Speaking of Change

My life is very different from what it was a week ago -- and in fact, only 24 hours ago, when I completed the filing of nomination papers to run for the Representative of District 21 (Waikiki-Kapahulu) of the Hawaii House of Representatives. I pulled (obtained) the nomination papers only a previous 24 hours before filing it -- after exhausting all the other possibilities over the last two years as Republican district chair.

People in the neighborhood were just turned off to political participation, wanting very little to do with it -- which is really the greatest indictment against the present status quo. That is what I noticed about all the political forums -- and even many other kinds, that seemed to think that Robert’s Rules of Order, facilitates communications and decision-making -- rather than prevents it. Those rules are essentially about maintaining the order of the status quo -- by not being able to talk about those things we should be talking about, and questioning authority.

The field of exercise and conditioning is probably most people’s earliest recollection of the experience in their lives in which they were forced to do things because somebody else was bigger, stronger and claimed to know more than they -- as the justification for their unchallenged right to tell everybody else what to do. Those are the roots of physical education pedagogy (and less obviously, all other education) -- now called by fancy names and designating themselves with fancy titles, outrageous salaries and inviolable tenure. But everybody intimately involved with sport, athletics and performance knows, it doesn’t matter how many certifications, licenses, degrees and belts one has; all that matters is what one does, and most importantly, how one does it.

World champions don’t do more; they actually do less -- because they have perfected the economy and efficiency of motion (movement). That is why the current popular notion of exercise to burn (waste) the most time and energy, doesn’t make one the world champion, or look like one. That is what is striking about seeing a master in any field -- the absence of any wasted motion. In writing, all words that are unnecessary, are omitted. “Better” is not simply more of that which is bad and incompetent. That doesn’t make one more fit for anything worthwhile and productive.

If anything, one merely conditions themselves to do what somebody else tells them to do unquestioningly -- because the other supposedly knows better. And that should always be questioned, particularly since one has virtually the same access to information as most researchers now, and maybe even more since one as a general consumer, is free to peruse all the information rather than just the “approved” sources. Paradigms fall and are replaced by others -- because all the “experts” were wrong, because they largely went along with what the agreed upon head expert said was true, and they were conditioned not to question that authority.

Challenging authority has always been an integral part of my character make-up -- on some deeply fundamental level. As I see things done, I instinctively wonder, is that the only way it can be done? Much of bad education (conditioning) is this thinking that there is only one way to do things, one way to see things -- after the self-chosen experts have determined that “consensus.” They have effectively chosen that there should be no further questioning and challenges to the authority -- when really, the whole beauty, authority and authenticity of sport and performance, is always the challenge to the established order.

The master has to prove anew that he is still the master -- and not just riding his reputation as an entitlement until the day he dies. Hopefully before then, he has chosen to retire at the time and circumstance of their own choosing -- and even identified a worthy successor -- to take that teaching on to the next level of evolution. Wisdom is not meant to be merely worshipped, repeated and ritualized -- but improved; that is wisdom.

For the purpose of giving greater focus to the study and art of campaigning, I will be writing mainly on my campaign blog http://repmikehu.blogspot.com/ , until the elections are over in November -- and then who knows what thereafter. I’m not thinking beyond that; in fact, if the truth be known, I don’t think too far beyond the next 24 hours. That allows me to be more fully there -- in that moment. In that moment, the past, present, and future converge into reality -- and that is what makes a difference.

As intense a period as it may be, it is still only about 100 days -- with a definitive conclusion, until we can all collapse across the finish line at the same time. But that’s what conditioning and fitness is all about -- the real purposes we put all those preparations and practice to use at. I wouldn’t have foreseen this present development a year ago when I began this, my first blog, as prelude to my third as the definitive campaign blog tool, I will undoubtedly make of it. That’s just my style.

I’m not creating newspapers; newspapers are creating blogs -- and so are all the old media. Political campaigns have become very costly -- done in the traditional manner -- much of which I don’t think is very cost-effective. Everyone guffaws at my suggestion of “Mike Hu’s homemade campaign,” to which I reply, “Everybody is authorized and approved to run my campaign the way they want to -- and I’m not stopping them, because I want it to be the People’s Campaign.”

Of the 5,000 votes I need to win -- all I need to contact are 2,500, who can convince one other. If they are very influential and can convince two others, my effectiveness has to be with 1,250 (Not quite but for imagery purposes). So the quality of those contacts have to be enhanced to the extent that it motivates another besides themselves. That is the magic of high-impact communications -- rather than words like so many others one immediately recognizes to toss into the waste receptacle as having no meaning but only well-polished form.

Getting people to act on their own initiative and confidence, is the ultimate objective of every teaching.

Fitness is the Ability to Change

Beyond all the arbitrary measurements that attempt to justify and rationalize what many do not feel comfortable doing, is the very simple, universal realization by everyone in any walk of life, that in order to change anything, one has to do something -- or not do it. That is the powerful relationship of cause and effect -- one thing directly related to another, obviously, self-evidently -- of which the most obvious example is the movements of our own body.

In modern times though, there has become a disconnect of this action from thought -- so that many people think that all that is necessary to accomplish anything anymore, is simply to wish and hope that it happens, while doing nothing to make it happen, and in fact, even making it more improbable that it will happen, by their actions. And so they are convinced even more, that thought and action, have no relationship, no common bond, but are separate and apart from one another.

That kind of worldview does not end there but proceeds to disconnect every other event and thing from every other -- in the thinking that nothing is related to any other thing, and that there are not universal, simple principles at work. One looks for the common thread between all things -- and the other looks for the generalization about only those things in that category, as though they were not subject to even higher principles.

The level of understanding of the highest common principle, is what separates those who are effective in their actions from those who are less so -- as for example, a person who realizes that the principle of gravity applies to all things -- and not just the ball. The latter individual, would then have to learn the behavior of every little thing as many different things to know and memorize, rather than the individual who recognizes the general principle (pattern) governing all.

That kind of understanding is much more efficient, allowing one to accomplish many things at once, instead of just one thing at a time, and always running out of time to do all the things they have to do separately and apart from everything else they do. Such people, are predictably always “busy,” and think that is an indication of their importance and worth. No matter how much they do (have done), they fall further behind every time one subsequently meets them for an update on their status.

Included in such reports, is the sensation that the work is only just beginning, rather than the work is practically over, riding the momentum of the past previous actions -- instead of the dread of starting all over, from nothing each time.

In the early days of exercise instruction, what was taught was the specific action of each muscle as a unique movement that had to be mastered. The value of focusing on the heart action was not that circulation was only effected by the heart action -- but the much larger principle that the very simple action of the heart in only contracting fully and completely each time alternated by the full and complete relaxation, is the ability of all muscles to contribute to the beneficial circulatory effect in this very direct and powerful manner.

Creating a Life

Everything a person does, creates their life; there is nothing else -- but neither is that all there is. It depends on what one makes of it. So the whole notion that exercise and conditioning should be done to burn off excess consumption -- is a very damaging perspective of life and its meaning and purpose -- trivializing all activity to this gross measurement. There is no difference whether that energy expended builds a house or a community --or destroys it; by that standard, it makes no difference -- and that is why people create a bad life or a good life for themselves -- if they can tell the difference.

So the first thing a person making choices will have to be aware of is the different choices and their implications -- and not simply, one view of reality and a “choice” to either get with the program, or suffer the consequences! Up to the beginning of this century, that was still what most people regarded as having a choice -- limited to what the “authority” decided was the only choice everybody ought to have -- rather than a choice of all the possibilities.

Those warnings are very familiar: “Do not attempt to alter and modify your diet without consulting with a registered dietitian.” “Do not attempt to alter or modify one’s appearance without first consulting with a licensed extreme makeover consultant, “ etc. “If you did not read it in the New York Times (local newspaper), it did not happen.” “Trust us, we are the only thing going on.”

Thus information of the past, was more about control, than freedom -- and freedom is always this challenge to the status quo of “enforced” limited choices. Nobody gives up control without a battle, however, the smart ones can tell which way the winds are blowing, and prepare themselves to ride the wave of those emerging and unfolding developments.

When one encounters it, there is an unmistakable clarity, vitality, and authenticity as though it were life itself -- and not just dead words, no longer invoking memories, images, meaning and experience. There is a language dying, and a language being born, as we speak it. One is a living language, the language of the living -- while the other is a dead language, only of things that happened -- long ago. The last hurrah of this latter was the tyrannical expressions forced upon all by the Associated Press or academic style of transmitting the previously known -- to those who hadn’t heard it yet.

The new language is the present exploration of the unknown -- which past knowledge has feared to tread. In fact, past knowledge was largely the prohibition about finding out -- other than what one was told to believe, by the self-appointed experts. Rather than these people being terrifying and impressive sorts, they were more likely to be highly insecure, uncertain people who bullied and intimidated anybody they thought was vulnerable to such manipulations and deceptions -- and were in turn bullied and intimidated by others who thought they were their logical prey, ad infinitum.

These masses of the uninformed, disappeared with ready access to information -- and especially to alternative sources. There is no defense -- for the unprecedented.

The Conservation of Energy (Valuing One’s Own Efforts)

One of the great principles governing life and the universe, is the need for the conservation of energy -- rather than in thinking that energy is unlimited and cheap, if not free. In this way, people have been taught to value their own efforts as nothing -- if nobody else pays them for that effort, and so they become conditioned to the thinking that what somebody else pays them for it, is its real value -- rather than what they themselves value it.

In the past, it was mostly the artists of various callings who thought otherwise -- and often, many never received the validation they deserved until after they were dead -- too late to honor their valiant efforts on the behalf of humanity. That still happens today -- that we do not honor the living, while they live, and think that it can be rectified, in honoring the dead -- when it is too late, to do them any good.

Often in the news, people are hounded endlessly until a few are driven into distraction, madness, or even death -- for that torment to end, mercifully. That is the other extreme of giving too much or too little attention -- and almost never the proper and appropriate attention to any and all efforts. That neglect and indifference, shows up in one’s appearance -- as part of one’s health. Obviously if a person doesn’t care and can’t tell the difference in being one way or another -- that randomness and arbitrariness will be conveyed as their essential nature -- the tendency for order to deteriorate utterly to randomness, chaos, death, entropy.

So while the general rule of the universe is this movement towards randomness and increasing disorder, life is the notable and remarkable exception. Life creates and predisposes increasingly greater order and organization -- as its organizing principle. This is a very critical misunderstanding of many who have a fashionably contemporary but shallow understanding of reality and all it entails. The methodology of study presumes randomness and looks for confirmation of it -- while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that there is intelligence at work.

It is a tremendous flaw in the study of human behavior -- because such a model of understanding, must presume that that which is studied and observed, has no awareness of what is being studied -- instead that, it might even be more important, to understand that awareness. In 1988, I named such a study, “Understanding Conditioning.”

Just like scientists studying the movements of the atom in the early 20th century came to realize that what they were observing was their own limits of observation, perception and understanding -- that essential failure in understanding, limits the success of most human behaviors and activities, outside of the laboratory conditions of most of life. Rather than in establishing laboratories in which to study behaviors, it is vitally important to understand them in action as the only reality because what one thinks he may be studying in the laboratory, may not be what is happening in the actuality.

Those studies may actually be just a waste of time and energy -- if there is no awareness of what one is doing.

The Freedom to Be

It’s appropriate in observing Independence Day, that we recognize that the ultimate expression of who we are, is the fulfillment of freedom and independence -- that we create the life we want to live, by living it -- and not just expressing noble but empty sentiments, while living the mindless repetition, drudgery, and futility of our daily lives. Then, one’s being is one’s doing -- and there is no separation, division, conflict -- between the person one is, and the person one wishes to be.

The real value of going to a gym periodically is not that one gets a superior workout only from their apparatus or instruction, but that occasionally, one runs into the various personalities with these huge missions in life -- to become the World’s Strongest Man, Miss America, Mr. Universe, etc., with surprising regularity.

Not everyone has that kind of vision, drive, determination -- to want to become the best, or at least become the best they can be. Most people are just content to settle for their dreams apart from the reality of their daily existence -- and so television and all the delusions and images of inconsequential success, are their entertainment, their aspiration -- the approbation of others, rather than their own inner quest for actualization. That is the reality that matters, and is meaningful to everyone, no matter what the scores indicate.

The success is the being and doing -- that makes one who they are. The prizes are incidental to those quests -- and only an unfortunate, tragic few, never learn that significance but pound the treadmill all their lives in their vain hopes that just one more step validates all their futility, and the meaninglessness of their existence.

As I talk to the many people involved in all kinds of vision quests, it becomes an emerging dominant theme among the already successful -- increasingly willing to step up to this next level of challenge formerly reserved only for the great gurus and masters of life. When societies achieve critical mass, behaviors not witnessed before begin to manifest, different from the random observed in isolation -- because the mass behavior, influences all behavior.

That is a very important concept in the study of human behavior and outcomes -- that the mass predisposes the individual -- which is what we call society, culture, the environment, etc. Any action is not taking place in a vacuum, under test tube conditions -- but in a context, an implicate or implicit order.

Most people don’t have to see the light actually turn red or green before they stop or go; they can read it from all the behaviors of everybody else around them. In fact, when the light turns green, one doesn’t just go -- but waits for the appropriate behavior from the others as a more important cue. Those who insisted that the light was green as their right to proceed, have been splattered on many windshields.

That is the importance and significance of living in a free society -- that most, unfortunately, do not exercise enough. Instead, many think freedom and liberty is just their right to tell everybody else what to do -- but they themselves, don’t need to do anything.