The Solutionist Blog

Posted By joe on July 24, 2014

Here is Chapter 2

Chapter 2
An Introduction To The Way It Ought To Be

How should we be living our lives differently and why is it better than the way we do things now?

Imagine life as we live now as if we are standing up. We start at our feet and work our way up as we go through life. We climb the ladder to progress up this vertical process. What I am proposing is to turn things 90 degrees instead; imagine life horizontally rather than vertically. It need not be an uphill battle.

The basic changes I propose are as follows:

• Early child care would be “facilitated” by parents, family, friends, and organizations designed to “funnel” children into the best possible position to succeed at life.
• Children would begin working at a very early age. This may begin as a kind of apprenticeship under the supervision of older children and adults, not just making the bed with mom. Children are anxious to “help” at an early age and are naturally proud of being able to help. By learning and participating when they are young, work would take on a more natural part of our lives.
• School would be conducted year round. It makes no sense to build the facilities for education and have them empty much of the time. School would also operate extended hours (24/7?).
• Everyone would attend school throughout their lifetime. Old dogs can learn new tricks, and we all need to continue to learn and sharpen our skills and trades. We also would benefit from learning things just for the sake of learning.
• Forget the current grade system. Classes would consist of various ages working at the same intellectual level, achievement, or level of proficiency in a particular area. We would not graduate from 8th grade or high school, but we would attain various levels of proficiency in many individual subjects. We would be free to learn what we choose with greater freedom as we get older, but the rate of learning would be up to each individual.
• We would spend less time per day and per week at our jobs. Our productivity would increase. Our health would be better and our families would be stronger. It would also give us the time needed to learn, travel, exercise, and to teach others.
• We would go on more vacations or experience “retirement” over a lifetime rather than putting it off until the end.
• We would continue in our careers longer, ideally throughout our lifetimes. Working fewer hours per day or days per week as time goes on, but continuing to contribute as part of the workforce into our later years. Why not take advantage of a lifetime of learning and doing. Why is experience suddenly worth less as we get older?
• We would be free to have more than one job, but not like we do now. Most likely, we would have a primary career where we would work to earn a living. Our other jobs would include various levels of teaching and instructing in areas we have become knowledgeable. Our jobs may change throughout our lives because we would be continuing to learn ourselves through a lifetime of learning. We would be able to change careers as we learned more and as our interests changed.
• We would take more time to spend with our families; especially children and part of our secondary jobs might include our own children and other children. Part of the childcare would be the early apprenticeship work training; not just learning the ABC’s.
• We would spend more time actively participating in physical activities including athletics for fun and for health. Sports could be adjusted by limiting athletes by size into various levels, just like we do with children’s sports now. Can you imagine the fun of watching football where the players are really talented, but can’t weigh more than 190 pounds; or basketball, where no one on the team is over six feet tall? An even playing field adds to the fun, and everyone can play if they choose to do so.
• We would spend some of our time throughout our lives appreciating, learning and participating in the fine arts. The arts are not just a frill we are permitted to enjoy now and then, but a basic need of humans. We have been creating art, music, dance and drama, since we lived in caves. We did this as a means of human expression which extends beyond basic communications.
• Public service would be part of everyone’s life. Whether enlisting in the military or working in the local park or picking up litter along the highway, public service would continue to be a part of our lives at least to some small degree; fluctuating as we move through life. When we look at our community needs, the list is unbelievably long. We should not only rely on paid services to meet those needs. By each of us participating in community service, we will have a greater appreciation of our community, and our community will become stronger. I use community to include all local, regional, (including states), national and international levels of society. We need to reinvent our government to actually represent all of us and to develop real solutions.
• We would learn to relax and enjoy life. We would take the time to vacation. At home, traveling, or doing anything we have an interest in doing. We would do this because it is good for us on many levels, and it makes us better at what we do the rest of the time. Our ability to learn improves, our thinking is clearer, and we are if we take a break from our daily. We can also do if we don’t wait until we are old and retired before taking this opportunity.
• I didn’t mention the problems of drugs. A whole chapter is dedicated to the issue of drugs. This problem can and must be solved and yes, there is a solution, and yes again, others, long before me have come to the same conclusions. The prohibition on alcohol did not work; and the prohibition on drugs is not working either. Terrorist networks are funded primarily on illegal drug money. It seems we are funding terrorist attacks on ourselves…
• We need to always be conscious of ourselves and others.

I think this is a good place to start but is by no means the end of the list.

In the following chapters, I have gone into more detail about these and other proposals and some tools to help in the process of solving problems and developing solutions.

Categories: Future categories to be considered.
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