Aging in Hawaii (and Elsewhere too)

Anybody growing up in Hawaii knows that they already start hearing people rationalizing their bad (health) habits at 20 to "old age."

The effects of bad health habits begin to accumulate throughout their lives but can always be reversed (and eliminated) with good health practices -- at any time.  But one has to change their thinking first -- or they are just reinforcing the status quo, which is the very problem of culture in Hawaii -- to reinforce the "old ways" even if better ways are being discovered as the very reason for life and existence.

That is what "evolution" and "progress" is all about -- the better ways survive, and the many things that don't work, don't survive -- with good reason.  That has disastrous effects if one is conditioned to believed that they can't change or should never change -- because that is the way they are, and who they are -- because their whole conditioning and orientation in life, is merely to protect the status quo.

One has to be "discriminating" or discerning those differences that really matter and make a difference, instead of promoting that all discrimination is wrong, and should never be practiced.  Discrimination is not prejudice, but the very antidote to prejudice -- because it means to look into the facts, and not just continuing with what one believes -- no matter what the facts are.  And that is what it means to be prejudiced -- to have one's mind already made up and set for life -- despite what their senses are telling them -- that what they are doing, is killing themselves.

But that is the fate they accept, and the lives they live -- because that is the best they can hope for, since it is already "Paradise" -- no matter what they do.  But "doing," makes all the difference in their lives, and is the meaning of it, and the obvious result of that living.  It's a simple thing -- that people want to complicate and make very hard, instead of realizing, that is the easiest way to live -- without the health problems, including aging -- which is a sign that whatever one is doing, is not working, but another way might.  And that's what they have to find -- sometime in their lives before it is over -- a way that works, and nothing else is more important for them to do -- especially in "retirement," or getting older.

The quantum leap in thinking, is that it doesn't have to be what most people have been conditioned to think it has to be -- which doesn't work as they get older, because their primary purpose was to eliminate the competition, rather than optimize human functioning -- which is an entirely different matter altogether.  Previously in history, most people didn't live to old age -- being eliminated by wars, diseases, famine, catastrophes -- but now when most people do, what is the strategy for optimizing a lengthy life, has to be created anew -- and not just accepting the old paradigm of dying each day once one has survived the perilous childhood years.