Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Ensuring Universal Participation

It seems strange that most plans to achieve “universal” participation, take an exclusionary approach rather than an inclusionary one. That is, by what definition and standards can we already include everybody -- rather than requiring them to meet certain (usually prohibitive) standards in order for them to meet our requirements for “compliance?”

If one wanted to ensure compliance, one would set the inclusionary standard to where it is impossible not to meet -- rather than ensuring that virtually everyone will drop out, some sooner than later, while the vast majority, will not have gotten aboard even once. That’s what happens when one has social engineering brought about by (physical education) teachers. They manage to turn a “slam-dunk” into 6 points going the other way.

That would explain that instead of populations becoming more fit and healthy in the aggregate, they are becoming less so -- because the capacity for deterioration vastly outstrips the actual gains in improvement by a wider margin -- because of the marvels that allow life to persist to even lower levels than was ever possible before.

So while the top tier is undoubtedly improving, the greater variance from the norm is that the forms in poor condition, are becoming even more dramatic. So even as the average increases, the distance from a higher average to the most prolific, exhibits much less obvious difference, than the average does to the person in the worst condition that can be maintained by modern medical technology. That would stand to reason -- except those in these advanced states of deterioration are seldom visible, except to the health care professionals.

In fact, it may be that for those in the poorest condition, their entire lives are consumed with trips to the therapeutic and diagnostic facilities -- and worse, trips by the therapists to the patient’s site of incapacitation. That’s how bad it can get. But it is not as bad as it has to be.

The more I think about the requirements for being in the condition one wants to be in, which is presumably the best condition one can be in, the more I’m convinced that the chief requirement is that the mind be in that condition of “mindfulness.” That is the first requirement for being on the path to universally accessible optimal well-being.

If that can be achieved for even one minute daily, it would have a transformative effect on one’s body, as well as every other aspect of one’s life. It would be the one moment in which everything in one’s body and life, is “in-synch,” “at one,” “together.”

Admittedly, the distractions, diversions and subterfuges are many -- if not unlimited. However, if one has even a moment each day of this total awareness of being, it is enough to nullify the deleterious effects of contemporary toxicity. Without it, one never catches up to that moment, for a minute daily at least, in which one doesn’t feel that he is hopelessly behind and discombobulated -- never to be “put together” again.

2 Comments:

At March 01, 2007 1:17 PM, Blogger Mike Hu said...

For many decades until recently, the chief function of "academically-driven" social organization, has been the fragmenting of knowledge and experience into infinitively many different categories and departments -- so that were many ladders for career advancement -- rather than the production of a few true geniuses of any time, who simplify and integrate everything into the essential concepts -- such as we live as the "digital age" now -- in which learning anything is the same as learning any other thing because they all go through the processing paradigm of reduction to On-off switches (discriminations).

The key concept is that all information can be represented as a condition of being "On" or "Off," which in the human body, is being either maximally contracted, or maximally relaxed. Yet from that basic simplicity and understanding, the variations of human behavior and performance are infinite.

In the human body, the great regulator and reminder of this essential life function is the heart -- which is the only muscle that unfailingly must operate in this one way -- of being totally contracted and totally relaxed -- to operate most efficiently as a pump, its essential function and task.

All the muscles in the body have a voluntary component and are less specialized -- which is what gives humans their uniqueness. That's why some people throw the shotput while others pole-vault -- yet are the same species, but even to the least discriminating observers, are doing what they are uniquely suited for.

Even in activities that are relatively similar, there is no mistaking the champion sprinter for the champion marathoner. One is built for speed and power, while the other is built for speed and endurance.

One is not better off by knowing superficially about the infinitely many things, as they are knowing about one thing well -- which serves as a foundation for every subsequent learning rather than that one's whole cosmology (understanding of the world), is built on a house of cards and mirrors everyone merely agrees not to blow down.

 
At March 03, 2007 2:50 PM, Blogger Mike Hu said...

The simple fact of the matter is that for those considering what activities to do to "get in shape," the art of bodybuilding is the most efficient -- that is, training the muscles to be in shape -- and NOT to run, jump, or any number of other activities just to burn calories.

The work can be very efficient -- consisting of movements to immediately and instantaneously shape the body into whatever condition it wants to be in, largely because it has an idea of the shape it can be in. It's much like the work of an artist, or a musician, or any workman; he has to have a clear idea of what effect he wishes to accomplish -- rather than just thinking that if he works hard and long enough, something wonderful will manifest.

Most people don't begin with that realization -- and are instead convinced that conditioning oneself to be in shape, requires all those things their teachers and trainers convince them is true because it is repeated by everybody else -- without anybody testing the validity of those statements.

Muscles look the way they do because they are directed to be in that shape -- or not directed to be in any pleasing shape at all. But any muscle has the immediate capacity to respond in that manner; it just doesn't know how -- because that hasn't been conditioned into its programming.

As these people are "working out," it is not the calories burned and the sweat produced that is directly meaningful -- but the actual conditioning of the muscle to assume shapes because of changes in body positioning.

Anybody can show an immediate improvement in shape and conditioning -- if they are just taught how to do it, which is not in the constellation of the vocabulary of people vested in longterm training contracts.

Most of the exercises prescribed to do as a fitness and conditioning workout, do not attain the possibilities of full muscle contraction and relaxation that exhibit this dramatic change -- because traditional physical education has not even reached that point of simple observation, and understanding of direct cause and effect.

 

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