Ideas To Consider

Several Concepts to Consider, Accept or Reject on Your Road Down Your Life of Autonomy

Americans have become very accustomed to a life of monitoring, licensing, obedience to mandates, and obligations to fulfill in order to be a respected and useful member of the citizenry. The experts have told us they know what is best, and we believed them. The cracks in the foundation of life in the USA expose glimpses of a different reality.

The fallibility of the experts is quite apparent. Going along to get along hasn’t worked so well for many everyday people.

The U. S. Constitution is in place to allow for the self-determination of the average person. This document that sets out the guidelines for the governance of the U. S. A. is still in place and is a great source from which to draw.

The Spirit of the Constitution seems to imply the thoughtful and autonomous action of the responsible individual citizen. The new modal of life in the U. S., of a few experts developing the rules for the culture, and the majority sheepishly acquiescing, is not drawn from our historical sources..

We would like to offer a few topics that impact modern life. We would respectfully like to offer a counter-thought to each topic for you to consider, accept, or reject; or to modify using your own viewpoint.

*Health Care -- Huge sums of money must be channeled into the health care system in order to keep Americans healthy.

--We may better put more effort into staying healthy rather than regaining health after disease has set in. Disease can occur intrinsically, but more often than not disease is due to life-style choices and environmental degradation. If the experts were truly more interested in vibrant health of individuals, the emphasis would be on toxins in the environment, pollution, stressful lifestyles, and poor life-choices.

*Hormone Replacement Therapy -- Women have been told, since the 1960’s, that upon approaching menopause, hormone replacement therapy would keep them young. For whom were the women to be kept young? How fast did the women want to keep dancing? Why did women allow M. D.’s to dictate their personal lives?

--Hormone Replacement Therapy fell out of favor by M. D.’s. The reason seemed to be a link between breast cancer, and the hormones. After M. D.’s stopped prescribing the hormone replacement therapy, the rate of breast cancer among women dropped precipitately. Where are the other areas of health, that can be improved, by living more naturally and less dependently on artificial drugs? Why haven’t the experts called for a simple clean-up of the environment, that will most certainly result in fewer diseases and better health?

*Education -- Again, our cost of education is increasing at a rate that far outpaces inflation. Individuals meekly buy into the suggestions that huge sums of money must be transferred to the educational system in order that the individual will have the opportunity to compete in the workforce.

--The transfer of huge sums of money to the educational system enriches the entrenched members of that society. If the same money could be used to set up in a business, or to follow a course of education outside of the entrenched educational system, the same result of respectable self-support may result for the self-determined individual.

*Competition -- Competition is used as a weapon among employees, for the benefit of the employer. The competition begins within the educational system, where a limited number of slots are doled out to an unlimited number of students-preparing-to-be-employees. One may consider the education to be less as a Hall for Learning, as a preparatory laboratory for the manufacture of obedient employees.

--Competition can be the self-motivating. manifestation of autonomous pride and enthusiasm generated from living the life of self-determination and interest of a self-employed individual.

*401(k) Plan -- The employees, trained by the institutionalized educational system and chosen by the corporation to fill their slot, are encouraged to participate in the company’s valuable retirement plan so the employee, at the end of his/her life, worn out and dazed, can stop working and “start living”, using the funds accumulated.

--The 401(k) Plan is a method by which employees, earning a pay allotment from the corporate world, channels a large portion of that pay back into the corporate system. If the system doesn’t hold, and we have a stock market crash, the corporate world has used the pay of the employee, the CEO has skimmed off the larger portion of this 401(k) money to retain within the world of the corporation, and the employee, playing by the rules, is left in poverty. The self-employed person, more responsible for his/her own future, and with few “benefits” to hope for, reinvests the money that, if working in the corporate world would go into the 401(k) plan, into his/her own business. The business may fail, the business may thrive--it is up to the autonomous self-employed person. The chances appear to be no better or worse than taking a chance on a corporation.

These are questions that haven’t been seriously discussed among the large portion of the U. S. citizenry. The result has been a transfer of wealth and power to the few.

This can be easily changed when the individual U. S. Citizen takes his/her life into his/her own hands.

The U. S. Constitution provides for the right for the individual to do so. This beleaguered document has been ignored too long. The individual U. S. Citizen has allowed the powerful to run their lives for too long.