Innovation:  The way social change usually occurs in American society is that some political-minded bureaucrat proposes a major change (called innovation) .   The proposed change involves spending a hundred or so million dollars on an untested program.    The program just happens to spend a significant amount of money in the sponsoring politician's political district.   The result is usually marginal at best and in some cases, is nothing short of a disaster-filled boondoggle.   

Fighting What Is:  The way our society approaches problems is to declare war on them.  We have wars against just about everything.   As you probably already know,  focusing on what you do not want produces more of the unwanted.  We have an entire page devoted to this topic.    To Fight It Is to Feed It ' ---  Why fighting and violence are absurd and dysfunctional.

Attacking the symptom:  Another aspect of  "business as usual"  involves how our society deals with problems.  We  attack the symptom.   We ignore the cause.   As an example of how pervasively ingrained this "attack the symptom" approach is, the next time you see a TV commercial about some drug that the pharmaceutical industry is peddling, (such as a cold or allergy remedy) notice that in the ad they will say, "for temporary relief from the symptoms of . . ."

Stuck in a Rut:  In our society, when our approach fails, what do we de?   Do we look for a new approach?  Do we focus on the result we want?  Rarely, if ever.  Instead, we do  more of the same.    We do the same thing harder.   You are probably well aware of the fact that a classic sign of insanity is "repeatedly taking the same action and expecting a different result."   

The Scapegoat Mentality:  Still another dysfunctional piece of our "business as usual" social structure is the practice of following the ancient tradition of piling all our guilt and other unwanted emotions onto a goat and then driving the goat out of the village.    The modern version of scapegoating is only a slight variation of this ancient theme.   When something goes wrong, like the Enron scandal, we find someone to blame, punish him, and then declare the problem solved.   We ignore the underlying structure that produced the problem, thus, in a year or so and in a slight variation, the same problem arises again at a more serious and more destructive level.  

Do you see anything even a little bit wrong with the "business as usual" approach to solving problems?    Do you suppose we just might want to look for, find and consider some other possibilities?

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Kaizen:  Kaizen is a highly successful and proven approach to making changes.   It involves a continuing series of small, positive changes made with the intention of improving the quality, joy, comfort, efficiency, and/or functionality in any area of one’s life.   Kaizen is a series of small, incremental steps; as distinct from constant change and as distinct from innovation.  Constant change doesn't work very well because changes are most successful and lasting if each change is followed by an integration time.   

Innovation is making a large, major change in the shortest possible time.   Innovation  doesn't work either because it is counter to the human psyche which resists change and sees major changes as threatening.   We have an entire page devoted to explaining the kaizen concept.   

Site 33  --  TLC-Life-Center 

Page  --  Kaizen  -- Making Changes One Step at a Time

http://www.TLC-Life-Center.info/kaizen.html 

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Focus on Creation:  Instead of fighting what is, consider this approach.   What is it we want?  How do we create it?  

Focus on what is that we don't want only to the extent necessary to deal with it's present manifestations.  For example, the youth Gang members who are randomly destroying car tires in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angels County, California) need to be stopped, but simply adding more police is not going to resolve the gang violence problem.   

What do we want?  Safety on the streets and in our homes and businesses.  Healthy kids.  How to we create that?   Step one is finding the root cause of what is in the way of what we want.

Find and Treat the Root Cause:   In this case, there are no easy answers, quick fixes, magic potions, or silver bullets.   The root causes are deeply imbedded in our belief system which, in turn are deeply imbedded in our social structures.  Several of those beliefs were mentioned above  in the section titled:  A Message to Responsible Adults.   

Do Something Different:  When we take an action, a wise person  examines its result and make mid course corrections.  When the approach is a complete failure, a wise person seek a new approach.   Well, as you can easily see,  the present approach to eliminating, or even reducing gang violence has been an expensive failure.

There Are No Bad Guys.  There are only "sleepwalkers,"  people who do not know what they are actually doing -- people who do not understand the context in which they are functioning -- people who do not realize the true consequences of their actions.   

Punishing people does not solve problems.   Waking people up does.  Do you recall these words?  "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."

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We are taking the Kaizen approach, focusing on creation, finding the root cause, and doing something different.   Instead of piling our blame, guilt and shame onto struggling young men and threatening them with jail, we are teaching them new ways of living and being.   

We are approaching youths and gang members with this offer:    Contact us,'  and we'll show you how to become a real man.    We'll introduce you to aspects of life that you won't get in school.   We'll take you through the basic Theta Healing /Theta Transformation ' class.    And then we'll provide a series follow up sessions.   We'll show you how to re-create yourself to be anything you choose to be and how to created things, situations, and experiences that, for you, at the moment, are impossible.  

See the complete offer on the page titled:  How to  Prove You Are a Real Man. '    

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