In Order to Improve, One has to Change

Real change is the hardest thing to see -- because everything changes rather than that everything stays the same, while only one thing changes. That is not the nature and hallmark of real change -- which is so pervasive that everything has to change in relationship to that one thing that really changed -- everything.

Change that is shallow and superficial, changes nothing else, and so everything stays the same, except that a few people may make a little bit more money, by ensuring that everything stays the same.

That is the problem with a lot of our problems -- that they stay the same, rather than disappearing and eliminating itself as the solution for a problem that no longer exists. That is the problem in professionalizing and institutionalizing problems that would otherwise be temporary conditions; we make it a permanent condition so that a self-designated few, can have lifetime job security.

That is the problem of the poor and those who need help: We may perpetuate the problems, to ensure more professionals and higher pay for those who provide those “services” (solutions) -- rather than eliminate both the problem (and the solution.)

One of the most familiar, is the system of education -- that quite predictably, requires more education -- not because there are more uneducated, but because the education produces a requirement for even more education -- in an escalating spiral. Obviously then, we have to create a more ignorant and inadequate citizen -- who “needs” education and those to tell them what to think, rather than that they are fully capable of thinking for themselves, even at a very early age. Those in fact, who come into schools too well prepared, have to be convinced that everything they’ve learned before, has been rendered useless because of a totally different “grading” system.

That, apparently, is the only thing that has changed -- and everything else has stayed the same, including one’s bewilderment at a world of such arbitrary judgment and rules. For unfortunately many students, that’s what education largely means to them -- and not any universal practical mastery of the workings of the world. Instead, they come to regard the arbitrary abuse of authority as the education one has to get “used to” -- as though that was the best and only preparation for a better life -- or a life at all, in more barbaric times and societies.

Many growing up in Hawaii suspect nothing else is possible -- that not only are there no other ways for doing things, but that it is the ONLY way it can ever be done! Whenever there is talk about improvement and perfect societies, it is always of some long ago past -- from which we have changed, and so change is the ultimate evil and cause of all our problems. With that kind of conditioning (education), it is no wonder that the desire for real change and improvement, is considered the great transgression -- and the only “changes” allowed, is MORE pay and jobs for doing the same things that make these problems worse each year.