The Richest People in the World

The richest people in the world are not necessarily those with the most money -- but those with the most time, who spend it wisely. That’s why Hawaii should be one of the richest places in the world -- because of its native population which has many "retired," but also because it draws people on leisure from all over the world, which should be a source of the total intelligence, energy and resources that is the world we live in.

However, if one only values money as the only contribution the whole of the humanity and civilization can contribute to this economy, society, and their own personal lives, then the possibilities are distorted and limited by those considerations -- of how to get them to spend the maximum amount of dollars while they are here on vacation -- while hoping they will not stay as competing citizens for the quality of life that they help to fund, while regarding them to have nothing else of importance to contribute.

Of course that is the greatest waste of human resources that literally flows through Hawaii each day -- as well as devaluing that which is indigenous. It is a culture of waste -- and not valuing things properly, and even in fact, to value that which is bad, over that which is good -- because that which is bad, creates problems -- and problems mean jobs, and jobs mean money -- which is the end in itself, regardless of the actual quality of our existences and experiences.

Some perceptive people even remark, that the culture of, or at least what they see in government and other public forums, is complaining about everything wrong in Hawaii, before starting on their list of everything wrong in the world -- as their trademark pastime. Surely there must be a better way to spend one’s time of leisure and retirement -- which in the coming years, threatens to grow into an even greater overwhelming problem -- as the number of people complaining, far exceeds the number of people actually doing something about it.

The quality of life that many justifiably lament about is not mainly about not having "enough money" but having too much time -- that one doesn’t have anything productive to do with besides complaining., which of course is not only endless, but multiplies and exaggerates the difficulties. Thus, no matter how much we have, or how good is life, the perception is that, we never had it so bad, and that they look increasingly hopeless for the future, as far as the eye can see, if nothing changes -- and the bureaucrats regard it as their job, to ensure that nothing ever does, preserving that status quo, and creating more high-paying jobs, for our ever-escalating difficulties.

One of the curious things to hear, even from people who spend their entire day, lying in the shade or sun, is that they have “No time,” to do anything, because they have a busy schedule of lying in the shade or sun, to occupy them for the rest of the day, and their lives. That is the more obvious ones; less obvious are all the unnecessary things that people do that doesn’t allow them to do the ONLY necessary things that need to be done -- but don’t even have the time to consider, because they are TOO BUSY.

The richest people in the world -- are those who have the time to do ANYTHING. That is the treasure of life.

The Quality (and Meaning) of Life

The only true indication of one’s quality of life, is not how much money they make -- but ultimately, how healthy and happy that person actually is. One usually doesn’t have to poll a person or run scientific studies to determine that -- because that quality is evident even to the untrained eye -- if they haven’t been conditioned not to see it. Obviously, people who are angry, envious, resentful, bitter, and complaining all the time -- as the only people featured in the newspapers, are not good indicators or role models -- which may have some validity when the actualities of scarcity validated those perceptions.

But nowadays, that one is not holding the nation's highest office or the most celebrated person in the land, is a cause for great grievance -- as an entitlement to be there, regardless of any distinguishing and noteworthy qualities -- because the role of the union organizer is to keep them dissatisfied and feeling wronged and thus entitled -- no matter how much they have. There is always some comparison that will show them at some disadvantage to some others -- if they look hard enough.

And so that becomes the disease of contemporary life. I’m not talking about the people who really have nothing -- but of the many now who despite making substantially more than the median income, feel that life (society) has betrayed them because they are not the richest, of whom they condemn as well as envy. Newspapers do endless propaganda for these generators of discontent -- feeling that their advocacy somehow helps their own cause -- instead of betraying everyone else by setting off another round of this hopeless catch-up and cycle of increasing disparity.

So it is appropriate that the conditioning apparatus of choice for these people is the treadmill -- by which they can go as fast as they can and never get anywhere, while feeling they have “done a lot.” One gets good at what one practices, and if it is to operate a treadmill, one will become a master of it. But is that a worthwhile objective in life -- to constantly compare oneself with every other endlessly, until one realizes he has wasted his entire life doing so -- without doing anything significant or meaningful with all the blessings they had been given all along?

What is relevant is not what people in other communities pay or earn compared to oneself -- but how much those living in the same community is paid or earns, that determines the cost of living for everyone living in that community. So for the newspaper’s business writers to have no understanding of that, is to have no understanding of anything worthwhile, while quoting many facts and statistics designed to mislead.

It is the understanding of those facts and statistics that have meaning -- and not simply how many facts and statistics one has, as though the mere accumulation of them was enough to give one richness of understanding. That is the real failure of education.

Statistics don’t lie, but those with only an academic familiarity with them, think they understand far more than they actually do -- so while being wary of that which sounds "too good to be true," are entirely taken in by that which sounds "too bad to be true" -- in the training that only bad news and information is news. And everything else is not on their radar screen -- especially the news that one should be grateful for all one has more than once a year.

Quality of life, is the appreciation of life -- rather than the perpetual devaluing and demeaning news that more and more people simply get along without now. For those without that quality, there will always never be "enough." There will always be somebody that has more than they do, has more imagined happiness and fulfillment -- for which they will be eternally resentful and complaining.

But is that all there is to life in their world?

District 21-23 Newsletter (Kapahulu-Kakaako)

Bob Kessler, District 23 Chair (Waikiki-Kakaako), would like to restart our joint (District 21- Waikiki-Kapahulu) monthly meetings on the 4th Wednesdays of each month, beginning with January 24, 2007, at 6 pm, 725 Kapiolani Blvd at Cooke Street.

It is a very personable and informal meeting at which to get a lot of big-picture insight on what is happening politically and in the Hawaii Republican Party particularly -- rather than attending one of these seemingly endless forums topics of interest often generate.

Then next month, we'll be having the caucus meeting at McCoy Pavilion, as sort of a magnet event for most of the city districts -- because these things are always a lot more fun when more people show up, although in any event and circumstances, we do the best we can with what we have. That's the hallmark of the alternative party in Hawaii -- which appreciates not having the luxury of wasting resources.

While it would be nice if we could replicate the Linda Lingle Campaign Committee fifty times, the fact is we don't have that sheer mass of numbers -- but we do have the best talent of the whole pool that if shared, creates a greater effectiveness. Republicans don't have that redundancy of everybody being the same; everybody is different -- and that poses a greater challenge in mobilizing and organizing, rather than the cookie cutter campaign committees that the Democrats excel at with their union and other powerful and well-organized narrow self-interest groups.

Obviously we're not going to be able to beat them at their own game -- for that would be a certain defeat of everything we stand for. So we have to design creative ways of combating that very mentality -- of winning at any cost, which is the problem of government and society in Hawaii. We even see a few people in the Democratic Party waking up to that -- and we should be encouraging those efforts to rid their party of the self-serving interest which are the corruption and problems of Hawaii.

Otherwise, it's Paradise -- but self-serving interest can make it a nightmare for everyone. Fortunately, we have a few unwavering voices of rationality and integrity in government -- while not the majority, have always been those rare voices of real leadership that eventually turn things around. So not to despair -- but to keep on meeting and talking with like-minded people who are not in denial over the obvious.

The good has always been the few -- but those are the ones who managed to change history, rather than the many who just went along with the injustices hoping to convince everybody that "everybody else is doing it -- so why not they?"


Mike Hu
3123 Esther Street
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808)-561-3645
humikhu@aol.com
www.freerepublic.com/~mikehu
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Districts 19-30 (Kaimuki-Kalihi): Tuesday, Feb. 20
McCoy Pavilion, Ala Moana Beach Park
4pm-9pm
Contact: Bobby Gocong
koloheboy50@hotmail.com
Anne Stevens 222-2964

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Friends – At this year’s State Convention we elect party officers. In preparation, you host a caucus for your respective district. To respond to a question typically asked at your caucus, please inform your district members that I am running for Party Chair.

I know many of you and have informed you of my willingness and desire to be our next chair. I am humbled by your positive response. I look forward to meeting those of you who I have not met. I will attend as many caucus meetings and county conventions as possible. My contact info is below to answer questions.

I encourage you to increase the number of attendees to your caucus and to assist delegates to attend the State Convention. Join us at the Maui Convention ready to have fun and to work. Please select your best grassroots operators for district and county leadership positions and begin the process to win your respective seat in 2008. Please ask your most committed leaders to step forward as officers on the state and county executive committees.

I appreciate your passing this information to your delegates. I seek your support and I look forward to personally asking you to support my candidacy. I ask now that you inform your caucus that I am running for Party Chair.

Thanks, Willes
Willes Lee
347-8126
WillesLee@aol.com

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Serve Dinner at the Next Step Kaka'ako Homeless Shelter

Summary: We have been providing dinner each month to the shelter so please join us for this great cause. Please call us to volunteer!
When: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Where: off Forest Avenue in Kaka'ako
Honolulu, HI
Who: Eliza Talbot
593-8180
eliza@gophawaii.com

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The Lincoln Day Dinner and Silent Auction

Summary:
You are cordially invited to join us at the 2007 Lincoln Day Dinner
at the Hilton Hawaiian Village - Coral Ballroom

Thursday, February 15, 2007
6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

A Benefit for the Hawaii Republican Party.
Silent Auction, Cocktails, and Dinner
Aloha Attire
For Reservations or to donate an item to the Silent Auction call 593-8180.

When: Thursday, February 15, 2007 5:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Where: The Hilton Hawaiian Village
HI
Who: Joanne Bretschneider
593-8180
Joanne@gophawaii.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: kessler.hawaii@hawaiiantel.net
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:15 AM
Subject: HD21/23 Meeting 1/24

Aloha all - And Happy New Year. Our next joint HD21 and 23 meeting will be held Wednesday, January 24, at GOP HQ, 725 Kapiolani. Meeting starts at 6PM. The agenda will include summarizing the election results and upcoming events, including Lincoln Day, district caucuses and the convention in May.

Hope to see you all there.

Bob Kessler
Chair, HD 23
Ph 922-6188

Beyond Government and Politics

If one monitors the mass media, one gets the impression that “government and politics,” is all that is happening in the world -- rather than that it is irrelevant for most people, as the declining poll numbers show at election time (as opposed to the constant polling of the few remaining who still make it a significant part of their lives to express an opinion at every chance they get).

But the most part of society has moved on -- since such opinions have become not only plentiful but oppressive. The mass media target still has a lot of easily manipulable people, but it is not likely to contain the most discerning members of society anymore -- and it is contact with that “intelligent life in the universe,” that is the meaning and purpose of our own intelligence. Those people have moved on to gaining most of their information through firsthand experiences -- rather than relying on the mediated event as interpreted by a “celebrity” journalist or an autocratic “teacher” -- who invariably is the limit to the understanding and even perception of the event.

The alternative is learning to read between the lines -- of what is not said, as well as what is said, which is the silence of the unknown. Often, there is much more content in what is unsaid than what is said -- for the discerning reader or listener. It has become an even greater art and talent than producing the (original) piece -- and never more so than in this age of interactive, collaborative writing, speaking and thinking that the new media makes possible.

The old mass media was always one way -- with those who controlled the media, as well as those who could afford to pay for the access -- in unilateral control. Some “bloggers” still try to maintain this control by moderating/editing/suppressing all feedback, in the old style editorial control -- as though the Internet simply made old style publications possible for everyone, rather than expanding the universe of possibilities, including how it could be done way better.

And thus we see human ingenuity and creativity explode as never witnessed and made possible before -- unlike the old style of battle of control for a limited resource. Once resources become very plentiful, than the strategy must shift from capturing it all, to discerning which is the best needle in the haystack -- because the best implies all the others, and can do what all the others cannot.

Government is usually not on this leading edge -- although there is no reason it can’t be, as it once was. Government leaders used to be visionaries of society, defining future society -- and the last thing they were interested in was their own job security, like every union worker is likely to be -- serving their own narrow self-interests. But usually what they value and are competing for, is not what the intelligent person values most highly.

That is invariably more food, clothing and shelter, ie., money, which are necessary for everyone up to a point, but beyond that, becomes the indiscriminate overconsumption that are visibly obvious in the contemporary problems of these times -- that “More” is not the solution.

The next step is not “More,” but “Better” -- and knowing the difference.

Keeping Everybody Down On the Plantation

It is amusing that the same editorialists who were writing long and hard arguments during the last election about how everybody “should know their place and stay in their place, and maybe one day they’ll get their proper chance,” are today writing odes on how everyone should "live their dreams."

The Martin Luther King Day is the inspiration for a lot of platitudes for people who have no idea what they are talking about -- but think they ought to make solemn pronouncements indicating the politically correct sentiments -- that everybody has the right to be the same, no matter what their skin color, or country of origin,” rather than the more meaningful and profound understanding that everybody has the right to be different, no matter what their skin color or country of origin -- which is the celebration of diversity.

There’s a huge difference in that distinction -- because the universal theme being observed, is that of subjugation and not skin tone, which makes it a very trivial matter. Once one makes something very trivial, then it is a very easy matter to make it arbitrary -- but seeing the significance of the matter, makes it impossible to trivialize. And if we are to observe and honor anything or anyone, surely we must seek deeper into its significance and not its trivial aspects forgotten the next day -- to do them really any honor.

So I think it is very important that those who think that rigid social hierarchies by which nobody in “inferior” positions should ever be allowed to challenge more “senior” (superior) authorities, should realize the hypocrisy and inconsistency in their views -- and try to capture the larger significance of these observances and reflections, rather than running these self-conscious odes to themselves as the highest authorities in the land on these matters that turns these days into just another excuse for self-indulgence and overconsumption.

The beginning of every year now, begins with this kind of ambivalence and confusion that loses the sense of national purpose very quickly with these confused and hazy pronouncements of what is important.

In the newspapers that are the record of the entrenched status quo, many think that national holidays is just one more day to abuse others about how they are not as noble as themselves -- who surely if they were President of the United States, would act differently -- rather than being chief editor at the embarrassment that has become the “mainstream media,” all prostrating and ingratiating themselves until the day they are the head luna, or master over all.

I don’t think these people quite get it.

Their abuse or tolerance of abuse to any other, including the president or the servant, is the template of intolerable and abusive behavior that continues to enslave the minds of those who would be kings. The observance of the day, is about this mentality to denigrate another (and every other), that they do daily, as the calling and defining expression of their lives here on earth that should rightly revile and repulse them -- as it does every other right-thinking citizen.

Life Beyond “The News”

If one reads the daily newspaper, one gets the impression that all people talk about is government, politics and sports -- rather than the 95% of what is real life now. The major reason for such a prominence in their coverage is that the government agencies send out constant press releases, so the reporters and editors don’t have to do much else but reprint them -- and since they are heavily-unionized, the ideal is to do nothing and get paid as much as possible for it.

Originality and creativity, will just make everybody else look bad -- so has to be suppressed as soon as it is detected. The hierarchy of the status quo, must be reaffirmed -- even if it leads to plagiarism in merely modifying what the original author said.

That is the bureaucracy of government and most large, well-established organizations that wish to entrench themselves as a permanent fixture of society. But other than government, they don’t last permanently -- and sometimes, even governments fall.

Such a revolution is already under way. It is the unrecorded revolution -- of people just running their own lives, by their own rules, by their own values -- and nothing can stop them. They can’t all be forced to wear a certain uniform and subscribe to the same information and communications technologies, the advertisers would like them to.

There will always be the few looking beyond -- to find the original and authentic, and not just “the news” that everyone mindlessly repeats -- and by repeating it, makes it seem true because of that consensus. Ideally, they’d be many gatekeepers checking along the way for validation -- rather than simply taking authority at face value, as was the problem of dysfunctional societies in which everybody merely followed orders and thought they were exonerated because they simply did what they were told.

The modern news industry works on that model -- that people accept what they are told because somebody has the seemingly proper credentials -- even if nothing else seems to add up or ring true with one’s personal experiences. It is enough that the head authority figure says that it is so -- and that takes precedence over one’s actual experiences and common sense.

That was the prevailing trend towards the end of the last century -- which has pretty much run its course at the beginning of this century and the start of an entirely new experience of life, along much more individual and personalized experiences as one’s actual reality (truth).

This is a very important shift -- in the understanding of reality. For many years in the 20th century, there was an increasing reliance on the generalized knowledge as the real -- even to the discredit of one’s actual experiences as the merely anecdotal -- or not credible. Thus people came to pride themselves on this book knowledge in preference to actual experience and empirical learning. One was actually warned not to attempt to learn anything on their own -- which is a real travesty and misunderstanding of the purpose of learning, education and knowledge.

The Problems are Not the Solution

One notices that many new arrivals to the Islands feel that everything is beautiful and life has no bounds -- but after a few years of living in the Islands, come to have a very negative attitude, that nothing can ever be done right, and everybody in government is self-serving or corrupt. So one wonders how it is that many people can undergo such a tremendous disaffection from their once high hopes and feelings about the promise of life.

Invariably, in an attempt to assimilate into the native culture and society, they begin to subscribe to the easiest sources of information and participation, which are the mass media, schools and universities that are world-infamous for their negativity and despair -- as a reflection of their own dashed ambitions and hopes.

Knowledgeable people just learn to turn these people off -- in the nation’s leading lowest participation rates. Using primitive psychological techniques, the only way the latter think to get their way is to browbeat everybody else into accepting their way -- as though there is no other.

But if we know nothing else today, it is that life as a generalization for all, does not exist, but is only limited by our awareness of the possible, and our willingness to adapt them into our own lives. It is not free -- but they are well worth it. All that is required, is that one knows what they are getting -- because not everybody possesses that appreciation and gratitude.

That is the one thing one doesn’t find in the popular culture -- because their cultural message is that there is never enough, no matter what and how much one has. That is the underlying message in the old world of information and communcations -- only for the purpose of discussing and legitimizing (reinforcing) age-old deficiencies and needs as the only way they can ever be.

There is no culture and language for the sharing of the new -- of creativity, ingenuity, prosperity and goodwill -- as the ordinary course of daily living. It is only one calamity and controversy after another -- as the daily course of the national life and identity -- that many are realizing, they can opt out of -- just by not tuning in to that negativity.

Somebody, somewhere, at any time, is doing something marvelous and wonderful that one won’t hear about -- and all that is left in old culture, is the negativity of all that doesn’t work. But rather than being mesemerized by that, addicted to that way of looking at life, intelligent life of the present times, finds those ways that do work -- for themselves, and in personally choosing those ways, manifest the reality of the experience to come for many more in society.

Those are the cultural heroes (leaders) of these times, rather than the old who merely hold ceremonial titles labeling themselves as such. These people have to at least find out what is happening in the world of ingenuity -- instead of demanding more funding for the continuation of problems that are obviously not the solution.

Understanding Conditioning(repeat) FOCUS (Channel 49, Honolulu, Hawaii) 1/2/2007 2:00:00 PM A revolutionary new way of looking at exercise. Environmental/Health