The Great Return 4 - What getting it wrong means

Why should we care how we live? Can't we choose what ever way we want?

Lesson - if we break the rules of nature, we tend to pay. One of the ways modern man pays a lot is that we have poor health. What is driving the obesity and diabetes? What is driving HIV? It is not just junk food and sex but how we feel. How we feel is determined by how much control we have.

Healthcare is a bubbling issue in Canada. By healthcare we mean access to doctors and drugs. We believe that it is medicine that keeps us healthy. This is only a little true. You don't believe me? Check this out out.

TB was all but wiped out just as antibiotics were introduced in the early 1950's. What happened? TB is a disease driven by social adversity. It's on it way back today. Where? In places like Russia and in the underclass ghettos of the US where more and more people feel helpless. The highly stratified world that we live today where there is such a gap between those that have a say and those that don't is driving poor health

You think that smoking, high cholesterol etc may kill you? You think that access to drugs that reduce attendant risks are essential? I am afraid you are mistaken.

This slide tells a very different story about risks to your health. It draws on over 20 years of data taken from ;civil servants in the UK. The chart shows the key 4 grades in the hierarchy. In the Uk the Administrative grade are the top people. What Dr Marmot discovered was that it is ones relative position in the hierarchy that determines ones main risk to dying of heart disease. It is how much we feel in control that counts. Because so few people in the workplace feel that they have any control, the traditional workplace is the main driver of illness in our world today.

This slide shows a gradient for health by state in the union. The states with high social capital and relatively narrow gap between the rich and poor (say and no say - in control or helpless) have much better health outcomes (Robert Putnam)

How we fit also affects education and even crime.

So ask yourself - what is really going on in parts of Toronto?

Bottom line - how much control we have in life drives our immune system, drives how we learn, drives crime or not.

Bottom line - modern organizations tend to remove most control from most people.

So what would an organization that fit the rules of nature for humans be like? If we can see it and understand it, can we get there?

More later. PS passive watching of TV is really bad for us

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