My Blog
Optimizing Lifetime Happiness with McElroy's Frugalista
I don't regularly read Wendy McElroy, but a snippet from her latest blog was at Rational Review News Digest (RRND), [www.rationalreview.com/news] which I do receive daily, caught my attention - Frugalista Philosophy #4."The goal is to spend your time -- which is your life and, so,
irreplaceable -- in a manner you value, a manner that contributes to
your health. One of the most destructive assumptions of our culture is
that people should act to maximize their profit, their self-interest
and that profit is defined by money. I define profit as an increase in
the quality of my life, which often means less money."
www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php
As an aside, the last two sentences above are so poorly written that they will undoubtedly add to the destructive misunderstandings. Far better would have been to write:
"One of the most destructive assumptions of our culture is that profit
is defined by money - and that people should maximize this kind of
profit because only it is in their self-interest. Rather, profit should be
defined as an increase in the quality of one's life, which often means
less money."
I read the entry in which she goes on to give some worthwhile suggestions on how to live more frugally for the purpose of "increasing the quality of [her] life".
"Think like a micro-enterpreneur[sic]. View your life (or your family
unit) as a small business that operates along the same lines as
any successful venture...with a product (your labor perhaps),
overhead, cost controls, a budget, etc..The best way to make a
frugal living -- namely, one that doesn't stress you out or drain
away your love of life -- is to do those things you most enjoy and
try to market them."
Wendy, though, has not specifically stated the purpose of a person's life. I and Paul do this - it is to optimize one's lifetime happiness, to optimally increase all that one wants to achieve and maintain.
Like Wendy, we consider the word "profit" to mean much more than an increase in or return of money beyond what one has expended. It is having the positive benefits from all desirable events in one's life be greater than the disbenefits from all the undesirable events - in other words, a net increase in *whatever* one values. Something to consider, and Wendy acknowledges this, is that one's time is the most precious commodity that one has. Since a person's lifetime cannot be extended, at least currently, beyond the current species maximum so far recorded, 122 years, time is definitely a limited resource for everyone - 100 years is only 36525 days (think about that!). And even getting to this current maximum requires spending precious time taking judicious actions to prevent the bodily degeneration or diseases that will occur otherwise.
The life I and Paul live is right along the line of many of the suggestions that Wendy has given; we constantly try to optimize our time as part of our method for optimally increasing our lifetime happiness.
morelife.org and selfsip.org
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The above was also made at OpEdNews.com - www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php
Happiness in Life Doesn't End with Getting Older
I had the link to this article in my Inbox for more well over 1 week and only got around to checking it out earlier today. Although I posted it to AZEDM.com this afternoon, there are some at tribe.net who likely did not see it. I think it's something well worth reading by everyone - here and elsewhere. So please do pass it along.--------------------
Older People Are Happy: Life Begins At 40 And 50 And 60
ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2008) — Growing old is a happier experience than many of us imagine - that’s according to the findings of a study conducted at Queen’s University, Belfast, on behalf of the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP).
The study, which was conducted by Dr John Garry from Queen’s University, looked at young people’s attitudes to happiness in old age and how these attitudes affect their current health-related behaviour.
Dr Garry said: “We have all heard the saying ‘life begins at forty’. But it seems that many people, particularly young people, actually associate growing old with being miserable, meaning they don’t see any benefit in preserving their health for old age.
“Young people like to enjoy themselves, but this often means behaving in ways that can damage their future health. The harmful effects of alcohol, smoking and poor diet and fitness are well known, but many young people still binge-drink, smoke, avoid eating fruit and vegetables and fail to do regular exercise.
“This study aimed to find out whether this risky behaviour is associated with young people’s estimates of happiness in old age. Are they determined to ‘live it up’ while they are young because they are convinced that as they grow older they will become more and more miserable?
“The research found that, contrary to common belief, old age does not mean a decline in happiness - older people are just as happy as younger people. Whilst many young people associate old age with doom and gloom, this is not the case.
“We also found a strong link between the belief that happiness declines with age and levels of binge drinking by young men. It seems that these young men abuse their bodies through alcohol because, as they see it, there is little point in preserving their health for a miserable old age.
“Perhaps health professionals should consider this in their efforts to tackle binge drinking amongst young men. By addressing their incorrect perception that growing old is a miserable experience, they may be encouraged to drink more responsibly and take better care of their health.”
Archie and Margaret Lindsay, who are celebrating their 44th Valentine’s Day together, say they are perfectly happy in their old age. The couple attend the Newtownabbey Senior Citizens’ Forum. Mr Lindsay said: “I am surprised that so many young people think that getting older means being unhappy. My wife and I are both in our seventies and are as happy now as we were thirty years ago - and I think many of our friends would say the same. In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years!
“It’s important that young people realise that they can still enjoy life as they get older. As long as they make an effort to look after themselves, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t look forward to a happy and fulfilled old age.”
Adapted from materials provided by Queen's University, Belfast.
Queen's University, Belfast (2008, February 18). Older People Are Happy: Life Begins At 40 And 50 And 60. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 28, 2008, from www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/02/080217223907.htm
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I made a special upload notice at MoreLife Yahoo yesterday evening (before we went dancing at Karamba and then Cafe Carumba) for the guest entry Paul made at Kitty Reflects on MoreLife to commemorate a special point in his life. The Index of all entries - morelife.org/personal/kittyreflects/ has this newest at the top.
I haven't yet, but will edit the above item by Paul to include a "revealing" photo I took last July - morelife.org/personal/ph..._600x839.jpg I didn't think about including it when he first wrote the item but I think it add some information. Personally, I think he looks better now than when I first met him in 2000 and when I took a similar photo in summer 2001, last one shown on the Photo page - morelife.org/personal/ph...hotos_5.html
Kitty
Been Plenty Busy
Time sure has moved along and I (and Paul) have been mighty busy all this time - but still getting in dancing on at least Wednesdays at Cafe Carumba (Switch Wednesdays) and special events, like Karuna 2/9/08.Just some of the things I've written during this time (always with at least editing by Paul, just as I do for him on all substantive items):
"Action for the Forgotten Real Problem with S1959" - www.opednews.com/articles/..._forgo.htm
"Trading Value for Value" - www.opednews.com/articles/...for_va.htm
"Critique of "Bio-Politics" Article: Argument for Societal Self-Regulation" - www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php
QuickLink for "The Recycling Myth" - www.opednews.com/maxwrite/link.php
Threads of several messages at MoreLife Yahoo related to social interactions:
"Self-responsibility, apathy, misanthropy" - starting with health.groups.yahoo.com/group/...ge/1713
"Government/media scare tactics" - starting with health.groups.yahoo.com/group/...ge/1741
An ongoing thread at AZEDM.com, "The Self-Sovereign Individual Project" (started by Nick Synergy) - www.azedm.com/forum/index.php
I hope to see comments/questions from others on the subjects of the items above, either at their locations or here.
A Trend Towards Reasoned Thinking??
My email Inbox is mighty full these days and I didn't get around to reading the message sent to me 12/21 from SPPI (Science and Public Policy Institute) until just a couple hours ago, very late on 12/23. It is a reprint of the 12/21 opinion piece by Melanie Phillips at Spectator.co.uk - www.spectator.co.uk/melaniep...lat.thtml It is a very good read, containing quotes from David Whitehouse writing in the New Statesman, including the one in my intro. www.newstatesman.com/200712190004So not just have the global average temperatures for 2007 been the same as 2006, but also for every year since 2001! Since that is counter to all the computer models being used by scientiests advocating for human activity reduction, that sure does put some wrinkles into their horror predictions. And it makes those in the climate change business look a bit foolish, if not down right suspect of purposefully misleading vast numbers of people in order to have governments force changes on their citizens and on those in other countries.
So with this news finally getting major news attention, maybe the chicken littles of the world will stop screaming "Do Something!" and stop insisting that governments enact more activity restrictions and take more money from taxpayers to fund more research on climate changes that will keep on varying and cycling just as it has done for millenia.
Extensive reading is suggested to everyone including:
scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
www.co2science.org/
Considering the Gratitude Dance and Being Grateful
Someone recently sent me a link to the Gratitude Dance at YouTube - saying "If you haven't seen this delightful video, "The Gratitude Dance," I highly recommend it: youtube.com/watch " He also specifically pointed me towards the words and phrases that flashed through near the end.While the music is bouncy, the dancing amusing/energetic and the idea of focusing more on the positives in life than the negatives is beneficial, I think there is something definitely missing.
And yes, I saw the phrases - "Be grateful for .... Nature....Love.....Joy. .... Be Grateful". All of these miss the point that one can only be grateful *to* someone who has *consciously* and *intentionally* provided value for which the recipient is grateful. A person can be happy with or glad for the existence of many things, but can only be *grateful to* the person(s) who purposefully made those things available. One can be happy, joyous for positive situations and/or the existence of certain people, especially those for whom such high esteem exists that each judges the shared emotion to be love. But simply to "be grateful" for something without a person to be grateful to for providing that thing makes no sense. So by all means be *grateful to* those people in your life who have purposefully brought joy and happiness at all levels to you - and best of all *show them* that you are *grateful for what they did/are doing* by returning value to them equal to what they have given you if at all possible. If doing the Gratitude Dance is something that these providers of value to you would also value, then do it - and enjoy it with them.
So I would say - each day ask yourself what you are happy about or why you are happy. If it is a result of the conscious acts of someone else, then identify who you are grateful to for that happiness emotion (joy, pleasure, contentment, peacefulness, etc.) and let them know by your words and your deeds.
I made a comment at the above YouTube video site - in fact 2 because when the first didn't appear in 10 minutes I thought there had been a problem. Both are different but actually shorter versions of the above due to YouTube's limitation to 500 characters. Maybe other viewers will stop and think at bit more about being grateful.......
Value-for-Value - A New Approach to Exchange for Mutual Benefit
I'm repeating here what I made as a (lengthy for sure) comment to the blog entry by YardZ on his tribe site today 11/11/07 so that those who did not see it (not privy directly to YardZ's blog) or didn't bother to read it get another opportunity. people.tribe.net/yardman_1/blog-------------------------------------------------
This was printed at OPEdNews.com on 11/5/07 - www.opednews.com/articles/...e___a_.htm with the lead in on the day it was printed: "Asking for contributions/donations or having fixed prices are not the only ways to obtain money (flexibly exchangeable commodity) from those who value what a person produces or provides."
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Rob Kall's recent request for donations to cover OpEdNews.com's expenses reminded me to make the PayPal transfer I had intended for a couple weeks now. His short note to thank me for my support prompted me to suggest that he might want to consider using the concept of Value-for-Value - the idea that each individual return value to the creator/producer of something commensurate with the value s/he receives from that something, in this case information. My husband Paul Wakfer and I created this idea - at least we had not seen it used or described anywhere else before we began writing on it - and we use it for our own websites. It is new and different - a paradigm shift from a required price by a seller or a request for donations. The idea also requires a fair amount of self-responsibility, something that is still greatly lacking everywhere in the world, but is truly necessary for there to be real progress in cooperative human interactions.
Value-for-Value is not simply some utopian ideal. The idea can be implemented singly by any individual, particularly in place of requests for donations, and, as more and more people do so, it will gradually promote the production of more and better information choices than currently exist - once large numbers of people come to realize that each producer will produce more if s/he receives value for his/her efforts. And the amount of value someone receives in such a system is clearly indicative of how much the idea/information is valued in general at that particular time, thus providing the producer with both recognition and appreciation. Currently far too many people want to get as much as they possibly can for as little outlay of value as possible. It doesn't take much thought extrapolation to realize that, if large numbers of people were able to do this with impunity and actually did so, then the production of ideas, and the products and services that arise from those ideas, would cease. What keeps this collapse from happening is that governments use money taken from everyone to first institute and prosecute mostly arbitrary rules concerning ownership of intellectual property, and second, to give money to some people and organizations based on the values of those who do the deciding (politicians and bureaucrats) rather than the value of what those people and organizations produce as determined by those who appreciate their work. And so we have the politics of pull (influence peddling) and all the mess that goes with it.
Value-for-Value is one of many ideas that I and Paul have been writing about for several years now and we are convinced that ultimately it can totally replace the current methods of payment for ideas, information, services and products. We include reference to it on the bottom of each of our webpages:
----------start of webpage footer-------------------
Although the owners of this website (Paul and Kitty Antonik Wakfer) assert that, except where indicated, they are the creators and originators of its content, and also assert that they should receive value commensurate with that which anyone reading it receives from the information on it (see morelife.org/supporting.html for elucidation of the notion of value-for-value), the site content is not 'copyright' as that term is legally defined because its creators do not agree with government copyright laws.
Readers are welcome to copy and distribute any text within the site as long as they do not modify the text and they provide a link to this website as its source, so that those who read it will know where Value for Value gained, can be returned. If those who copy text from or link to this website, in the manner just described, gain value from that action, then they are similarly expected to return some of that value to its creators. Those who make use of any text on this website in any other manner than as described in this paragraph without explicit permission from its creators will be socially preferenced against.
---------end of webpage footer (see a page for exact format, morelife.org/personal/ )---------------
So how, one might ask, is a reader of information to determine what value s/he has obtained from an article or webpage read? Imagine a cost which you would certainly not have paid for it. Suppose that is US$100, then imagine the cost had been 1/2 of that (ie US$50) and ask yourself if you would have paid that price. If yes, then imagine the price had been 1/2 way between that and the higher price which you already dismissed (ie US$75), and ask yourself again. If no at the US$50 price, then imagine a price 1/2 that (ie US$25) and ask yourself again. Continue in this manner (which is called a binary search) until you have reached the exact price that is the point at which, for any higher price, you would not have bought it. After a bit of practice, such an estimating process should be able to be done quite quickly to reach a sufficiently precise result.
Actually this is very close to what is called "price negotiation", "bargaining" or "haggling" and is widely practiced in many cultures. The difference is merely that this is "purchaser determined pricing" and takes place after the fact of obtaining the desired service - information from the creators of whatever web article or page having been read. You can also think of this as a kind of auction in which you are bidding with yourself.
Note however, that one of the major advantages of the Value-for-Value approach is that you have already had full use of that which you are evaluating and thus have a pretty good idea of its value to you, rather than having to make a buying/evaluation decision before gaining the knowledge of how it will actually work out and be valued by you once purchased and in use. Since the value of something to an individual may go up or down in time after the initial usage, the Value-for-Value approach can even be extended to additional return of value to the producer if one later realizes that the information/service/product was of even more value than that which one first returned. And vice-versa, if one sends value to the producer/creator and later realizes that one overvalued the information/service/product (but not simply because it was lost/stolen/damaged) then one should be able to request and get back some of the value already remitted.
I and Paul know that we are in the forefront of new ideas, a place that leaves us out in the financial cold in many respects and those website owners who are early users of this idea may think the same, at least at first. However, I and Paul practice what we preach in all areas and know that getting across concepts that are very different will take a lot of time for many people to come to understand and accept as worthy replacements for what has been the common practice. So we are willing to wait, spread the idea around and see who recognizes value in it.
My PayPal transfer to OpEdNews.com was a return of value for the value I have received from Rob's website in the past few months - a different outlet for my writings, though I haven't had time to do but a couple articles and a few comments. The writers and readers come with varying views and outlooks, and more than many places on the Internet have an opportunity to cross-pollinate their ideas. This is a value to me and I expect to all the other regular writers and readers of articles and comments. Therefore to the degree that each person obtains value from the information exchange on OpEdNews.com, s/he properly should, in his/her own best interest, return value to the owner of the site and the producer of the particular items of information assessed to be of value. This value exchange applies to every website dealing in information and the assessment of value received can be done by each reader of that website with value returned to the creator/provider of that information - Value-for-Value ... V4V!
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The above is something to seriously think about regarding Tribe.net and all other websites and services for which there is no set price by the owner/operator.
I've also sent the following email to Tribe.net:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Value Transfer
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:48:08 -0700
From: Kitty Antonik Wakfer <kitty@morelife.org>
To: feedback@tribe.net
I have been using Tribe for less than a year and only to a small degree, though that could change as I have more time to write. However I value ability to make the exchanges, mostly regarding trance/techno/raves and want this to continue. In the spirit of the recent article I wrote at OPEdNews.com please direct me to which email address I should use in order to send a PayPal value transfer to the owners of Tribe.net.
In addition, I encourage the management of Tribe.net to seriously consider the concept of Value-for-Value for the network. It sure can't do you all any harm and it may be more powerful then you think.
**Kitty Antonik Wakfer
MoreLife for the rational - morelife.org
Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality
Self-Sovereign Individual Project - selfsip.org
Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness,
individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting
--------------------------EOM--------------------------
I'll report back on the reply I receive.
**Kitty
Back in Dance Country
We arrived back in AZ before dawn on Monday 10/29. We've had many things to do to get ourselves back up to full operating speed so plans for dancing have been put off till this coming Sunday (11/4) afternoon/evening - the outdoor event at South Mountain in Phoenix sounds good and we look forward to seeing some of the regular locals and hearing and dancing to good music.EDM Fan Stranded for the Warm Months in Rural ON
We had to make a short trip back to AZ early this month and the good part about it was attending OverMindWork's Aura on 7/14 in Tempe, a 40 minute drive from our house in Casa Grande. These bimonthly (were monthly prior to May) events have become a real favorite for us. They and other events by that group are really nice and cozy - none of the mega-event theatricals that IMO detract from the music and dancing itself.That taste of good trance makes the rest of the warm months in Ontario bleaker in that respect.All EDM events/parties in Ontario I see so far from looking online appear to be in the greater Toronto or Niagara areas. Just too far to drive - at least 250 km - for 3 to 4 hours of non-stop dancing. Still hoping that some of the locals out this way will discover the pleasures of trance/techno/eurodance and have something - small is actually better IMO.
While asking around online I got some positive comments about dancing after reaching 60 - and hopes by the writers that they'd be doing it too when reaching that age. Well, my response is don't just hope - make sure you can. There's plenty of technical and personal info available at MoreLife.org <morelife.org> for any reader to make that possible. Readers can see how I and Paul,eat, what supplements we take and how we exercise. Our health statistics are available for all to see so that the effects of what we do is clear. Dancing into one's 60s and beyond is absolutely possible - we have no intention of stopping, though we may be limited to the really energetic variety to when we're in AZ.
ITMT I search online now and then and enjoy recorded music - streaming is an impossibility on dial-up here.