An e-mail to the White House about the value of health
The healthy world is a paradise
Hannele Tervola 14. marraskuuta 2007 18:10
Vastaanottajat: comments@whitehouse.gov
The concept of health is good for fitting together all the different viewpoints:
1) power (health gives strenght),
2) benefit (health gives a strong and well arranged working force and
consequently a high standard of living from which to benefit, healthy
goals give a strong motivation),
3) freedom (live and let others live is a rule to follow in order to
achieve a maximum amount of freedom for everyone and a healthy society
in this sense),
4) control (the health of practises makes people agree with the
practises and creates no opposing forces),
5) life according to feelings (healthily according to feelings is a
part of the full health),
6) moral (moral means guarding the good health of the whole world,
evil means needless breaking),
7) science (a healthy animal is the fittest),
8) most religions (a healthy world / a paradise and good moral are
things to aim at),
9) computer logic (healthy = fully functioning = times 1, broken =
non-funtioning = times 0),
10) common sense (health is a common sense concept which all know well),
11) the views of those who bring up children (they are typically for
healthy ways of living and good moral),
12) the views of the traditional Finnish culture and propably of most
other cultures too (it is good to cultivate good health and stupid to
break needlessly),
13) a view capable of handling large interconnected systems (health is
a good concept which can be generalised to all kinds of systems),
14) a sexuality oriented view (what could be more attractive than
health and happiness),
15) the points of view of aiming at manliness or womanliness (healthy
natural life according to emotions is what the charm and capacity of
each sex is based on),
16) the view that no material world exists (the wholes stay unchanged
and the truth about healthy versus broken functioning stays valid),
17) the wish to protect nature (health of the world means among other
things the protection of nature),
18) the wish to develop technology (a healthy life in a nature
environment should bring the best ground for theoretical
intelligence),
19) the need to secure the future,
20) a picture of humans according to which there is no need for anyone
to do experiments on humans like those during the holocaust,
21) the hopes of exhausted workers needing rest and variation to their lives,
22) the dream of just about all school children of more life and less
dry school like things (see my book Work Efficiency and Likings for
the rationality of feelings and the role of atmospheres in thinking),
23) the goal of solving the fight between good and evil in a positive
way via the concept of health - which should give you what you want or
even more...
24) the sovinist point of view of wanting everything to be well
grounded on hard values too (see my two books!),
25) the feminist point of view of wanting respect for women's values:
for feelings and moral (see my two books for the fitting together of
these last two!),
26) hard war like rationality,
27) It is a view that could prevent people being controlled by the
force of technology etc. in a way that is in contradiction with the
freedom of individuals or moral. (Health of the whole i.e. high moral
is the most beneficial way to arrange things.)
28) One's own good (Allying with the health of the world = excellent
moral, gives the strongest allegiancy.)
Why happens this to be so? Is it just an unlikely coincidence? No: it
is a truth which we can well trust since the EVOLUTION - or God - has
shaped us so that our health and health of the society are what our
nature, our feelings, instincts (= directions) and understanding (= a
map, directed only because we have the goal of answering our needs
which the feelings and instincts too help to answer) together, guide
us toward and what gives us, the society and the world at large its
best possible functioning.
A healthy whole works much much better than the same whole as broken.
Applying this to the whole world, one gets the result that in a
strongest one wins competition the healthy natural world is the
strongest option,
i.e. the healthy natural world should be the winning option over any
other kind of world.
Outrageous but true:
Full health and happiness go hand in hand.
So the healthy natural world is a paradise.
In other words its is a global nature paradise which ought to win in
the modern competition.
If this paradise wins idea sounds too outrageous to you, you might try
phracing it in a much much milder and surely objective way, like is
customary here in Finland, and then just mention that this truth is so
objective that in fact one can in theory go very far into this
direction without it ceasing to be beneficial direction to go to. "It
is always good to cultivate good health in everything!" and "It is
stupid to break!", says the Finnish culture...
Health of the world at the era of technology
Technology is just an addition. It does not change the nature of
things in what comes to living beings' functioning. Technology's
effect to competition ability must be counted as a sum, as an
addition, separately from how to treat the living beings. As
technology is developed, it gets adabted to the requirements of living
beings. Technology is capable of adabting, living beings are not.
Evolution happens only upon time, upon many generations and it isn't
jumb like, it is gradual and that is not the case in adabting to the
technology since the technology is a new factor, a factor of a
completely new kind. We must survive through technology based on our
old functioning. Our most efficient ways of handling the technology,
the enermous amounts of information in the modern world rely on our
natural ways of functioning, for example on our capacity to handle
sensory information of seen nature landscapes - much of the most
efficient thinking is like watching imagined landscapes of structures,
such is also engineering work. And the best training for such is to
lead a natural healthy kind of life.
With the existence of technology the word "healthy" gets a new
generalised meaning: a well arranged and fully functioning system. It
means among other things that each thing is treated according to what
it is like - that means true objectivity and something like justice.
Also that each part is unbroken so that one can optimise the system -
in questions of human beings that means following human values.
Also for solving the problems with the concept of the healthy
biosphere and about the healthy biosphere being the winning option,
use the above definition for good health and relate that only
afterwards to what the nature is like: so you will find the balance
points between opposites, like for example the purpose of competition
is to keep the populations as healthy as possible and to develop new
strategies, not to destroy everything in short-sighted excessive
ruthless competition.
If it really is, like it seems, beneficial to ally, why people do not
always do so? One must ally for the best health of the whole,
sometimes that means conflicts too and sometimes it is mistaken to
mean conflicts. But often the reason is just that we have become
confused and stopped from following our feelings fully. And our
understanding is often too little to bring us the whole way toward
full cooperation.
It is easy to optimise any whole: seek to maximise its health: its
functioning is based on its health parts and healthy substructures and
structures. This means minimising its brokedness since broken parts do
not work at all. And already optimised whole, like a biological whole
which has been optimised by the evolution, is contradictionless, so
leaving some parts unactive does not make the whole function better
but instead lessens the functioning of the whole since the parts
support each other and the functioning of the whole. (For example the
thinking ability of humans is supported by the sense of sight,
wandering in nature and sensitivity to atmospheres. Similarly the
parts of a well working society support each other.) This method of
optimising wholes by keeping them non-broken and healthy applies to
all wholes of all sizes. Since the biggest things matter the most, one
should start by keeping the biggest scale healthy and unbroken - that
means peace as a strong value. Such peace means most peace in the
world in the long run and not the avoidance of all conflicts untill
evil has conquered the world and there is something like a civil war
all over the world. Also fair play is typical to a healthy whole.
Justice which aims at respecting human values - live and let others
live! is a rule to follow. So one can let the different strategies
compete about which one is the most beneficial to the whole and
support just such strategies while punishing those who damage the
system. Defending only one's own good isn't the thing to value but to
defend the greatest good of the whole, including peace and large scale
cooperation. Via the health of the whole one gets most prosperity
since just good srategies are counted on and bad ones dropped away. So
it is good also from the selfish point of view to act for the benefit
of the whole more than one acts for one's own short-term good. This
way one can build friendly relationships to others which will be
beneficial in the long run but also in the short term.
What about the human goals in life?How do they connect to the
optimising of a system which has both natural and artificial parts?
Humans were created by the evolution and have not by their nature been
adabted to the existence of the artificialities. So the human goals
oin life have been created by the natural human goals in life which
seek to keep both humans and their environment in full health. Our
thinking takes the artificialities into account, our goals stay
unchanged. If it is the goal of the systems get enough working ability
and/or to keep humans under control, they need to answer human needs,
in other words safeguard good health of humans and their environment.
That means respecting the human goals in life.
Also if the rulers, be they some kind of a cool intellect like robots
and computers running wild or whatever, if the rulers are not
interested in humans as a working force or as happiness as a goal in
itself, they have their own fate to think about. Maybe they will some
day meet someone stronger than they are, so they have to be prepared
for that too. Then it might be that they would be treated according to
the same principles that they treat others with. Not destroying others
needlessly they might not them selves be destroyed. If they killed us,
they might be considered without the protection of the "articla" in
the society agreement which says that all the likes of them should be
protected. The society agreement says that you buy your rights by the
obligations that you follow. If you are too dangerous to others
because you do not protect or respect any values, you will be killed
by the others who want a safer world. So even robots as rulers should
respect our right to healthy life. So a healthy way for them to build
a system is to treat humans fairly and according to human values,
giving them lots of freedom to moral action.
The extend to which we are dependent on our environment makes it
understandable how our own well being is dependent on the health of
the whole and how consequently selfishness equals moral. We are
concretically dependent on our environment if we are, like I claim
since it was and still is the most beneficial choise during the
evolution, by our nature parts of a bigger whole, of the whole
biosphere in good health. But even if we weren't, our well-being is
affected by the amount of conflicts in our environment: how much we
get harmed or benefitted by the environment and how well the
environment works together to produce a higher standard of living and
how much it consequently can help us toward better life when it
decides to do so. So whether or not we are parts of a bigger whole by
our nature, we are in practise parts of a bigger whole and our whole
life is dependent on the relationship that we have to the whole.
The healthy world is a paradise
The second thought is about a healthy one being happy and about the
healthy natural life in nature bringing happiness, so that the healthy
natural world would be a paradise.
1. Fullfilling the natural living requirements of a living being
should make the being happy, so the healthy natural world should be a
paradise.
2. Feelings can be seen as forces in life. Negative feelings repel
negative things and situations away from our lives, repel things that
are harmful to our health, to the health of the society or the
environment or to the health of the ways of living. Positive feelings
bring us toward things which are beneficial to us, to our health,
binding us to the healthy natural ways of living. With completely
healthy ways of living the world must thus be full of binding
feelings, of happiness and love, and without repelling feelings,
without suffering. So the completely healthy natural world must be a
paradise. So a paradise is more a way of life than just a place!
Since the time begun, has our true nature placed a call upon us. A
call to live a full happy life which gives the best survival for us
and for our offspring. What makes us strong are the things which keep
us fit, which give us a full life and happiness. What makes us weak,
are catastrophes, the reasons why we become weak and suffering. We
suffer in order to avoid those things. We feel love in order to reach
for what is best for us, for our survival. The message of our feelings
is the same as the message of our understanding. Like the love for
life is in the very nature of living beings, it is in their structure
that just such life that their feelings guide them toward gives the
best functioning, best survival, keeps them most fit for work and is
the most rational choise. So if there is a strongest one wins
competition, just natural life according to feelings and understanding
is the winning solution of how to arrange things.
Gibran: " I have chosen both the joys of this world and peace in the
world to come. Because I feel in my heart that the Upmost Poet wrote
just one poem and its structure is perfect."
Hannele Tervola, Finland, Europe
www.paradisewins.net
comments@whitehouse.gov 14. marraskuuta 2007 18:10
Vastaanottajat: hannele.tervola@gmail.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House cannot respond to every message.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
Email: Hannele.Tervola@gmail.com