The survival kit #4 for COVID-19 – Covid – Coronavirus = Keep your friends healthy

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Coronavirus, Covid, COVID-19, Family survival, Keep your friends healthy, survival, The survival kit #4

I have been promoting kindness on this blog for a long time, but it has been an abstract harangue against people talking love excessively and not doing anything physical to express their claims of love.

However, if and (that’s more like a probably) when Coronavirus comes to your town it will be moving past the time to consider your response to people getting sick. What are you going to do about your friends needing help? What are you going to do about your spouse or other family members coming down with this highly contagious disease?

There is a good chance that when your community is hit by this disease it will be hit quickly and hard. If that happens, the local medical facilities will be overwhelmed and be forced into some kind of tent city situation where victims are isolated. Or perhaps to isolate all the victims into a gymnasium where they can be “cared for” but actually as a method for protecting the rest of the people from their spreading the disease.

Is that what is in store for you or your family members, or friends? Before this problem arises, it is easy and cheap to make preparations. These preparations may not prevent all the problems, but they will ease them a little.

For example, if a special room of your living quarters could be set aside for a contagious person, which had a separate toilet, sink and water and where food and verbal support could be provided without actually physically contacting the person, it would improve your chances for avoiding the Coronavirus, or the common cold.

Most diseases are probably caught from people you know personally, therefore it makes sense to keep your friends healthy.

Happy, Healthy, Wise and Wealthy

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Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, Wise, Worthwhile goals

My current thoughts are that “happy, healthy, wise and wealthy” are not individual states to achieve but goals sought after, and when they are almost within easy grasp they vanish. They are orientations generated by our minds when we see something someone else has, or we think they have, that we desire for ourselves.

They are all based on envy and this is most obvious when we observe others who have great wealth. It appears from the outside that wealth brings with it easy purchase of everything desirable and the ability to buy one’s way out of undesirable situations. Of course, when one has more than they can spend it doesn’t feel that way at all. If you can just transfer some cash and you can have anything you want, then those things lose their attraction and are worthless. If you have enough money, and your friends all drive Porsches, like Janis Joplin suffered to sing about, then you buy several new ones in different colors, like Steve Jobs did. But that acquisitiveness was meaningless, so they launched into the ability to produce something that everyone wanted, such as irreproducible music or fantastic products that everyone else wanted.

The same processes operate with wisdom. From afar the possession of wisdom seems like a wonderful thing, because with wisdom you can obtain anything you want, even intangible things. But from the inside wisdom would seem hollow, because with wisdom you can foresee cause and effect and choose the desirable ends you seek. But what’s the value in that when you know how to do, this, that, and some other thing, and voilà, there it is, exactly what you wanted. Soon, that becomes meaningless and boring.

The health of the body seems like an infinitely desirable thing, and it is, but once possessed, health vanishes for the possessor, and those who have it just live their lives like everyone else. They are oblivious to the bounty of their health and go searching for something else, something that will make them believe they are happy. Perfect health doesn’t bring happiness, or wisdom, or wealth.

What is happiness but a transient moment of winning when you, a short while before, thought you might be a loser again? It is similar to contentment except for the element of time. Contentment lasts longer because it is based on winnings that have a lasting value. Happiness is when you or your team is winning a game, but contentment is owning your own home after paying off the mortgage. The win is bigger and more useful.

Each of these — Happy, Healthy, Wise and Wealthy — are momentary phantoms of the imagination, but they can sometimes have a positive value by motivating people seeking them to do positive things to help others.

 

“Do it right!!!” Be healthy into the future.

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A scale of happiness, A scale of health, A scale of wealth, A scale of wisdom, Actionable suggestions, Do it right!!!, Emotional Thriving scale (ET), Happy Healthy Wise Wealthy, How to live a better life., What should I do?, WQ (Wisdom Quotient)

What is the value of being perfectly healthy on into your physical future? My answer, my opinion if you prefer, is that without perfect health all of Ben Franklin’s virtues, Happy, Healthy, Wise, and Wealthy, get degraded.

Monetary wealth in abundance means little other than the ability to give it away to family, friends or society if you are about to die. Or, if your health is terribly degraded, as it is when death is near, then huge quantities of money can be plowed into the ground trying to maintain a few more days of drug-induced breathing-coma. Having a Good level of wealth means you have access to medical care and can maintain a good life with paid personal assistance. Okay wealth will get consumed in a few days in a health emergency without some form of medical insurance. A Difficult level of wealth will be consumed in one day without government-sponsored help because at that monetary level few people will have personal insurance. Catastrophic wealth means your health is absolutely dependent upon the kindness of strangers. 

Money may not bring happiness but when it comes to health it can often prevent misery.

Happiness can be had for a while in a Catastrophic situation, even without any wealth, wisdom, or health. One of my most memorable experiences was in 1959 when I visited my father’s father’s brother and his wife in a nursing facility. He was ambulatory but mostly incoherent, but she was bedridden and as alive as an eighteen-year-old girl. Which in a way she was, because I was talking to her about my Grandmother, who was her best friend when they were teenagers. She was so excited hearing about my grandmother’s life and the success of her children, and even of me who was an Air Force pilot at the time. Both she and her husband died within the month, of old age.

The point is that even in extremely poor health situations, even near death, a person can be very happy.

Wisdom, when had in Wonderful abundance, can help in coping with lack of wealth, lack of health, and lack of happy external situations. However, wisdom can also eliminate situations that are not inevitable, unlike death. Wisdom can help bring into existence the best results of all the virtues because wisdom looks into the future and does those things in the present that will bring a long and happy life to you. As I concluded yesterday:

“Wisdom is more valuable than rubies.” “Get wisdom and with all thy getting get understanding.“

Why quantify happy, healthy, wise and wealthy?

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The key to happiness, The key to health, The key to wealth, The key to wisdom

That question was asked by Farmer Georg, one of the readers of this blog, about  yesterday’s post. I will admit instantly to him that it is a strange quest to try to quantify any of those big four goals as stated long ago by Benjamin Franklin since it appeared in his Poor Richard’s Almanack, and yet by doing so it became apparent to me that it pointed in a direction that people might pursue that would lead to a better life for them. I googled “happy healthy wise and wealthy” and it claimed 45 million results on that phrase. Therefore, there must be some interest in those subjects.

There are many posts and YouTube videos on these subjects, and yet if those things were easily accomplished those millions of people who follow those authors would simply take their advice and be happy, healthy, wise and wealthy. What becomes apparent is that there is a cloud of confusion surrounding those seemingly simple quests.

It is generally thought that within a given society having more money is a good thing, but it has been discovered that having a lot more money than your acquaintances isolates you from having meaningful relationships. Having more money than one can use in a meaningful way to do something worthwhile leads to distress.

I chose a million dollars in yesterday’s example as enough money to be free of money worries because if used with wisdom it eliminates many problems. However, among Wall Street millionaires I’ve heard that they have a term, fuck-you-money, which means enough money so that you can do anything you want. When I heard that term used about twenty years ago, it was said that 30 million dollars in the bank gave you the status among them of having fuck-you-money. You don’t have to take any guff from anyone.

Having that much money may give you leverage to do many things that most people can’t do, like having a private jet plane. However, that plane doesn’t make you any happier, because it isolates you from your friends because they are scattered all over the world. I would expect that people whose friends are scattered become lonely because their relationships are infrequent and thus shallow. Also, when you have vast amounts of money there are few people you can count as equal friends. Also, everyone, even other rich people, might take your money if given the chance.

This is a long and convoluted subject, but yesterday I concluded that – We need a high level balance of happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy to attain the ideal life.

I think a person can be what I think of as wealthy even with very little cash because what it means is that in your life situation you have enough so that you never have to even consider borrowing. If you have a perfectly stable small income it is possible to rent your home, and not worry about making your rent, but it is much easier to not worry about your home, or short-term payments, if you are a mortgage-free owner. To own your home free and clear makes it much easier to be happy.

If in addition to ownership of your home you have perfect health, wisdom and happiness it makes it much easier to maintain the ownership of your home. All of those qualities work together and affect one another. If you are in perfect health it is easier to become wealthy. It is more difficult to become wealthy if you are sick. If you are wise it is easier to become wealthy, and healthy, and happy. They all are synergistic qualities. That is why I think a key to a good life is a balance of all of those qualities.

Some obvious guidelines follow from the above discussion. Never risk your health even in tiny ways unless there is a huge counterbalancing reason for doing so. That eliminates such things as fast driving, skiing, base-jumping, or hanging out with drunks. Never risk your money or your home without a huge counterbalancing reason for doing so. 

The key to wisdom is to not be stupid. The key to health is to avoid dangerous activities. The key to wealth is to not owe anyone money. The key to happiness is to stay back from unhappy people.

Quantifying – Happy, Healthy, Wise, and Wealthy

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Attaining the good life., Happy, Healthy, Wealthy, Wise

Of the four essentials of a good life, happy, healthy, wise, or wealthy, which is the most important? Previously, I had thought they were all equally important, but is this like George Orwell’s book, Animal Farm where “All animals are equal!” and only later do we discover that “Some animals are more equal than others!”? Do we two-legged animals discover later in life that there is a hierarchy of qualities that are associated with the good life? Do some things more consistently bring about a longer and better life?

With those thoughts in mind, I decided to do a quantified comparison of those ideas. It seemed absurd at first. How can you quantify happiness or wisdom? But creating a four-step scale for each of those qualities seemed plausible, and then maybe they could be compared on those scales.

The easiest of these to define was wealth because it is already quantified. The first question then becomes, “How much monetary wealth does a modern American need to be well off? That is, that they may have anything they physically need if they have the other three qualities also in similarly good condition.” If they are wise they can use their money wisely and with some slack they would never have a monetary worry. If they are filled with robust health they can enjoy the modest pleasures that are readily available and without any risk to their health. And the highest level of happiness would include having some meaningful tasks in their life, being in comfortable relationships with friends and loving relationships with their family. Having that level of good on these other three qualities is equivalent to having a million dollars available for living.

Those are inevitably loosely defined standards for happy, healthy and wise that I am equating to being wealthy at the million-dollar level. The value of defining them in this measurable way is that we can then ask some specific questions for comparing each of them to the others.

“If you had a million-dollar personal estate would you be willing to drop that to a quarter of a million to keep your health, happiness, and wisdom at their current top levels?” Would you be willing to drop your wisdom to a quarter of its current level and usually make only good decisions, rather than wise ones to keep your money? Or, drop your perfect health to a quarter to good health and never be sick enough to be hospitalized to keep your money? Or, to drop your wonderful happiness to generally be happy most of the time to keep your million-dollar personal estate?

Having chosen which of those decisions you would make, ask the same question again but starting from this new lowered status on your chosen thing. In this example, we are using the monetary condition. Would you be willing to drop to one-quarter of your quarter million dollar estate, that is to sixty thousand? At this level of money, you can no longer own your own home, or drive a new car, or send your kids to college. It is still a lot of money, but you must work at any job you can get. That lack of money will impinge on those other top-level qualities even if you are still relating to everything in the same way.

Let’s do this just one more time. Which of these qualities would you be willing to drop another one-quarter of their value to you to keep the other current ones where they are at their present levels? Staying with money as the measured quality, there will now be fifteen-thousand dollars. That is still a lot of money, but it can’t create any kind of permanent security, and it can’t even provide a fancy vacation trip for your whole family, because when you come home you will be living on the edge of trouble.

Although this essay chose the monetary quality as the basis for comparison with happiness, health, and wisdom, going through a similar procedure on any of those other qualities will corrode away the satisfaction that may be derived from any of the others.

We need a high level balance of happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy to attain the ideal life.

What do you want? Truth? Beauty? Health? Happiness?

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Beauty, happiness, Health, truth, Utilitarians, What do you want?

Truth is beauty say some. Health is happiness say others. I have for years sort of gone along with Hume and Smith and sided with the Utilitarians and tried to apply those kinds of concepts to them and their kind in the form of kindness. That is, intellectually at least, to treat other people better than I treat myself. That’s a low bar you might claim because I don’t treat myself particularly well.

The Utilitarians claimed they were seeking the greatest happiness for the greatest number. That’s okay for a brief statement, but as with all definitions, it doesn’t go far,  and certainly in the case of kindness not far enough. If we are to be kind, must it be limited to those with whom we interact or must it be granted to all humankind, and can we include our personal pets? If we are to be kind to all humanity must that include the as yet unborn? Does it include those who won’t be born for ten thousand years? If humanity is approximately halfway through its population journey, then we have about a hundred billion people yet to offer our kindness to. Is that a realistic use of our time and adaptive energy?

Can’t we just all get along? Apparently not, and I can’t even decide what truth, beauty health or happiness really are. Can you?

My perfect health goes imperfect at 82

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How to avoid smoking., I admit that I am an cigarette addict., When in a doubtful situation avoid being stupid.

I won’t complain about this turn of affairs, prostate cancer at age eighty-two, but it will take some adaptation. I have been in near perfect health all my life, and my only bad habit was smoking intermittently for several years from about 1955 to about 1975. I say intermittently because I was only smoking about half the time. I would quit for long periods, sometimes for over a year, and many times for over a month, but I must admit now that I was addicted to smoking. And because I know that I am addicted I will not even take a single puff from a cigarette. The reason is simple enough; every time I decided that I was in control of my smoking and it was now safe to smoke a single cigarette after dinner, which I know that I would enjoy, I discovered that a month later I was up to a pack a day. That sad sequence happened several times and it is sad because I know I would really enjoy a cigarette after dinner. The last one was back about 1983 and that’s a quarter of a century ago, but since I know that I am an addict I can, and will, go another twenty-five years without smoking.

This post is partially motivated by an article in the magazine New Philosopher where the question was asked of the interviewees, “What is your motto?” My first response was that I don’t have a motto, but then after reflecting on that for a minute, and it was a whole minute, I realized that I do have a motto that I do actually think about and use fairly often when in a possibly difficult situation: “Don’t be smart, avoid being stupid!” I see a lot of what is obviously stupid behavior that will occasionally get people physically injured.

When in a doubtful situation, avoid being stupid.

 

Fasting and Eating for Health – Joel Fuhrman

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Some thoughts on diet

I have been doing some further research on fasting, and one of the classics in this field is Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman, published in 1995. In the world of electronics, this is ancient, but it appears that in the world of diet progress is not incredibly slow, it is regressive. The population of the United States is fattening up and it isn’t for lack of information, it is for not responding to good information. The public is in a death spiral in their response to health information and is eating, on average, exactly what they shouldn’t be eating. This book is in the same tradition as The China Study by Colin Campbell and Thomas Campbell, and it comes to very similar conclusions about what we should be eating. Fuhrman stresses cleansing of the living tissues of the body by the use of fasts because he shows the body naturally wills to cleanse itself if it is given the chance to do so. Each cell of the body can have various kinds of unneeded byproducts in it, which it will preferentially expel when the body is not being stuffed with more of the same junk. That’s stating it callously but when we stuff our bodies with junk that is what will be inside of every one of our cells. When we fast, this junk is what is forced out first.

I have been doing a daily fast for over a year and have been having excellent results losing weight, but what Fuhrman asks us to do is occasional longer fasts. My eighteen-hour fasts are okay for losing weight but doing occasional several-day-long fasts is better for clearing out the resident toxins. Having been on this year-long intermittent fast makes it much easier to do a longer fast, so I am going to do one next Tuesday. That day is one where there will be fewer complications with my schedule.

I’m feeling good, but after cleaning out some junk I’ll probably feel even better.

A happy, healthy, wise and wealthy society.

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A happy healthy wise and wealthy society., Fake information, Fake news, Falsehoods, Free speech and hidden lies, Survival of truth

It would appear that Benjamin Franklin was the creator of the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Most of the words were written by Thomas Jefferson but Franklin is considered the one who changed the final idea to the pursuit of happiness.

This post title takes its inspiration from the proverb ‘”Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” This quote is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin since it appeared in his Poor Richard’s Almanack; however, it was first used in print by John Clarke in a 1639 book of English and Latin proverbs.

That general idea is usually considered to refer to the happiness of individuals but it might also be applied to whole nations of people. The individual human emotional terms happy and wise do not automatically transfer over to groups of people without a little stretching of the definitions, but words are always defined in relation to their surrounding context. Among the nations of the Earth when these terms are asked of people in survey polls, Americans generally consider themselves to be happy. I am not aware whether the question of being wise is ever polled, but after our last election, it will probably be added to the questionnaires.

The terms healthy and wealthy are more easily accepted as applicable to groups and to the American nation two centuries after their usage in the Declaration of Independence. It has been for a century the wealthiest nation ever to exist on Earth. My worry is whether the quest for wealth by the corporations has gone too far in their focus on bottom-line profits and thus interfered with the other three great goals of our Declaration of Independence. Are the people’s happy, healthy, wise goals being destroyed by the corporations’ need to maximize their profits?

I am a firm believer in Freedom of Speech being promoted to the maximum but that freedom does not include and permit lying about the source of the speech. Creating fake news and publishing it under false source names is a violation of the intent of free speech, which is to find the truth and make it public. The hope is that when all ideas are exposed and explored in an open forum that the truth will prevail. Truth comes about through the interchange between competing ideas. If an input from a hidden source is permitted to enter the conversation, then there is no interchange of ideas; and when that source is intentionally lying to create a manipulation of the truth that the public would not applaud if it knew the whole truth, then that source must be dismissed.

The institution permitting secret money and information entering the public debate must be exposed and brought back to open truth. 

Learn how to be happy and healthy when young.

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Avoid angry old drunks, Avoid angry young people, Learn to be happy, Learn to be healthy

Yesterday, in Epigrams about Health, I wrote, “To maximize a long, happy, healthy life, learn how to be happy and healthy when young.” That seems like a sensible bit of advice, and most people would probably claim they are following the path. They would claim they rarely do anything that would imperil their health or sanity, and yet when I listen to older people talking about their lives, which I do quite often, they often mention the risky things they did when young. Usually, these stories are told within a setting of mild hilarity and are accompanied with statements that they wouldn’t do that again. And yet, when they tell their current problems as anecdotes they seem to be following the same general life strategy. They talk about the problem people they encountered as youths and then talk about the problems they are having with the people they now associate with.

I see a pattern in their actions when they were young being repeated in their old age, but it appears they don’t see it. What can I say? What can I say that would be heard by them? More importantly, what can I say that younger people would hear and act upon?

Find and interact with happy old people and avoid angry old drunks.