Do Better, Chapter 8, section III. A: 1/5 of a map for the later years of Phase II

This post is the start (for a Reader who’d expressed interest in my writing process: the Featured Image is my high level outline, which I sketched initially, and the image below is my detailed outline for this section) of the rough draft of  Chapter 8 of my non-fiction WiP, Do Better, fka Baby Floors.   This part of chapter 8 will begin the later years of mapping out a path to get there for Phase II, with a potential new adulthood rite of passage. 

Sorry, Dear Readers, I forgot that this chapter has 5 sections per early and late, rather than the usual 4.

The overall objective remains that of putting a floor on poverty so that each and every baby born can have a safe childhood.

Outlines for chapter 8 will attempt to match with each section, at the bottom of each post.

Once again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter is part of showing what Phases I-IV could look like as potential roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

(Chapter 8, II. E. was last week)

III. A

III. A (1196/1000 wds).

1. (327/250)

The last 5-7 years of Phase II, the 8th to 15th or 20th year of this phase, which will have been the 30th to 40th year of our overall project, should find the prerequisite requirements for attempting the Challenge to have been fairly well nailed down by many communities, at this point.  The prior emphasis on education around the need for each and every person to understand and be able to do certain tasks, and advocacy for each citizen to take the responsibility to help every person learn those things, now moves into a more urgent mode.  Committees working on this part of the project should check the timeline, and check of course with other committees in their communities, and decide whether this phase may need to have up to another 5 years added to it.  Lobbying for more education and library funding is also part and parcel of this phase of our overall project.  Reminding the public that higher educational and  physical training expectations lead to better health, confidence, and safety outcomes for all of us is also part of this phase.  Ideas like advocating for starting Tai Chi in the Park at 3, much like the “stranger danger” campaigns of the 1970s, can inculcate in our youngest citizens the importance of healthy movement for both self control and self defense.  Looking at the statistics for obesity, falls, osteoporosis, and other common public health measures, should already be starting to show a downward trend in physical exercise related health numbers.  Lobbying for free swimming and flotation classes including annual updates or ‘checkout swims’ as the FAA does for private pilot bi-ennial flight reviews, for all interested persons from the earliest possible age, at their local neighborhood swimming pools, should start to include requests for local health clinics to have a swimming pool added to them soon.  Other ideas may include education campaigns like “tie your shoe while standing on one foot” day, and other simple NonExcerciseActivity.

2. (270/250)

The sets of measurement tools, and the milestones for the later stages for Phase II, for decision-making around whether to require candidates to meet certain prerequisites before attempting this new rite of passage, should now move to consider adjusting the time frame, if needed, depending on the needs of each community.  The prerequisite for physical self defense can include the study of ballet, Pilates, Tai Chi and Yoga as ways of maintaining a healthy back and core muscles (with the caveat that ballet may not be considered healthy due to the damage it does to the skeleton if up on point too soon), and self defense classes for assertiveness and self confidence training.  Assertiveness and emotional self control through meditation training requirements could potentially be considered to be met through Aikido + Tai Chi, or Chi Kung, or any other form of moving meditation.  Keeping track of statistics should start to show increasing improvement for physical health statistics, and also gradually improving mental health statistics as well.  Emotional self defense training can include therapy for all, Tai Chi, and reflection time tools of various kinds.  One idea may be a “Journal for Good” campaign to encourage reflection on one’s feelings, and then applying that to how one could do some good deed based on it, such as a day in which one is feeling lonely leading to nodding or otherwise acknowledging one random person on the street, that day, perhaps on the walk to the metro, as a way of increasing “random acks of humanity.”  This campaign and other 1-minute activities should continue to be developed and tracked statistically and published.

3. (287/250)

Again, in the last years of Phase II, the tools and some of the 1-minute activities developed for or around the prerequisite requirements, where communities are including these, now combine with new legal campaigns.  The issue of emancipated minors and children who need to be able to live on their own, whether orphans, abused at home, or otherwise in need of authorization to live independently, may be highly relevant to this part of our project.  First, though, they need to have, and perhaps also demonstrate, the ability to protect themselves physically via a variety of physical self defense techniques, including awareness of their surroundings and potential threats, so as to avoid going there in the first place, and having the assertiveness to know and implement the fact that they have not only the right but also the obligation to protect themselves, and also others if need be.  These abilities and awarenesses, tools and activities should continue to drill and drive home, are important for both physical health and security, with emotional health benefits, as well.  Other tools, such as public health statistics, should be shared, particularly concentrating on swimming related health statistics, and our legal right to float up together, as that “rising tide lifts all boats,” and life rafts, too.  The tools should make it a point of noting, in some amusing or entertaining way, perhaps, that emotional health and financial health are also tied together, starting from the very earliest ages that one can hear adults screaming at each other.  From a legal point of view, children should have the right to protect themselves from the earliest age possible, for example, from the time that they are able to safely cook an egg by themselves.

4. (262/250)

The purpose, both practical and symbolic, of the prerequisites to The Challenge, during these last years of Phase II, for both individuals and for society should start to be seen, through statistical public health measures by this time, in the benefits to individual, community, and overall public health.  Physical self defense as we have said, entails, and thus must remember to build in to our tools and questions, both physical health determinant factors, like flexibility and core muscle strength, as well as nutritional and respiratory concerns, while not forgetting the obvious parts of physical self defense, such as locks, traps, bars, holds, and throws for smaller sized people, and also for those with various kinds of disabilities.  Health defense must also be included as part of physical self defense, over the long term.  Emotional self defense, and the role that emotions play in physical health, must be remembered as part of the overall societal impact on individual and public health.  Issues such as homelessness deeply affect the psychological health of every person, no matter how well off or how poor, given that the sight of human beings reduced to living on the streets implies that any one of us could end up in that situation, too.  Financial self defense is related, given the levels of various types of unjust debt, and the number of people unjustly involved in our criminal justice system.  Statistics for physical and mental health outcomes, anti-poverty funding, prison recidivism rates and new entries in to the penal system, and statistics related to hunger, childhood poverty, and early childhood education all related closely to each of these types of self defense, and all have the potential to help move our society to a more democratic and free society for all of us.

— (Next Wednesday: Chapter 8, section III. B. )

I’m considering this Rough Draft as the block of clay from which my book will eventually emerge, obviously, and some ideas for phases III and IV are still becoming more  fixed in my mind as I write, so the final version will likely look pretty different from this Rough Draft, and will need updating once I get to the very end.

As for genre, I’m still wondering:  clearly part of  Non-fiction.

Maybe also: Social Policy,  System Change, Causes, maybe even Inspirational, but I doubt it.

Action Items:

1.) Share some ideas you may have on how our society can solve homelessness and child abuse, starting right now,

2.)   Write a book, story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz (The Protector), Lupin, or Money Heist Reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Term Nonfiction & Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, please consider sharing about  #ProjectDoBetter (linked above…).

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.