government -- because it has become "professionalized" rather than being something everyone can be involved in so that they don't create these bureaucratic fiefdoms answerable only to themselves. That's how people lost their government, and the few careerists naturally demand that they should get more than everybody else -- permanently. And so many retire from government service with pensions higher than those who actually still do those jobs -- which shouldn't make sense, as though they were forced into those jobs and were working for free, or even less than the comparable median for all workers.

Surely that should disturb people rather than proclaiming themselves "liberal" and wanting more for everybody else too -- but that opportunity doesn't exist in any other enterprise where they can just demand more infinitely. The way to ensure fairness is to share or rotate these jobs among as many of the populace as possible -- in the noble tradition of the founding fathers, and to restore the American spirit of government belonging to all the people.

Not How Much, But How

2012-01-12T11:06:00.000-10:00

By now, many people have exhausted themselves and been demoralized by the realization that their best laid plans for the coming year (and beyond), have already gone awry -- and so-called "experts" merely advise them to keep on doing what is obviously not working -- in the misguided notion that if one merely continues doing what one has been doing with disastrous or no favorable results, the results will miraculously turn out differently the next time -- or some future time, as though that was how anything actually worked.

When something actually "works," that truth is self-evident, and not some preconception of what one would like the results to be -- despite the obvious self-evident truth of it that every individual can see for themselves -- instead of what the experts tell them they must believe despite all evidence to the contrary. "Studies" they proclaim, have proved it so -- and they are the self-appointed and self-certified experts on such matters, and nobody else must be allowed to question what they say -- because that is what they say.

That mentality is reminiscent of the "dark" or medieval (middle) ages, when one person determined the truth as told to them by God Himself -- and they further sanctioned the designated propagators of the "truth," on punishment of death and torture for non-believers. So it is not like it hasn't been done before -- to enforce the conformity (socio-political correctness) of everybody -- because it follows this singular hierarchy of authority that allows no other alternatives to be considered, rather than the strength that such knowledge can withstand all challenges from anybody, at anytime, under all conditions -- and not just the special case of their one (secret) laboratory conditions, usually to prove what somebody has already paid and told them to "find."

Nowhere is such "findings" more common and plentiful than the field of exercise and "conditioning" -- to believe the correctness of the day that somebody has already paid for -- in the various media outlets whereby an oft-repeated untruth, develops the ring of truth because it has been repeated so often -- as some catchy jargon or buzzword. The most famous of course, is "No pain, no gain," -- as though pain was a reliable guide of what to do, rather than the built-in safeguard of what not to do.

Thus many people can be fully convinced that everything that isn't true, is true, and everything that isn't false, is false -- and they have no way of knowing and determining for themselves, the truth of any matter -- because their entire education (socialization), has been not how to think for oneself, but what to think because the duly-self-appointed experts tell them it is so -- because they too, have merely learned the jargon and buzzwords they mistake for actual insight into the investigation of any phenomena.

Among those who did poorly in every subject but physical education -- often because they were allowed to beat up all the other competitors, a particularly intriguing word they believe implies knowing anything, if not everything, is that their exercise is superior because it is "cardio" -- as though any exercise or movement could not involve the cardiovascular system -- at all times, in everybody, under all conditions if they are alive -- as the basic precondition of life. That is, one could not design an exercise that does not involve and engage the cardiovascular system -- since such people boasting of such expertise, think nothing is related to anything else -- and they alone, are the experts in getting anyone's heart pumping -- because they do not think that is what hearts do and have evolved perfectly for -- without their instruction.

The self-evident obvious truth of the matter is that the best and only way to get into the shape one wants to be -- is to articulate (express) that shape as one's focused effort and objective -- while effecting the full range of expression from fullest relaxation to fullest contraction -- by those muscles expressly. In other words, one cannot make the biceps peak, just by making the heart beat faster. The bicep actually has to articulate the fullest range of its capacity to lengthen and shorten -- or change its appearance directly and momentarily -- just as competitive bodybuilders do in maintaining their constantly contracted state.

What they have to learn is achieving the opposite effect of relaxation -- that allows them to effect the appropriate muscular state as a task requires, because it is the appropriate response to the varying challenges of change and conditions, which conveys their greatest fitness, and not simply doing one thing, maintaining one state of contraction or effort, more and longer -- as in a pose or posture. Like the heart, it is the changing from one muscular state to the other, that gives every muscle its value and usefulness -- and not simply more of one without the other -- which results in death, and the inability to change anymore.

Why Is There No Hope for Hawaii

2012-01-07T11:57:00.001-10:00

You really need to get the unions out of government -- so that government once again belongs to all the people, and not just the union leaders serving themselves at the expense of all the people.

Otherwise, the government's only solution for all the problems that cripple the economy and society, is to give themselves higher wages, privileges and entitlements the rest of the citizenry don't have -- which is the reason for government and government workers -- and not just to ensure higher pay than everybody else -- because of their "sacrifices."

The way they talk about their sacrifices, you'd think they're working for free -- instead of twice the median for everybody else, and demanding that status for life -- after which Senator Dan promises, "After I die, you people can have it all, but until then, I should be your leader for life."

With that as an example of selfless public service, it is no wonder all the government workers have that same attitude of self-service -- while the people get nothing and increasingly are homeless.

The Impossible Question

2011-12-30T07:23:00.001-10:00

If one is in the habit of observing -- rather than being told what to see -- it becomes apparent to the observer, that some things are more significant than other things, and those who can make those distinctions properly and reliably, go on to be successful at whatever they are doing, while others will do many things, and be confused as to what is important to do. And so they rationalize such behaviors with the proclamation that doing anything, is better than doing nothing at all, and even observing and understanding what they are doing and hope to accomplish, before acting at all, is "doing nothing" -- rather than the most significant thing to do -- before anything else.

Such people are "exhausted,' because it seems the more they do, the less they accomplish, and the farther they become, from those promised objectives -- if they still recall what they are. Usually, they just get lost in all their activities and busyness -- as though that was the objective in itself. Thus such people are always "too busy" to be healthy, happy and fit -- because they are too busy throughout their day and lives, to have any time and energy for that which is most important to do -- and to let go of the rest.

That happens whether one has a lot to do, or a little. So the significant question to ask, is what 5% of the effort, gives one 95% of the results -- and making that determination (discrimination) consistently and persistently, always leads to favorable results (outcomes) -- because one is distinguishing the significant from the total randomness of activity. That is actually what scientists do -- and makes anybody scientific and systematic in the pursuit of any objective -- determining the 5%, and then the 5% of that, and then the 5% of that, which achieves the more than 99.9%-tile which almost guarantees certainty.

Such people then, seem to know what they are actually doing -- differentiated from the many who just "think" they do, but have no clear idea of what they are doing, because it has just become a compulsion with them. They do what they do, because they've always done it that way -- and can't think of any other way to do things, except as they have always done them before -- regardless of whether they achieve any desired results (outcomes). It is enough that they just do them, or follow the directive of the next thing to do (compulsion).

But always, they do not think through these things for themselves -- and rely on their own senses and results (outcomes) in determining whether it makes sense to continue in the way they have been -- until finally, they may become so exhausted and confused, that they just "give up" on everything -- including and especially, looking for the 5% of effort, that provides the 95% of the favorable returns.

Unfortunately, most people's conditioning (education) are still that way -- thinking that anything, is better than nothing -- instead of determining the 5% which clearly distinguishes the qualitative difference, and from that, those who will go even further in refining that 5% to the 1%, and then the unmistakable because they are so extraordinarily exceptional.

Most of that math, or computations, are done for us now, by computers that begin asking the simple question of, Is it this or that? (Yes or no?) -- to determine the clear 50%, and then the next question is, similarly and tirelessly, Is it this or that? -- at which one immediately arrives at the 75%-tile, and the result of that tedious and relentless determination, will in 10 simple distinctions, enable one to determine the 99.9%-tile unquestionable champion of that activity and distinction, which is the veritable needle in the haystack that would have be futile to begin the quest for.

That is how the impossible becomes the possible -- and then the inevitable.

The War Against Every Other

2011-12-19T11:14:00.002-10:00

Honest and truthful people come in every size, shape, color and occupation -- and are not only self-selected by those who choose to become "trained journalists."

This writer has chosen to generalize the shortcomings of one particular individual -- to smear and impugn everybody else not in her inner circle of socially-approved, politically-correct defenders of the powers that be, who always wish to remain exclusively so. It is a (not so) subtle institutionalization and socialization of the kind of deception and manipulation that is not as obvious as many people's (blogger's) clumsy and more obvious misuse and abuse of speech -- but actually much more dangerous and destructive to society, because it uses all the ploys of mass media techniques to convince us of what is not true -- as the truth -- that only journalists are truthful (are you listening Jayson Blair), while everybody else majoring in everything else in life, cannot be trusted to know and tell the truth.

This is the war that the self-certified "journalists" have declared on everybody else to maintain their preeminence over every other occupation and inclination -- just as the teachers and the university professors declare daily that they should be paid ten times as much as everybody else guaranteed for the rest of their lives -- because of their "sacrifices" for everybody else all their lives, and comparing themselves not to the median as their peers, but to the top 1% -- as their perceived fair share.

Yes, the manipulation and propaganda running daily through these journals of "political correctness" of what we should all believe, is that obvious and ham-handed. So rather than smearing and slurring every other camp as the "unanointed," every person has a responsibility to be truthful and as unmanipulative as they can be.

A Challenge for Everybody -- Throughout the Ages

2011-12-12T08:30:00.002-10:00

The fact of the matter for the USPS demise, as most people can see and reason, is that the traditional mail delivery business is shrinking irreversibly -- and we can't keep maintaining (quasi-)governmental institutions at full employment, increased compensation, benefits and pensions forever -- when there are vastly better ways of fulfilling those needs, and providing those services at competitive market rates.

So while the USPS business is shrinking, the UPS and FedEx is growing -- because they only come by on actual demand, and not as a regular service -- which has its place, in the proposed downsizing of service to needs -- which could be as little as every other day, rather every day. Very few people get mail every day -- excluding the junk mail. In another time and age, people would fill the mailboxes with Christmas cards -- and now virtually nobody does it anymore.

And the reason they don't is not because they aren't in touch, but because they are more in regular constant communications with those who really matter -- instead of the annual Christmas card to everyone today's world would consider a "Friend." The newspapers, bookstores, centralized data processing centers, buggy whip manufacturers, schools all have these same challenges of dealing in a new age of technologies and capabilities that they have to rise to the challenge in meeting -- instead of insisting that the whole world has to rally and keep them at the top of a social/economic hierarchy that no longer can be justified.

That's the challenge of these times for everybody -- throughout the ages and times. That is the history of the world.

All is Better Than One

2011-12-06T09:27:00.000-10:00

The flaw in the popular conventional thinking on exercise, is the belief that if one works only the heart, it will develop all the other muscles of the body -- rather than the much more logical thinking that if one develops all the other muscles, the heart will take care of itself -- which is really the design and function of the human musculature. That's why the heart is an autonomic function; it does what it has to do without conscious effort to do it. It automatically adjusts to the demands made on it by the other muscles -- and not vice-versa.

One of the great mistakes is thinking that the effect is the cause -- rather than the proper relationship of the cause to effect. With that kind of thinking, one is led to believe that simply raising the heart rate to target levels, automatically makes one jump higher, lift more and run faster -- rather than the mastery of a specific coordination of the voluntary muscles -- acting in confidence that the heart will take care of the rest of the body, so the mind is free to focus its concentration to that which requires its complete attention.

Random energy expenditure, is not the same as extremely focused concentration of energy -- which is what a person is deliberately attempting to do, rather than just randomly burn as many calories as possible -- even when the objective is weight control, and body shaping -- the latter which is seldom discussed, even when the subject is "Getting into shape." The muscles will get into the shape, one expresses it to do so -- just as the muscles can produce a frown (disapproval) or grimace (denial), rather than a smile and affirmation -- until that is the permanent expression (shape) the face takes on -- and one could not suspect it could appear any other.

All expressions of the human body, are effected by the musculature similarly, if not consciously -- but it is more than a matter of just elevating the heart rate deliberately and specifically -- to cause those effects. It is the very deliberate and intentional expressions that alters the underlying support systems -- to be healthy, because that is what one can effect and affect through voluntary actions (movements). A muscle that has never been expressed, has no idea what is the shape it can take. It requires some bit of experimentation and then practice, to achieve the effects it desires -- but wishful thinking alone, makes little difference in those outcomes. One has to actually express them -- which is the muscle, altering its shape (and appearance) -- in contracting or lengthening, which is all it does -- but 600-800 muscles throughout the body, produces a complexity of expression and usefulness unduplicated and unmatched by any other species -- particularly at the extremities of the head, hands and feet that individuate people.

Other species are much more specialized, and therefore limited, in the expressions and uses it can have -- such as a horse's hoof to give it speed, a tiger's claw, or even an monkey's grasp -- have all not achieved the versatility of the human hand for manipulating tools, the human face for expressions (communication), and the feet to run, jump, push, pull, lift, or dance. And because of these expressions, people take on different appearances to embody what they do -- specifically, which is why gymnasts as a group, look strikingly different from marathon runners -- which is the ideal chosen as the general rule of what it means to be fit -- even though such a highly self-selected gene pool, has very little relationship to how most humans look -- even as an ideal, for doing anything other than running the marathon.

But is running a marathon, or operating a treadmill for extended periods of time, the best and most useful expression of the human capacity? Undoubtedly, fat people just want to get as skinny as possible, and skinny people want to get as massive as possible, but beyond those gross generalizations, what truly is the human ideal? Those whose specific objectives come closest to defining that, are probably the competitive bodybuilders, but as many others realize, that is not the ideal for everyone also -- to be as intimidatingly massive as possible -- in a very stereotypical fashion unique to that competition.

For most others, but probably less dedicated to such singlemindedness of purpose and conformity to that ideal, infinite other variations are also possible -- not that they would necessarily win any other contest. But what matters is that they are in the shape they want and require to be in -- which is the best they believe they manifest and embody at any time -- and not just to peak for one contest, which is very damaging for the overall health of individuals -- as many are familiar with in virtually collapsing in exhaustion from the effort and deprivation required to achieve that optimal "look" even for that one targeted moment. That's not a prescription for a healthy lifestyle most would want every day -- because "balance" is the key concept in developing a healthy and happy life.

Acknowledging that, would one be better to work the one muscle more that already has to contract over 100,000 times each day unfailingly, or spend that time, actuating (activating) all the other muscles, that may not work at all, every day, even for a moment? What would make the bigger difference?

Fortunately, one doesn't have to do 600-800 specialized movements to activate each muscle in isolation -- if one knows how to activate all the muscles as though it is just one.

Conformity (Consensus) Is Not Reality

2011-11-26T17:21:00.001-10:00

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

2011-11-16T09:16:00.000-10:00

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

2011-11-10T13:35:00.003-10:00

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.

What Does It Mean to be the 99%?

2011-10-24T06:34:00.002-10:00

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

2011-10-19T09:49:00.002-10:00

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

2011-10-12T08:07:00.003-10:00

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)

2011-10-02T13:50:00.002-10:00

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.

Creating Your Own Environment (World)

2011-09-27T08:23:00.003-10:00

The problems in the world, is that people think that they have to create the world for everybody else -- and not just the best world for themselves. So people still think they have to force everybody else to go along with them and "support" them, instead of just going ahead and making the best choices for themselves -- and not everybody else, which always leads to the world's catastrophes.

Individuals really are different -- and not the same, or forcing them to be -- no matter what that political correctness is called. Usually it is some noble sounding purpose like "progressive," "liberal," or even, "democratic -- this forcing, coercing and enforcing, of their will upon everybody else -- as the only true way, humans can live their lives.

And so everyone must agree to see things the same way -- even if it means denying all their own senses and better judgment to think for themselves. That is the greatest evil in the world -- even if one calls it the "enlightened" society, "paradise," or "utopia." Everyone must agree to give up their own preferences for this greater good -- that one person now decides for everyone else.

Such societies are consumed in the endless struggles for everyone to be that one person -- even if we now live in a world that provides enough for each person to make their own choices, and benefit from those outcomes. Thus the challenges of the "organization man," or conformist, were never greater, as those realities of a harsher survival and times become meaningless, and one now, is distinguished and made more fit, by the individual choices they make for themselves.

And so the difference in outcomes, were never greater -- even if some still see it as their task, to make them all the same. That is a particular problem in the schools, that still believe that the result of their education (indoctrination), is to make everyone think alike -- to their political correctness. Usually, that is, that those doing the teaching, should receive more than everybody else in society, because they above all, are the most deserving -- and particularly, most intelligent.

That's a hard habit to break -- of thinking of others only as the means to one's own ends, and not entitled to their own freedom and choices, as much as they have the capacity to exercise them. That is the cutting edge of society -- being created as people live their lives -- making the best choices they can recognize, and increasing those abilities to differentiate and discriminate them. It is a world that requires more discrimination -- and not no discrimination, and the inability to make any discriminations.

But discrimination is not just prejudice -- which is the inability to make valid discriminations, and so to think for oneself -- beyond the indoctrination of those who insist on thinking for everybody else -- and telling them what is correct -- for everybody, for all time.

Homelessness in Hawaii

2011-09-13T08:12:00.001-10:00

You don’t have to build $500,000 houses for the homeless — to solve the homeless problem. Most of them have their own tents that they prefer to live in — and air mattresses to sleep on.

You just need to give them a place to pitch their tents — and bathroom facilities that one should know by now, need to be supervised by a caretaker (as a home and job for the most responsible homeless) — for all the public facilities in Hawaii

You need to enlist the expertise of the homeless to solve the problem of the homeless — rather than all these bureaucrats who have never done anything for their high-paying jobs — but go to school to learn how to get a high-paying (government) job.

You need to reconnect jobs to actual needs (of what needs to be done), and not just everybody looking important and “not their job” to do anything — because they are a government (union) employee.

All the jobs can’t be union employees. Somebody has to do something — besides supervise (inspect). And then one by one, the problems get solved — instead of exploding everywhere when they hit the fan.

"Going Postal"

2011-09-08T08:00:00.003-10:00

It seems like the Postmaster General knows what needs to be done -- and has a plan for accomplishing it -- if the United States Postal Service is to remain a viable entity into the 21st century.

Now the unions and politicians (editors) need to get out of the way and let him do it.

It's getting ridiculous, that most of the money now is going to pay for lifetime pensions and benefits (for people not working) -- so that there is "no money left over" to do the jobs they were created to do. In many states, the teachers' pensions, benefits and career advancement programs consume all the education budget so there is no money to actually hold classes.

The unions (and workers) forget that the reason for a job, is not just to get paid for life, whether one does anything in exchange for it, but to actually create value in exchange for those compensations.

The key issue is whether we create value -- in those exchanges, and not just unilaterally one side being able to extort, all one's life, as much money as they want -- as their idea of "fairness" and "justice," not to mention "entitlement."

If worse comes to worse, we can probably go with just one mail delivery a week -- because there is email, cell phone, news forums 24/7, delivery services, and not just the Postal Service as our sole lifeline to the rest of the world anymore.

But everybody is still trying to own the monopoly to happiness whereby they alone can collect the toll -- which is not the world we live in anymore -- ruled by the Boss Tweeds, Jimmy Hoffas, bin Ladens, etc.

We can't freeze the clock so that no more inventions, innovations and discoveries can be permitted anymore -- so that those getting paid high wages for producing what nobody needs anymore, or the only thing they need anymore, can continue to have lifetime security -- as the wet dream scenario of government (union) workers.

Government shouldn't be the only "option." The value of government, is the choices and alternatives they create -- and the crippling dependency of only the one way, as the only way it can ever be.

The Problem of Government (Education)

2011-09-05T07:30:00.000-10:00

Government jobs should have a high turnover and be shared among as much of the citizenry as possible -- as part-time jobs, rather than becoming lifetime sinecures for government bureaucrats.

What is critical to government, is that it belongs to the people and is a shared responsibility and right of all the people, and not just permanent entitlements for a self-serving trade association (union). No one has a right to be a teacher permanently and irrevocably; that status is dependent on whether they have something of value to teach, and not because their seniority guarantees that.

Education should be the leading example that a person can hold that position of "teacher" as long as they are at the forefront of learning and teaching -- and not just because the unions (trade associations and lobbyists) protects their rights against those competitions to be the best.

But the original intention of government service was that it would be borne by all the citizenry -- sometime in their lives, partly as a public service -- and not as it has become, lifetime entitlements for people who have only been in schools and learned everything they know in schools rather than in the greater and larger arenas of life. That's how they become, arbitrary and authoritarian bureaucrats -- lobbying for endlessly more money (as much as their comparable peers Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffettt et al. they fantasy in their union-think).

So we should share the government jobs as part-time (non-career) positions to employ as many people as possible -- while forcing people, especially the teachers, to make up the unlimited more they think they are entitled to, in the free market -- as proof that they really have something of value to teach, and not the obsolete and irrelevant education that is the tradition of unproductive academia, and education for the educators' sake.

That is how education has now become the problem. It is about learning the new, and not about entrenching and perpetuating the old -- as though maintaining the old status quo should be inviolable. We need education to serve the challenges of the present times to remain relevant and useful -- as the primary model of how things can be done, and not simply as the manifestation and embodiment of everything that is now wrong with society. That is the problem -- of education and everything else.

Where is the Next Generation of Leaders?

2011-08-30T08:56:00.001-10:00

The only hope for Hawaii now, is to elect the next (new) generation of leaders like Tulsi Gabbard, Charles Djou, to lead the state into the 21st century -- instead of the present leaders, like Mazie, Mufi, Colleen leading them back into the old plantation era -- of their being the lunas for life. And so a whole generation will have to wait their turn for them to die or get senile in office so everybody else can move up. Meanwhile, Hawaii falls further back into the Dark Ages where the homeless and lawless urinate, defecate and take over the community property and assets, while the present l"leaders" are powerless to do anything about it, because they've long forgotten how to do anything -- but keep their seats warm.

And the people of Hawaii are convinced to do what they've always done before -- do what the leaders tell them to do, as though that was their own idea and will. In that way, Hawaii is like every 3rd world country -- where their "democratic" leaders get 95% of the vote, and the people complain year after year that their lives are getting worse, thinking there is nothing they can do about it because they "have to" do what they've always done before -- because that is what their teachers teach them to do. And so the money goes to the leaders and the government workers (unions) to keep themselves in power and get all the benefits formerly intended for the keiki, kupuna, handicapped and the whole community.

Meanwhile, the government workers are double- and triple-dipping because they administer these government welfare programs to include themselves in addition to their lifetime sinecures by setting the qualifying levels for welfare at 250% of the federal standards. And so there is no money "left over" for government's original purpose and functions -- because the teachers think their job is their own career advancement, pensions and benefits, and not to teach the classes, or even hold classes, fix roads and sewers, etc..

That's why the homeless and lawless now (the people) are living, urinating and defecating on the sidewalks, parks, beaches, ocean, and right outside the police station -- because there is no respect for the government anymore. And so the people of Hawaii need this revolution (in thinking) to overthrow the present oligarchy (government for the benefit of a few) and really introduce a modern system of government that does something for the people (everyone) -- and not just maintain the present status quo of benefiting themselves and their "ohana. "

Aren't the people tired of being used and abused for the ambitions of those who think it is their birthright to be their leaders? That can change, and the people have a right to -- even if their "leaders" tell them they cannot do that.

You Can't Solve One Problem As Though It's Unrelated To Every Other Problem

2011-08-25T13:14:00.002-10:00

That's why no problem in Hawaii can be solved anymore. One can't solve any problem without affecting every other problem -- and it is the stubborn insistence that only one problem can be solved, that makes it impossible to solve any and all the problems -- because you just can't solve only one. Which means one has to pass a law just to solve that one problem -- and only that one problem, rather than all the problems similar to it.

That would be government by law, and not just arbitrary government -- needing one specialist to solve only one problem, and then another specialist to solve only his one problem -- so that many more government jobs can be created in that way.

So when one hears that the homeless are defecating on the surfboards and other property right outside the Waikiki police station and there's nothing anybody can do about it -- because the bathrooms must be locked or they will be vandalized (right outside the police station), it becomes obvious that those bathrooms must be supervised 24/7, and what better way to do it but to build an adjoining living area for a homeless person to take care of that bathroom in exchange for that shelter -- instead of just storing the cleaning supplies, and leaving the place abandoned and unsupervised the rest of the time.

We obviously need caretakers for all the public bathrooms to protect our investment -- while providing the homeless, shelter and a job. What else do they have to do? and where else would they go -- except the surfboard racks, beach concessions and the ocean?

But the unions for the government workers would not approve of that because that would eliminate their jobs -- to clean up the problems, while the problems have far outstripped their capacity to keep up, because efficiencies are not allowed; that would eliminate more jobs.

The problem has to be the solution -- and not one group causing all the problems and another, cleaning up their problems. The problem has to become the solution - and not endlessly creating more problems because it will create more (high-paying) jobs instead of the many minimal ones that would eliminate these problems. But if government is convinced that the only way they can create more jobs is to create more problems, when the money runs out, they have a problem-creating machine with no funding available to keep up.

One group of people exists just to create problems for everybody else -- and they can never be their own solution. Eventually, the dependents outstrip the codependents, so that society must fail. That is the problem of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and government pensions and sinecures. All the money goes to those who are no longer productive, and no money is available to do any work -- because all the money is paid to those who don't work, don't produce, but just demand increasingly more. That is an unsustainable society -- that have been doomed from time immemorial.

Eventually such societies pass away -- and are replaced by new societies of people who are productive rather than just destroyers of any value and usefulness. And the people who should know better, are powerless to do anything about it but watch that disintegration with increasing dismay. But that is the society they have created, and sit on the top of, and hope it will continue for as long as they live before it collapses -- as they know it must.

You don't have to build elaborate houses for the homeless to live in to care for the public restrooms; the most basic accommodations will do -- until they find better, or they can't do the jobs well enough to justify their tenancy. There has to be a will to solve problems instead of just creating problems -- as the only thing the citizens are capable of anymore.

Making a Difference

2011-08-12T08:05:00.001-10:00

It's not the form (media) that is important; it is the content.

Unfortunately too much of the proliferation of new technology exchanges has no or little content -- besides the upgraded version of telephone tag, and so just becomes a drain on one's attention.

The opportunity of communications is to create and share a new idea and feeling -- and not simply be another node for repeating the old and trite to one's own circle, in case they haven't heard it yet. That is simply the Old Media of mass propaganda.

But to communicate an original idea and feeling, requires immense energy, focus and is the manifestation of intelligence -- that is the organizing imperative of anyone's life. So if one can maintain that proficiency all one's life, there is no decline -- but one's personal challenge to do so, and meaning, purpose and fulfillment in life.

The whole secret of writing is to write to the one -- as though that was all that mattered, and not to all, as though they didn't matter, didn't know better, didn't care, and couldn't tell the difference.

One can be vapid in haiku -- as well as incomprehensible in the more familiar lengthy (and unread) academic treatises and style of writing, which made necessary modern journalism and the legions of middle men to explain what the proclaimed geniuses actually said. But the great accomplishment of any communications, is to make the complicated, simple, and directly understandable -- as the expression and communion of one's own familiarity and understanding.

All of art is the same way -- the expression of the original and creative, and not a form, no matter how novel it may seem in the sea of sameness and conformity, simply doing things as they've always been done before -- as though that was enough to make it art, tradition and culture. Society and culture, is what individuals do -- that matter and makes a difference. That is the only thing that has ever made a difference -- and mattered.

You Can't Put the Genie Back in the Bottle Again

2011-08-05T18:49:00.003-10:00

Back in the old days, newspapers would ostensibly compete on the claim of which was the freest (independent) news source -- but in the new era, the quest now is to see which among them can exert the most control -- and get them (readers) back aboard, thinking only what they (editor-publishers) think is important, if not the actual limits of thought -- just like in the good old days before every forum became a two-way street -- if not an information superhighway.

That meant that no one person or organization actually controlled that flow, but every play could be a "jump ball" and anybody could play -- some being the best in the world at what they did -- even if nobody else knew what they did. That puts the ball firmly in the court of those who do -- while leaving the "middleman" of the media way behind. That used to be the job of the media -- to be the middleman, in the exchange of information from the specialists, to the vast citizenry awaiting directives on what to think -- which is that dependency-codependency that arose in the 20th century as people migrated from stable rural communities into the accelerated paces of big city life and environs.

The pillar of stability and reliability thus became the big city newspaper, and then the broadcast networks. They assured us, they would be all one would ever need to know -- and was everything worth knowing. Those were simpler times before the flood of information released at the end of the 20th century, when it seemed to those traditional gatekeepers of information and political/social correctness, all hell broke loose.

But now that the situation has stabilized somewhat, it's time to reassert their authority -- in the new landscape, if they can first find out, what that is. And so we saw the Honolulu Star-Advertiser this week move towards an online subscription requirement for full participation and access to what they believe is their premium brand, as is their right to do. It's just that in the not-so-distant past, these newspapers all but (mis)represented themselves as quasi-governmental institutions -- as they proclaimed themselves the unofficial fourth branch of government, or merely, the lofty, irreproachable fourth estate.

It's a great niche -- if one can get it, and they were not bashful at claiming it, or even better, owning it. So it was quite amusing to see them try to reclaim that former high ground they thought they used to own -- as lifetime entitlements. But many others caught on -- if that is all one has to do -- act like one owns the turf.

Thus their first tentative steps in that direction to reclaim their place in the pantheon of immortals, was quite obvious, if not impudent. Comments now were to be relegated to a much lower status than their much more highly vaunted articles and editorials, and new and improved industrial strength editing, censoring and suppression. That was very deliberate and unmistakable. Everything but their own writing and suasion, was just to be tossed in a large basket called "everything else," with no time stamp and independence apart from its subservience and subordination to their primary articles of singular importance. They were even to appear in much smaller print, and shouldn't be taken seriously -- when people had come to look forward to those forums and interchanges, as the evolving newer, better news(paper) of the future.

Once one opens Pandora's Box, or lets the genie out of the bottle, it is very difficult if not impossible, to put it back in, and restores the world to the perfect state it was in previously. Everything has already changed -- irrevocably. But one knew, Hawaii would be the place, where somebody would try.

The Unsustainable Future of the Aging Paradigm

2011-07-29T13:07:00.004-10:00

Actually, they're missing a critical first step that is key to the aging paradigm (problem).

They need to teach everybody to take better care of themselves first -- before training the caregivers (health care system) to take better care of the elderly (disabled) -- who may not have learned these skills very well (as young people), and especially did not have access to all the (health) information that many still resist learning. That's no longer optional; it has to be mandatory -- and then a safety net(work) can help -- but if people are caring for those who "don't care," then all the caring and caregiving in the world will be futile and exasperating.

That is the problem of a culture (society) of dependency and codependency any place is built upon. The organizations and institutions did all the thinking and talking for everybody else, so when they retire and are on their own, they are at a loss -- because they've only known to be dependent on others, and not to be independent, self-sufficient and self-reliant.

There has to be more people who can care for themselves -- all their lives, and not accept a fate in which nobody can care for themselves -- and so it falls disproportionately on the able until they give up and become the disabled -- because that is the only way to survive in that kind of society.

Then the dysfunctional (homeless) take over the parks, sidewalks, bus stops, etc., and the people (society) are powerless to stop them.

And so the educational assets should be shifted from the young to the aging -- to re-educate themselves -- in light of today's possibilities of the incredible potential a few are groundbreaking. That is the side of the story that is not being told -- in order to lobby for more money for the problematical dysfunctional. The solution doesn't get any money; only the problem does, and so the lobbying interests want the situation to become as dire as possible -- knowing that's where the money is. And government has become only about the money now.

Private enterprises and individuals are expected to pay their own way with viable solutions -- of the people who at age 60, 70, 80, 90 -- and a few are redefining life never seen before. It is far more than simply plastic surgery, cosmetics and the latest health fads. That is a growing reality also; that is the alternative we need to know about -- and not just the despair of solutions without hope, and endless worsening of the problem -- for all the money, that too, in not an unlimited resource.

Is There a Cure for Alzheimer's (Aging)?

2011-07-23T05:02:00.001-10:00

Back in the late '80s when I first got involved with the problems of the aging, disabled and terminally ill, I noticed that those with dementias (diminishing brain function) also characteristically did not move their heads as well -- and tended to sit and lie like rigid, unresponsive, immobile statues -- even lacking the muscular development that would support such movements anymore.

The atrophying of the muscles understandably indicate a lack of blood flow, while optimizing that flow, produces that robustness and dynamism in development (hypertrophy), whether one seeks to achieve that development or not -- and so it was clear to me, that unless one specifically designed exercises (movement) to that area, the blood flow would be diverted to areas that are actually in movement -- and one should not presume, that just because the heart is beating faster and harder, that flow is going throughout the body equally well.

Bodybuilders are acutely aware of that phenomenon -- and thus know, that if they want to develop their biceps, they have to perform exercises that are specifically effected by the biceps, deltoids, pectorals, etc. However beyond these conspicuous muscles -- they ignore the much more important and critical muscles where the human body distinctly has the poorest circulation (blood flow) at the extremities of the head, hands and feet -- where the human body ages most visibly and obviously as well -- as well known conditions of arthritis, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and most unnoticeably, diminishing brain/cognitive function in all its various manifestations.

And so I determined that if exercise was indeed effective in producing and maintaining optimal development and functioning, the major "muscles" that should be developed as highest priorities for these effects, were the head, hands and feet more importantly than the currently popular preference for the "core" muscles -- including the heart, which should be obvious to even the least informed, always gets all the blood, and therefore, is least likely to suffer from that lack of circulation.

Obviously then, the lack (effectiveness) of circulation, should be measured at the extremities (head, hands, feet) -- and not the heart, which is the conventional/popular focus of that function, because it is simply the easiest thing to measure. However, it should be obvious to any researcher or thinking person, that the easiest thing to measure, is not necessarily the most important thing to measure.

But there are always a few people who make that important distinction -- and differentiate (discriminate) what is most important to consider. That is real science -- and not what most people think it is because someone has told them that is the truth -- because they are the "authorities" on such matters, as though that was the "scientific method," and the end of all knowing. The scientific method is discovering the truth of any matter for oneself -- independent but not ignorant of such "knowledge," which is never all that can be known -- however much any self-proclaimed expert may insist is so -- usually because they have been told by others as well -- or at least biased in that direction.

But unfortunately, that's what science (medicine) has become -- the organization and hierarchy of experts each protecting their own specialized knowledge (turf) without a disposition to see the whole, and how the parts relate to one another. And that's why there is the erroneous idea that the greater phenomenon of circulation is just what the heart does -- rather than the whole cardiovascular system, which includes the muscles, as well as every part of the body -- as more than the sum of its parts.

It is this fragmented and compartmentalized way of thinking, that is a great part of the problem in functioning in the later years of our lives when we are forced to live and think outside the box -- that is the particular and unique challenge of our times, and lives.

The Health Care (Obesity) Problem

2011-07-08T07:48:00.013-10:00

The flaw is the thinking that fitness is merely "quantity" of activity rather than "quality" of activity.

This is expressed as the moronic notion that simply burning more calories is all that is required to be fit -- rather than the insight that random, mindless activity will not result in a world-class fit population.

People's fitness has to be organized around a desire to improve -- and not just be active and busy -- wasting energy, time and money.

World class athletes are the opposite of the fitness profiles promoted by the fitness (sports medicine) industry in that they are notable for their efficiency and economy of movement -- rather than movement for movement's sake -- just to burn as many calories as they can with no real organizing principle or purpose in doing so. You can't be fit just for fitness's sake -- you have to want to improve at a specific activity (purpose), and not just go through the motions thinking that is enough.

That's true of any learning and activity -- it has to be meaningful, sustainable and orients the whole psyche for improvement -- rather than just treadmilling, and the innumerable activities and movements with no real world usefulness. Then activity and every other thing in life becomes arbitrary, random and meaningless -- a politically correct person's paradise in which outcomes are merely averaged.

Lost in these studies, is that some people are actually improving spectacularly -- often with little time, energy and effort to do so -- devoted to such activities in that conventional mode of thought. Obviously the old "progress through the miracle of brute force" approach taught by the physical educators and fitness professionals are an obvious and spectacular failure -- of which, like bad education, more is not the solution but the essence of the problem. Nor is throwing more money at the problem -- which is usually what these studies are all about.

There needs to be a fundamental rethinking of this process for success -- rather than the customary and predictable failures.

They mistake "health care" for "health," which are the inverse.

So we spend more on health care, and that health care (system) makes everybody worse -- just as we spend more on "education," and the students need -- more education.

Obviously that is not the right kind of education or health program(s) but institutionalizing the problems -- which predictably gets worse, until eventually there is some kind of epiphany that wakes people up that the present solution is the problem. But usually by then, there is an entrenched monopoly who wants nobody to offer any alternatives -- but their certain death spiral.

And that is the kind of society we've become, and the people manifest -- these obese people who don't care, can't tell any difference, and have been instructed to believe that nothing makes a difference, and they have no alternatives but to accept their fates as the next 911 victims.

And so we only see in the media these stories of people overwhelmed with their multiple difficulties of life -- and never any examples of people succeeding at anything. It's just become a dysfunctional bloodbath supporting more money and jobs for increasing dysfunctions, dependencies and codependencies as the American way of life.

And then we can look forward to 30 years of "life" on extraordinary support systems -- that ensure that our hearts keep on pumping even though nothing else works, and there are no further signs of consciousness -- as the "health care" ideal.

We need everybody to become "experts" (masters) of their own lives.

In the Age of Information, that becomes entirely possible.

What is the failure of these times, is the old way in which there are a few people who do all the thinking (and talking) for everybody else, which keeps the people uninformed and ignorant -- for the vested interests (experts).

That's the model that fails modern society -- when the trade associations serve their own self-interests above the interest of the general well-being -- which is to have an independent thinking, egalitarian society -- instead of the rule by the self-chosen experts (technocracy). That is the fulfillment of the democratic ideal -- and not that a few tell everybody else what they need to do.

Everybody can own their own lives -- as their ultimate expression of who they are, and what they know. Thinking for themselves should be the highest attainment and fulfillment of citizenship.

The New Declaration of Independence

2011-06-30T20:17:00.003-10:00

Nobody has to be a government worker in the United States of America.

If they are, it is because they choose to be -- because nobody is forcing them to be a teacher, a social worker, a clerk for the government; working for the government is not a sacrifice -- it is an honor and a privilege, that also compensates more richly than the median of those performing those occupations in private industry, as well as the public at large. It might not be the top -- which should not be the comparable peer benchmark they compare themselves to in contract negotiations.

The best in any field, are the best -- and have no peers, and that's why they are the best. The union, or collective, is the average -- and not the best, or they wouldn't be bargaining as a union. These points are blurred in the lynch mob atmosphere of those stirred to believe they have been cheated and wronged because they get only more than the average, and not the most -- of which they are not deserving, or they would be somewhere else, thinking and speaking for themselves, and not having a representative speak for all because they need that tyranny and rage of the masses to coerce a contract.

A contract is an agreement willingly entered by parties free to do so -- or not. From the talk of the unions (government workers), one would think they are slaves or indentured servants forced to work for compensation that is substandard and conditions that are inhumane -- rather than the standard of the industry which is their job -- instead of merely double the median, and demand that preferential treatment for life -- as their entitlement, which is what brought about the Declaration of Independence from that exploitation -- that a self-designated few, were entitled for life to the bounty of those who actually produced the goods, services and intellectual capital.

That declaration of freedom, was not so that another group of self-appointed "nobles," should demand that they alone were now entitled to all.

The Freedom to Know (Be)

2011-06-24T07:46:00.008-10:00

When the world wide web was just becoming popular in 1995, I took one of the early introduction courses on what could be done with this new possibility -- and realized right off, the opportunity it represented, for alternative voices and viewpoints -- although the class was not taught that way.

They still insisted that one had to be as anonymous and secretive as possible -- so that nobody would really know who they were -- which I realized was a terrible mistake, because the problem was not that most people were too well known, but they were not known well enough -- by others, as well as themselves. The great advantage of the World Wide Web, was the ability to be known by others, and to know others -- and by that process, to know oneself, because one doesn't really know oneself, except in the actual relating with others.

Otherwise, one can have all kinds of delusions about oneself -- and demand that others believe that, rather than as they actually are, and manifest in the relating. The actual relating, is the relationship, and not what one calls it, or wants another to believe it is -- with certain expectations, obligations, wishful thinking, etc. In that way, many could demand that "friends" behave in a certain manner to them, while they exploited, deceived and manipulated everyone else in the name of that "friendship" -- which was obviously something else entirely.

That was the norm before the World Wide Web made other (alternative) "visions" more commonplace. Still, some organizations and institutions insist, they have the only truth that should be known -- just like in the (good) old days, and they should be in charge of editing, censoring and suppressing everything that does not conform to their truth (political correctness), which invariably, and not coincidentally, put them at the top of the flowchart of authority and "entitlements."

That part of human conditioning dies hard -- the desire to attain an unfair advantage, and retain it for life -- despite what it costs everybody else to maintain those "privileges" -- which they think is the reason for everybody else's existence. It's not that those tendencies never existed before -- but now they become more apparent and obvious, because alternative viewpoints are more often seen -- than the one a self-appointed few, demands that is the only thing that can be known, and it should be dangerous to hold any other viewpoints -- even if they have to teach and enforce it themselves.

This is most commonly seen now, in the discussions of the government workers, that the government should exist, solely for their own benefit and well-being -- because they have "sacrificed" themselves for everybody else, and one has no right to believe anything else.

Nobody Lives Forever

2011-06-16T06:55:00.006-10:00

Death will be the great challenge of the 21st century -- and the meaning we give to both death and life.

Mr. Haugen (Oregon Death Row) wishes to regard his death as a "sacrifice" and service to society to reflect on some issues we would not otherwise, and in this way, is making his own contribution to society -- with his life.

And now a group of people want to rob him of that dignity and opportunity by declaring that he is incompetent, and his sacrifice is invalid -- because he does not subscribe to the political correctness (beliefs) of those self-appointed to make these judgments for everybody else, as to who should live and who should die, and whether individuals have a right to their own lives -- and death.

The matter of death becomes increasingly important as more people live lives that can be extended beyond what we have traditionally thought to be a viable and meaningful existence -- just because they have the medical insurance to pay for that, as a few do. Others will decide to climb Mt. McKinley or Everest -- or die trying. People die everyday, in many ways.

In many cultures, the old, weak and dying, were often banished to the wilderness -- realizing they were sacrificing themselves in that way so the rest of society could survive and even flourish. That is even the myth of how civilization began, and a theme in a pioneering heroic age, in which a few individuals declare, "This is as far as I go; the rest of you go on without me," because the chances of success are much greater without them -- or all will fail (die).

Death doesn't have to be that traumatic ultimate "penalty" but can also be a going to sleep and not awakening -- dying peacefully in their sleep, having reconciled themselves to everyone else, and decided the time is right -- and they are at peace with it. A person should have a right to their best death -- as well as their best life, and preferably both -- as their essential rights and freedom of expression that defines that society and its values.

We have to stop looking at death as a penalty -- and view it as an integral and necessary part of life -- so that it can be made more significant, and not just denied as that we hope to avoid forever (and at all costs). Because that is not the essential nature of life; life is that which comes to an end (dies). It is not something permanent but temporary, so one needs to make the most of that time he has -- and that is the best anyone can do -- anyplace and in any position in society.

Living Beyond the 20th Century

2011-06-08T04:24:00.000-10:00

The specialization and compartmentalization of thought and life in the 20th century, fragmented reality into the many parts and created many bureaucracies and hierarchies in these matters -- which are not a natural and normal feature of reality, but shatters the wholeness of that experience into the many unconnected and seemingly disparate (contradictory) parts -- often at eternal war and argument with one another.

The previous century gave rise to such divisions in the thoughts of Hegel, Freud and Marx, who saw the whole of history and civilization as a perpetual war between the opposites -- as the essential "duality" of reality -- as represented by good versus bad, left and right, high and low, inner and outer, workers against owners, men against women, white against the colored, fiction and non-fiction, etc.

Then in the latter half of the 20th century, the foremost thinkers realized that life was becoming hopelessly and meaninglessly fragmented into the prevailing personality of that generation as a hopelessly conflicted and tormented individual -- always battling within themselves just to maintain their sanity and integrity. And that word "integrity" means to be whole and undivided -- but the work of man of that era, was to produce the many divisions and specializations of one's own neuroses as the high achievement of well-educated and civilized people of that time -- celebrated in the mass media by the self-parodies of Woody Allen, etc., creating the division between the observer and the observed, the analyzer and analysis.

So in the later 20th century, there was a call for a New Age -- that would heal the divisions and restore the wholeness (holism) of life in all our activities and in our essential outlook -- not by simply regluing the pieces, but not shattering them in the first place. Many of those steeped in the thought and conditioning (education/socialization) of the 20th century, still insist that the purpose and meaning of life, is to create these divisions and arguments -- before they can "cure" or solve them by putting them back together again -- or better yet, further subdivide them into further subdivisions of specialties -- of which they can then be that department's chair.

Which means of course then, that life becomes even more divisive as the value of "diversity" in its own right -- which implies that universal and unifying laws are not possible or valid, and therefore, anything goes, or at least anything one can get away with. The cure seems to be the Information Age -- where there is virtual knowledge of what (every)one is doing, and the elimination of the division between the public life and the personal one -- which restores and reveals the integrity and wholeness of the individual -- even if that is not the image they would like others to believe.

Why Is The News So Depressing?

2011-05-26T17:05:00.005-10:00

If the truth be told, we're actually living in an extraordinary time of peace and prosperity, because there are no global wars like the last century -- when literally 100 million people perished because of wars and their related persecutions and purges.

Nations didn't recognize the rights of other nations to exist, or to live the lives they saw fit to live, which we now recognize as universal human rights. However, many still think that the role and purpose of governments and societies, is to force people to do what they don't want to do -- and that is a hard habit to break. Most of our institutions still justify themselves in that way -- of forcing children to learn, and people to obey the traffic and other laws, as though that is not what intelligent people would do for some good reason.

Many even seem to think, that laws can't have a good reason, but exist to be arbitrary as an opportunity and excuse to exercise that power over others -- just to maintain the social order that they feel would surely be chaotic, if everyone were allowed to think for themselves. To those brought up in the old world order, there's something not quite right about others being allowed to exercise their own judgment and free will, because it seems like the reason they exist, is to be dominated and exploited by whoever thinks of it first, and is the most ruthless at executing their power.

That seems to be the theme of many of the writers who never left the last century -- that everything still must seem a problem and an argument, to see who is the victor, and who is the vanquished -- and the notion that all can win or be right, is a violation of the premises of their world view. Not surprisingly then, many in that last century, were very conflicted personalities, always at war with every other, and just as much, with themselves over everything.

Nothing could seem as easy as it could be. There had to be a struggle that gave meaning to every effort, goal and desire. Life could not be easy; one had to be in constant torment, anguish and guilt, in order to make it righteous and virtuous.

And then the liberals (socialists) came along to blur the distinctions and discriminations of everything into their random soup that insisted nothing mattered but the perpetual meaningless struggle over everything (the dialectic) -- just to be the devil's advocate -- as though that became the new virtue of the age of struggle and effort without meaning and purpose, because one had so completely lost their way, and the constant agitation and stress, gave them their exhilarating sense of being alive.

It was not enough, just to be, and let be. Somebody had to create a problem for someone else -- and they knew no other way of being, and would not allow it for anybody else.

Customizing One's Own Best Environment

2011-05-23T04:47:00.007-10:00

A lot of recent legislation have focused on creating one exclusive environment for everyone -- administered and dictated by government bureaucrats, who ensure the conformity and the consensus, so that nothing else is possible.

It used to be done subtly, by generating public sentiment and will, but now it is done with the heavy hand of government -- to force everybody to accept a singular worldview as the only world view -- which a previous generation recognized as presumptuous and ethnocentric. But it has been revived under the guise of a pan-global worldview presumably even for the benefit of those animals who can't speak for themselves -- and so a few duly self-appointed guardians of the "public interest," take it upon themselves, to impose their own better judgment, over that of everybody else less virtuous and all-knowing -- in proposing bans against what everybody should or shouldn't be doing, because they feel entitled to manipulate the rest, and that is what their certificates and accreditations imply/grant to their (trade) association exclusively.

And the proof of this, is that they can manipulate and mobilize an impressive number of people who have voted and designated such leaders to do all their thinking and talking for them -- and henceforth, their leader, should now do the thinking and talking for everybody else as well -- even though many choose not to be represented and choose not to abrogate their rights to think and speak for themselves in this way. Instead, they are told, this is the way it will be in the future -- henceforth, and so they had better jump on the bandwagon early, lest they become one of the persecuted rather than the persecuting majority -- for they are certain, it is this might that makes them right.

These of course, are the proverbial red flags in the life of every democratic society that has briefly existed before succumbing to these tyrannies of the conspiratorial and self-serving -- that become a right unto themselves. At that point, there is no turning back, and recovering Paradise Lost. It is the end of the world, as they knew it.

The other vision(s), is that every individual should be allowed to make their own best choices for themselves -- guided by the lifelong wisdom to know themselves better, as the unfailing truth to creating that best world each can best do for themselves. That is the seed and promise of a democratic society and republic we need to be mindful of as the overarching greater good.

Life and Death

2011-05-14T06:11:00.002-10:00

Writes Oregonian staff writer Helen Jung:

Wearing shackles and a red transport prison uniform, Gary Dwayne Haugen sat at a table in a Marion County courtroom Friday and greeted the judge who had presided over his 2007 death-penalty trial.

"It's like deja vu," he said in a friendly tone to Marion County Circuit Judge Joseph Guimond.

But the 49-year-old, who has been in prison since he was 19 and on death row since 2007, said he's ready to move forward. He scoffed at arguments from his own attorneys seeking a 90-day delay to assess his mental competency.

"I think it's cruel and unusual punishment that counsel continues to give delays and give postponements," said Haugen. "This is my life we're talking about. I've got a lot of things to prepare for and I'm cool with it. I don't think they should keep getting chances until they get that trump card."

I think Mr. Haugen's statements regarding his death is really a remarkable achievement for an(y) individual, as well as for society -- in that we see someone accepting death bravely, resignedly, responsibly and consequentially -- which should be the whole objective of our justice system, as well as the whole meaning of life.

And he doesn't want to be cheated out of his contribution to society by the courts, the lawyers, the bureaucracy and the ideologues, who wish to use him to serve their own agendas. He wants to own his own life entirely -- and is at peace with himself and everybody else, apparently. Yet everybody else in the "system" wants to challenge his mental competence for having such clarity.

We don't often see people give up their lives with such grace and dignity -- preferring instead to see people hang on at any cost, even long after they have lost most of their senses, cognition and quality of life -- which is the major problem facing the maturing societies of the world. At what point do people say that they've had a fair chance at life and now it is time for that end -- under the best of circumstances, even at the time, place and conditions of their own choosing?

We're all going to die at some point -- but we have too few examples of people dying at peace with themselves and everyone else, and that moment, should not be sullied by everyone else's confusion and ambivalence about life and death. His story is fairly unique but should not be lost, or tarnished with the many other issues that people reflexively argue over as their entertainment because they don't want to face the significance and profundity of such serious matters, issues and moments.

Life is important, but death also gives meaning to that life -- and how one accepts that, or any other consequence of living.

How we define "life," as well as "death," is probably the great challenges of the future, because we now have so much control over prolonging life long past the point of no return, and are into denial about this ever-increasing period of every life now, that we need to establish a few benchmarks and milestones on the journey that is not so capricious anymore.

In the past, we could rely on wars to wipe out a few hundred million, but now, only a very few die that way. So both life and death have become unprecedentedly controlled and controllable, with tremendous unforeseen consequences of this success, that can threaten to become its own cause of decline and even extinction. We've become victims of our own "success."

Is Banning the Plastic Bag a Panacea?

2011-04-28T07:00:00.000-10:00

It'd be nice if just banning plastic grocery bags would solve our litter and pollution problems, but it won't -- because they'd still be all those other pieces of trash and the thoughtless consumption of resources.

What would be an even better idea, is to go around once a week with one of those plastic grocery bags and fill it with all that other litter -- and beautify the neighborhood (environment) in that very real way, and one will realize that the plastic grocery bags are a small part of the total trash being dumped out thoughtlessly by people.

That would be far more meaningful than simply banning the plastic grocery bag -- that is very useful, especially to the people who walk, bike and bus -- instead of riding around in their SUVs.

I know it would be very inspiring to see young people going around picking up trash this way -- and for that matter, people of every age and socio-economic condition, as a very tangible display of their concern for the environment, and its stewardship.

But simply to ride around in one's SUV instead of walking, bicycling or busing while deploring the poor people carrying their bags long distances, doesn't show a lot of understanding of the impact of one's activities on the environment, and even more importantly, one's relationship to other people, who may not have the luxury of a car to transport their paper bags -- especially in the inclement weather Oregon is world-famous for.

So let's get to the bigger root of the problem -- which is the littering and pollution of all those things -- and not just one small gesture one hopes will be a panacea to a vastly greater problem. Then after banning the plastic garbage bag, we have to ban the paper cup, sandwich wrappers, and yes, the paper bag that is as great a source of the problem as the plastic bags.

So the problem is not any particular kind of litter -- but all littering, and how we could solve that problem very tangibly and effectively.

The Present Education Crisis

2011-04-21T09:41:00.000-10:00

The long term future of learning is that students will teach themselves. In the past, they haven't had the tools to access all the information. Learning is not a separate function from living; in fact, one learns to live, and not lives to learn -- and all the specializations and compartmentalizations into all these divisions, turfs, hierarchies and bureaucracies.

People are already doing that now -- especially those who continue to learn beyond their "education," or even begin it after they're finished with school. We no longer need people just to learn everything they can while they are in school, and to stop learning after that -- thinking that what they learned in school, was everything there is to know, and if they want to learn more, they have to sign up for four more years at $100,000 -- or they can't learn anymore.

That's everything that is wrong with the present education system -- and as that cost becomes prohibitive, people have to find a better (cheaper) way. The telling videos of these times, is how the 1 year and the 99 year old, can learn to operate the iPad -- on their own, after a brief demonstration. People instinctively want to learn, but it is the government and trade associations (unions), that distort and pervert all that for their exclusive benefit, which has very little to do with learning anymore, and only about how much more they can get for doing nothing, or as little as possible.

It's also the same with escalating costs and dependency on health care. People learn to take better care of themselves so that they're not totally dependent on the health care "professionals" to keep them alive, tell them what to do and think, and make the decisions they should be making for every individual's own "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (health and well-being)."

These changes don't come easily -- especially for those who make their living profiting on the continuance of the problem -- that students do even worse, because their education is out of date and irrelevant, and only learning for learning's (the educator's) sake -- instead of the freedom to learn, the desire to learn, and without having to ransom one's entire life, fortune and future, so that a few people can retain their positions as gatekeepers and toll collectors for the rest of society as their hostages.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that that's not how the future is going to play out -- because they just can't continue in that manner, because of the cost, but also because there are much better ways to perform those functions that were not possible to do before because the tools were not available.

As for the "social contact" that is surrendered in moving away from the traditional classrooms, we don't need to reinforce the teacher as necessary authorities and authoritarians -- which is destructive to the whole purpose of learning -- which is that there shouldn't be any coercion, fear, conformity, intimidation, tradition, convention biasing the choices we make, as the best that can be made -- and not the traditional indoctrination of the union president doing all the thinking and talking for everybody else -- on down.

So the present crisis is also the opportunity -- or one can be dragged kicking and screaming into the future
because we haven't done it that way before. But that would require real thinking and learning -- which is not what they are teaching in the (government) schools.

"Raise the GET Tax!"

2011-04-14T07:24:00.001-10:00

While it is a nice thought that raising the GET tax so that there would be more funds available "for the kupuna, for the keiki, and for the homeless," the fact of the matter is that any tax increases goes largely, if not exclusively anymore, to provide for government worker pay raises, benefits, and pensions, "leaving no money left over" for the general welfare of the citizenry, and particularly those most vulnerable citizens.

That's why the schools are always "getting" worse, the seniors have no future programs, and the homeless have no place to live -- while not coincidentally, the government pay to themselves, keep rising faster than the rest of the economy/society.

Why do you think the homeless are camping all over the sidewalks and there are "no resources and training," to actually do the work those jobs were created for?

They're all down at the Legislature lobbying for more. That's what the GET tax means to them. They GET.

What They Would Have Us Believe

2011-04-11T09:15:00.002-10:00

The (public) worker unions would have us believe that it is the unions against the corporations (rich people) -- rather than that it is the unions' (public) workers against the interests of everybody else in society -- and that they should be placed unquestionably at the head of the line before any benefit actually gets to those people they were hired to serve, which is the public at large, and especially the most needy and disadvantaged.

Instead, the union workers have proclaimed themselves "the most needy and underprivileged," so that there is no money "left over" to serve the greater public interest and welfare.

That is the crisis of the present time, and not that the corporations are forcing children into slave labor -- and so we need highly paid public service workers to protect them from those exploitations. Rather, the children will be expected to work their entire lives to provide for the generous pensions and benefits of long-retired government workers (trade association) at a standard of life equal to the richest, who make that prior claim on the resources intended to serve everyone equally.

But we can't continue that way because one of the major benefits is free, unlimited health care, which sounds like a very noble idea, but poses unlimited opportunities for abuses -- because it is an "unlimited" entitlement not restrained by any personal accountability and cost. And so as people live longer even in declining health, those costs can multiply astronomically -- and a few are "entitled" to unlimited claims on those very finite resources.

One can never undertake anything as though "cost were no object," because there is always a cost requiring us to make tough decisions about how those limited resources now get deployed -- because the United States is no longer in its unlimited frontier days when the most is still yet to be discovered, but we are at a maturity that requires us to make choices with critical consequences for all our subsequent decisions.

It'd be nice if there was an unlimited pile of money for everybody to take as much as they want -- and there was enough for all, and unlimited more to come, but that should not be the prerogative of those whose job it is to pass it on to the rest of the citizenry.

Learning Beyond the Education

2011-04-03T09:09:00.000-10:00

Instead of identifying the kids at risk and spending even more attention and resources on them, perhaps what we need to do is identify the child prodigies among them to teach their age-peers -- which is how learning is actually done in the real world, that we are presumably preparing them for in the schools. For such prodigies in their respective fields, everything is simple and self-evident -- which are the people you would want to learn from, and not the least able adults who invariably choose "education": as a major and vocation, because then they will be the most knowledgeable person in the class -- or at least, given the authority to be, which has very little to do with real learning.

What we actually have, is an indoctrination into a system that is obviously not working -- of the old model of mass education (indoctrination), that even many of those raised in that previous generation, found alienating -- especially now, that our education tools and technology, could enable the kind of personalized and individualized learning now possible for everyone. The case in point is the child of 1 learning to use an iPad proficiently -- and even those at 99.

The obvious problem is trying to keep all those different aptitudes and maturity together -- simply because they are the same age, when age conveys the least significant information about where that student may be -- but mass education demands they must be the same, which frustrates everyone, and serves nothing but the education industry -- because the outcomes are worse than ever. Obviously, their "solution" is not the answer.

Is there anybody today who is not learning something new each day? If they aren't, then that is the problem regardless of whether they are 1 or 99, and that is the significance of the problem and challenge -- and not whether we should put more money towards the young, or the old.

This problem of aging is now emerging as one of the challenges of these times -- which mostly, is not learning new strategies fast enough to overcome their deficiencies and challenges -- because of the present specialization and compartmentalization of learning -- as a special activity apart rom life, rather integrated and integral to it.

That is both its problem and its solution -- not creating these fragmented and mass minds that aren't always learning, because they are no longer forced to, or don't see any "future" or reason to. So the very notion of "compulsory" education is the problem -- because there is no lack of opportunities for learning.

But people, even at the youngest ages, have to be exposed to the best and brightest among them to truly know what that is about -- and not simply having adults of the poorest education and competence, force upon them what they think learning is -- when that is only indoctrination into what to think, rather than learning to think for themselves. And so we have and see these arguments that there is only one way, and no other should be allowed -- rather than a real discussion of all the possibilities, not proposed by the self-serving trade association.

That should be the province of the 21st century news agencies, and not simply, the propaganda and marketing of the status quo and powers that be, to always remain so, and further promote themselves. That is the fundamental problem of education in the US.

Increasing Vulnerabilities

2011-04-01T10:12:00.003-10:00

As one who has witnessed and been acutely aware of this process of aging ever since I was born (my father was 50), I've never been fully convinced that increasing dependency -- and codependency, and the vulnerabilities they entail, are not to a great part learned behaviors, and culturally accepted, if not embraced, as the prototype for aging in the future. Obviously, it is a dismal prospect for any society, in which the work of the young and able, are increasingly to take care of the old and disabled, and the energies and resources are drained and overwhelmed in this way. That is not a sustainable society and future -- but a dystopian one, because we fail to envision meaningful, productive and vibrant lives beyond work (and retirement).

We teach the kids how to be grown up, and the young people how to be adults, but there is no recommendation for the seniors beyond travel, golf, and "normal aging," until one can no longer do them, and then there are no further challenges that require them to maintain and enhance their responsiveness. So quite predictably, people eventually become entirely dependent -- in the various ways.

While working in caregiving and with caregivers, I often noted that a person made a "fatal" decision that doomed them for the rest of their lives -- like breaking a hip, and then failing to move into a residence that would re-enable them to live without the handicap of living in a perilous home built on many levels, that trapped them in their homes -- yet they would never consider selling their homes because they wanted to die in that house. And so a whole bunch of caregivers had to be deployed to enable that fatal decision.

And then there were those who believed it was the doctors' sole responsibility to make them well, while they continued to overeat and do no exercise -- because it was the doctor's responsibility to make them well -- because that's what their medical insurance was paying for. Of course these are the worst cases, but only to the worst degree, of people who are increasingly brought up in a society to become increasingly dependent on government, the health care system, experts or union presidents, to do all their thinking and talking for them, for the benefit of unlimited health care and now, long-term care as their primary benefits.

But we see some people at 60,70,80, 90, who don't age in that familiar pattern, and they should be studied more, as the prototypes that work, rather than the ones that are drawing increasing funds for a future that doesn't -- and is unsustainable, with its increasing problems that multiply as that generation grows disproportionately larger. That is the crisis of the present times -- manifested in these many ways, all lobbying for more funding from a stagnant pool of resources.

The Last Place on Earth

2011-03-27T05:36:00.000-10:00

Beyond diversifying the base of the tourist industry, it'd be far more fruitful to diversify industry itself -- so that it doesn't just mean tourism, and beyond that, real estate speculation.

Hawaii should take advantage of its distinction of being the US's only tropical state -- and develop the state of the art lifestyle and technologies for all the other tropical and superwarm countries, most of which are mired in third world status because of their inability to overcome the conditions of too warm conditions -- that sap human energy and industriousness. They don't have to give lectures on industriousness to those living in colder climates that make them naturally disposed to overcoming those challenges.

But as we see in Iraq and a lot of those sub-Saharan and tropical climates, temperatures are so hot and oppressive, that the people don't want to even move for fear of overheating, and merely adapt to survive the day without heat stroke and exhaustion. Hawaii only has a few days of such oppressive conditions (Kona winds) but also, most days one cannot stand being exposed to the sun, sand and sea all day, even among the homeless and most impoverished. They need sheltering strategies, and suitable clothing and other adaptations of their own unique challenges that wouldn't be produced elsewhere in the US because they don't face those conditions

Essentially, Hawaii doesn't want to be competing against the rest of the US economy and industry in those respects, but would surely have a tremendous competitive advantage against all those other too warm (third-world) countries in developing and marketing the technologies for overcoming the challenges posed by unvarying too warm conditions, is Hawaii's natural niche, and not implementing those things that make sense in New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, ie., the rail, conventional air-conditioning, landfill, fossil fuels, etc.

Hawaii should be "alternative" and "innovative" by natural advantage instead of conformist, and the last to adopt whatever technologies were used successfully in the past centuries, as though that was the meaning and purpose for contemporary society and culture as manifested most familiarly by government ruled by pre-industrial unionism, which is just another form of the old tribalism.

And then people of the world would want to come and witness and participate in that as the reason for their visit, and not because Hawaii is the last place on earth to do so.

What Is the Health Care Crisis?

2011-03-22T07:17:00.001-10:00

The so-called health care crisis is the classic case of what's wrong in America -- because of the health care industry/interest claiming to be everyone's "primary health care provider -- rather than that being the primary responsibility of each individual -- with the intelligent and selective assistance and aid of health care professionals.

Every individual has to provide for their own "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," as their own highest right and responsibility -- and not that one has to go to their health care provider in order to obtain health -- or permission to change one's diet, activities, attitudes and thinking -- as though any trade association (union), has that right to supersede.

The major difference in healthy incomes, are the individual choices individuals make, and not whether one has adequate health care insurance to pay for unlimited health care services -- that are actually better regulated by the free-market desire to reduce those expenses, and in fact, to avoid those costs if at all possible.

Those considerations are distorted once a large group of individuals don't have to bear and account for those costs at all -- and are actually rewarded for being "sick." So there is no financial incentive or deterrent from "getting one's money's worth," by obtaining all the unnecessary procedures the health care provider wants to provide, after determining that one is fully covered, and if not, they won't waste your time and money.

People who don't have health care insurance are in fact more likely to be healthy -- rather than those totally dependent on the health care, as well as all the other codependent institutions and bureaucracies that enable and increase the problems. That is the crux of contemporary American life -- and its ills.

Where Has All the Money Gone?

2011-03-14T06:26:00.005-10:00

Tourist: "When I come to Hawaii each year, it seems to me like there are more and more homeless people than previously, and I was wondering if we could contribute $1 a day to solve the problem?"

Christi, it is awfully nice of you to offer to contribute $1 a day for the homeless, but the problem in Hawaii (as most places in the US), is that that money will be diverted to pay higher compensation to the stronger organized (union) government workers -- who have deemed themselves to be the truly underprivileged, deserving and needy, despite all being compensated in the upper half of incomes.

That is the "homeless" problem -- that those who are better off, take all they can, because they are in an advantageous (stronger) position to do so, and so the homeless (and everybody else), fall further behind. That is the essential problem of societies in failure vulnerable to the ensuing chaos and anomie from the Big One.

Where do you think the money for the homeless, water, sewers, roadways, young and elderly is going?

Government workers no longer work to serve the greater public good but now see it as the vehicle to serve themselves primarily -- and as was revealed in the furloughs of previous years, think that their compensation should not even have to be related to actually showing up and performing that job -- it is now just their entitlement, because that is what their labor monopoly and lawyers, can secure for them above the law, fairness and any other principles that governs healthy societies.

So even, and maybe especially the rich, realize that you can't be the One with all the money when everybody else has none -- because that is the ultimate precarious position in which everyone is one's enemy. But it is not so easy to see when a large class of people (association), obtains a position of trust (to serve the public, greater good), and then betrays that trust in only serving themselves, as though that was the only good, and rationalizing that if it weren't themselves, everybody else would do it too -- if they had the position and status to do so.

And thus the public is betrayed by the very people who should be serving them -- but have merely learned to play the game and milk the system better than everybody else. Not surprisingly, their jobs now consist primarily of lobbying for even more -- at the legislature, media and public forums, with the disadvantaged as the pretext -- but only for their own job security and increased benefits.

That has become the great problem of these times in contemporary USA -- of which Hawaii is unfortunately at the forefront -- justifying it as "the price of paradise," which of course is nonsense for the greed, corruption and lack of choices that is the topic of every conservation in Hawaii.

That society has already failed -- and is just treading water until the Big One in whatever form it comes, to reveal that there is no infrastructure -- and certainly, none of moral sensibilities, besides "getting more than their fair share," as the principle that guides all conduct, until the Big One changes the rules of the game -- and then the predator become the prey.

Death By the Unions

2011-03-04T18:25:00.001-10:00

So this is how it all ends -- death by the unions.

You live by the unions, and you die by the unions.

The day they turned out the lights in Hawaii -- for good. Hawaii always wanted to be the first at something -- and now it will get its chance -- of being the first state to be choked to death at the hands of every group that thinks everybody else exists just to support their own high paying jobs.

The unions control the monopolies -- so there is no choice, no right to work -- if one can and wants to. They have to pay their tribute to every tribal chieftain who thinks he should be the Big Boss. Life will get harder -- because everybody wants it to get harder -- for everybody else but themselves, and of course, because everybody is thinking that way, it will get bad for everybody.

It's not enough just to be concerned with your own ohana, or brotherhood, or trade association -- in order for societies to work. Everybody wants to be better off than everybody else -- and so everything will stay the same. Everybody will suffer -- and think they have everybody else right where they want them.

That's why hard -- even in paradise.

What's Wrong with Government (Workers)

2011-02-23T09:02:00.002-10:00

For most of the history of this country, public service (government) was what people did for the benefit of the whole community, and so people volunteered a few years to serve this public good.

But then some wanted to make this service their exclusive career path -- and so rather than allow everyone to participate and contribute in this manner, they began to make it exclusive -- and create all the barriers to public service to reduce the gene pool, and thus became more technocratic and bureaucratic, which turns off a lot of the truly public spirited people.

And so now government has become the self-serving of government employees putting themselves first -- and so there's no money "left over" for what government was originally intended for, which is to serve everyone, and so the weak are the first eliminated -- so the government workers can maintain lifetime, secure positions beyond the median for the rest of society -- but of course, the unions will have their people deny that is so.

So the media becomes a propaganda machine for the unions (government workers), and the disinformation and misinformation is propagated by the rank and file, who know this is wrong, but think that democracy is the tyranny of the most ruthless -- to control the public opinion.

Nowhere is that more true and evident, than in "education," where a small group of homeschoolers dominate the spelling bees and science fairs because they are taught by people who really care about them -- and not because they know how to play the education career path game. We live in an information culture -- and it really is difficult not to learn, if one simply allows it, just as the best and the brightest already come to school with that advantage. Education is not a labor-intensive function but an intellectual capital one -- requiring only the best.

We don't need 50 departments of education and 500 schools; we need only the best -- and broadcast that. Then that money is free for what truly needs to be done.

You Have to Start Somewhere

2011-02-17T08:25:00.001-10:00

Budgeting is like dieting -- you have to start somewhere, and not maintain the attitude that nothing will make a difference because everyone will end up dead anyway.

Small changes add up to big changes, once they actually get underway, so the ploy not to do anything, is never to do anything at all -- except talk about the big changes, which of course, has never made a difference.

It should be obvious to most intelligent people by now, that the old information propagation institutions should in fact be shrinking, and disappearing altogether in the future, much as the other information propagation institutions like the publishing business have already experienced -- with the downsizing of 90% of the bodies that used to be involved -- because that function has become integrated and mainstreamed as what everybody does, rather than just a few specialists.

Everyone has to become their own teacher -- and not that there is a teaching profession that can only do that, just as health has to become that way also -- what everybody does, and not just what the health care professionals do.

But predictably, just as the "strategy" adopted by the old publishing businesses to circle the wagons tighter, that just locks out the talent on the other side, which then becomes their greatest threat and enemy, and they become a cultural dead-end, with no prospects for survival because they didn't reinvent themselves and recruit new talent to remain at the leading edge, but are stuck with all the dinosaurs of a previous age.

One always has to adapt to the present realities -- as the only meaningful reality, and not speculate on all those future scenarios that will probably not materialize in that way -- but becomes the fantasy, or paradise people choose to live in, while denying the actual realities.

That mentality is reflected in all your arguments of "devising a flexible strategy to adapt to change," which is really an excuse and justification not to change at all, and not to address the obviousness of the present situation -- because somehow, far in the future and fantasy, it will all make sense, because nothing that you do now, makes any sense at all.

Is There No Other Way?

2011-02-16T09:14:00.003-10:00

A rare, but increasing few, don't age in the traditional and familiar fashion -- and it doesn't occur to most people that they are "old," because they seem uniquely ageless and healthy. These are people who have gone beyond Maslow's concept of highly-actualized people, to create a whole new possibility of life that didn't exist before. These are the people society should be studying -- and not those in the familiar deteriorative (dysfunctional) conditions and fashion -- which is increasingly where our resources have been going, and is unsustainable.

Most of the deteriorative conditions are usually dysfunctional behavioral responses -- that need to be recognized as such, and then maintain that vigilance the rest of their lives -- whatever the different challenges arise. When people just give in and give up, and decide they cannot change or would rather not -- but the world must change to accommodate them, death then moves in for the kill.

Fortunately, we live in an age when the opportunity for that revitalization were never so auspicious -- in that we now have the tools to access all the information, research and intelligence that exists, without all the "control freaks" getting in the way, and insisting we have to pay them exorbitant tuition to learn any of it. That's how the world has changed for the better -- and is available to those who are merely open to it.

But the old conditioning and way of life, was the struggle against each and every for primacy and dominance over all the others, which ultimately destroyed everyone, including themselves -- until they realized that instead of using their intelligence against all the others, they can eliminate the barriers that separate them from the total intelligence, which is the greater life that all the visionaries have previously spoken of.

But it is possible in this life -- and not just imaginable in the next. What more important thing does one have to do -- especially in retirement, than create (actualize) this better life -- for themselves, as well as the generations to come?

Why Banning Plastic Bags Is Not a Great Idea

2011-02-10T15:01:00.002-10:00

Obviously, a ban on plastic bags doesn't hurt a Costco, or even a Safeway -- where people do their regular shopping, and know beforehand, what they're going to buy.

But a ban on plastic shopping bags would impact the marginal mom and pop operations, at which people are not expecting to buy, but would be willing to look around, and see if there are bargains too good to turn down. In those cases, they would not be carrying their reusable bags with them, because those would be impulse purchases -- or discretionary expenditures, or purchases of opportunity.

All that would be cut out or dampened. It hurts places like the Dollar store -- where people may go in for one specific thing, and end up buying 10-20 things -- without having their reusable bags on them, because they didn't expect to find so many good bargains -- often coming on foot, bus, and bicycle..

It hurts the Goodwill stores, the Salvation Army stores, the consignment shops -- all those businesses teetering on the brink, all those businesses these liberals and progressives are whining about keeping the Walmarts, and the megastores out so that these businesses can't stick around -- but they won't support in any meaningful fashion.

And if you're tired of seeing all the litter, then once a week, take one of these plastic bags and go around the neighborhood and wherever one is not personally responsible for and pick up the trash until that bag is full -- as one's personal public service project. If everyone did just that, the community would look like Disneyland. That's what it takes -- and not passing all these idiotic laws that really don't get to the root of the problems -- as these people decry the waste of resources -- as they drive around with all their toys and containers in their SUVs to demonstrate what conscientious, considerate, thoughtful and well-intentioned people they are.

All that shows no understanding of what it means to be conscious and aware of anything.

The Primary Function of the Brain is One's Health

2011-02-05T05:44:00.000-10:00

Many people would find that statement an extraordinary thing to say, and a few, would even think it to be an extraordinarily dumb thing to say, because in their worldview, everything is unconnected to everything else, so one's health particularly, is independent of any, and especially, the sum of the parts. That is how disconnected they are from their own body, to say nothing of their disconnection from the rest of the world. To their mind, nothing that is happening inside it, has anything to do with what is happening outside it -- and everything they do, and think, is to reinforce the separation of one thing to any other.

And so it is not surprising, that "bad things" just happen, with increasing and predictable regularity, in their lives and all around them, and there is nothing they can do about it, because nothing is related and connected to anything else. This unhealthy worldview, is the perfect prescription and prediction, of great calamity in the world -- beginning with such individuals. So it particularly pleases them, to hear that those who have believed otherwise and taken great care of the fine details , meet of some unforeseen disasters despite their careful considerations and preparations, while failing to see the successes of those responses, that limit any damage, or often, make it seem like a non-event.

Thus one has to be impressed when a major earthquake, typhoon, flood, and fire occurs, and no lives are lost or impaired, because the collective intelligence and culture made it so -- because that is what intelligence does, and not simply play more elaborate mental games -- to distinguish and separate oneself from the rest. That is the integrative nature of intelligence -- that it becomes integral to all that is happening, and not something apart from it.

In this way, the greatest manifestation (intelligence) of the brain, is the health of that individual, and the environment they manifest around them -- and not the scores they achieve on IQ tests, but in the actual living of life itself. So when one hears of the latest study that shows that intelligent people are more attractive than less intelligent people, that would seem to be a self-evident truth -- that one would use their intelligence, to be more attractive -- as a manifestation of intelligence, just as producing a great work of art, a sublime insight, a great piece of music, and themselves, as their greatest work of art.

That would not be vain and stupid, but actually, a real achievement, of their greatest possibility (intelligence) -- and not the denial that such things should ever matter to an intelligent person -- or that there should ever be the valuing of one thing over any other -- including health over sickness and impairment. Such people will use their "intelligence," to construct elaborate arguments that that is so -- while really intelligent people, will recognize that it is a waste of time to try to convince such a person otherwise, and let events and consequences take their course, of teaching them otherwise -- because one could argue endlessly with those who have no other point but to create and prolong such arguments -- as though that was an intelligent thing to do, and a mark of intelligence.

So it is not surprising, that the mind that is always creating these divisions and resulting conflicts, invariably suffer these consequences of seeing everything as unrelated and unconnected to everything else, while those who recognize and maintain these connections and relationships as well as possible, seem to become masters of the environments they live in -- rather than to always be in struggle and at odds with everything and everyone around them.

Can Government Continue to Operate This Way?

2011-01-30T08:46:00.002-10:00

Just like with the health care insurance funding, at some point, you can't just keep on providing more money for more people to get more medical care and services, but people have to actually get better, and be better able to take care of themselves -- because the present pace of more people requiring more other people to take care of themselves, is unsustainable, as well as downright unhealthy.

In the old days, that was called, self-sufficiency and self-reliance, which was actually the original purpose of public education in the first place, and not more reliance on other people, and particularly educational professionals, lawyers, and unions to do all our thinking and talking for us.

So obviously, we are at another one of those inflection points, at which everything that has been true but not working and solving the problem, has to be revisioned and repurposed, so that the objective is not simply providing more money for the codependents, but actually improving the lot of the disabled and dependent.

Fortunately, a few leading edge thinkers are already breaking new ground -- to eliminate these problems, rather than continuing them, to continue to exploit them. The chief beneficiaries, will be the codependents themselves, who are the most vulnerable to providing that help even when it is detrimental to the health and well-being of the clients -- as well as them.

These lines are not well-defined, and so those most vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, are the most trusting and compliant -- by those who pride themselves on knowing how to work the system to their exclusive advantage, which is largely what government has become, and why we need to take this opportunity to rethink everything, so that they make sense again, and not just simply so we can hire the best lobbyists and public relations to get "more than their fair share -- as what they are entitled to."

Nobody should be a fulltime caregiver for everybody or anybody else -- and teachers have to learn too.

Reconditioning, Recreating, Rejuvenating Life in the 21st Century

2011-01-26T04:28:00.000-10:00

It is obvious to most people who grew up and were conditioned (educated) in the 20th Century, that the world is wholly different now, but the knowledge and possibilities they learned back then, may not serve them so well now and in the future – if they simply repeat the patterns of the past, rather than explore and develop the greatest possibilities of living in the 21^st Century.

Quite possibly, most of what we know, may be no longer true, if it ever was, because information keeps evolving to higher levels of understanding – so that many things thought impossible in the past, including and especially a vastly different and better life, are now the present day realities for increasing many. Some are the first to know about these new understandings and possibilities, while many others, resist them until they are the last to know and accept them.

The conditioning of the past, was partly this resistance to change and accepting different ideas and ways than the one in which they were taught to live out their entire lives, as the only way it has always been done, or had been convinced of that. But the new world, is the understanding that there are many ways, ideas and options – than the one the present conventional wisdom and defenders, try to convince us is the only, if not the best way, even when it obviously does not work for us.

When the knowledge we possess, does not produce the results we desire, we are often told we must simply try harder, and devote more time, effort and expense, into what has not been working, rather than consider that there could be a different understanding, that makes more sense, and in fact, achieves the remarkable results and benefits, with vastly less – because no amount of effort with the wrong understanding, will achieve the results of a very little effort with the right understanding.

In fact, the right understanding automatically leads to the right actions and practices – rather than having to force oneself to continue to do what is obviously not working, and may even be undermining our efforts, and confidence. We often acquired that knowledge (conditioning), because nobody thought to question that there might be a better way (than it's always been done before) – without all the problems, demands and reservations previously thought necessary and essential in those undertakings.

That is the possibility of life in the 21^st Century – to be healthy and whole, not as an exception for only a privileged few, but as the new paradigm of living in these times. One no longer just learns everything in school, from experts or teaching professionals, but learns all the time, from everything, and everybody, all one's life – and it is being in that perpetual state of learning, by which one remains healthy, vital and evolving to ever higher levels of well-being, rather than thinking one has learned everything one needs to know in school, and never needs to learn anything else ever again – which is the familiar and destructive pattern of deterioration, decline and dysfunction (disease).

This is very different especially from how we have been conditioned to think of exercise – as the need to do incessantly “more,” rather than that we could be doing less, but better. People don't get better because they do more (of what made them worse with their old understanding), but because they do better, that allows them to do less. But not simply less with their present understanding – which is to think of themselves as a struggle and competition against everybody else, including themselves, working against gravity, time and circumstances, rather than the proper orientation and understanding of optimizing their actions, choices and behaviors to obtain the fullest benefits from their environment and conditions – which produces greater health and fitness as its logical and inevitable outcome.

Much of what we believe to be true, we take on the word of other people telling us so, rather than that we can verify and validate our knowing through our own experiences and sensibilities, so that we can all think for ourselves and make our own inquiries and discoveries thereafter – and not just be told what to think, and when to think them, which no intelligent human being, would settle for.

Vital to any instruction, is that the student learns to be their own teacher – but in order to learn that, they need to see how one learns, and not simply, how the teacher teaches. The great value of education, is observing how the teacher learns – if they in fact do, and not simply repeat what they have been told, is what they must teach. Nowhere is that more true, than in traditional physical education classes and instruction, which is usually just the most obvious of a heavy-handed indoctrination and coercion that doesn't allow one to come upon the truth of any matter for oneself – which allows them to take that basic and vital skill to all the challenges of all one's activities, interests and pursuits.

That is the critical difference in how life has changed from the last century to this: we are no longer merely narrow specialists capable of knowing only one field of expertise or automatons performing one task endlessly, but can broadly experience and operate confidently and competently in as much as we want to. Undoubtedly, some will be more talented in some fields than others, but on a base level of participation, one can feel qualified and welcomed to participate, and not be intimidated and bullied by the self-appointed few who feel they are the only ones who belong there, and own the turf, and everybody else exists only to pay their dues and homage to them.

We no longer live in that world, and so the new paradigm of conditioning in the 21^st Century, is the liberation from the compulsion and coercion that restricts and limits movement and funnels them into self-defeating and destructive patterns, to the realization that the range of movement is much greater than thought/imagined possible, and increasing those ranges – and not simply doing a self-limiting familiar range, as a veritable self-fulfilling treadmill -- is what will enable one to do what one has not done before, no matter how many countless, tedious times of thoughtlessly going through the motions.

The conditioning of value is what enables and empowers one to do what one hasn't done before – which is to extend one's range of movement and expression, safely, confidently, sensibly and effortlessly – and create that as a base template for every other activity one engages in the normal course of one's day, rather than being a disruption requiring inordinate amounts of energy, time and focus that takes away from one's day, and becomes one's excuse for not having enough of to do it.

"Education" in Hawaii (US)

2011-01-12T05:33:00.002-10:00

It is the teachers' own union that convinces its members that they are worthless and powerless without them -- and not that people inherently feel that way about real teachers, but of course have no respect for those who only want to get as much as they can from their communities without giving anything in return.

The union disempowers teachers so they cannot speak for themselves and determine their own rules for conducting their own classes in the best manner possible for each -- but instead, one union spokesperson assumes that power to speak for all, and detrmines the rules for all. They've turned a profession and calling, into assembly line workers who have no right to speak for themselves and exercise their own best judgments -- which is the denial of their capacity as "teachers," who if they cannot speak and make these judgments, well then, what exactly is it they have to teach that would be of value to society?

We don't need teachers to demand as much as possible for as little in return as possible -- and ultimately, to demand something for nothing as their entitlement simply because they can "stick together" and bully everybody else into doing whatever they can force them to. That's not a free and "democratic" (egalitarian) society but an authoritarian one based on the notion that might makes right, and that they are more important and deserving than anybody else (which they do ceaseless propaganda for) -- which is not fairness just because they are the most efficient and ruthless at organizing for that purpose.

And so, many growing up in Hawaii, are educated (indoctrinated) into thinking that status quo, is what they must agree to and fit in, instead of learning to think for themselves and acting responsibly as individuals, and not always as a group who demands that they are worthless and powerless and need a union strongman to do their thinking and talking for them.

They've destroyed the whole meaning and purpose of education -- which is to identify and promote merit, and not just promote themselves over every other member and group in society. Why does the future of Hawaii need to be taught that? Why would any society value that kind of "education" and educators?

There is very little real education going on besides that.

What the Future Holds

2011-01-01T07:39:00.000-10:00

Contrary to what the education lobby would like us to think -- the whole reason for education is to get people capable of learning on their own, so that they can do it all the time, whenever they need to -- without paying tuition to the keepers of the information, and creating endlessly more, high-paying jobs for education bureaucrats (controllers).

At least 50 years ago, real educators created "learning machines" so that students could drive (direct) their own learning, but the technology didn't exist to make that leap, because the machine couldn't learn from the student also -- which is now programmed into the instruction, and that's why it is more appropriate and effective, than the one-way transmission of information -- just as the old media publications also suffered from the one-way communications (propaganda). Now, people are used to interacting as co-creators in the learning/information exchange, which is the primary skill of learning in the 21st century.

All the specialized subjects were merely "tools" for this process of learning -- and not sacred information in themselves. Language is in fact, merely a tool -- but a primary tool for communication, just as math is a tool, for conducting rigorous and products experiments by which we hope to enrich our experiences and efforts -- and not just to parade our knowledge and superiority, for no other good purpose.

The future of health is also the same way. We won't continue to add more professionals to take care of more people but more people will have to take better care of themselves first, and then consult the experts when they are stymied -- and not as a first resort, because there are not unlimited resources, and never was.

In the new world and new age, people have to learn for themselves, and by themselves, what the future will be -- as they discover it. The "teachers" can only teach us the knowledge of the past -- but we have to individually discover the future that is not simply the repetition of the past. So learning has to take on this greater significance and effectiveness, and not simply repeat the ways that are failing, as though they could not learn from their own failings, because that is the most essential lesson in learning, and not simply repeating things as they've always been done before, no matter how predictably and reliably they fail.

That is not intelligence.

"All the "Free Money" is Gone!"

2010-12-26T10:13:00.002-10:00

There comes a time in everyone's life, when they realize that money is not free and entitled, but what has to be earned -- not by extortion and/or deception/bullying, but in the marketplace of value exchanged for "fair value," which is the free market of many choices.

In Hawaii, the marketplace is usually determined by eliminating all the other choices -- so that there is no "other" choice -- but yes or no, and not the fullest range of possibilities, which is a political, or impolite incorrectness. One is expected to do what one is limited to do -- which they believe, makes them a true and loyal "Democrat," -- which is their agreement, that they will consider no other way of thinking about anything, except what they have been taught (told) to think, is the only way things can ever be rightfully done.

And so as one goes through life, one will frequently be asked to "vote" that they fully agree to whatever limited options (ultimatums) they have been given, as an expression of their free will -- and will also agree to persecute, prosecute, identify and isolate all others for the violations of independent thought. Such conditions, will invariably be called, "The best of all possible worlds," or "Paradise," because it is the vision of one enlightened leader who does all the thinking for everyone else -- with dire consequences for failing to maintain the "bargain." Even James Hilton's Shangri-La, in the Lost Horizon, envisioned such a kingdom isolated from the rest of the world, for which the inhabitant who left at the end, immediately age the hundreds of years they actually are, but have been immune from the aging effect, of life in the sheltered confines of Shangri-La.

Meanwhile in Hawaii, people actually age prematurely, as the effects of too much sun, wind, and corrosive salt water -- it is thought, and not as a result of the oppressive conditions of a high cost of living, in which many feel they have to work two or three jobs, to merely get by -- which leaves no time, energy and choice, for anything else.

Instead, there is this foreboding, that life can only get harder and worse -- unless they are delivered by a great savior -- who they will vote for as their only choice (hope).

"The Pork Barrel Kingdom"

2010-12-16T10:47:00.003-10:00

The consequence of having a "pork" culture is that people consume far more than they produce (contribute) -- thinking they are "smarter" than everybody else for thinking of that first.

But its effects show and cannot be denied -- that, "No, I didn't eat all the extra plate lunches (pupu platters) the politicians left."

In Hawaii for too long, there has been this culture of denial and deception -- that reveals itself, though the media, schools, universities, and government studies may "prove" otherwise -- that nothing is related to anything else, and one can therefore solve the traffic congestion by building a rail through empty pineapple fields, and that one can mysteriously balloon to a tremendous weight and out of shape condition overnight even though one hardly eats and exercises faithfully.

So in that world of disinformation and misinformation, all things are plausible, and bad liars (lawyers) become king, in an upside-down world. One tries to point out these things, but few will listen -- and instead, they will be called fools for not jumping on the bandwagon and eating more than their fair share -- thinking that is the smart thing to do, and what makes them "winners."

But in the end, as the health care industry knows, justice is served, and these "health care professionals," milk these people for the last half of their lives -- as though they were cash cows, who exist for no other purpose but to max out their medical benefits. And that is the present medical care/insurance problem in the US as well as throughout the world -- in which a lot of people grew up in a world of scarcity that has now become a world of abundance, but they were never taught the discipline to exercise restraint and the freedom to choose wisely.

And so at any opportunity, they think they still have to eat more before everybody else can beat them to it -- with disastrous effects. It's time for a culture change -- and the local media to stop running these stories about Hawaii being the "fittest and healthiest place" on earth, just because they say so -- because everyone can see the reality in the faces and bodies of those around them.

That's why it's not good to mainline "pork" -- as the dominant cultural value and highest achievement.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same

2010-12-04T09:54:00.002-10:00

The problem with lawyers is that they think that anything they want you to believe, is the the "truth," and so produce testimony that "proves" only what they want you to believe is that truth.

But the reality of the matter is that Hawaii's greatest problem is its skyrocketing cost of living that makes it prohibitive to live there -- so that rather than people flocking there to live, people will choose to live elsewhere -- and the first to go will be the best and the brightest, who could choose to live anywhere.

Thus Hawaii becomes the latest casualty of the many Pacific islands that fail to produce viable self-sustaining societies like Nauru, Micronesia, New Guinea, Samoa, islands of the Philippines and Indonesia, etc., where the people have to migrate elsewhere to the next rock before it becomes unsustainable, and the pattern is repeated -- which is actually the reason for the founding of the Hawaiian Islands in the first place.

Hawaii has squandered every natural advantage it has had -- thinking it is all just free, and they can live on it until it dries up -- without replenishing its resources, rather than just consuming increasingly more.

The real progress would have been the first truly enlightened green society -- by harnessing the sunshine, air, water, as the world's premier (first) state of the art pedestrian/bike/health infrastructure, rather than the last to adopt 19th century technology, as though they were the first.

Most of the communities in Oregon seem to be making this leap towards walker/bicyclist/urban gardener innovations -- while realizing more of the mass transportation and mass (media) culture, is an era that has come and gone, which of course, the mass media and other institutions of the schools, universities, and self-aggrandizing trade unions (government workers), are loathe give up as the sole reason for being, and would rather everyone just continue to conform to their "political correctness," and status quo.

The only ones remaining then will be the trade professionals who get to clean up at life's end -- when the predators become the prey.

But that is so 19th century mentality -- and not a leap into the future of greater viability for most, and not just the politically correct favored few.

Is There No Hope For Hawaii?

2010-11-28T21:38:00.007-10:00

"Speeding has nothing to do with traffic safety...The colleges need more remedial courses...Eating has nothing to do with obesity...The Islands are messed up because of the Republicans in control...Kailua only wants failing businesses and not successful ones...We need to build a rail to nowhere..."

The list of nonsense is endless, and dutifully reported in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, where now, the less sense an article makes, the more likely it is to be published as vetted fact. It is the final chapter of a society in decline -- drifting into anomie.

Goethe said, "Heaven is where everything is related and connected to everything else; Hell is where nothing is related and connected to anything else." Humankind can ascend but also descend, as the people in Haiti and Somalia can attest. Societies don't all have to succeed, just as in nature, not all animals are guaranteed long lives and prosperity.

Those are the realities and facts of life. Not everyone and every society can be guaranteed success; a few will succeed spectacularly, while many others will fail as spectacularly -- as they always have. That's why the great Roman Empire is no longer so great and dominant, just as the British also were at one time.

Societies and cultures rise and fall -- and so the question one asks, is this where the story of success will be written, or is this one of the many that will be plunged into endless and utter confusion -- and nobody can tell any difference anymore, or cares to? "Who is John Galt?," ask the characters of Ayn Rand's epitome of the novel Atlas Shrugged, which is intended to be a meaningless question for which no answer is expected, because nothing makes sense any longer.

Many familiar with the novel, would not be amazed at how it seems to be the story of where Hawaii at this time is -- even to its central story about a railroad as the metaphor for how life is going, and where it is headed. Nowhere.

The successful people who make a society work, finally realize their efforts are in vain, and even when they persist in their desire to better the lives of their fellow citizens, they are merely regarded as fools for thinking so, and the more they do, the less everyone else will do. So it doesn't matter how much they do -- the others will always do less, until they wake up and realize, they don't have to do all the work, for everyone else's benefit.

That is a great awakening -- much like the buddhahood, or epiphany. One awakens and sees things as they really are -- and it is that right understanding and perception, that leads to right action, and not any amount of greater effort and struggle, with the wrong perception and understanding. In thinking one was doing good, one was actually doing harm -- because the others merely learned to do less, and become more dependent on them, which is a disservice, rather than a service they thought they undertook for the benefit of society.

We also recognize that as a paradigm shift or inflection point -- at which things that have been going along in one direction, suddenly changes, disrupting that continuity and progression -- for a quantum leap into another realm of consciousness and reality. That is what the true leaders of any society ultimately must do -- and not like the many, who merely win elections and office, because they know how to play that game.

But when the name of the game is change, then only those who really are such leaders will know what to do, while those merely pretending to be so, will be lost.

The Future Will Be Different

2010-11-18T10:02:00.003-10:00

Very obviously, the only hope for a viable future, is that more people are going to have to learn to take better care of their own health -- and not just rely on the acute care medical system to make them well.

Fortunately, all the information is available to them to do so now, but they have to learn that they have to do things for themselves -- because nobody else can do it for them.

That's going to require a huge culture change from Hawaii's traditional culture of increasing dependency and co-dependencies.

That will give a whole new meaning to the "survival of the fittest." Those who are self-reliant and self-sufficient have a healthy and happy future to look forward to -- of increasing health even as they grow older, but those aging in the traditional fashion, have to realize it is a choice, and not a destiny.

That is the major difference between healthy people and people who have a multitude of health problems and conditions -- what they can do about it. Even your doctors will tell you so -- and if they don't, find a better doctor or health care program, than those who merely say, "That's okay, you have good medical insurance, We'll take care of everything."

That's a real change in the mentality and mindset that will make the biggest difference in the quality of life, which more than the cost of living, is the true measure of well-being. Yet usually, if not unfortunately always, these are discussions only about the money -- rather than all the intangibles, that is the bottom line of existence. Of course nobody wants to live a longer life in pain and declining health and circumstances -- but is there a way to ensure this adequacy and abundance beyond the money.

And that has always been -- knowledge, insight and awareness -- that is worth far more than the money, and with it, one can even make money, but always, it costs one less money, and sometimes, dramatically less, so that much that people spend their entire fortunes and health on, can seem to be free and unlimited.

But it doesn't just happen; an individual (and it has to be an individual responsibility and undertaking), and is not achievable just by group-think, or the "political correctness" (conventional wisdom), but is the looking beyond what others want one to know -- to what one desires for themselves to know.

That's not the kind of world we were brought up in, and certainly not the education we receive in the schools, which is about the conformity, and even coercion into one way of thinking -- even if it doesn't work, and produces the problems of these times.

That is the challenge of living in any time, in any society, anywhere -- but what else is more important to do?

"Lock the Gates!"

2010-11-15T09:05:00.002-10:00

There seems to be increasing awareness that in a society that rewards "seniority" over every other qualification and quality, that the impact of "aging" in that society will be much more severe than a more "balanced" one that Hawaii has come to eschew and vilify as a diabolical Republican scheme.

I'm sure the Democratic legislature will come up with a diabolical scheme (law) to keep the young people from fleeing in Hawaii's famous "brain drain" -- and force them to be perpetual caregivers for all who came before them, and are the "most entitled."

And then the next generation can also make that sacrifice for everybody else when their time comes.

Obviously to most, that is not a vision of a sustainable and meaningful society -- in which every generation "sacrifices" itself for the next, so nobody is ever actualized and fulfilled in living their own. That is the dysfunctional tradition of life in Hawaii -- sacrificing for the keiki (young), kupuna (old), and best of all, the old government workers -- who presumably "sacrificed" themselves by working for everybody else, and so now they are entitled to all the tax revenue in their retirement -- even if there is no money left over to actually run current government programs except to pay their escalating retirement benefits.

That's all government, and society, has become in Hawaii anymore.

"Lock the gates before anybody else can escape!"

What Went Wrong

2010-11-08T07:46:00.004-10:00

When Linda Lingle won the Hawaii governorship, the thing I suggested government should do, is provide an electronic bulletin board, so that the citizens and elected representatives, could communicate with each other directly -- rather than have to be edited/censored through the private mass media masquerading as a quasi-government agency. In those days, "the press" still fostered the notion that they were the "unofficial" fourth branch of government, with ultimate authority over all the others -- by virtue of the claim that they were the "voice of the people" -- instead of merely using the people, to say what they wanted them to say.

That's why the selections of the "letters to the editor," are so prejudicial and biased -- while claiming that is what the people are saying, instead of what they are made to say. Most of the writers here, have experienced that same malicious interference and editorial manipulation -- to what the editors want him to say, rather than what the author themselves want to say, and how they meant to say it. Their cover was that it was "edited for clarity and brevity" -- when it was done for malicious, deceptive and manipulative intent.

Often, it would turn out that the person in charge of this "editing," would be the newspaper union's own shop steward expressing their solidarity with their union/Democrat/gay brotherhood, or some aspiring would-be novelist/poet who was not there to make everybody else "rich, famous and influential," but to make only themselves so, and realizing they didn't have the talent to achieve that, was going to make sure that nobody else could "get ahead" of themselves.

Thus, nothing could be said or expressed beyond what they wanted to be said -- in the way they wanted to say it. And so those who were chosen most frequently for publication, were the many "useful idiots" (as Lenin would call them), who merely repeated what the editor/publishers wanted them to say -- which repeated often enough, becomes the "truth," or at least has the ring of familiarity and credibility.

And now, after another election in which the people are realizing how much they were once again manipulated and deceived (while the media raked in millions while denying their role in negative advertising), they now get on the comment boards insisting we have to go through them again -- as the only legitimate means of expression.

My original proposal for the community (government) electronic bulletin board, was that people could say what they wanted to say, but had to be registered under their actual names -- which produces responsible expression. It is the old mainstream media, that promotes anonymity under the guise that people have to be protected from their government in order to speak freely -- which is what The Constitution guarantees -- rather than the power given by the press to the people. That is the power the press "takes" from the people -- for only themselves.

Back to the Good (Bad) Ol' Days

2010-11-04T08:08:00.002-10:00

People forget very quickly, that the reason they voted Linda Lingle to the office of governor of Hawaii, was that the Democrats did nothing when they were in full control -- and now they are back in full control. Sometimes, the people get the government they ask for and deserve -- which is that their goverrnment workers do nothing, while receiving maximum compensations for doing so. (Do we expect them to work for free?)

But then, nothing ever gets done -- and the problems and difficulties pile up again, until finally, the voters turn to the alternative -- out of sheer desperation and exasperation. But how soon they forget -- suffering as they are, from short-term "newspaper memory" -- which is that anything you read is true, until the next day's edition, and then anything that was said before, never happened.

So those who can remember beyond that each day, play an invaluable part in a sustainable society, because they can recall clearly, what happened yesterday, and the day before -- and can see that pattern of today's arbitrariness, and purchase of today's reality. This is what is called, "cultural memory," or history, which is not something that is rewritten daily, by whomever pays the bill today -- which is the buying of the news, or the truth, and that is the only truth they know.

Unfortunately, that is not the only truth they have to live with -- that will haunt them all their days, and is clearly visible in the bloated masks their faces have become -- that is the distinctive "look" of the people of a culture -- for those of any other, and especially to those, trained to notice such things, as the true indicator of the health of individuals and societies, let alone their relationships to one another.

Even more easily forgotten, is that Hawaii's most recent deep malaise, was not definitively overcome until the response President George W. Bush to put an end to the arbitrariness and cruelty of terrorist attacks that thought that they were protected because they represented no official country. The resulting security, caused a return to success and prosperity that nothing in their education and socialization prepared them for -- except to undermine it, so they could be successful coming from the bottom again, knowing how they did it the last time.

But the last time is not the present time -- and so solving the problem of the past, is not likely to solve the problem of the present -- as many who think history and experience merely repeat themselves, think. That is not an understanding of cause and effect but merely, a new conditioned (compulsive) behavior, having very little to do with the present situation -- and so merely doing the same thing over again, produces no satisfactory result (response).

And that was the situation Hawaii was at when I returned in 1998 -- and the rest of the country went on to boom, while Hawaii prided itself that it did not.

Individuation versus Mass Conformity

2010-10-25T08:14:00.002-10:00

When reading the newspapers or watching broadcasts, a central theme emerging, is this argument over whether individuals should be allowed to make their own choices -- or whether those choices should be made for them, by those who presumably know better, what is best for everyone. That is the central issue of all the arguments. And then the mass media's job, is to tell everyone what those edicts are, whether through public service announcements, personal biases and political/social correctness, or more intensive courses of socialization, as schools, universities, and professional/trade associations.

These arguments are as universal and as old as recorded time of which the story of creation, is God asking the quintessential man and woman, "My way or the highway?" And of course, the road leading anywhere else, is fraught with perils -- unlike the garden of eden for never venturing outside -- and discovering whether life could be any better.

The quality of life, is the measure of whether individuals have more choices in life, or whether they have no other choice but to accept their one fate -- determined by others. That is at least the symbolic and public function of elections that are carried out regularly and predictably -- which many have learned to to take for granted, which is also their choice too.

But the importance of choosing often and whenever possible, is the fulfillment of a life of choices -- and not just the promise of it, always unrealized and untapped, because, that is the difference in the outcome of lives -- if for no other reason than the realization that every action and behavior is a choice, and not a destiny determined by others.

For those who have been around long enough to have witnessed the difference and changes, they know that even those of the same age and economic circumstances, can now be very different not because of one big choice, but the result of many little choices -- that altogether added up to a big difference in the end -- which never ends because they are still choosing, and not just resigning themselves to a fate determined by others -- which in the end, is the beginning of the end of life.

That can happen at any time -- and so at election times, the critical question to ask is not whether one is choosing never to have to make a choice again, or whether this present choice, leads to more choices or less, and ultimately none, because those who they have chosen, will know what is best for them forever more -- and so they never have to do any more thinking for themselves.

But assuredly, they will be told what to do, and when to do it.

The Truth Is Out There (Information on Demand)

2010-10-20T02:47:00.003-10:00

It should come as no surprise that the world we live in now has changed very greatly from the world many grew up in -- in the previous century. Since then, most of the world has been created -- and most of the world that existed prior to that, has disappeared or become irrelevant. Nowhere is that more true than in how we obtain information.

In the previous information age, what we learned and knew about, was what those who fancied themselves in charge, thought we ought to know and learn, which is therefore the emphasis on control above all else. Already in the middle of the last century, many were beginning to rebel against such a notion that some self-designated few, should determine that for everybody else -- because presumably, they knew better.

Then beginning in the '50s, a few began to question such authority -- the most notable being George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Henry Miller, Abraham Maslow, the beatnik generation of the '50s as the precursor to the more popular and heralded '60s, when such rebelliousness became increasingly more acceptable, and recognized as a counterculture, or alternative culture, and ultimately evolving beyond that, to alternate realities -- chosen individually and uniquely to one's own tastes, talents and inclinations.

What made that possible, was having access to all the information that was out there -- and not just the information self-designated priests of information control hierarchies, wanted, or thought we should know -- to establish and embellish their position in the socio-economic (information) chain. One's status in that information hierarchy, determined how much access one had to all the information -- and so the world has changed very greatly for those who have realized they can determine what it is they know -- beyond what others, even well-meaning people, determine is the extent of all that can be known, or what they "should" know.

That is increasingly the cultural divide between those living lives of the fullest possibilities and actualities of the present time -- and those still living in the past (the last century), cut off largely by their (self-imposed) access to all the information available, which is being created faster than one can research it.

So the challenge of this Information Age is increasingly to shift from a mode of learning only what others would like us to know and think correct (mass media and culture), if not the limits of knowledge and the universe -- from all that is actually possible to know now, and even participate in the creation of that knowing (discovery) as the new fulfillment of life in these times.

The First Step is Always the Hardest

2010-10-09T08:19:00.003-10:00

It seems now that whenever one looks at the Hawaii media reports, things are getting uncontrollably worse, and the people have lost their hope and will that they can get any better.

The latest stark image is that the communities adjoining Waikiki -- where there is reportedly a resurgence of customers and business -- is that the sidewalks outside of a public library branch, has become a homeless campground -- because apparently, there is no law against it.

Those who initially demanded that something needed to be done about it -- on the eve of such a resolution and enactment, then turned against the measure, undermining that will, confidence and community resolve -- because of the possibility suggested by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that such an obstruction might be an expression of a yet-to-be-found individual expressing their right to freedom of speech in such a manner.

Of course that is hypothetical, and quite a shift from the past precedent that somebody actually in fact, had to have had their rights violated in that way, and not simply the possibility that it could be plausible. That is, one had to have an actuality of actions and events, rather than simply the thought of it -- blurring the lines between fact and fiction, plausibility from actuality, and not being able to differentiate any difference -- which of course, is social anomie and disintegration, even in a self-proclaimed "Paradise."

The reality of life now, is that it has become unaffordable and untenable, for all but the most fortunate, greedy or ruthless -- and of course, those who cannot distinguish such differences, which are the extremes of the very rich and the very poor. But a pleasant and easy middling existence, is all but impossible anymore.

That won't have been the first time such imbalances have ever existed -- because it has always been a precursor to societal decline and disintegration -- even if at one time, they were at the greatest heights of civilized social organization. That's why the Greeks, Romans, Macedonians, Egyptians, French, British, and some would say, Americans, are no longer there.

But there is always some other social organization/entity eager to replace them -- as the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, and Russians again, now think is their destiny. Otherwise, the king lives forever, rather than just another king.

The hope for any declining society, is the example of societies that are working and emerging -- and not those in their twilight. So while the civilizations in decline are becoming more "socialistic," the societies on the ascent, are becoming much more "capitalistic," or demanding and determined that they are going to reward and fund profitable enterprises rather than the counterproductive -- confident that they can recognize and know the difference, while the backwater societies slide into a hopeless quagmire of despair that such things are still possible.

The first step is always the hardest.

The Problem of Education

2010-09-27T07:33:00.002-10:00

The best teachers have always been those who are the most knowledgeable about the subjects they teach -- and especially the few who discover what they teach, and not the countless many in education schools learning to pretend to know what they are talking about.

That is the problem of mass specialized education -- in which the educators know about education, but have nothing really to teach -- and the kids realize that, and recognize that it is just learning for learning's sake, become disinterested, disruptive, rebel, and drop out.

The same is true of every compartmentalized profession -- and particularly true of the mass broadcast professions such as journalism, public relations, and mass marketing -- whether for a product or for political ideologies.

That's what happens when a trade association begins to think that the reason for being, is to promote their own self-interest instead of the greater good -- and cannot distinguish that difference. That's the tremendous and fatal problem of unionizing the public service workers.

And so every discussion of public education now, is how can they get more money for the teachers and education administrators -- and never, what do the students want to learn, and how can they best do it?

The "Envy" of the Public Union Workers

2010-09-06T08:07:00.002-10:00

The "envy" that is so troubling for work and fairness in America today, is not "of" the unions, but" by" the unions, to create resentment and their overwhelming sense of entitlement that they do not deserve -- and to justify their trade monopolies.

When total compensation is studied, the median for union (government) workers is twice that of the median for all other workers -- and the latter median should be the basis upon which the fair compensation of the former should be tied to -- which is the ability of the community to pay for their public sector (service) workers -- and not that government (union) workers are entitled to more because they "sacrificed" by taking less than the highest compensated members of society.

The fair comparison for union workers compensated for seniority, is the median for the entire population sample (community) -- and not the top 10% determined by merit, which the union workers delude themselves is their "comparable peers" -- who are there because of extraordinary merit and luck. But a society can afford to reward a very few in that manner -- because they are not everybody -- and that is a good basis for doing so, and NOT envy, resentment, delusion and entitlement.

Just because one has done the same job for 30 years, does not make them the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. There is something about genius and innovation that is more than just putting in one's time doing the same thing everyday for 30-50 years. And that is why society has to reward the innovators of the light bulb or computers more than just those who can use one equally.

And then, when the union (government) workers compare their compensations to private sector workers, they distort that comparison by ignoring substantial compensation like nontaxable health benefits, holidays and employer payments -- which the taxpayers (their employers) have to pay and so while already receiving twice the actual median, are resentful that they're not getting what their imagined peers in the top 10% are getting, even though most harder working people are usually getting less.

That is the issue as most people see it, and not that they are resentful or envious that they are not the ones in on their great deal of getting over everybody else because they stick together and can therefore force their communities because they are the only ones allowed to do so by laws passed by lawmakers they largely determine.

That's not fair.

Is One Wasting A Vote to Vote Republican in Hawaii?

2010-09-02T07:16:00.006-10:00

Actually, when one votes for the lesser of two evils, one still gets evil -- and not good, so Hawaii voters should give up on the hopelessness that any of the Democrats are going to do any other but serve their own government worker self-interests (supporters) -- most dependably the teachers because they can indoctrinate generation after generation of "democratic" voters who would never even think of voting another way, which is characteristic of most authoritarian regimes dictated by cliques and conformity, even when it insists on calling itself the "correctness," that this editorial writer as well as all the political writers enforce "religiously" and dependably in the media of Hawaii. That's why you get ruinous government.

Of course they would wish the voters of Hawaii to believe that any vote other than for even a flawed "Democrat" is just throwing your vote away -- rather than probably the single greatest act of valor and independence they can exercise in their lives, and if enough people act with that mindfulness, they can change the course of their own history -- instead of the pervasive hopelessness and despair that they cannot do anything else but pay four times a much for everything.

That's why Saddam used to get 97% of the vote -- and why the Democrats of Hawaii actually sent their Aloha and admiration for his success in dominating his country, and were horrified when President Bush didn't recognize that legitimacy to crush the citizens of his own country even if he got all the votes and threatened to unleash his weapons of mass destruction -- which only the Republican president Bush dared to challenge.

People forget already that the world used to be terrorized and paralyzed by such threats that have now become mostly distant memories, but those things don't just happen because they weren't ever real. But people change that reality, even if the "Democratic" propagandists would like the record now to read that there never was that threat and fear that caused the world to vote unanimously to enforce the United Nations' resolutions.

And now they want you to believe there were no such fiascoes as the Boat, the Garbage, the Sewage, the Potholes, and more money for government workers to do less but designate themselves as the poor, underprivileged and truly deserving.

People need to start getting into the practice and habit of voting for change that can make a difference.

Real Change Changes Everything

2010-08-28T05:18:00.009-10:00

Einstein is frequently attributed with the observation that "Madness is doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result," but if he did, it probably would be more likely for him to observe, that "Genius is doing different things, realizing that that is what makes a difference." The whole essence of genius, is making the complex, simple, and not the simple, more complex, as was also attributed to Einstein, and every genius before him.

However, the latter creates more jobs to explain what the original source said, and thus the need for "experts," to interpret what such great ones said, or meant -- as though they had an even superior understanding of what the genius meant to say, but failed to. And so in every previous, earlier times, broad classes of people were created to mediate between the knowledge and what "the masses" could hope to understand -- primarily because they didn't have access to all the information, or even, a lot of it.

That's how much the world has changed -- already. In publications, one was always limited to the understanding of the publisher/editor/writer, which were those intermediaries who communicated what the "genius" understood. But what was actually the case, is that the information had to be reduced, and was invariably limited by the understanding, of those who only knew "words" as their livelihood as "scribes," or writers, who often "knew" nothing else, and so it was often enough, that the words just had the "ring of truth," rather than was actually true.

What changed, was that most people became better writers, because the new word processors, made public and personal writing accessible to virtually every "educated" person, and not just limited to the rare few who could produce perfect copy to the satisfaction of dictatorial editors, who thought it much less important that anybody else could understand what the author meant to say -- than what the editor wanted them to.

It is the most common use and abuse of power -- to control what another person thinks, by controlling what they think can be thought. The power to edit, in this manner, becomes the power to censor and suppress, what one chooses others to know or don't know, and in the hands of the ambitious and ruthless, easily and invariably becomes co-opted and corrupted -- because they "know better" for everybody else. That is in fact, "their job," yet they would claim, that power seemed to corrupt everybody else and every other profession but them, acting in their endless and noble pursuit of objectivity and the truth.

However, they are not good enough writers or liars, not to be betrayed by everything they say -- other than their rigorous professions of innocence, which are not obvious to anybody else. And so most of their writing and efforts, go to promoting that image of themselves -- rather than the service of allowing the audience to know anybody or anything else -- but the limits of their personal vanities and delusions.

And so while they are very fond of generalizing what people are like, we only get to know what they think everybody is like -- and nothing is permitted beyond.

Collectively, such people were fond in their past roles as essential middlemen, or intermediaries necessary for communications from one closed and specialized group with any other. But all that changed, with the reversal of the trend to increasing narrow and exclusive specialization, as allowed by the development of a more universal communications network -- which is the primary great change omitted in most lists of great changes, because it is so pervasive and fundamental -- of destroying such barriers and limitations. That change is still rocking the world.

Predictably, the greatest victims of such changes, are the old perpetuators and defenders of the way things used to be -- with themselves at the top, or at least in indispensable roles, as the exclusive ones allowed to perform the "brain surgeries" of information exchanges. The most populous of this class, are familiarly, those who work in compulsory education -- which should seem an anachronism in these times.

When people want to learn, just like people want to eat, why should there be a force-feeding of what a self-selected group of "professionals," be allowed over any other kind of learning -- which may even be superior to the required learning, which is more often the case now, than the officially sanctioned education.

Almost all child prodigies have to be home-schooled -- not to become resocialized and brainwashed as the "average," and told they cannot do what their teachers tell them is impossible or impermissible to do -- "at their age," as though mere seniority should be the basis or merit and recognition (reward). That may be the union teachers' reality, but it is not the whole, or even the best, of reality -- that will undoubtedly limit the future prospects, possibilities and vision for any society but the present troubled, unviable, unsustainable one.

Alternate Realities

2010-08-13T20:26:00.002-10:00

Those who have never known anything but their one "reality," cannot even begin to imagine that there can be any other -- and that is the value of presenting many different realities as their introduction to the world, as children. From an early age, most are capable of recognizing that their can be other existences than the one they know. The ability to hold these many different experiences, is what gives them perspective -- and the possibility of different outcomes, rather than just being indoctrinated with the certainty and fatality of one -- and that is the discovery and joy of living.

But in the drive and ambition for power, many think it is desirable only to have one way of thinking and viewing the world, as the political and social "correctness" -- which they feel they alone should have the right to determine for everybody else. In fact, they think it is their duty and role in life -- because everybody else is less capable than they are, otherwise, they would not be in the positions they are in, as proof of their moral and intellectual superiority and desserts.

So it is very important in such societies, that the social order and hierarchy are preserved -- above all else, as the primary function and duty of each citizen -- and there is no higher power, no higher authority than listening to the "correct" people, and doing what they have determined, everyone else should do.

If they even hear of any other information, other than what they have been told by the duly certified authorities, they completely shut down, and go into complete denial that there can be anything possible but what they have been told is the only truth, and they must suppress all others. That was life in the olden times, which many have come to prefer over having to make their own choices. In fact, organizations and associations exist to relieve them of such choices, now and forevermore -- if they simply vote to allow them to make all those choices for them.

Only a few live such sheltered lives now -- with the rare exceptions of a few 'identities" who still feel safe and emboldened as a member of a group with superior numbers and force, to impose their will on all the others, to make it their right -- because they can, because that is the only way they know -- and it doesn't matter what they call it. They are most likely to call it a "Democracy" -- as though the people thought of it themselves, and truly wanted from all the choices, although they only knew the one, and were taught to summarily reject any other.

Those are authoritarian (totalitarian) societies, even if the people believe, there is no better place to live, under better conditions, than the only one they have ever known, and will be allowed to know.

The Future is Not Bright

2010-08-08T08:52:00.001-10:00

Hawaii is probably past the point of no return. With each opportunity and election, it becomes clearer that hope is no longer possible -- that people will wake up and realize that something horrifically wrong has taken over the community and culture -- and the best propagandists, are being hired to justify and rationalize these prejudices, biases and provincialism.

This is the Talibanization of countries in this day and age, in which a small minority can terrorize and control the rest -- because of these hatreds.

And that is best exemplified by the fate of Hawaii's flagship store, The Banana Republic.

Even the worst of despots know that if you are going to set up the battle of Us against Them, you need to be coming from a position of strength vis a vis the rest of the world, and not just because you look like one another. That's why Japan now also has a difficult time -- after decades of excluding foreigners from participation in their society. The entrenched status quo just gets older -- and then demands that the younger generation follow them into the grave.

The prognosis is not good for societies and cultures that self-isolate and self-discriminate in a world in which all those traits for which Hawaii prides itself, have long become moot issues everywhere else, but which still is successfully demagogued by the Hawaii institutions, including, and especially, the schools and media, as their imagined and presumed superiority over the others. (That's also characteristic of the problem.)

Hawaii is totally dependent on the rest of the world, while produces nothing of essential value for the rest of the world, and is deluded by demagogic leaders that they are a shining example for the rest of the world -- and the rest of the world has to go to them for their pristine beaches, and so-called "Aloha" which this very publically-acceptable mentality is the very height of hypocrisy.

The future is not bright for the communities that export their best and brightest, while importing lawyers to take complete control of their society -- even if they call themselves "Democrats."

You're Not Doing Me Any Favors By Voting For Me

2010-08-03T04:50:00.003-10:00

What the citizens have to realize is that they are not doing the Republicans any favors by voting for alternatives, they're doing themselves a favor.

The Democrats would have them believe that they are doing themselves a favor by having no choices -- as though the objective of government, is to have no choices.

That's why the people have to pay 4 times as much for everything as their fellow citizens elsewhere -- who have these choices. That's fundamentally what being an American is -- the right to have choices, and the protection not to eliminate those choices, which is what the Hawaii Democratic Party and the unions then enforce, when members vote to let someone else do all their thinking and talking for them, henceforth.

While they may obtain more money in that manner, they give up their freedom to determine themselves how best to get that job done, and ultimately how to live their own lives, and then they complain mightily, of all the stupid rules and policies their elected spokespersons, have decided for them. That's how all those arbitrary rules and regulations come about -- they voted to allow all that to happen, and then, are convinced, they have no choice but to seek the protection from their own oppression from those who constrain them.

So the real choice is to conform to these predetermined choices and fates, or to choose to retain one's freedom always to choose again -- and not once having chosen, they give up the right to think, speak and vote for themselves ever again. Undoubtedly one can make that choice, but that is not the only "choice," they have, and their victory, is not to have any real choices anymore -- but only those dictated to them by others, at some long forgotten "vote" when they supposedly gave up all their rights, choices and freedoms -- as the Democratic thing to do.

There's a reason for the government people get. Freedom and choice, are the greatest values, and not merely being well paid, to oppress everyone else, and ultimately oneself -- in eliminating all choices.

Take Back Your Government (Lives)

2010-07-23T08:40:00.003-10:00

The consequence of the 20th century education/indoctrination, was the promotion of increasing specialization and fragmentation of knowledge into exclusive fiefdoms for whatever hierarchies and bureaucracies claimed them as their fiefdoms (turf).

In this way, they are not unlike medieval institutions and the organization of society as rigid chains of command, for which the student was trained to be one of the anonymous assembly line workers -- rather than an enterprise's owner or management -- mainly because the teachers saw themselves as the workers, rather than its administrators, because of the education department's own division and fragmentation of teachers from administrators (those who make the rules).

And so most students, inculcate these values, of learning they are merely cogs in the machine who have to learn the status quo, even and especially if it is unjust, and how to fit in -- and never determining these objectives and purposes for themselves, in deciding themselves that is what they want to do. The presumption is that the young cannot make, or should not be allowed to make these decisions for themselves, and if they don't learn how to do that from the beginning, they won't be able to learn it at the end of their education, or any time in their lives, because those formative years were devoted to teaching them deliberately not to.

While such educators are found of saying that the children are the future, instead of learning from those growing up in these times the new way of seeing life, they are instead taught to learn the old ways and particularly the old ways of seeing and doing things before, if ever, they can create any new ways, and being indoctrinated in the old ways, usually is enough to convince most, that there is no other way of seeing and doing things, but the one way they were taught -- and reinforced (rewarded) as the only way one should/can think.

And so when that one way doesn't work, or no longer works, the usual thinking is that there is no hope except for deterioration and disintegration, until finally, there is inevitable death -- but no hope otherwise, until maybe after life. So that accounts for the popularity of the afterlife that many institutions offer -- the promise of a better life, after one has tolerated the misery and suffering of this one. And that is how the status quo has largely been justified -- that eventually, one will be rewarded for all the pains and injustices, with a perfect life thereafter, if only one diligently lives out the preprogrammed one.

However, in the present life, one can only lament that an imperfect life and its tolerance, is the ticket to a better one -- and not that the life here and now, can be altered, if we do not accept the present status quo, as how things must be. That's the great lesson of Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, or Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. That is the revolutionary notion, that life can be better, as one lives it -- and not merely accepts a hopeless fate, even if it is the only one we were taught possible.

But of course, the present hierarchy, will tell us, that there is no other way possible -- but through the gateway they control, and for which they collect the tolls, for those wishing passage. They call that "paying one's dues," and having done that, one must then step back in line, and wait until one is called.

Passing the Torch to a New Generation

2010-07-11T10:49:00.004-10:00

That whole generation now in power, has to be rethought, re-educated, and resocialized to live in a world very different than they grew up in, because most of what was true when they grew up in it, has changed -- including and especially, the whole possibilities for life at that age.

The most common of that difficulty, which is really the crux of the socioeconomic problem of these times, is that people who grew up thinking that the meaning and purpose of their lives was to accumulate as much as possible, have to divest themselves of those accumulations -- to recapitalize society, or the whole thing dies.

A lot of people have worked and accumulated towards the purpose of providing for their retirement years, but when they get to that stage, merely want to continue accumulating more, while ceasing to be productive, and depriving others, and particularly the young starting off in their careers, of access to that wealth -- because it is just being accumulated rather than divested and recirculated, until finally, those expenditures are forced upon them in a catastrophic (usually health) event.

In a previous generation, that was known as philanthropy -- which is the recognition that the wealth of the community and society one lives in, is their quality of life -- and not merely their personal, private hoard. That is the “entitlement” mentality, of thinking that one should only be on the receiving end, and not the providing end -- that is characteristic of the trade union (association) mentality, of getting as much as possible as their only end.

That creates the divisions and antagonisms in society -- of each special interest promoting only their own best interest, and not the whole’s. That is the continued fragmentation of society and individual lives by which they come to eventually realize, that the predator has now become the prey -- for the much younger, stronger and more ruthless individuals, who also think they are justified in promoting only their own self-interest.

And that really is the problem of this society and culture now -- this mentality and all its consequences. You don’t hear the unions or anybody else for that matter, promoting that they should get only as much as the next person. Instead, each wants just a little (lot) more than everybody else has -- which is the conflict and chaos in society now.
So most of the problems you see and have to deal with, is changing that rigid mindset, that creates all these problems for oneself -- because one demands that the world change to suit them, rather than they adapt to the world, which is the state of being vital, fluid, and vibrant.

In the past, we’ve thought that our best efforts and expenditures went to educating the young, when it would be far more productive now, to educate the old. The young learn as a natural function of being young.

This is the most important function of every society and culture, and when it fails to do so, extinguishes the chances for survival for succeeding generations -- as many people have come to sense. That is why we educate the kids -- and not only to promise that they will "have it all," only when the most senior of that society are dead and buried. The present has to be for everybody -- now.

The Homeless (Hopeless) Situation

2010-06-30T07:10:00.002-10:00

The Department of Education should be taking the lead in socializing these people -- rather than simply creating a need for "more education," among those capable of learning better on their own. Make education remedial and corrective -- to solve the very real problems of society, and not spend money re-educating those who already come to school with more skills and knowledge than the teachers do -- and rightfully, should be teaching their peers, as highly respected and accomplished prodigies, who should also assume that role of leadership as they grow older, rather than teaching them to be perpetually immature, dependent and "entitled."

It's because all the money is tied up perpetuating the institutions (status quo) of the past, that no money and resources are available to solve the current problems society faces. At one time, that was that very few people could read or had access to the information (libraries), but in this age, that's not the lack anymore -- and just throwing all that money on the old solution, is creating (as another article in today's paper not allowing comments) the predictable DECREASED proficiency with MORE education.

So we need to stop that and let people learn because they can more easily do it themselves -- and spend those resources on those who can't, which are obviously the social problems of our time -- such as all these people who feel they have no place in mainstream society. Then it can be a comprehensive approach instead of teachers complaining that these problems are "not their job," as well as all these bureaucrats now paid to do essentially nothing but "act important."

But the kids see through all that and taunt such "teachers" unmercifully so that they have to be promoted to "educational administrators," and thus, those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, become educational administrators -- and the problems of Hawaii keep getting worse, because there is no money "free" to do what has to be done.

So most of the government expenditures is for what doesn't need to be done anymore -- while the private sector assumes the lead in developing the cutting edge technologies, including these people going off and "making do" as best they can, which is quite impressive for homeless people. They know that tents are actually the optimal shelter in a tropical climate -- and most even know to purchase an air mattress, which makes any hard surface, a non-factor, and an even more luxurious support than most hotels provide. These people know what the basics are -- which are not unlike the logistical problems of the military in mobile and temporary conditions.

It has to be highly functional -- and even state of the art, which could serve the peoples of all the world in marginal and challenging circumstances. It's not a lifestyle and accommodation that should be suppressed but should instead be taken to the state of the art -- which is really the whole point of any society, and not merely preserving and perpetuating the institutions of the past as the best of all things possible -- and suppressing/oppressing everything else.

You Have Choices -- Just Like All Other Americans

2010-06-23T12:41:00.003-10:00

The reason for government is to serve all the people -- and not just the government workers, which is all that government has become anymore -- while using everybody else (and particularly the vulnerable and gullible) as pawns for their own gains.

But one also hopes that the community newspaper, doesn't just become the union newsletter, reporting the biased results of the union's own studies to prove that they are grossly underpaid -- and reported as a fact, by whomever is the most complicit (corrupt) at the newspaper.

The fact of the matter is total compensation for state workers has been validly reported by reputable independent studies as $69,000 for local government workers ($79,000 federal), while the TOTAL COMPENSATION median for ALL workers is less than half the median for government workers -- who should be the comparable peers, and not the top 10%, who achieve that by merit and are usually not the same people because of risks they assume in becoming the best.

So despite paying evermore money for less work and productivity, the quality of life is lowered while the cost of living increases, making life increasingly unaffordable even in self-proclaimed "Paradise," which implies that life couldn't be better elsewhere, when the fact of the matter, is that it is now better everywhere else, than having to work multiple jobs just to pay the ever-increasing rent, utilities, fixed costs, and of course, compensation for those who should be working for them, and not vice-versa.

At the realization that are falling farther behind despite their greater efforts, most Americans and most of the people in the world, consider if life could be better elsewhere -- than the futile prospects they see for the foreseeable future. That is the great story of civilization, and particularly the legacy of America -- representing that land of opportunity for Americans first of all, and for the brave immigrants from elsewhere -- who are notable for the motivation and enthusiasm they bring to their new communities.

That could be true for Hawaii too -- if it was not so determined to reject those alien impulses -- in favor of maintaining the old status quo (that has been imposed upon them) -- that may or may not change when the old finally die off, but there is no guarantee of that. And by then, the generation that inherits that legacy, just holds on themselves until they die -- and so the vital energies of the new and the young, are never allowed to renew and revitalize a dying way of life.

As Jesus might say, "Let the dead bury the dead," and not like in many cultures, burying the living with the dead.

Everything You Know, You Learned From the Mass Media

2010-06-13T18:04:00.004-10:00

"1984" is a very significant period in literature and history -- as depicted by George Orwell in his novel of that name. That year also signals the introduction of the (Apple) personal computer memorialized in the commercial that ran in that year's televised Super Bowl, of a woman throwing a hammer at a screen in which society and information is controlled by Big Brother, as represented by IBM and its centralized data processing monopolies. 1984 is also the year in which newspaper subscriptions peaked -- and have been in an irreversible decline since then.

At its peak though, the information in the "news," was sacrosanct -- as most information was popularized by that means, as though they were a official pipeline from the information priests, to the people awaiting the official word on what they should know. And in fact, the schools completed the triad by testing one on their "knowledge," of what they should have seen and retained in the mass media, as what every person needed to know -- as though that was absolute truth.

On a side note, for those who check into my blog on conditioning, that was also the year that the vaunted running guru was found dead on a roadside from a heart attack, which didn't seem to have a negative impact on the notion that the heart couldn't be overstressed from such conditioning. Many others would die subsequently, and their activity also not be implicated as a direct cause. One can see, only what one wants to see.

Up to that point, university professors were still going around proclaiming that everything that could be discovered, has already been discovered, and it was the work of the university professors now to perpetuate that information -- and graduate students were too late, in thinking that anything new could be discovered. Their task was simply to pass on the known (knowledge), to succeeding generations, and play their part in the endless repetition that was history.

In that way, 1984 signals a turning point -- when everything that used to be true, no longer was the monolithic truth, but cracks and challenges appeared everywhere that are still being resolved today. And in fact, the truth and truism of these times, is that nobody owns the truth exclusively, but everyone has the tools to find out for themselves now -- if they want to. That eliminates the convenient middleman that the press once played -- as popularizer of esoteric knowledge that only those with their credentials, had access to.

So that was the height of mass media, when that flow of information, was limited by the understanding of those who sought to spread that information more broadly -- as a public service. But seeing that, there were those who then sought to spread information, for their own exclusive benefit and advantage, which marketers have traditionally done, but also came to be blurred by those claiming that their own self-promotion and self-aggrandizement was the public good (interest), because what would the world be like, if they were not permanently awarded a position on top, as their own entitlement?

That's what the media has come to mean for those who have not learned the responsibilities of power, and its misuses and abuses, and so think that anything possible, is allowed -- until they are caught and expressly forbidden to continue. This is the missing element in those with a professional education rather than a traditional grounding in the foundaments of civilization and civilized behavior.

That is when a little learning becomes a dangerous thing -- to be used as a weapon against all the others, rather than as a tool for the common good. Such terms are not even mentioned very often anymore, as it is expected that everyone must be acting and thinking only for their partisan dominance over every other, and that one is simply a fool if they aren't grabbing for more than their fair share, understandably at the expense of everybody else. That is what is to understood by "professional," as partisan, and self-serving, and not, abiding by higher universal standards of conduct that apply to all under all conditions.

Are We Better Off Now Than We Were Four Years Ago?

2010-06-11T09:10:00.002-10:00

Who knew that everything that could go wrong, would go wrong -- as soon as he "won" the presidency? Rather than place blame, it is enough to note the unfortunate timing of doing so -- but it was also an unfortunate time when the previous president took office under much less auspicious circumstances.

George Bush didn't assume the presidency as the new messiah, but actually under a cloud of doubt that he even legitimately won the election -- even stealing it from the rightful self-proclaimed genius of our times, Al Bore. What that candidate, as well as the present incumbent have in common, was the unshakable and unquestionable faith in their own superiority to make the best decisions for everybody else, regardless of whether everybody else thinks so or not.

His enablers in this, were the mainstream mass media, who have presently fallen on hard times themselves -- as one supportive editorial staff after another, finds themselves looking for a new line of work. So this president, hasn't been the savior, even for those who promoted his ascendancy most vigorously, and the hope and change they clamored for, have turned out to be their own nightmare, reinforcing that old wisdom, "Be careful of what you wish for," it may be your own undoing.

For the liberal press, life was good, as long as they could blame everything on the president, but not so easy, when they have to think of other things to say, when they no longer do. In fact, then, a lot of people find they have nothing else to say -- and merely self-destruct, as the recent doyenne of the industry found herself out on the limb, and nobody to back her up, simply because she led the "blame-Bush" chants. The mainstream mass media, would have to find a new pom-pom girl.

Meanwhile, the whole business of the newspapers now seems to be walking around in a daze -- wondering what is their relevance now, without a president to kick around to denote their power. What exactly are their credentials for knowing anything else with passion and authority, since they've long forgotten (eight years is a long time), how to do anything else? "All lines are open."

So for everybody in the information business, that is the challenge of these times. What do you know and can do besides blame George W. Bush for everything? He's no longer the president, and so, that is not enough, or anything at all.

And they already purged, everybody who was not on that bandwagon. As I warned them repeatedly, you can't keep circling the wagons in tighter formations until everybody's heads are up each others assholes -- while locking out the talent on the other side.

That's always a bad formula for future success.

The Day the Music Died (Another One Bites the Dust)

2010-06-04T05:59:00.007-10:00

Finally, on the eve of its own demise, the newspaper (The Honolulu Advertiser -- Gannett) publishes a sample of the communications that have been begging all along for a fair representation of the "other side" of the story -- besides the union/liberal/Democratic Party's portrayal of ownership and management as the evil oppressors of all workers.

In the past, those omissions were usually justified with explanations that "it's OK because we're biased FOR the Democrats and liberals" and not FOR the evil rich (Republicans) -- which shows no understanding of the whole nature of bias and prejudice. Of course you think your side is all good, and the other side is all evil, and therefore should rightly be censored, suppressed and edited to distortion -- because you are so "progressive," know better and unilaterally ought to do the speaking for everybody else.

So when their own day of reckoning comes, they cannot understand why it was that they were so innocently going about their business ensuring "fair" play, when their own plugs got pulled.

In many "liberal" organs such as the newspapers have become, the newspapers own union shop stewards are either the assistant or associate editorial page editor, ensuring that only one side of the story is portrayed, while the other side is mischaracterized and misrepresented, by the skills of the mass communication skills they've learned to make the people believe anything they want them to believe. That is the insidious nature of "mass communications," which "journalism" has become a subset of.

But simply having these skills, is not enough to render anybody "objective," in and by itself. That's also true of lawyers who justify that the justice they serve, is whomever is their client, and pays them to lie for them. And one of the distinguishing profiles of occupations in Hawaii, are the disproportionate numbers of people employed to distort the truth for the benefit of whomever pays them to do so -- or what their union tells them, as though that made it right in itself, because their "might (majority) makes right," and there is no questioning or insight beyond that.

But that era is coming to an end -- as one day it must. And then like that cruel childhood game of "musical chairs," they find that there is no place for themselves at the new dinner table. And the band plays on -- until the next time. When will they ever learn?

How Would One Really Improve the Education System

2010-05-27T07:33:00.001-10:00

What you need to do to have a culture of excellence, is to identify and have the child prodigies of every subject, teach their fellow students their insights into their area of genius --

rather than the mediocre adults who can only get "education" degrees, and think just by looking busy and learning jargon, they understand what they are talking about.

But in the schools, when the bright kids do that, they are told they are "cheating," and not to ever help their fellow citizen again.

And so Hawaii has become this quagmire in which everybody contends with everybody else for "more than their fair share," which is the essential difficulty of life in Hawaii.

It is not that education has failed, as it is that they have been successful at teaching everybody the wrong things -- that one should use other people, and particularly the vulnerable like the children (keiki) and elderly (kupuna), for their own ends -- which is the foundation for a society of endless exploitation from the cradle to the grave.

This has been fairly well-documented in the early studies of the anthropologists of primitive, brutal societies (that invariably become extinct), as well as the observations of psychologists who have explored the other end of those possibilities in highly self-actualizing societies and individuals, which must always begin with the individuals, and not the system, or the mass culture the individual is required to conform to.

Once you have such a hopelessly troubled system, the only solution is to rethink society and the educational (including the mass media) system that supports it -- as the fundamental flaw that no amount of subsequent effort and expenditure can overcome. We have to go back to the very premises of that society -- which in this case, is the instructional imperative that the student cannot and should not learn from everything -- but only from the duly certified and authorized authorities. Such an "education," puts one in the lifelong disadvantage of not being able to learn instantaneously, on-demand, as the situation requires it -- but only allowed to respond in the pre-approved manner taught to them -- that maintains the status quo of the authority other than oneself.

In a fast-changing world, with abundant information flooding into one's consciousness because the technologies make that not only possible but easy, most of what one learns, will have to be done in this manner -- and not that everything one learns of any value, they learned in kindergarten -- and never learned anything more after that. That world has disappeared, although a few of its staunchest defenders will undoubtedly lament the passing of that "golden age" for them; that used to be the world that brought them on high, and now it has collapsed, and nobody recognizes them anymore, when they grab every person demanding, "Do you know who I am!"

And now the people around him will observe unjudgmentally and whisper to one another, "That guy doesn't know who he is.," with no condemnatory significance.

There's a Reason (Why) Things Happen

2010-05-20T03:57:00.004-10:00

We may not know what they are, but there is a reason (why) things happen. Learning what those reasons are, is the meaning and purpose of life -- and not that we are born into the world, ready for those with all the answers already, are ready and eager to pour that knowledge and wisdom into us, as the function of society, and particularly, government and education.

That is the gross misunderstanding of what "education" is -- as though some people had a monopoly on knowing these things, and then there are others with an exclusive monopoly on health information, and then, as in the "old" days, some claimed they knew everything worth knowing -- and could tell us about it, if we subscribed to their exclusive (proprietary) services.

But what anybody knows, is not the whole content of information and reality, but just that small bit of it, some people have decided for everybody else, is what everybody should know -- usually for their exclusive benefit, or at least to keep them esteemed highly in society.

Although many, if not all, claim to want an equal playing surface, what they really want, is to maintain the status quo, that allows them to obtain or maintain an unfair advantage -- even to the extent, that they control all the sources of information that would reveal that unfairnesss, because they know the proper people who are unscrupulous and ruthless enough to lie with impunity and no conscience.

Of course they don't call it this, but claim that they have superior marketing prowess, or know how the game is played -- and in fact, they make the rules, all the rules are always changing, depending on what gives them an unfair advantage.

Thus they come to believe, that the only way they can win, is to lie, cheat and steal, even if that would not be necessary. But they have lost all ability to make those distinctions anymore, and have to lie, cheat and steal, because that is all they know how to do anymore.

And that is the reason (why) things are so messed up -- and not in spite of their good intentions.

"The King is Dead, Long Live the King" (What Else is News)

2010-05-03T08:18:00.002-10:00

Change -- even progress, is disruptive, but it is nevertheless necessary and inevitable.

Nobody owns the monopoly on news, information, and communications -- which many news organizations thought they did -- just like nobody owns the monopoly on learning (education), health and well-being, problem-solving/resolution, etc.

That evolution is called "disintermediation" -- that while it is claimed we are losing one editorial voice, we have actually gained the many others, that used to be edited, censored, and suppressed to express essentially one "politically correct" (Associated Press) view -- which will result in more (freedom of) information and not less -- because even though there is just one newspaper now, there are many other outlets and sources, including radio, television, and now the Internet in all its many guises. Nobody owns the monopoly on information (news)...

Of course there are a lot of people who would like to, and have that be a permanent position of authority, influence, and security. That's never been the way of the world, though many would like that permanence to last throughout the history of civilization -- or at least their own lifetimes.

But change, challenge and a new adaptation, is the history of civilization (mankind), and there is no creating a safe backwater apart from that river of life, as hard and as much as one tries. So the wise society prepares itself to deal with the many challenges and not just the one outcome they hope that fate brings -- and if it doesn't, they simply go into a cultural denial -- of everything, which is a death and extinction of societies.

The value of culture and history, is to prepare one for these changes, and not merely to enshrine and perpetuate the old, as the good times that should have always remained so.

You Have To Know What You Are Doing

2010-04-30T09:08:00.000-10:00

A lot of pseudo-scientific people will point out with pride that what they know, they know, by observing people who had no idea what they were doing -- which are the claims made for double-blind testing, in which the participants will have no idea what they are being observed for -- and every attempt will be made to keep them in that ignorance, when in most human activities, what you know, or think you know, is the test -- and simply doing anything without that as a concurrent or primary intent, is meaningless, and way before the study is ended, the subjects will have lost all interest in what they are doing -- which may be all the researchers may be measuring.

When it comes to exercise, and the studies of exercise, it would have to be obviously true that one doing something one hour a day, every day, would develop a greater insight and understanding into what they are doing -- even more importantly than what they are doing, because that's what the basic human constitution requires one to do. If they become more unconscious and unaware of what they are doing, then most people would not judge that to be progress or success, no matter what they became "the world champion" at -- which would again be totally meaningless and purposeless, because that was not what they were trying to be.

Such a world would be a random nightmare that one had no idea of the results one was hoping to achieve, and so doing just anything, told them nothing, and maybe in 25 years, they could learn about they were doing, and reveal the monumental study they had participated in. In such a scheme and universe, time separates everything -- and so there is no immediate biofeedback that what they are doing feels right because it achieves precisely the effect they want to -- instead of the private fantasy going on in their heads that they have mastered the universe, and everyone they encounter, are also aware of their great distinction. And so that explains why many behave "inappropriately," when the appropriate behaviors are obvious to everyone else -- who have agreed that they have to share a common basis for that intelligence and awareness to manifest, and for subsequent greater social organizations to be created and sustained.

That is the essential human contract that governs all purposeful activities that one can meaningfully assess, is worthwhile doing -- and not simply the advice, that doing anything is better than doing nothing -- because even "nothing," is obviously a judgment on the value of what one is already doing. That doing is primarily a judgment that one is not doing something, that would meet with the approval of the person purportedly with the superior knowledge or control of what is really going on -- as though only they actually knew.

That's not the reality most live in except in the most oppressive societies of our times -- which are distinguished by the deliberate intent to keep everyone else in the dark about what is actually happening and going on -- because they alone know what is best for everyone else. That increasingly, feels like what we experience in contemporary life as the technocracy -- of rule and regulations by the experts, usually for their exclusive benefit.

Lucky Leave Hawaii: Voting With Their Feet

2010-04-25T08:03:00.002-10:00

For at least the last two years, it's become clear that Hawaii is a society in freefall decline based primarily on the fall of the speculative real estate markets that have also depressed "magical kingdoms" like Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona -- but at least in those places, people are more disposed to moving on to other areas -- where the economies are booming, or at least show promising merits to recover, because that is what brought many of those people to those areas in the first place. They are the mobile opportunists, who go where their prospects are most promising -- and because of that disposition, have a tendency to do well and better, because that is their primary constitution and drive in life.

Most other people though, are not so finely-tuned in just moving to where the economic opportunities are at their height -- as their only motivation in life. They will define "quality of life," as more than just the "quantity of life," as measured simply by income because they are more focused on outgo, or expenditures and what they can get for them, as a better indicator of how they experiencing and enjoying life -- which is usually summed up in one overarching measure of health and well-being.

People are directly healthier, because they are doing all the right things -- whether they are conscious of those choices or not. Those who are not aware of such choices and think they have no choices, are invariably at the lowest levels of being, as far as actualizing the highest possibilities of many choices. They usually are to be identified as those still doing what their parents did, and their grandparents before them -- often in exactly the same way, using the same technologies, and thinking that they have a responsibility to preserve and carry on those traditions to their children and grandchildren -- despite all the progress and innovations of the present times and possibilities.

It's usually not a tough choice to make -- unless one has been conditioned otherwise -- to believe that their lives should merely be a repetition of the past -- as the highest achievement of living life now. They may give an exaggerated importance and glorification of that past, as though it was "paradise," or some "golden age," in which they have fallen from, rather than the proper work of any time, and every community, because everything they do now, just seems to get them farther away from where they think they ought to be.

Obviously, they are doing everything wrong -- although they may be convinced that might or the majority, makes everything they do, right. That is usually not enough to alter reality favorably -- though for a while, nearly everyone can be convinced that that is so, until they get down to those who are resistant to all delusions and deceptions, no matter how strong the peer pressures and incentives to believe what is not true.

That is the unraveling and moment of truth, many seem to be realizing, all of a sudden, as though there have not been warning signs all along. Usually, such errors are quickly detected and corrected as they become more widespread and is likely to be noticed by an increasing population sample of those not solely indoctrinated in that exclusive reality, or tradition of thinking.

That used to be the danger before the age of instant access to information, where time lags of many years and even generations were possible. But not in today's world -- in which it is possible to select any community's reality to participate in -- in developing the greater global consciousness now directly possible to all.

Formerly, and throughout all of history and civilization, information and communication, was controlled by hierarchies, and those who were closest to the source, had a greater advantage, as they even created those advantages by withholding that information from the rest, and often distorted that information further to one's exclusive advantage. But when everybody does that, information and communications become worthless, and not worth knowing -- especially when it is possible to easily connect to the full repository of information available to everyone, anywhere, at any time.

That access, profoundly changes the world, and everything in it -- instantaneously, as recognizing the truth of anything, always does.

And so many in Hawaii are realizing that Hawaii is not the only place they can live, and in fact, remaining there, will handicap them from enjoying the life that is now possible for increasingly many.

Do You Need to be Anonymous?

2010-04-13T19:56:00.002-10:00

You don't need anonymous posters.

It's always been the press that has insisted on the right to protect the anonymity of its sources. They've encouraged irresponsible assertions.

Think about it. Why would a normal, healthy person want to be anonymous -- rather than making a name for themselves as who they really are.

It was the old media who insisted only they had the right to make and break people -- and nobody could do it for themselves. They created the need for the intermediaries -- rather than promoting the notion that people could communicate directly with the reader.

Why are those people on "American Idol" and all those reality shows? To be anonymous? They're all trying to be famous, well-known as who they really are -- and not somebody else.

That fear of being known, has been fostered by the mainstream media itself as their means of maintaining control and being the only ones that mattered -- instead of allowing people to speak their own truth, in their own words -- as is now possible.

Where does that leave the old media people who claim to speak for everyone else? In the old media model, a lot of people's contributions were suppressed, censored and edited to say what the editor wanted to say, and not the individuals themselves.

And then these editors convinced most people that if they spoke the truth, there would be retaliation and negative consequences, so that only they could speak the truth for everyone else in society. That was the old media game -- that got carried over to the new.

It's the old media that tried to pit one group against every other, with themselves as the middle man in control of the information. That game is over, and people should welcome becoming known for the best they can do, and not merely becoming skilled at manipulation and deception in the old ways.

The Internet (WWW) is not the fake, and the other publications and institutions the real. The Internet, is the real and lasting, and the Star-Bulletins and Advertisers of the world, that come and go. What people have to be clear is that what they say and do, is who they really are -- and not the person they pretend to be.

The Meaning and Purpose of Education

2010-04-09T10:07:00.002-10:00

The whole purpose of "education" is to make the citizenry more self-reliant and self-sufficient -- rather than more dependent on education and educators -- who then exploit their students for their own self-aggrandizement, even while claiming what marvelous "sacrifices" they are making for their students.

If a teacher feels that their teaching is a sacrifice from what greater things they could be doing, which they are constantly reminding everyone of, then surely, such people should be heeding that greater call to service and doing what greater deeds they think their talents are being wasted for. And so education, and particularly public education, which serves the teachers and not the students, has become this monstrous thing in which the only thing that matters is more money for themselves -- and not the best way to free oneself of this terrible bondage to the teaching profession.

For surely it should be obvious by now, that learning should not require more and more teachers and "dedicated" education administrators, but that learning is integral to all functioning and doing now -- to become merely an adjunct to some larger purpose -- and not as an end in itself, and especially, a self-perpetuating machine for those with no other capabilities for learning and doing themselves.

That's been the obvious evolution in education -- and the meaning of why it grows exorbitantly more costly, because it is no longer meaningful and necessary in the old way, when information was scarce and difficult to come by except through these institutions dedicated to that purpose. But now, every activity and function, requires instant learning as required, and not learning everything just in case one should ever need it -- which is a wasteful use of human resources and resourcefulness.

When the price for anything seems to approach infinity, that is when thoughtful people begin to ask, is it necessary at all -- if the price is everything else we hold dear? And then we get back to the higher understanding that is the basis and rationale for all learning -- which is no longer to need learning what keeps us more dependent and enslaved, but frees us to move on to enjoying other things -- as rightly we should, and is the whole meaning and purpose of anything we do in society.

What Does It Matter Who the Writer (Speaker) Is?

2010-03-31T10:17:00.000-10:00

What does it matter who the writer (speaker) is? What is important is her very important insight into how caring members of the profession feel -- and how they are frustrated and stymied by the system, so no improvement is ever possible, and we are deliberately distracted instead onto trivial issues like "Who is the writer who dares to speak?"

I'm stunned that even such an honest appraisal of the department of education was not censored/ edited by the conspiratorial agents within the newspaper -- not allowing anybody but the union spokespersons to speak for everybody else.

That's what the education professionals have given up -- the right to bargain and speak for themselves -- instead of being treated like the students they teach, who are told what to think, instead of how to think. And that is the grave problem of Hawaii -- that people look for the seal of approval from the union or Democratic Party before they can say for themselves, "That makes a lot of sense. Why shouldn't the teachers be allowed to have a voice and control in how they can best do their job?"

That is the right they vote to give up by deciding that only the union spokesperson can speak for all of them -- and in that way, leverage their bargaining position for more pay. But as any professional knows, what makes them truly a professional, is the right to do their art their own way -- by how they determine is best, because they can think for themselves in their field of expertise.

But if they nullify those rights in thinking that only the money is important, and not the freedom to do their job as best as they themselves can determine, then they've turned themselves into mere cogs in the machine who have to obey the right of might, and the majority rules -- and not what is best for themselves as individuals.

That destroys the whole rationale for education -- of discovering the potential of each student rather than the teacher determining beforehand, only and all that it can be, because it is only the teaching that is important, and not the learning -- beyond the instruction, where any real learning and usefulness takes place.

And thus so many people are produced in the Hawaii education system, who are only capable of repeating what has been taught to them, instead of discovering the unknown -- which is the future, and not merely repeating the past endlessly, as though nothing else is possible.

And so the problems of Hawaii can never be solved -- because they haven't been in the past, and the leaders don't know what to do when the beaches and parks become overcrowded with the homeless, and the crime overruns government and society, the sewers and roads break down, and nobody in government feels accountable and empowered to speak and do anything with any initiative and their own judgment.

And reporters are bullied and intimidated if they try to report the truth, and are censored and edited themselves in so many ways, because nobody wants to hear the truth anymore, or allow it.

And that is why life is very hard and frustrating now, particularly in Hawaii. It doesn't have to be that way -- but that's the only thing they know, and will allow.

That is the importance of freedom of speech -- and not just the right to force people only to say what the powers that be allow them to say.

What the So-Called Health Reform Does/Doesn't Do

2010-03-23T09:40:00.004-10:00

What is overlooked is that there are a lot of people who are very healthy -- and seldom need to see a doctor -- who now have to pay $15,000 a year for services (insurance) they don't need.

They're subsidizing the people who think the doctor and medical care facilities and insurance are primarily responsible for making them healthy, and they are the drain on the health care system, who are usually on disability/welfare to begin with.

So in effect, the so-called health plan does the opposite of what a sound health strategy would do -- which is to reward the healthy for not needing the medical care facilities, which if they do, they pay for, because it makes sense to do so in that manner.

They've never been the problem. The problem are the few who overuse and overtax the health care facilities disproportionately -- because they don't have to pay for it, because they are either on disability, or get it as tax-free compensation as government (union) employees, who think they aren't getting their money's worth unless they max out their sick leave and medical benefits.

This health care program just further enables that.

No amount of money is going to make up for the negligence of people first taking responsibility for their own health (not health care), as their own primary caregivers. And then we need a system to insure "catastrophic" health incidents -- but to require everyone to pay for health care insurance regardless -- punishes the healthy, while rewarding those who don't care. That is the real problem -- and not just adding the healthy to subsidize the unhealthy practices.

Our society is so biased into thinking that the natural state and condition of people is to be sick -- rather than to be healthy, and the latter is the only society worth creating -- and not the randomness of not knowing any difference and thinking it can be any different than dysfunctional model. We need to create a healthy society of healthy individuals -- and not simply pay for disease and dysfunction -- as the "normal."

Knowing and Being Known

2010-03-22T06:05:00.002-10:00

The overarching imperative of communications is to know and to be known.

But mass media's paradigm was to control and manipulate, which is something else entirely, and so the device of "anonymity" is obviously not to be known, and to let another to know all the information and to maintain that advantage.

So in the world and wave of personal computers and personal communications, mass media will obviously be the big loser, because its whole machinery is designed to make people anonymous -- except for the editors, columnists and reporters -- who then become "famous," and powerful, often for no good reason. That is the cult of "celebrity," which the mass media machinery used to control, but now obviously, there is something beyond mass media to control.

That's problematical for the people of that old mass media mentality whose purpose is designed to create those tollgates and hierarchies -- of people who then "speak for the people," but now, people can speak for themselves, and so we have a very different picture of humanity than when a self-designated few spoke for everyone, so they could remain anonymous, and told them what they should think as the socially and politically correct -- even if only by editorial manipulations.

When the World Wide Web was first getting started, a few recognized that the power of the Internet was that everybody could now become as famous as they were capable of being -- but not, as always, that everybody would be or become equally famous. Being known, is not enough, if one doesn't have the talent worthy of that publicity, otherwise, one is just known as a fool or a mediocrity -- and people feeling that, obviously would prefer not to be known for it, but will choose to adopt avatars or advertising images as the "MagnificentOne, or the "AllKnowingOne," along with "SexyBabe."

It is really the old mass media that derives its power in promoting anonymity, or keeping everyone but themselves unknown, while they promote themselves and their "anointed" ones as the proof and exercise of that power.

Every legitimate, talented and honest person would of course prefer to be known for precisely those reasons -- as who they really are.

The Transformative Experience (Back to the Basics)

2010-03-16T10:59:00.001-10:00

Home gardening is probably the single greatest activity a person in Hawaii can be engaged in -- to teach them the lessons of cause and effect, consequences, and the rewards of meaningful work.

With no industry or agriculture to speak of, people think that if they want something, all they have to do is sign-wave down at the Capitol -- and then like magic, planes full of money from the federal government will arrive -- along with rich Japanese tourists.

So the people have lost a vital connection to productivity -- and think if they want anything, they just have to demand it from their government (legislators), and not that they can provide these things for themselves.

That's an important experience in the development of cultures, societies and civilization, and lacking that, one has the experience of the vandals who think that the reason for the wonders of human ingenuity, is to destroy them -- because they don't know how to create anything, but only know how to destroy them -- as the activity they are familiar with.

So giving such people more, does them no good -- because they always transform something into nothing, instead of learning how to create something out of nothing -- or very little. That is the transformative experience that makes progress possible, and not just "giving" more to people who have no appreciation or understanding of how it came into being.

That is the education even, and especially the educators need, to be productive and useful human beings -- instead of people who think they shouldn't be working for "free." That's how nothing becomes something.

Many of Hawaii's problems are connected to the simple lessons of recycling wastes -- to produce rich organic material that the sandy soil of Hawaii is poor in, and so they cannot grow despite the abundant sunshine.

Even plants don't just happen -- automatically, but have to be planned and cared for, by people who know what they are doing because they learn it doing it -- and not just in the useless academic way that deceives people to think they know anything useful.

What If We Forget (Lose) the Past?

2010-03-11T10:44:00.002-10:00

Far more important is understanding what is going on right now -- and the personalities and forces trying to influence and impose their perspective on everybody else.

I once was required to study a book written by two scholars who had used old documents (archives) to reconstruct what they thought was actually going on two hundred years ago -- as though that was the most important use of scholarship and intelligence at that time (or any).

Even in the present moment, witnessing events as they're happening right now, it's not really clear what is actually happening, or what the observer/reporter thinks is important and significant. But then to reconstruct a culture and reality two hundred years ago, or two thousand years ago, doesn't seem to be a wise use of one's so-called intelligence because the present always implies the past, and thus, one can learn more about the past from the present, than to imagine what it was actually like in the past.

Thus, the real work of a historian is not about explaining the past, but understanding the present -- that will come to past in time. If one cannot understand the times one is living in, then obviously, they're not going to have keen insight into behavior in another time -- and so the valid history, is understanding what is going on right now, as best one can -- and writing that history as one is actually living and experiencing it, and the rest is just a fabrication, rather than a greater truth.

I know the justification is that one cannot understand the present unless one first understands the past, but it is likely more true, that one cannot understand the past unless one first understands his own present because that is actual and verifiable reality -- and that present, implies not only the understanding of the past but the whole totality of reality -- including the future, as one acts with that present knowledge.

The past is always being created -- and recreated, in each present moment, and so those archives, become much less important, just as we've all gone through many personal computers now, and at first thought it was important to retain and transfer everything -- until we've evolved to realize that it's not so important what we wrote/recorded 20 or 40 years ago that is so important, as it is what we are writing right now -- which implies everything we've ever known before, and evolved us to this point.

Thus we can let go of that past because most of it is not needed, but that which is, is the DNA of the present reality -- which is not lost, but knowledge actualized in today's reality, and not just a flawed, outdated and irrelevant understanding of reality in some far away or imagined time.

The Challenge of Responsibility

2010-03-04T09:54:00.003-10:00

There was a time when holding public office was a great honor and responsibility -- but now it is just about staying in office for the rest of their lives -- usually doing nothing because the people's expectations are so low, they just don't want their elected representatives stealing TOO much, and if they can maintain those minimal expectations and allow the voters to get over every now and then, that will be enough to get them re-elected for the rest of their lives.

Meanwhile, life and everything else in the world changes at great speed now -- depending on where one is in the information chain -- because it is already happening somewhere in the world by the first adaptors, the first to accept new information -- rather than simply learn the old, repeat it and even defend the old, long past when everybody else has moved on. Those are the people charged with protecting the rear -- who will inevitably be convinced they are at the front, among the first to know what is going on. But assuredly, they are among the last.

It usually doesn't take much to keep them fighting even when there is no prize -- or it has long ago been snatched up by those who are pulling everybody else's strings -- usually with promises of the wonderful world that will come to be if they just do this one final "sacrifice" -- for the keiki, kapuna, ohana, party -- when obviously, the party has long ago been over that they have only now been invited to.

They just think "a mistake has been made" -- that their invitations were misplaced (as usual) and they are not seated at the head table at the banquet, next to "Jesus."

One wonders what keeps such people motivated to continue on in that manner -- feeling that their lives ought to be sacrificed for the Great Leader -- for which they always demand reparations and justice at the next negotiations for their just compensation, which they always feel, they have been cheated out of, and should be rewarded as the top 1 or 2%, they feel their blind loyalty and sacrifice have entitled and earned them.

That of course, are the familiar refrains of the contract union negotiations, at which their members ask resentfully, "Do you expect us to continue to work for free!?" -- as though their twice the median incomes were not enough for prostituting themselves so shamelessly and selling out themselves so cheaply and disgustingly.

As lady MacBeth would say, "Cannot all the water in the world, wash the blood from my hands?!"

Changing "Education"

2010-02-25T06:49:00.001-10:00

It's about time -- and hopefully, the colleges and universities won't be far behind.

What's important is the understanding (proficiency), and not merely looking busy and doing the most work -- because real understanding and insight into a process, should always reduce the amount of work and effort required.

But the old school was about effort, and struggle, and learning things one really wasn't interested or ready for, which is always non-productive and creates the (discipline) problems of the education system. A person has to be ready (prepared) to accept any learning -- and it is the learning itself that is critical, and not the teaching, and the job security and benefits of the teacher and instruction, which is only what the education discussions are about anymore.

The highest level of learning is when a person teaches themselves -- and we now have that capability to keep track of where the different students are -- rather than arbitrarily demanding that everybody must be in conformance with the program, on exactly the same page.

Fifty years ago, before computers were readily available, educators were already developing individualized instruction like this -- before the education professionals realized it threatened their own job security, and denied such a thing was possible or permissible. That was still the era of centralized data processing in which everyone had to await the availability of the lone IBM mainframe and data processing department to tell us the result of anything.

The field that should be most greatly impacted by the development of the information and communication technologies of the past 50 years, and especially the last ten, is education, learning, lifelong discovery -- yet that is traditionally the defenders of the existing status quo, of the institutions, schools, universities perpetuating themselves forever -- and so they've become the rearguard of culture and society rather than the avant-garde. We no longer process or transmit information and communications through them anymore.

Information is exploding all over, with nobody capable of tracking and controlling it all, and learning the obsolete, is not just as good as learning the state of the art, which is really is the only thing worth learning -- that implies everything else. But in the schools, they start chronologically so that they require people to learn the old before the new -- instead of just the new.

The old traditionalists will still insist that everyone must learn Latin in order to improve their understanding and use of English -- which old schoolers will nod their heads as though such a thing made sense, because there is so much to learn that one should learn what one wants to for a specific objective, and not just the walking encyclopedias of useless information -- who when you ask them a specific, targeted question, answers you with all they know -- which is not helpful, and wastes a lot of precious time, energy, and resources.

Can Hawaii Work?

2010-02-22T06:09:00.006-10:00

It shouldn't be a secret that living in a tent in Hawaii is preferable to living in a crowded shelter -- usually with poor ventilation, etc. In fact, a tent may be the optimal structure for housing in Hawaii -- and not the many poorly designed structures people have been forced into.

"Homelessness" means having no home, and not that one prefers a tent to live in, or likes only having all that they can carry on them, or don't care that it gets stolen because they scavenge most of it in the first place.

There's always been a nomadic tradition among human populations, and in Hawaii, minimal requirements for housing because of its hospitable climate.

Even now, prefabricated housing, trailers, and a lot of cheap alternatives are banned so that union construction workers can maintain artificially high salaries and make the many housing alternatives unthinkable.

The housing problem in Hawaii is greatly due to the lack of true options -- forcing everybody into the limited choices.

Create separate areas for alternative housing (tents) -- and alternative communities where people solve their problems instead of denying they exist, so that they have a place to go to besides the parks and valuable resources. Obviously, ignoring the problem and hoping they'll just go away is not working.

There is no "positive" alternative -- but just the usual punishments if they don't get in line with the limited pre-existing choices, that are unattractive and they've probably tried them before.

But that doesn't mean people can't create working communities -- and communities that do work. Such places don't have to be desolate unstructured, lawless no-man's lands. They could be communal living arrangements -- like hostels, co-housing, extended family rather than nuclear family arrangements, etc.

They can make up rules for a society based on common agreement -- and not just be regarded as bands of outlaws whose lives have to be made more difficult until they conform properly.

The primary purpose and function of government is to produce a meaningful and positive culture and society -- and not as it has become in Hawaii, just a means to reward one's own ohana -- and too bad about everybody else. And that's why you have all these problems. That was the meaning of the persecution of the majority Shiites by the minority Sunnis in Iraq -- to which the legislature of Hawaii highly approved and admired, and sent their fondest Alohas to Saddam.

It's a matter of record. And so the fact that large segments of the population are treated badly and ignored while a favored few are rewarded lifetime tenures and sinecures have always resulted in this kind of misery for an increasingly many before the people finally revolt and start something different.

That's how even great civilizations rise and fall -- as a response to the challenge of their times. When they can no longer respond effectively to any challenges, then something new must replace it.

Otherwise you have another Haiti, Micronesia, Nauru, Taliban, Easter Island in the making -- rather than the Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealands. That's how the world works.

The Award fot the Greatest Contribution to Life and Peace

2010-02-10T11:39:00.002-10:00

The Internet is not inanimate -- but actually has a life of its own as the collective consciousness and intelligence that is more than the sum of its parts -- and keeps growing.

Any individual life is not meaningful except as part of some greater whole and context -- meaning and purpose. The mistake was thinking that these isolated individuals made society -- when in fact, the whole makes the individuals, and so the recognition and award of the right perspective and cause and effect, would signal the evolution of the Nobel prize itself to this greater consciousness and understanding.

Those judges may not be qualified to determine the greatest contributions to society, since they are usually products themselves of very narrow interest groups -- specialized into compartmentalized thinking of that age, deliberately isolated from every other -- and now we live in this age of interconnectedness in which it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell where one person's thought ends and another begins.

The old academic world was about competing against every other -- for primacy above every other -- and people like that cannot go very far anymore, as those who can easily and instantly access the total intelligence in the world -- regardless of those boundaries of mine, yours and nobody's, which obviously, is very provincial, and Nobel wanted to reward and honor those who stretched the frontiers of thought.

Probably the obvious representative to receive the reward on the behalf of the Internet would be John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems, who uses the term, the Human Network, as the emerging global consciousness that has no borders, and is not just the manifestation of one ego and enterprise.

There used to be a time people thought that history was made by singularly great people -- rather than these individuals representing the summation and achievement of highest understanding of that culture and civilization. That highest understanding doesn't belong to one individual, but resides in the collective wisdom and cosmic consciousness -- to those who are merely open to it.

That is the greatest life of all. It redefines life on a higher level.

The Meaning of "Education" in Hawaii

2010-02-02T07:33:00.004-10:00

There are many more people who have quit the departments of education than remain in the teachers' unions -- because it is obvious to them that this whole money-sucking bureaucracy is about providing permanet job security and entitled status to the friends and relatives of the so-called leaders in government.

People don't need schools and universities to learn -- but a culture and society that doesn't get in their way and doesn't brainwash them into thinkiing that "liberal" authoritarianism is "democracy," and so they better learn to go along with the crowd or terrible fates will befall them -- including not being able to get a $100,000 job doing nothing, and then after 50 years, being able to "retire" and double-dip, or if one is really smart, triple-dip.

And so Hawaii is like the next Haiti -- living in fear of their voodoo masters telling them what to think and do -- as though they are really thinking for themselves ratherr than being manipulated to "do unto everbyod else because that is what everybody else is doing unto everybody else, and so one would be a fool, not to," and then continue that education as lifelong, dutiful union members.

Education's never been about money but just the desire to learn -- when people are not discouraged and deceived doing so. But that is ONLY what Hawaii education has become about -- the MONEY, and haow people getting $70,000 average salaries are claiming they are being asked to work for "free," and sacrificing their lives from the billions they would otherwise, command as comparable worth in the private sector.

You need to let those "teachers" go to actually create those billion dollar corporations that provide meaningful jobs for everybody else in society, rather than maintaining this entitled class, who think that eating everybody else's lunch, is what they're being paid to do.

There are already a lot of educated people to learn from -- and with, and even the best students, would make better teachers than "teachers," who think acting big and self-important, is a necessary role and function in any modern society anymore.

Hawaii has to move out of those tribal dark ages -- especially in thinking that an education is merely an indoctrination to the "politically correct" brainwashing.

People learn their whole lives now, from everything and everybody -- and not just because they pay a lot of money to the "certified" kahunas to do so.

Improving "Paradise"

2010-01-23T09:31:00.002-10:00

What Hawaii needs most and could create the greatest value, are shade corridors -- which then make it possible for most people to walk or bike anywhere comfortably, because the lack of shade, is what makes most people dismiss such an idea for even short trips.

One of the chief appeals of rail, are the stations, because they provide this shelter of shade, which the present bus stops, most often don't -- which is the reason, many will not wait in such hostile conditions to use that system.

The advantage of the industrialized communities and nations of the temperate areas, is greatly due to their mastery of their climate, which is invariably being able to stay warm in the cold.

The tropics, and warm areas, have never had to consider that primal engineering and organizing challenge of optimizing their environment, and so lack the fundamental skills of resource management to advance their societies as it grows into cities of greater complexities.

What these largely traditional societies of the warmer climates have largely failed to consider, is that warm climates can be optimized even beyond that achieved in the great cities of the temperate areas -- as their fundamental great challenge of living in those environments, in order for them to organize and work industriously, rather than being discouraged by the danger of heat exhaustion and stroke. In this way, warm is a greater threat than cold is, because one can expend more energy to stay warm, while those who work hard and strenuously, in warmth, run the danger of overheating.

And so many people raised in these conditions, disdain and avoid hard work, as something only those on the lowest level of society would do -- and those who reach the highest levels of society (government), have learned to pass onto others. Eventually, everybody "wises" up to do as little as possible -- while demanding as much compensation they feel they are "entitled" to -- by largely knowing how this game is played.

Recycle the plastic bottles into the mesh netting that provides shade as a basic industry, instead of shipping the garbage far away to be buried. Compost everything that is organic -- including and especially paper. One would think that an island community would be among the pioneers and leaders in recycling -- instead of having no idea what to do with managing their own waste and creating resources that improve the basic conditions for going even further.

Shelter in Hawaii is also this major consideration of creating shade -- just as the greatest threat to the people of a earthquake devastated Haiti, is the lack of water (also a limiting factor in Hawaii, and just relief from the constant -- when all their buildings have fallen down, and they had previously deforested their island.

Even the "homeless" in Hawaii know that is their requirement for shelter -- not to be constantly baking in the sun. Then once one has pioneered these technologies for optimizing climates in warm areas of the world, there are huge markets and populations that could from these advances -- especially if there is a future trend to global warming.

The Problem with "Liberals," "Progressives," and Other Enlightened People

2010-01-16T08:23:00.003-10:00

The greatest crime in this day and age, are those who presume to speak for everyone else -- as demagogues and tyrants have always done.

MLK Day makes YOU feel uncomfortable -- but not those NOT demagoguing the war between the rich and the poor, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, black and white, incessantly and relentlessly, while claiming just to be an innocent observer and being the "devil's advocate," which surely you are. That's why those prejudices and hatreds are kept alive and given fresh fuel daily -- instead of simply living the new greater consciousness without first insisting we relive the past.

If you are sincere about solving these problems, then you have to see the world wholly -- without those preconceived notions that there must be these problems -- and that way, is the only way to see things, which is the problem. You create the problem so that you can be the "genius" who solves it. And that is what most of the old mainstream editorialists do, as well as many other so-called, self-proclaimed do-gooders.

But the essential problem, is projecting your own biases, prejudices, hatreds, ambitions, and limited understanding, on everybody else, who are not that way at all. And that is what you, and many like you who reflect this mentality ought to consider -- that everyone else is not as prejudiced and limited in their thinking as you presume them to be -- and that is the creation of a better world of understanding -- and not creating the divide in the first place, between the rich and poor, black and white, regressive and progressive.

If you replace "I" everywhere you use "we," you will see the real person YOU are -- but project everybody but YOU to be.

You can never rid the biases and prejudices in somebody else; you can only rid the biases and prejudices by seeing and owning them yourself -- instead of projecting them onto others and beating that (d)evil, which is really the great problem in this world.

It's Not Perfect, But It is A Good Beginning

2010-01-06T11:40:00.002-10:00

Of course the strong unions, lobbyists, more ruthless don't want across the board cuts: they want to eliminate the weak to their increased benefit, and that is why the money that should go to education goes to educators and bureaucrats, and not the students -- because after paying their salaries and benefits as a priority, there is no money left, to actually hold classes.

It's the same with all the other pretexts for creating high paying permanent jobs for all their relatives.

Professors who can't get jobs at Harvard, teach at the University of Hawaii, so why are they demanding to get paid as much as their "peers" at Harvard?

Education should be done very differently -- for almost no cost and manpower, just as most adults continue to learn now -- because there is information and other educated and informed people everywhere -- and not that education is about going through kindergarten, first grade, etc., to provide job security for those who are already obsolete, and need to do what NEEDS doing.

When a society starts handing out guaranteed lifetime jobs to their own relatives, that is a sign that a "democratic" society is on its way out -- and a revolution and reshuffling of the pecking order is needed and imminent. That's not coincidentally the way it was before the American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions -- which were caused by these permanent inequalities that made many more increasingly desperate, and open to new ideas of a leveled playing field once again. That doesn't happen in a society determined by seniority, privilege, rank, the status quo -- while eschewing merit, effort, productivity, initiative, individual responsibility. Obviously, we're getting closer to that tipping point as long as the economy does not resume its prosperity in short order.

Injustices are tolerable as long as they are regarded as temporary -- but when they persist too long as a permanent state of inequality, then the dynamics and rationale change. When all the money in a society is permanently going to a self-designated few, less is available to everyone else -- obviously. There doesn't seem to be any hint of a turnaround in this consolidation of wealth and prosperity in the public employee unions only -- while the masses are encouraged to suffer just a little more to sustain their regular expected raises.

The thoughtful and thinking people are the first to recognize those injustices and if they cannot change them and think there is no hope for doing so in the immediate future, move to greater prospects, which is why people immigrate to the United States in the first place. But some states are more equal than others.

What Is This World Coming To?

2009-12-29T09:34:00.001-10:00

If we had all the money in the world, this is what we'd do -- but we don't have all the money in the world, and so we have to make choices, which difficult in the beginning, becomes easier with practice and discipline.

I doubt many will miss not going into the state library building and actually seeing the archives of great documents of the past, so that closure impacts few lives, but there will undoubtedly be the few, and especially those whose jobs it is presently, to maintain that their continuance is essential for civilization itself to exist.

Far more difficult but even more necessary are the far more employees to continue the status quo of the past based on sheer manpower -- and do things more efficiently than have ever been done before, or thought possible -- like education/information processing, health care, social services, in which it was thought that the expenditure of money was its measure of success, rather than the new world concept of efficiency and better outcomes, including evolving beyond liberal notions of progress.

The liberal notion of progress, curiously, is largely the idea of preserving and perpetuating the past, as though they had discovered everything possible to discover, and discourage everybody else for looking beyond THAT known.

So the problems of lack (unlimited) of funding for symphony orchestras and universities, are not an indication that musicians and educated people are becoming increasingly rare, but actually that the "problem" is one of overabundance of musicians and educated people -- beyond those traditions/status quo of exclusivity and hierarchic control, in which they have to compete with a much larger pool of talent.

Talent means there are no guaranteed lifetime jobs once one has achieved the proper initiation and designation by a self-chosen few who keep themselves at the top until they die and promise then, that everybody else can then have it all.

Instead, people rightly regard that they have as much right as long as the old system of privilege, doesn't exclude them. Those were the old turf wars, now conducted mostly by the self-serving associations and unions who would like everybody else to know that if they want to learn, they have to go through them, or if one wants to be healthy now, they are the ONLY options, and we have to pay them first, before any other expenditures we might deem necessary.

The High Cost of Living

2009-12-13T10:59:00.002-10:00

We always see these teachers inviting everybody else to do their work for them for free -- as though they weren't being paid very generously relative to every other way they could be struggling to earn a living in Hawaii. Perhaps they should tag along with the farm worker or fireman -- or even computer programmer, waitress or janitor to see if they could even survive a day -- actually doing something difficult besides praising themselves in the newspapers incessantly as the only deserving people in society.

You pick 'em -- for all those easier jobs you think you could be earning $100,000 you think you are entitled to, including of course, running for the governor. But you actually have to run for the position -- and not just feel entitled to the position and pay.

The high cost of living affects everyone equally and not just teachers, and in fact, the major reason for the high cost of living, are the insatiable demands of public servants demanding something for nothing.

Of course the "brains" behind these talking points are the union leaders who tell them what to say -- as though they thought of it themselves, and we haven't heard of it before, as though they think sheer repetition of lies, make them true. Chief among these lies are that we cannot have a "democratic" society unless they vote for the "Democratic" Party -- and dismiss any notion of any other alternatives, and especially the Republicans -- which they brainwash their members to believe means, only for a few "rich guys" who deserve to have all their money taken away from them.

These mythical "rich guys" turn out to be all the poorer guys -- put together so they can afford to pay these unionized civil servants more than most people make because they are not organized to pursue their own advantage regardless of the common good. That is basically the constituency of the "Republicans," and not the armies and conspiracies of the rich. And so as one reads the opposition to the collectives of the unions, there is no lockstep political correctness repeated day after day unquestioning by their union comrades at the media outlets.

They know how to play this game utilizing the old mass media to their own benefit -- but something new has come into being in the alternative media that promises to at least level the playing field of information and communications, and it is this leveling of the playing field, that often lowers costs to zero -- because that is the cost of obtaining that information now, rather than having to pay these tollkeepers who have secured these monopolies for all time.

That is the old status quo, that they don't want to see end -- even if it is to the greater benefit of society, and allows everyone to move forward. So there is quite a bit of this tension -- to maintain the dysfunctional status quo that sucks up all the resources needed to solve the very real problems of today.

When half of a society has college graduates, one can become educated just living in that environment, and no longer needs to create an artificial world for learning. Learning is now a part of everyday living, and not just for students and young people. Doing so, drives down the cost of living because people now have the alternatives of solutions that actually do the job and work.

Do We Really Need Teachers to Learn?

2009-12-06T08:40:00.002-10:00

The fact of the matter is that one does not need teachers to learn but only a culture and environment that encourages people to learn on their own -- whenever they really need to.

That is the evolving reality of the Internet as well as other socializing networks that used to center around the schools -- but now is accessible to everyone, any time they choose to access it and know about it.

One no longer has to go through these tollkeepers who insist they have to be paid a hundred thousand dollars before they'll teach you anything -- as though they knew even a hundred dollars of information worth knowing -- that isn't available for free.

That's what it means to live in the Information Age -- and not in the old medieval societies in which the universities were the only place to access information and instruction. Now, it is pretty much available to those who just wish to have it -- and know those simple skills, rather than cultivating the old culture of costly dependency on others.

The great problems of these current times is the prohibitive expense of depending on others -- for that which one can provide better for oneself now that it is possible to do so. It begins with education teaching us this dependency -- rather than promoting self-sufficiency and independence, which are the basic tenets of a society dedicated to freedom.

That is the only thing a good teacher does -- teach one how to learn on their own, and not the many people who have nothing other to teach than that they are the teacher -- regardless of how much they know and facilitate the learning process. Nowadays it is to get in the way and make the basic impulse to learning, a difficult and arduous task -- so that one doesn't want to learn.

But healthy human beings want to learn -- as the major of their health and purpose for being, which they naturally do unless they are twisted and perverted not to. And that is the great problem in Hawaii -- people who don't want to learn -- anything, ever again. Why do we need schools to produce that kind of citizens -- just so we can pay the teachers even more.