Everything is Connected to Everything Else
Goethe said that Heaven was where everything was connected to everything else; and Hell was where nothing was connected to anything else.
Thus the first is a place in which there is a reason why things happen, and the second is where there is no reason for anything, things happen out of the blue, and everything is arbitrary, the rule of capriciousness rather than the rule of laws, principles and verifiable realities. Everything is so because somebody says so, and we are forbidden to inquire who gave them that power, or to consult anybody but themselves. That is often one’s first introduction to “physical education,” and what turns many off to such “conditioning” for the rest of their lives -- that world of bullying, intimidation and coercion.
It seems always to be about somebody demanding one should do something they do not feel entirely comfortable with and are convinced it is for their own good -- but that the authority figure demands that obedience or there will be a dire consequence, like dropping dead from a heart attack, a lightning bolt, etc. The threats are usually variations on the theme -- do this because it is good for your heart, etc.
So there is always this element of fear and coercion rather than an intelligent approach to what one is doing in the here and now -- and not some promise of a great reward a year from now, next year, some indefinite future, in the afterlife, etc. That kind of conditioning is not so much self-reinforcing and validating, but is rather, a deception, with no clear path of how something bad miraculously turns into everything good, just on the belief and promise that it does.
Such conditioning is dependent on authorities to reinforce that belief system -- rather than that one should eventually reach the objective of health, which is the freedom and independence from all such authority -- to be in control of one’s life, destiny and happiness. Much of our other conditioning (education) is done just a bit more cleverly and subtly, but is little more than this same coercion into accepting what is "right" as the truth from authorities -- rather than the alternative of discovering it for oneself, with the guidance and aid of those who do not substitute themselves for one’s own judgment -- which should remain supreme and sovereign -- over their own lives.
Only those who are confident and secure in that way, can feel connected to everything -- and not feel threatened by everything, which sets up a lifelong struggle against everything it does not recognize as an integral part of themselves. When there is no such separation, division, specialization, compartmentalization of consciousness and authority, there is no longer self-consciousness apart from the consciousness of the totality, which is reality.
The culture of specialization and compartmentalization reached its zenith in the 20th century, which produced the revolution of the 21st century as its response by which everything is integrated again by the dominant paradigm of digital information processing that requires only that one is either switched “on” or “off” -- and there is not all that obscurity and obtuseness, that marked knowledge of a previous era.
The superior conditioning strategy is to enhance the connectedness to all things and be able to draw on that strength as one’s own -- rather than in the old manner of defining oneself in constant struggle and competition against everything else -- even and especially time.
posted by Mike Hu @ 1:26 PM
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/271221_dementia23.html
Physical performance linked to future mental ability
By SUSAN PHINNEY
P-I REPORTER
Determining your chances of developing dementia or Alzheimer's disease could be as simple as timing your walk, testing the strength of the grip of your dominant hand and checking your balance when standing still.
That's what a Seattle-based research team determined during a six-year study of 2,288 people 65 and older.
Dr. Eric Larson, director of Group Health's Center for Health Studies, said the study started in 1994 and is ongoing, but the analysis of the first six years was published in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
When the study began, none of the participants showed signs of dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Six years later, 319 people had developed dementia, including 221 with Alzheimer's disease.
"Everyone had expected the earliest signs of dementia would be subtle cognitive changes," Larson said in an interview. "We were surprised to find that physical changes can precede declines in thinking."
The first indicators of future dementia appeared to be problems with walking and balance, according to the study. A weak handgrip may be a later sign of the development of dementia in older people.
In an earlier report in the Annals of Internal Medicine in January, some of the same researchers found that when people exercised regularly, they were less likely to develop dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. The cause of this association was not clear, though. This newer study suggests a possible pathway: that regular exercise might help stave off dementia by improving and maintaining physical conditioning, Group Health reported in a release.
"These results suggest that in aging there's a close link between the mind and body. Physical and mental performance may go hand in hand and anything you can do to improve one is likely to improve the other," he said.
In general, people who are less likely to develop dementia tend to be better educated and not to have genetic markers, Larson said. "But this study adjusted for those and focused only on physical performance compared with others in the study and what happened to them over six years."
Each person in the study was assessed every two years, or three times. Serial observations make it easier to detect and define dementia and Alzheimer's, Larson explained.
In the study, the first indicators of future dementia appeared to be problems with walking and balance. A weak handgrip could be a later sign of the development of dementia.
Dr. John Younger, who specializes in internal medicine and geriatrics at the Polyclinic, is a board member of the Western Washington Alzheimer's Association. He was not familiar with this study, but, "Alzheimer's disease or no, it's a good thing for all of us to stay as mobile, healthy and active as we can."
Li Wang, of the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System and Drs. James Bowen and Gerald van Belle of the University of Washington were co-authors with Larson. The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging.
One of the well known “problems” of people living longer is that while physically healthy, the connection to the brain and thus willful, voluntary physical functioning is impaired and is unresponsive. Well-conceived conditioning programs, strategies and technologies make a huge difference in facing these challenges -- and can actually enhance one’s capabilities beyond the old top of the line abilities.
The greatest gains are just in adopting the formidable new technologies -- such as the personal computer and cell phone, which many of the older people are resistant to, If memory is a problem, the personal computer and its tie-in to the Internet provides one superior memory and storage beyond the best of capacities in the past. All one has to be able to do is respond to the prompt. Cell phones allow one to program dates and times as well as provide communications in the event that one is lost, has an accident, or needs assistance.
Yet people will disdain these very practical and affordable solutions which may cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to correct after the fact -- and not solve. These solutions only have to save one’s life once in order for them to have proven their value. As many as possible should consider switching over to cooking exclusively with microwave ovens -- to eliminate the possibility of fires to virtually zero -- before they forget to turn off the stove that once.
On top of that, food designed for microwave cooking, have a higher assurance of standard quality. Each bag of frozen vegetables will taste like every other bag. Every bag of meatballs will taste like the previous. The standards of food processing are uniformly high -- reducing the possibility of food poisoning that even the most meticulous and diligent can be negligent.
All these are adjuncts to one’s life now that most people overlook, or take for granted. They don’t have to create it from scratch, or for themselves -- but are available just for the taking. But the habits of their previous conditionings die hard -- or not at all, which often takes them to their grave.
That’s why more than ever, there is tremendous survival value is being able to condition and recondition oneselves as often as possible and as new technologies and understandings becomes available -- which are happening at record pace and are largely limited by our ability to find them, and then integrate them into our lives. But we have the most powerful search tools ever available before that makes information and communications possible as never before.
A short time ago, it was said that the computer was the network; now, it can be said that the individual is the network -- as the computer is no longer regarded as apart from one’s self but is integral to one’s life -- and it’s more than just the machines; it allows us to see life in the big picture, as systems rather than only as isolated, fragmented parts -- in motion. So “dynamism” or movement, is the distinguishing quality of the contemporary state of the art perspective -- s opposed to the old one of “stasis,” “status,” and “statism” (institutionalism) that distinguished the prior. While the institutional or “official” mass media view is the one we learn about through the properly designated channels, real life is lived beyond that by the 95%.
One of my personal favorites for those who have trouble just getting to the bus stops, are the electric scooters with a seat -- that looks like the sporty version of that full-sized all-out wheelchairs for the disabled.
A lot of people fall into that category in which walking a block is so painful, difficult or prohibitive that they no longer go out into the world -- which is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. That isolation and alienation seals one's fate of never walking and living among fellow humans again.
Mass media is not an acceptable substitute for social interaction -- which is really what kills people off. I think what keeps people alive and growing is that they create an environment that stimulates them to grow -- and if not, they deteriorate and die. It's also a problem with animals in zoos.
People create their own environments, or reality. That is what a gym is -- just one of those environments. Not all are conducive to well-being. Some can actually create mental (physical)- illness. It's the understanding that is paramount.
The secret of exercise is that what works for 20 year olds, won't necessarily work for 70 year olds -- but what does work for 70 year olds, will work for anybody -- because one has discovered the overriding principle rather than discovered the exceptions.
That's the illusion in working with 20 year olds -- to discover the few with exceptional talent and ability. You can't extrapolate that into a meaningful fitness program to strengthen the least able -- whom the conventional method discards.
Otherwise, it would be easy to advise that if one wanted to live in top condition for a long time, all one had to do is run 5 miles a day for the rest of one's life -- and think that in prescribing that regimen, one knows the secret to health and well-being.
One in a hundred or a thousand might be able to maintain that program, but most cannot -- for one good reason or another. Therefore they are written off and doomed to ill-health since they don't want to get with the program. It should be obvious to sensible people that such a prescription conveys no understanding at all -- of anything worthwhile, yet they'll find another 20 year old exercise fanatic who swears by those methods. Like aerobics instructors, it's always a different 20 year old -- that they go through after the previous ones have burnt out or mysteriously disappeared trying to maintain their own wishful-thinking.
Most people don't hang around long enough to recognize the turnover -- or they're fascinated by each fresh face that thinks they've discovered the fountain of youth.
What is sad is to see people who were once very vibrant and lively, try to capture their youthful looks in an unvarying attractive expression -- that no long has the vibrancy of range in expression -- because it is the range of movement and expression itht is liveliness and vitality and not a fixed position of unvarying expression -- that is a popular conception that health is a state rather than the dynamism.
That dynamism is not about speed and power but about range -- particularly at joints, people seldom think to move, or think can be moved. The thinking is the limitation for that range of movement.
Physical movement requires a mental capacity -- while mental functioning in the conventional manner of thinking, can occur apart from any physical component (movement).
If the physical and mental functioning are linked so there cannot be one without the other, then there cannot be a mental decline without a corresponding physical one. And vice-versa -- if it is possible to ensure proper physical functioning, the brain is engaged and exercised as well.
So while one can, one wants to condition them to be inextricably linked in that manner.
Having spent time around both the most physically gifted and the most mentally gifted, what is common is for the physically oriented person to recgnize the value of being completely developed so that their mental acuity and agility matches (complements) their physical prowess, while the need for physical development is rarely recognized by the "intellectual" types.
Because of this imbalance, such people rarely achieve the formidability that complete, balanced growth can attain -- which is to say, the smartest people are likely to be physically developed as well but not vice-versa.
That fullness and completeness has long been recognized except for the short period in the last century in which people tended to specialize into incompletely developed, unbalanced people -- often typified by the dichotomy of the physical from the mental (intellectual).
That was not true throughout history. One can see the "ideal" throughout the art and perspectives of all cultures throughout all times. The 20th century was an aberration of the mindless assemblyline worker as the cultural ideal. That's why most of the people of the 20th century need to be reconditioned back onto the track of an integrated existence.
The fragmented approach is disintegrative in its very conception.
The dichotomy is not between the physical and mental personalities but between the completely developed persona and the incompletely developed personalities -- that are the fragmentations, divisions, partisans, arguments, injuries, diseases and conflicts -- who are the violence and injustices in the world.
The kind of "conditioning" practices that are popular among "intellectuals," are those that fragment the mental component from the physical, allowing them to perform the treadmill whle reading a magazine to distract them from the tedium of that activity. In this way, they learn to alienate themselves from what they are actually doing rather than using that activity to bring about the integration of mind and body. That predisposes the disfunction of mind from body -- as we see in the dementias.
And before then, other mental dysfunctions of cognitive dissonance -- losing touch with reality.
What you practice, you become very good at.
So the key is to understand what one is doing -- actually, and not the theory and explanation of why one is doing the opposite of what it would be sensible and obvious to do.
One of the great skills in an age of information/propaganda/entertainment overload, is the ability not to have one's attention fragmented, distracted, dissipated so that an individual has all the energies and faculties available to them when confronting any challenge.
But if one is not "fully there," obviously the response will be less than optimal -- and so the conditioning one wants, recognizing that anything is now possible, is to be able to command that focus, that totality that is the complete integration of mind and body, which is spirit. That is the inevitability of life in the 21st century -- if that option merely exists, along with all the dysfunctional ones of the past that many are undoubtedly trapped in -- by their "conditioning."
listen dumbass, I'm not trying to be mean,
in fact I'll throw out the most important thing you've wriiten so far:
http://geocities.com/mikhu.geo/2005.html
That said, I call out self-serving erudites who call out main steram media (yet haven't learned from their mistakes)
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