The Problem of Hawaii

One of the massive failures of Hawaiian society and culture, is always "hiring down" -- and only recruiting people who are less competent than they are, so they can never be a threat to take "their job," and so we see the reign of incompetent people at every level until they rise to the highest offices in Hawaii.

And so when those leaders die, there is always a tremendous vacuum and crisis, because nobody can replace the present holder of that office, who has ensured that nobody can possibly replace them -- making it possible for them to be their own replacement after they retire so they can double- and triple dip on the Hawaii taxpayers even as they do nothing.

And so the potholes become sinkholes -- and the children need evermore education BECAUSE of the education they are getting, and the only way to find out what is wrong, is to hire themselves as consultants to tell themselves why the education system is not working to produce the competent and able leaders Hawaii desperately needs.

Instead, the only people who are ever qualified to hold a high office in public service, are sycophants and obedient followers who will never never question and challenge authority and that status quo -- that ensures that everyone on down, is less capable than everyone above them.

The culture and society needs to change to recruit the best and the brightest from whatever party or state they come from, and not just those who have proven their loyalty by always kissing okole, and do nothing else to get ahead -- as the only way it has always been done.  Then there will be hope for the people, and things can improve -- for a change.

Your Health Is YOUR Job

Because of the excessive specialization and fragmentation of jobs and roles in societies even of the recent past, many people don't think they have a job and/or responsibility unless they have the specific job title, and pay that goes along with it.

That has disastrous consequences when such people "retire" -- and can take on any job they are willing to pay themselves.  They are not in the habit of "paying" for anything themselves -- and are only accustomed to think of "being paid" -- at which they are willing to do anything, but if they have to decide what to pay themselves -- will choose nothing, or as little as possible.

That is the damage in thinking of oneself as less than the whole of society -- or as individuals, which means the indivisible whole.  Such people are always fighting with themselves, struggling with themselves in everything they do -- and even think it highly enlightened and ennobled of themselves, if they only "compete" against themselves -- and so undermine and sabotage themselves all their lives, as the only thing they know what to do.

So when one suggests that they must look after their own health, their immediate knee-jerk response is, "Who for?"  While it is nice to think of one's spouse or kids, it should be obvious that one must attain their greatest health so that they can perform and do their best at whatever they do -- and not that, they should sacrifice their health in the doing of anything, including suffering serious injury or death.  An intelligent person is always weighing the risks against the rewards, in determining what is the best course of action.  The ultimate price, may be his life, or less dramatically, their health thereafter.

That consideration must be foremost in every living thing -- which is the real meaning of "fitness," and not that a brief moment of glory, justified a lifetime of pain and disability.  One is not on earth, to "sacrifice" for everyone else -- and be the pawns and entertainment for those who feel others exist for that exclusive reason.  Everyone has a right to live their own lives -- as best they can -- and not that it is true only for a rare few living at the top of the pecking order.

One's health is the quality of their existence -- rich or poor, tall or short, gifted or not.  Their health is their best life.  And so for many not to regard it as their greatest asset and treasure in life, means nothing else will have greater worth -- if they abuse their own health and bodies in such obvious ways.  They really don't care enough about themselves -- to care about anything else more.  It can only be less.

That -- more than anything else, is the great challenge of these times, of people having to learn to value their own health as their greatest possession -- and make the most out of it, and not regard it as a hopeless cause, and a great inconvenience.  That is truly their whole purpose and meaning for being -- to be the best they can be.  That is not something separate and apart from everything else they do -- and then all their efforts are contributing to everything they do, and not canceling out everything else they do -- as is most obvious in the tortured writing of many whose every sentence is a contradiction and denial of everything else they've said previously.

So one wonders, what is the point -- of anything they do, but to oppose themselves and negate any effort they make -- no matter how hard and valiant?  That is a lot of people's conditioning strategy -- to simply oppose themselves, as though that was ever an intelligent thing to do.  But one can spin their wheels endlessly in that manner -- and of course, have nothing to show for it -- but to "grow another day older, and deeper in debt."

Yet many people still live their lives that way -- enshrined and encouraged in song and literature -- as their conditioning (indoctrination), that that is what life is all about -- from time immemorial, to at least their generation also.  But if that is the problem of that age, what is the point in carrying on that tradition -- instead of ending it, by creating another path.  What is there to be lost but that bondage to the past -- that merely nullifies their existence?

So when one wonders, what will this generation of retiring Baby Boomers do? -- the answer should be obvious, that from Day One of Retirement, their only job is to actualize the greatest health they've ever manifested and thought possible for themselves -- as the first step of any journey to anywhere, and without that preparation, they simply won't be up to any task -- and will truly have lived their lives in vain, never finding out what that is -- when their very being, is their doing.

We All Must Become Bodybuilders

The distinguishing characteristic of aging and deterioration, is muscular atrophy or shrinkage -- obviously visible as sagging and wrinkled skin -- for which there is no dynamic, underlying support -- of the musculature.  That is less obvious in the obese -- because of the mass that supports the skin, just as artifices like botox do in filling out the spots that have basically collapsed because there is no underlying supporting structure -- as the muscles are designed for.

Thus one can tell right off, whether that specimen is "robust" -- or in declining health, which is the major cue in life as to a prospect's chances of success or failure, which in the successful and healthy, determines the course of their lives.  They don't make bad choices, but instead, make better and better choices -- which makes the quality of their lives improve with age, rather than revealing the accumulative effects of a life of bad choices.

First we have to acknowledge, that the quality of our lives is a choice -- and not just random fate, so that all choices result in the same outcome, so it is futile to hope to do better.  Many people try to pass off that despair as the wisdom of being older -- and so go through the motions of doing something productive and meaningful, while having no idea of what they are doing, much less how they could be doing it better.

For such people, nothing really and actually makes a difference, but they go along unquestioningly -- because one can't be wrong doing what everybody else is doing -- even if it is obviously and categorically not working.  Their sole criteria of "right," is what everybody else is doing/thinking, regardless of whether it makes no difference.  It is the end-all and be-all, just to do what everybody else does -- including the complaining of the futility of their activities and lives, because that is what everybody else does.

But assuredly, some things do make a difference -- and the reason there are differences, and not that an "enlightened" society must now ban all differences -- and agree that everything must be the same.  Obviously, that is a giant step backwards for individuals as well as civilizations -- and human evolution.  The thrust of evolution and progress, is that we become more discriminating -- and not less -- to the ultimate achievement that we cannot distinguish any differences in anything.  The supreme achievement of life, is to be able to distinguish differences (qualities) that no other person can distinguish as well -- or even realizes there can be.

That obvious difference, is whether one is getting better, or worse -- and determining what behaviors and activities result in those conditions -- in all the things we do, to produce the preferred outcomes that enhance our lives and prospects for the future -- all the days of our lives.  It doesn't make much sense, for life to get unrelentingly worse each day, all the rest of our lives -- until death is a welcome release, and then lament that end.  Better one should go suddenly at the peak of their powers -- especially at a hundred.  That alone would be a life extraordinarily lived.

But the present pattern, is that one peaks fairly early in life (40), and then may spend half as much in decline -- claiming that is the normal and healthy, and the only thing that can be expected, as the way life is -- despite the fact that life was not always so long, and kind.  Life before, was "brutal, nasty and short," and people were conditioned to such lives -- but now, that is not the only way it can be.

But a better life doesn't just happen.  It happens because people deliberately make it happen -- in all that they do, as the organizing principle of their lives.  For the first 40 years of one's life, it is not so  important to be a bodybuilder, one as one ages, it is increasingly important and obvious that that is what one must do -- but is presently, when most people stop and abandon all hopes of becoming one, because the present regimen and conditioning ideas, fail to work -- and prove futile and discouraging.  That is not inherently the case.  It is simply that the popular notions are wrong -- and fail at those times they must succeed -- that really matter.

And that is the major determinant of the quality of life in that latter half of one's life -- that makes those years golden, rather than the unrelenting torment it has become for those who no longer care -- about anything anymore -- or can tell the difference.