Robert Paterson's Weblog

An introduction to the Science for taking charge of your own health

 

A central part of my upcoming book - You Don't Need Medicine - To get Healthy - is to do what Martin Luther did for religion. It is to give us access to ideas that we can all understand and use to take charge of our own health.

I am just starting the part of the book where I introduce you to the amazing people who have worked for decades uncovering the systemic aspects of how our health works. Here is a heads up of the cast of pioneers who will help us all change our own lives and so the world. It's just a quick survey - The Book will have so much more and lots of data and images.

Aging - Professor Michael Rose

We all take it for granted that as we get older, we will get ill. In reality this is indeed the case for most of us today.  But is Aging = getting ill part of our evolutionary design or is it no more normal than the fact that if you lived in London in 1850, you would likely die of cholera?

Professor Michael Rose (UC Irvine) is the world's leading thinker on Aging. It was his insight that convinced me that I could avoid becoming ill and disabled as I grew older and so set me on this course for myself. 

What Michael, and his colleague, Larry Mueller, have found out is what we think of the inevitability of aging = decrepitude is not a set pattern. And for humans not at all.

Humans are designed to get old as fit and contributing people. This does not mean that we don't get wrinkles and grey hair. It does not mean that our sight and hearing may not decline. But it does mean that we are designed to be active contributors to society. The reason for this is tied into our evolutionary past. Raising human children takes such effort, over such a long time, that a small tribe had to have no baggage. The Middle Aged and the Old had to be contributors. In tribes where they were not, they died out.

There is a plateau where the loss of powers ceases. We can see the remnants of this in those family members who reach 85 and are still fit. This group can go on well into their 100's. Of course they die. But they remain vital until just before the end.

What Rose and Meller have found out is that this plateau will normally kick in in middle age - Provided that we live close to the rules of environments that we are evolved to do best in. 

The closer our ancestry is to Hunter Gathering the more the risk and the more the opprtunity. Here is what that means in practice:

• Eat the right diet - a very varied diet that has NO grains or novel foods - Novel being foods that we have not evolved to eat
• Be active - not go to the gym for an hour 3 times a week - get off your bum and move all day
• Have a real Tribe - aka be part of a small community where you play a real role and have a real place. Loss of control and identity is a major negative.
• Be brought up as a small child in a community where adults create a trusting structure around us
• Live in a small community - there is a very tight correlation to aging well and small communities
• Obey the time and seasons of nature - sleep a lot - get sunlight
• Don't travel too much or too far or be in contact with people who do

There is no silver bullet. Our health and how we age is a complex matter involving many interactions that we have with our environment. But the good thing about complex systems is that they have simple rules that we can all understand and so act on.

We can choose to eat differently. We can choose not to sit all day. We can choose to have a real network and to put meaning back into our work. We can choose to make parenting the most important job we have. We can choose where we live. We can choose to go to bed earlier and to spend more time outside. We can choose not to travel too much.

Each of these choices challenge the prevailing culture that we live in. We can choose to push back from that and get more connected to the other pioneers who are doing the same.

All of these choices are hard to make. All connect to each other but they all roll up to the big choice. Do you want to get ill as you age or not? For living as we do today makes chronic illness your destiny. The institution of medicine is making no progress in prevention and can only help you with the sypmtons. Only you can keep you well and only you can restore your health if you lose it.

So here, in the evolutionary setting, is the cast of today's Pasteurs - Doctors and Scientists - who are part of the new revolution in health.

Diet - Profesor Staffen Lindeberg

We are all told to "Eat Healthy" and to "Take more Exercise". But what is healthy eating? Lindeberg has done all the work and he is clear. Traditional societies - those close to our Hunter Gatherer way of life - have NO chronic illness. 

The one thing that traditional people do NOT eat are grains and lots of sugars. Neither do they eat any kind of processed food. When they start to eat the modern diet, they get ill. When Lindeberg took people off the modern diet, they got well.

The modern diet is too novel for us. 10,000 years is nothing in evolutionary time. And the past 50 years of industrial food, is a blip.

Diet is the most leveraged part of taking charge of your health.

Our next two pioneers take Lindeberg's work to the next level.

Diet - Dr Natasha Campbell McBride

Your digestive system is not only a set of organs. Our digestion is a complex and co-evolved colony of partner bacteria. We have trillions of bacteria in our gut that do the real work of digesting our food. The make sure that the good stuff is shared and the bad stuff is eliminated. They are the gatekeepers.

Our digestive system is the core of our immune system. Sick gut flora allows toxins to leave the disgetion and enter the body. All chronic illness has some form of inflammation at the core.

Grains are major disrupters of our gut flora. Anti Biotics are mega disrupters. 

Gut health is a vital part of total health. McBride, whose son developed autism and so spurred her work in diet,  is a great communicator and her lab has developed a wide range of strategies that can help. 

Diet Dr Mary Vernon

Fat does not make us fat. We get fat when we disrupt our insulin mechanism. We do that when we overload it with too much sugar. When I say sugar I mean a very wide range of foods that have a high sucrose and glucose load.

Once you understand how this process works, you will never believe that fat makes you fat again and you will be able take make a major change to your health. 

Dr Gordon is one of many people that are working on this metabolic part of our health. I offer her up here because she is so clear and personable. 

Diet Gary Taubes

If you are still hanging onto the fat makes you fat and that grains are good for you, then Gary Taubes has done all the research to demolish this. 

Activity - Dr James Levine

We are all told to "Take More Exercise" - We think that this means go to the gym. The real issue is we must be more active. One hour three times a week in the gym, has little effect on you if you have sat for 10 hours a day. 

Professor Levine makes it quite clear that sitting on our bum all day is a big problem. We are not designed to sit all day. We are designed to move all day. 

How long do you sit all day? 8 hours 12 - 16? We have become like astronauts but in a bad way. 

So what to do? Design activity into your day. I use a standing desk. Walking is the best exercise too. Have walking meetings like the monks used to do.  Your son has ADD at school - maybe not - Maybe he is right and needs to move around all day - maybe it is school that is sick?

This one insight offers all of us a wide range of new possibilities to improve our health. Activity is a design issue. 

Sleep - More than a rest - Dr Charles Czeisler

Just as we are designed to be active, we are designed to sleep. Sleep is not a waste of the day time: it is a powerful resetting process that operates many restoring and repair functions for the mind and body. Dr Czeisler is one best people in the field. His work explores not only what sleep does for us but what YOU can do to get better sleep. 

Sunlight or Vitamin D - The Vitamin D Council

When we moved inside as a species, we lost contact with a vital part of what we get from the sun, Vitamin D. The Vitamin D Council is a goldmine of information about why we need more D than we are getting by living inside all the time.

We evolved in Africa. We are evolved to need a lot of Vitamin D.

Our Social Environment - Dr Sir Michael Marmot

Do you work at the bottom of a hierarchy? Then you will get ill and die 4 times earlier than those at the top. Married to your work as a man? Retirement will kill you in 5 years. Are you at the lower end of the vast income inequality in the US and the UK? You will get ill. 

How much control and Status we have in life directly affects our health. Medicine and access to healthcare has nothing to do with these differences in health outcomes. 

Dr Sir Michael Marmot is the world's leading authority on how human social environments affect our health. Cubicle land and factory work is lethal. Large differences in national income is lethal. Inequality is lethal.

His research on the Brtish Civil Service is a landmark piece of work that sheds light on how this works. 

Our Social Environment - Professor Robert Sapolsky

So how does this process work? All primates get stressed by social issues. Zebras only worry at the moment when they are being chased by the lion. Baboons worry all the time about their place in the troop. Humans worry even more. Our consciousness can be a curse. We can worry oursleves about the mortgage or global warming too. 

Sapolsky is the leading scientist studying the primate and human stress mechanism.  

Sapolsky is a brilliant scientist and a remarkable explainer. His lectures online are very accessible and offer massive insights as to why we, as the most social of all animals, have to pay attention to our social environment and do all we can to make it less stressful.

And what to do to cope with our stress? I have two favourites here - The late Dr Viktor Frankl and the very much alive Dr Gabor Mate. 

Social Environment Early Childhood - Dr J Doug Willms

The single most important social factor on our health over a lifetime is the social environment that we had from 0 - 3. When I say 0, I mean from the moment of conception. Children's world view, and so their stress reaction to life is set by 3. This setting drives the development trajectory for life. 

Professor Doug Willms is the authority on the link between family culture and long term development outcomes for children. 

So how we parent is key. If we are too top down, use power all the time, don't touch enough, speak to but not converse with - all signs of a stressed person - then we set up poor conditions. If we allow everything, let the child run her life, don't stand firm on important issues, are distant - then this too has poor outcomes. The worst being when each parent has one of these two styles.

The best outcomes are from parents who stand firm on important things but allow a lot of room for all others. Who have lots of conversation with their infants. Who touch their kids a lot and who are affectionate with each other. 

This style of parenting is not tied into any one income level. So many of us have been captured by our own stress response to the corporate world. It leads me to believe that earning our living in a different way will help.

Social Environment Parenting - The Late Jean Liedloff

Just as Michael Rose goes back in time to show us a lifestyle that is suited to how we evolve, so the late Jena Liedloff does this in how best to parent. Her work is the manual of our evolution and is very accessible and pragmatic

Social Environment - PTSD - DR Jonathan Shay

PTSD is a massive issue in the west today after more than a decade of warfare. Here again people have been shaped by their environment. So is the cause of PTSD the trauma of seeing or doing  bad things? 

Shay has discovered that this is too simple a perspective. The deeper cause of PTSD, and all illness caused by trauma, is Betrayal. This is why incest is such a terrible act as it involves the worst betrayal of all.

PTSD is driven by bad leadership. A military that has leaders who care not for their men but for their careers. A political class that goes to war and exploits the patriotism of their young men for a game and not a real cause. A system that rotates men too often and breaks their attachments.

This betrayal was seen everywhere in Vietnam.  All that was wrong in Viertnam has taken place again in Iraq and in Afghanistan. As those involved learn that they were betrayed, their feelings will deepen. The PTSD epidemic will grow.

Shay also has done the work to find a way for these men to come home. And it is not drugs or experts. It is in helping people help each other. It is in helping them find a tribe again. Medicine and conventional therapy does not work. Only the tribe can offer the trust required to quiet the demons. 

Changing Deep Beliefs - Alan Deutschman

How do we change our wiring? If we have depression, PTSD, had a shitty childhood, have addictions? There is no pill. There is no smart man in a white coat. But there is a proven social process and journalist Alan Deutschman has made a lifetime study about what this is. 

His work, Sapolsky's, Mate's, Frankl's and Shay's all intersect and support each other. Alan offers a special clarity and great case studies.

Changing Deep Beliefs - Neuroplasticity - Dr Norman Doidge

And so what is this kind of change that Alan reviews so clearly? ? We have to rewire our brain - literally. Our beliefs, or our automatic responses to an event, have been hard wired in our brain by repetition. The more times we go to THAT place, the faster we go there. It is like a river cutting a chasm.

Doidge and Sapolsky have unravelled how this mechanism works and are using the understanding of the plasticity of the brain to change the wiring. 

Dr Norman Doidge has had great success in helping people rewire. Even people with schizophrenia. 

Good for you

This is a long list and if you have reached this far, well done. As you can see there is not a pill in sight. I hope you can see that all of this is related and all of this intersects. It's complex. But if you make a start, you will be amazed at how you start to change and gain confidence.

The best place to start is diet. It is the most leveraged area and you will get the fastest response in health gains. Then you will have the confidence to try other areas.

If you want to know more now, I have a supporting website called the Missing Human Manual. There is loads more information, videos, articles etc from all of these people there. If you want to even deeper, Michale Rose has put together a major work on the evolutionary context at 55 Theses

A Fractal History of the World - Part 1 - Where are we and where are we going

I know that I am not alone in being worried about the state of the world today. Are you? My reaction has been to see if I could find a way of seeing things so that I could understand.

I needed to know where are are - how we got here and where we might be going. I needed context.

So I have been writing a very short book. It is all but finished and I thought now might be a good time to show you at least the premise of the book. So here is Chapter 4 - The Map.

Crisis drives change in food system - then and now part 1 #paleo

12,000 years ago a crisis ended millions of years of Hunter Gatherer society. We did not happily chose a new way of life. A crisis forced it upon us and our brilliance at using our minds to solve problems lead to us inventing new technology that took us down a path that created the modern world as we know it.

I can see that such a crisis is upon us again and that once more we will have to use our ingenuity to find a new way. This series will be my sketch book as to what that might entail.

Let's start with what happened to us the last time and then I will go on to look at why we face a crisis of similar scale today and then what we might to to get us out of it. 

The Crisis that Ended Hunter Gathering

Who better than James Burke to show us what happend

 

The crisis was a change in climate in the middle east that destroyed the wild habitat that the large population of Hunter Gatherers needed to sustain themselves. 

The big new idea was domestication of plants and and animals. The core tool would be the plow. The core new food would be grain. A food that you could store. And so a food that you could control. A process of control that lead top the idea of property, of kings and their great tool for control - the written word. 

It meant nothing that this food was a poor substitute for what we had eaten before. We lost a foot in mean height. We developed the diseases of modern civilization. It was eat this or starve.

This was a food that could also expand the population exponentially. Farmer/herder societies could field armies and then take over lands of Hunter Gatherers who had no defence. The grain produced the population, the king, the army and then the conquest.

Our world view is shaped by this history. The normal of centralized control. Of power concentration and the use of the word to control us. Of cheap and easy food.

By 100 AD and the rise of Rome, the end of the Hunter Gatherer world was certain.

Our modern crisis

So what's the crisis? It had better be a big one for our current system is so well entrenched!

I think that these are the elements of the crisis that will force us to change as our Hunter Gatherer ancestors were forced to change.

Our food system today depends utterly on the availability of cheap oil. This is what has made available the expansion of world population from 2 billion in 1900 to 7 billion today. This expansion coincides with the oil age. Some time soon this will no longer be available. 

This is Timgad in North Africa - the Capital of the Prairies of the Roman World. If you want to know where the top soil is look here in Ephesus across the Mediterranean.

The great port of Ephesus silted up from topsoil blown from North Africa. Constant plowing destroys the topsoil. Just as constant irrigation destroys it from salt build up

Our focus on grains and the plow and inputs to feed and to defend a concentrated row crop ALWAYS destroys the land. 

The clock is ticking for the prairies and California.

Making corn and sugar the centre of the modern diet and the agribusiness, we are also driving a health problem  that is overwhelming us. Not just a health crisis but a financial crisis. The costs of dealing with this are too much for any of us to bear or any society.

We are starting to understand now that the very core crop, grains, that saved us all that time back will now destroy us.

We have reached the limits of what the agricultural revolution can offer.

This feels like a crisis to me that cannot be undone by working harder to do what we have always done.

In the middle east back in the day, you could not hunt harder either. 

And, I nearly forgot. Nature is also doing her thing. Weather instability is making crop growing a very hard thing to do and it is getting worse. With 7 billion people to feed, we cannot miss a beat but we are.

So in my next post I want to explore how a new diet may drive a new food system. A new food system as radically different as the one that the plow created and with all the ramification for human society and power that a real revolution implies. 

Sap or Sapiens - Taking charge of my health #paleo Part 1 - Context

This is me - a year ago. A "normal" overweight 59 year old male. 205 lbs and 5.11" My BMI is 28.6 or just under Obese at 30.

I am 60 years old. Life expectancy for a man of my time and age on PEI is 75. On Average by 65 the average of men like me will be helpless.

My own father died at 55. My mum has been an invalid since she has been 45. So the big question that I am confronting is not when I should die but will I too become a helpless invalid soon and burden my family and the state with looking after me.

The issue for me is not about death but about my life! My question is - How will I live out my last decades? Will I be getting progressively more frail or will I be healthy, active and a contributor until my end?

This question is about my health and also about my finances. 

Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia are all how most of us end up. Even in Canada with the state paying - this can be crippling financially. If my mother did not have a pension from my dad I don't know how we would have coped.  In the US the costs are immediate and can ruin a family. If you are an American and you get any of these, you will end up bankrupt. 

In Canada and in the UK, when most of us are over 65, the costs of the new normal way of aging will ruin the state as well. On PEI the costs of healthcare will double in 2015 and double again to 2.4 billion in 2018. The total tax revenue from PEI's own resources is currently $600!

Now that most of us will be old, the stakes are huge - for me and for you as individuals and also for the societies that we live in.

So what to do? I and you are surrounded by fad diets and by people making their living by giving us "answers"

I have the motivation but I did not have a context for action so that I could choose a path that I could sustain. For I, like you, am a creature of habits that will be hard to break. I had to find not simply a diet but a way of life that would suit me and one that was not impossibly hard for me. I had to find a way that I could adhere too.

I had to find a context for action.

My regular readers will know that I have long espoused a return to a more Human way of life that is more akin to our Tribal Norms. I have written for a time and extensively about what this may be like. I have written also about how to grow food in a new/old way.

So one day abut 3 months ago, I got a call from a friend who wanted to introduce me to a colleague of his - Dr Michael Rose. Michael is one of the leading Evolutionary Biologists of our time and is one of the leaders in the world on the process of aging. Thus has begun one of the most formative relationships of my life.

For my bias has always been science. As many bang on about this and that in areas that I care about sich as how the Social in Social media work - I look to the science. Hence my interest in Robin Dunbar whom I have been following for many years. So my interest in parenting is not about this fad or that but in the science of how family culture affects children's development. Hence my interest in Doug Willms. So my interest in how our institutions affect the health and spirit of employees is not just a rant but based on the research of Dr Sir Michael Marmot.

What Michael Rose has opened my eyes to are these vital contextual points that are rooted in not a "How To Book" but in a lifetime of research and from a mind that is laser like. 

• Aging is not downhill all the way from our peak to the grave - that trajectory is a product of how we have bolted our modern culture onto our Paleo biology. We can halt aging. It does halt normally if we reach about 80 - but we can halt it earlier. I want to halt mine NOW!
• The diseases of modern times that cause us to age in this way and that make us so ill are a result of how our culture - Post industrial living and eating of 50 years - Farming and Settled of  7,000 years for North Europeans and much less for all else and 100 years for Natives - has violated our biology of more than 2,000,000 years. We have got too far away from whom we are!
• Diet is a very important first step in regaining our health and with a more "Human" diet, we can undo a lot of damage - modern diseases are unknown in the few remaining Hunter Gatherer societies.
• But so are other areas of how we live - How we are employed - how large the population of the place is where we live - how much sunlight, sleep we get - the strength of our tribe connections - the kind of activity we get.

In short, Michael is recommending that I and you do our best to live a Paleo or more Human life - to live again as a Sapiens and not as a Sap!

By this he does not mean return to skins and a cave. Remember at the time of the Renaissance, people also re-discovered the wisdom of the Classic Age and using this Wisdom overthrew the Dogma of the Medieval time that was based on the self interest of the governing institutions of the time - the church and the hereditary monarchies. 

This lead to a cultural change.

We too today live in a Matrix. We think that it is "Normal" that we get ill the way we do. We think it "Normal" that we look the way we do. We hope that the institutions will "Cure" us when we get these Normal Illnesses. There are powerful forces out there that do very well out of this and we think their role in our life is "Normal" too.

But then in 1500 the Universal Church, the Inquisition and Monarchies were normal too.

This new series will be my kind of 95 Theses. I am going to show you the "Observed Truth" not the fad. I will confine myself to science. Not just Michael's work but a host of other scientists, who each have a piece of the puzzle well worked out now. In my next post I will outlines the areas that I will be working in.

The greatest challenge we will have - you and I are our own beliefs and habits and the vested interests of the powerful who wish us to stay as we are. Later I will explore this too. I will explore Resistance and the Coming Inquisition. 

But for now - for you to chew on - what am I doing that is helping me fit my life closer to my paleo biology and how is this working.

Here I am aged 18 - at the peak of my life in terms of health and vitality. I weighed 140 lbs then. Check out what I looked like last year.

My plan is to get back to about 165 lbs. Most important to lose my tummy fat. I am now at 185 lbs so I have lost 20 lbs already. Imagine carrying a back pack with 20 lbs of books around all day. At 165 lbs I will have lost 40 lbs. You try  carrying 40 lbs around all the time - you probably do!

So that is my goal - what am I doing? I am trying to be Human again. Trying to match the life that I am designed to live by my evolution. I am doing my best to mirror the following:

Food and Diet - In our Paleo past - all 2 million years of it - we ate mainly meat, insects, nuts, fish and leaf and root veggies. We have been cooking for at least 2 million years. We did not mainly eat Raw food. Nor did we only eat veggies and plants. Our brain development was powered by meat. (I know that many will be upset to hear this and in later posts I will make the link to the science)

Der Spiegel

I come from Northern European stock. My genes are the most adapted to dairy and grain. But we lose this adaptation by our middle years. If you are of African descent, you have no adaptation to this. Most of you are lactose intolerant. If you are Asian - dairy is out! If you are a Native American or Canadian - you were eating a traditional diet only 100 years ago and you have no tolerance for any modern food - least of all for the very worst modern foods - sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

No one!!!! Is adapted to the Agribusiness Diet. Look at the global obesity and diabetes epidemic that has taken off since the 1980's.

If you are a Native - the answers are in your traditional culture - what an opportunity to go home for you.

Lot's more to say here later - for of course the Food Pyramid is wrong. Wonder why? Also need to help you with "a calorie is not a calorie issue" - we are not a simple machine and different foods get dealt with in different ways. Controlling calories and attempting to burn them off is too simplistic an idea.

Nor is this about sacrifice - if it was no one could do it. 

Am I hungry? Not at all. One of the interesting things about giving up grains is that mow my Leptin works - this is what tells me and you when you are full. Sugar kills this off. As soon as I have had enough, I get told. I am never hungry.

Sleep - Hunter Gatherers lived by the Sun. They sat around the fire at night but got up with the Sun. Dreams are a key part of how they process issues. How much sleep do you get? Most of us are deprived and sleep has all sorts of healing properties - it also enables you to process complex problems. I get at least 8 hours a night and I wake to the sun. My window faces East. 

Work - Of course when you get up in the morning is connected to how you work. If you have a "job" you usually use clock time. If you commute - it is even worse. If you have kids - it's even worse! But our real normal is to work in a tribal setting not in the setting of the "Man". So work is task based and the work part of the day is punctuated with long periods of social or rest time. Daycare is your eldest daughter or sister. Work made up about 25% of the day. It probably does for you too - the rest is in meetings or commuting. Can you do any work at work anyway?

I have been self employed for 15 years and I get up when I want to. My commute is 8 steps. I go to bed when I am tired and get up with the light. In summer that is very early. In winter it is late.

Exercise and Daylight - When have you seen a ripped Hunter Gatherer? When have you seen them exert themselves except for a reason? This is the bit I like! We are designed by our biology to be active. That is to be moving around a lot and to carry loads. The word here is ACTIVE not exercise. Walk - carry wood - carry babies - carry food. Have stairs and use them. Stand a lot.

Be outside a lot. Most of us who live in the North are very deficient in Vitamin D - the best place to get it is outside in the sun. 

Have a Tribe - Then worst thing that could happen to a Paleo person was to be shunned, expelled or to be without her tribe. We are designed  to be part of a small group of people that we would die for. Many today have barely a parent. I have my web tribe that is very small but where the feelings of trust and love are high and I have an active extended family that increasingly looks after each other in very tangible ways. 

The worst thing that can happen to your health is to lose a loved spouse or to have a major  break with a sibling. These kind of social events can kill you.

Live in Small Groups - Most of the infectious diseases of our time come from concentrations of people and animals. We are designed to live in small communities where we "Know" most people. We are intensely social with all sorts of social tools that keep us informed as to what is really going on. When we live in big places we shut all of this down to protect ourselves from the noise. We switch off most of our feedback mechanism and so get "lost' - we tend to disappear into ourselves. This is the root of so much dysfunction and depression.

I live on PEI - total pop 140,000. We all know everyone! The big city is 35,000 this size of Athens of Socrates and London of Elizabeth 1st. 

Mission - A Tribe has a compelling mission that all adults are prepared to die for. The kids must survive and have their time as the leaders of the Tribe. This is no faux corporate mission - this is the reality of all existence and we have largely forgotten it. It can be a larger mission that includes all the kids in your city or state or province. 

At 60 my own kids are important but now so are all kids. I am devoted to doing my best to give them a better chance - for it is me and our generation that has used up so much of the planet just for us and that has given them shit for a future.

Having a mission gives the later years of my life a purpose and with a purpose a reason to stay vital and active.

So my dear readers - this is the thesis.

Over the next few weeks I will delve into every part of this and introduce you to the Scientists and to their work - Any of the points that I have made now that are odd - seem wrong etc I will expand on. 

I am not saying that you have to do anything. I will talk about what I have done and will do. My point is to show you that what I am doing is possible - I have done it or I am doing it.

All I am doing is also rooted in science. I am not trying to sell anything. But if you want to take charge of your health - please pile in.

Oh and PS - Alcohol - Very early in our history - Thank God!

Benoit Mandelbrot, RIP

Nothing in the news media yet, but many folks on Twitter and colleague Nassim Taleb are reporting that the father of fractal geometry is dead at age 85. We're not there yet, but someday Mandelbrot's name will be mentioned in the same breath as Einstein's as a genius who fundamentally shifted our perception of how the world works.

His death is now confirmed NYT His His death, at a hospice, was caused by pancreatic cancer, his wife, Aliette, said. He had lived in Cambridge.

via kottke.org

A giant - the discoverer of the geometry of complexity and chaos - or how the world really works. A life well lived!

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

More here - you get a sense of his mind and how sweet he was as a man

 

WWI ships chart past climate - Citizen Science is Emerging

The public are being asked to revisit the voyages of World War One Royal Navy warships to help scientists understand the climate of the past and unearth new historical information.

Visitors to OldWeather.org, which launches on 12 October 2010, will be able to retrace the routes taken by any of 280 Royal Navy ships including historic vessels such as HMS Caroline, the last survivor of the 1916 Battle of Jutland still afloat.

By transcribing information about weather, and any interesting events, from images of each ship’s logbook web volunteers will help scientists to build a more accurate picture of how our climate has changed over the last century, as well as adding to our knowledge of this important period of British history.

‘These naval logbooks contain an amazing treasure trove of information but because the entries are handwritten they are incredibly difficult for a computer to read,’ said Dr Chris Lintott of Oxford University, one of the team behind the OldWeather.org project. ‘By getting an army of online human volunteers to retrace these voyages and transcribe the information recorded by British sailors we can relive both the climate of the past and key moments in naval history.’

Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, said: ‘Historical weather data is vital because it allows us to test our models of the Earth's climate: if we can correctly account for what the weather was doing in the past, then we can have more confidence in our predictions of the future. Unfortunately, the historical record is full of gaps, particularly from before 1920 and at sea, so this project is invaluable.’

Dr Robert Simpson of Oxford University, one of the OldWeather.org team, said: ‘Luckily, these observations made by Royal Navy sailors every four hours without fail – even whilst under enemy fire! – can help to fill this ‘data gap’. It’s almost like launching a weather satellite into the skies at a time when manpowered flight was still in its infancy.’

via ox.ac.uk

Citizen Journalism is established now - even though the old guard hate it. And now Citizen Science is emerging - here is a very interesting Oxford project that asks for volunteers to go through ship log books to record old weather patterns. Asks by the way on Facebook!.

In the field of Astronomy, citizen science is long established. Like in the oil industry, amateurs are usually the ones who find the asteroids etc and then their finds are taken up by the "Majors".

The advent of social media will surely change science as it changes all fields. The irony is that the great achievements of science were mainly made back in the day when it was all Citizen Science!

It is so refreshing to get the "professional" out of telling stories, teaching and now science.

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

Why we need a new media model - Complexity!

Are you frustrated by how our politicians cannot seem to get anything done anymore? I am mad as hell! I hate how they just seem to score political points off each other? Don't you?

Does it worry you, as a consequence, that we cannot seem to make any progress on important issues such as energy, education, health, global conflict and now immigration? Does it seem to you as it does to me that each issue seems to about only competing slogans and yelling and name calling?

If you share my concerns, do you wonder why our political process is so polarized into conflict?

I suspect that the answer is that how our media works is big part of this.  They live by headlines and by circulation. This is their model. So fear making and conflict is how they make their money. Conflict sells papers and pulls in eyeballs and ears.  So they offer all of us - politicians and us - a view of what is going on that is binary - Us against them - Me against You. 

Maybe this worked better in a simpler world where our problems were in our community and we could all experience the context. Then a headline was OK because we we the local experts. We knew and experienced what was going on.

But now we live in a such a hyper connected world many of our problems are outside of our experience. How could you know that the noble idea of "Bringing democracy to Afghanistan" is an insane idea? What do you know of the place - you have no context. No we can have a furious debate about this with no one knowing anything real about the context. Such debates can never end.

What do you know about the pressures that have driven millions to risk their lives to cross the border to work in terrible conditions? You and I don't and we can't - so instead we can take sides in an artificial debate about legal or not - secure border or not - racist or not - and never come close to understanding enough to make a valid decision about what to do.

What do you and I really know about oil reserves and how much time we really have before there never will be cheap oil again. What do you and I really know about how our food supply depends utterly on cheap oil and how we might starve if this is not available? We cannot - so we engage instead in a furious and futile debate about whether there us global warming or not.

So if the media only gives us headlines - if it always drops a story when there is no "News" - if it never helps us find the context what then?

Don't we need to find a better way that can help us understand the complex issues?

What would this mean? What would better mean?

This is a "no-context" storm - this image shows us how it feels to be In the storm of "no-context". We just get tossed about. We are helpless. We get scared. 

But this is the Pattern - all hurricanes look like this if we can find the right perspective. As you can see from this POV there is structure, order and meaning. We can't stop them but we can work with them because we know how they work.  

We can also know the tracks that they take - not precisely - but we can mitigate the damage that they do.

No meteorologist will ever tell you that she can predict the precise actions of a complex system like a hurricane but we can learn how to live with them. We can do a lot to redice our risks because we do understand their pattern and their habits. 

Now imagine if your media could help you see the patterns in our complex challenges? Surely we would do better than we do now? Would that be a project that would excite you?

THIS is what we are trying to do at KETC in our project on the most binary topic of our time right now - Immigration. A topic that gets us all easily into name calling and so into a dead end where NO progress is possible.

Immigration is a topic that the media don't even pretend to offer us a pattern. Here is the Pattern of Patterns that will show you the nature of a problem and how you solve them.

Cynefin Dave Snowden

The curent media is stuck in the Simple. It pretends that we and they live in the "Known Realm" The Simple Realm (Laying Bricks or Stacking Wood) where cause and effect are directly linked. They don't even go to the "Knowable" or Complicated Realm (Designing a Jet Engine)

They operate in the Simple Realm when nearly all that confronts us is Complex or Chaotic. Using the rules of the Simple to deal with Complex and Chaotic leads to confusion and disaster. 

Nearly all our challenges are in the Complex or Chaotic realm. These are the realms nature herself. So for example this is how Hurricanes are structured. They are Complex. In the Complex Realm we have to get enough perspective to find the hidden and inevitable order in the patterns. These patterns are the same but different. They are predictable in how they operate but only in a general sense. For instance all turbulence of a certain type for instance looks like a hurricane. The water going down your plughole and a galaxy all share the same pattern. They have internal rules that are consistent that enables us at least to understand them. Whereas if you are in a storm, all you can do is hang on and hope. 

Chaos is even harder to "see" but it too has patterns and order that have structure but they are very hard to "see" as a lot of time has to pass before the pattern emerges.

In Chaotic Realms, small things have to iterate over time until a shape is settled. So, think of a seed becoming a small shoot, then a plant then a sapling then a tree and then a copse and then a wood and then the full ecosystem of a forest. At each stage the shape changes but you can only see the complete pattern at the end.

That is how Chaos evolves into a knowable pattern. All acorns have the potential to become not just a tree but a forest. 

If you only saw an acorn and did not know it could become a forest, you would have to wait for a thousand years to see the connection. You still might never see this. Most only see the obvious end state as a tree. But that is not the real end state. The Climax Forest is the end state.

But now we know the pattern, it will always do its best to reach its potential. We can help an acorn become a forest by helping it have the best environment for each stage of its development along its trajectory. So we cannot control it. We cannot be assured that it will reach its potential but we can give it a very good chance. It is like this with our children.

Seeing the patterns then is the way to understand Complex and Chaotic system.

So then how can a media organization do this? Well first of all it has to know that this is the work. Not itself a small thing when all the real media lives in a different mindset!

This is what we have decided to do at KETC. Call us mad! Most called Columbus mad. No one would finance his voyage to the west for decades. Everyone knew that the world was flat! It took a Queen to make the investment. Columbus also did not have a lot of fun along the way either. This is not fun being out there on a limb with everything at risk. But it is maybe our destiny. We sure can't turn back now.

So sorry about the lecture but I don't know how else to show you our context.

This is where we are at KETC.

I would like to show you an example of how we are using "pattern seeking" to make sense of immigration. If we can do this then maybe we can make sense of a lot of other things.

Mea Culpa - We have not cracked this.

We are very much still finding our way and do not claim to have solved this. We feel like Columbus must have felt weeks into his voyage as the supplies were running out and the crew getting scared. I think we have seen the odd gull and a few logs in the water. We sense we are close to land but not sure. And we still don't know what to do if we get to land.

You can help us by telling me more about how we might improve this process. You will see things that we can't - please pile in and help!

Here is the process that has emerged from our work - with no prior plan. It has just emerged into our own vision this week! It is offering us a pattern for rooting an issue into pattern of its own that has structure and so meaning.

1. We go out to the community in St Louis and ask people in the street what they know or think about an issue - In this case the Dream Act - we do this to find out where we are starting from - do people have a view, do they know much anyway, what is the local temperature? We start with our local reality and experience with the issue. We let them speak not us. 
2. We go out to an expert - who does know a lot about what ever is the issue - in this case an immigration lawyer in St Louis - she provides her professional opinion of what is the context. We find out the facts from a person who knows a lot more than we coud ever know. We let her speak not us. 
3. We go out to a person who is directly affected by the issue and get her experience. We find the impact of the issue not from a pundit but from a person who is affected. We let her speak and not us
4. We mine the web for the related national stories on the topic - This is where I am using Darwin to help me find patterns globally on the web related to Immigration This link will go deeply into the help that this tool is providing in seeing patterns in the chaos of the web - a whole new kind of search based on pattern emergence. We extract the larger patterns from the chaos of all the headlines. We let them speak and not us.

Please look at what we have done behind the links.

In part 2 of this post I will offer up the pattern that I have seen - but for now - what do you see if anything?

 

A Great Divide - Are we living in an evolutionary event for humans? Part 1

I have been wondering what is the difference between people who get the deep meaning of social media and those who don't. I am now wondering as I see the profound failure of all of us to fix our great underlying systemic problems whether, the failure for many to "get" social media is in fact a sign of a wider problem of "World View"?

I wonder also if there is an evolutionary shift underway? A shift between a "Kinetic" world view and an "Energetic" world view? Is the divide merely a cultural one or might there be a physiological difference?

Are there in reality, two species of humans now walking the Earth? Is there a Homo Noeticus?

There is at least no doubt that we are having problems solving massive problems right now. What makes the problems worse are that the very assumptions used in creating the problems are being offered without question as the solutions. At some point, we will all see that we are stuck.

Our world is controlled by the Kinetic POV. Over the last 50 years, a mass of evidence has been gathered to show the Energetic underpinnings of all these systems. But a Kinetic Person cannot "see" the alternative. It cannot exist for their reality. They cannot be argued. So we remain stuck - for now!

I say for now because I see hope in an ever larger pool of people who naturally "see" their world using a larger overlay of perspective that is Energetic and Social. They cross all racial and class barriers. They are often separated from their own family and even spouses as their connection to the wider perspective of energy expands. They know each other the moment they make contact - even online. They cling to each other for support and protection for they know that they are the "Other" that the Kinetics fear the most.

If the Kinetic world cannot fix our problems. Problems that extend into our impact upon the planet itself. Problems that carry our doom as a species with them - energy, food, global extinctions and climate change - then maybe our only chance for a descent versus a collapse will be that there enough people with an energetic world view to lend a hand.

So what makes a person more Energetic - able to see the connections and to feel and project energy? What is it that offers this gift?

I am starting to think that the answer is more than merely cultural - something that can be learned. I am beginning to think that the answer may be physiological and so may then be an evolutionary response.

Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke and discovered a new reality when her "Kinetic" brain was lost to her and she could only access her "Energetic Brain".

With access only to her right brain- she found that she inhabited ONLY an energetic world - where she was dissolved into the universe.

When she recovered access to her Kinetic brain, she found that she could now move between one and the other.

I think the answer is that those who are more energetic have a wider pathway between the two hemispheres of the brain and can travel back and forth as Jill Bolte Taylor can now.

How does this pathway open up and why was it closed.

Julian Jaynes in his masterpiece, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, made the case that prior to "civilization" and very importantly, the common use of the written word, that humans had full access to both hemispheres of the brain. Hence we could hear the voice of the Gods - our connection to the larger group's and locale's energy. Writing and reading demand massive use of the left hemisphere. Over time, as literacy became the norm, we narrowed the pathway. In the 20th century, it must have all but have been closed off. 

We know that many critical aspects of our neural development depend on Use it or Lose it. Any 2 year old can learn any language with no effort. But an 8 year old will really struggle to learn a second - there is a window. This window idea extends to the physical. For instance, if you blindfold a cat for the first year of life, it will never see. The brain connections for sight have to be used during a critical time or they can never be made.

These gains or losses do not have to be experienced directly by the child. For instance any 3 year old will draw using the vanishing point as a perspective. But a 14th century master artist had such a problem with "seeing" the world this way that he had to have a tool to help him.  So, just as a border collie will have herding built in or a Labrador a fondness for water, we seem to be able to pass on some kinds of skills and behaviors.

Changes that affect a lot of people, can happen very quickly. In 1970, there were almost no fat people anywhere. Now there is an epidemic of  obesity. How can this be? Obviously it has some thing to do with our life style and food but what happens to us as people? We cannot have a genetic shift in such a short time. The genes must be there. But why some fat and some not? Why do obese people have obese kids? What can happen is that the on/off switches that control which genes express or not can be inherited. So the parents that have the fat gene expressed can pass this on. We pass on the dashboard.

What I am saying is that events can change our wiring. When the wiring is changed, we can pas on the new wiring to our kids. 

What I would like to do in my next post is to describe my own experience in "waking up. It was almost as traumatic as Jill Bolte Taylor's. Something happened to me. 

I would also like to hear what happened to you too. Have you always been awake? Can you recall an event or a series of events, or maybe something about your early life that created the conditions by which you too woke up?