The Ability to Change

Fitness, ultimately, is the ability to respond to a challenge -- that may vary and be unpredictable -- and so that readiness, should include that ability to recognize, when and how the challenge is different, in order to make an entirely appropriate response. Running when one should be stopping, can be as ruinous and disastrous as doing nothing when the situation absolutely calls for it. Usually, those people who cannot distinguish the difference or appropriate response, do not stay around longer and are weeded out of the gene pool -- as the least fit by those realities.

But in a more civilized time and compassionate societies, many simply bump along endlessly throughout their brutal lives, being battered and abused by all that is happening in life and never really feeling as though they are really “in the game.” Occasionally they might see one come along who seems to stand out from the crowd, and mistakenly think that distinction is due to their weakness and unfitness, rather than that they may be the unquestioned leader of the pack that can stand alone and apart from the safety of the herd. So one of the mistakes these “unfit” individuals make is to attack the strongest of the herd, and after quickly being routed, every other member of that group, recognizes the one who has no idea of what is going on -- and is appropriately ignored.

The leader emerges because (s)he has superior faculties of discernment -- to make the right discriminations -- before every other member of the group is aware of them, but they have at least learned which other individuals to cue on for their survival, and beyond that, success in life. While these metaphors can easily be seen and noted in subhuman animal populations, they are at work in human societies as well, because they are the time-proven winning strategies that are perpetuated by replication, imitation and further refinement in that direction.

There may also come a time when conditions change so that those at the head of the pack, find themselves at the back, or moving in precisely the wrong direction -- if they don’t have the fortunate right instincts for change, at the right moment.

And that is the purpose of conditioning -- not just to be successful and proficient in one unvarying and untiring manner, but also to be alert to take in new information that may tell them that something wholly different may be more appropriate. Whatever that response might require, it will still have to fall within the range of one’s repertoire for responses -- of which the whole range and gamut is from complete relaxation to complete effort, rather than just the repetition of any limited part of it, which is what most popular conditioning practices are.

One can be certain in a long and eventful life with any significance and purpose, that there will be many challenges and changes because of that success -- so that the conditioning only to be one unvarying way forever as the best strategy of doing anything, has relatively little usefulness. The measure of one’s successful conditioning programming (education), is the significant movement and change of state, that creates a readiness to recognize the opportunities for action at any present time -- rather than mindlessly repeating, “Life (and history), only repeats itself,” until one perishes.