Robert Paterson's Weblog

Why when we "see" the network - many of our problems may go away

Do you see how things are getting worse for most people and for the rest of the planet and feel helpless? Do you wonder what you can do?

An answer to your frustration may be as simple as "Seeing" the world in a new way. It was the answer to the problems of the Medieval world too. When enough people "Saw" the world anew, human society was renewed and hope legitimately returned. 

This is how I see this.

In a small world that was highly local the illusion that the Earth was the centre and that the sun revolved around it was good enough for life as it was lived then.

Everyone today knows that the sun rising moving across the sky and setting is an illusion. We know it is an illusion even though the first time we could "see" this with the human eye was in the 1970's.

Imagine how hard it must have been to get others to agree to this idea? Especially when the most important and powerful institution of the day, the church, had a stake in the illusion. No wonder people who espoused the new idea were burned at the stake or threatened with excommunication. 

But the idea took hold because it solved a pressing problem. This new idea enabled people to navigate. Then it enabled people to be able to plan and engineer. After Newton, a huge amount of predictability could be engineered into how things were made and used. We could do so much more after we accepted this new idea.

The idea was accepted because it worked. It made what had been impossible to do, possible.

 

To develop further as a species, humans have to transition though stages of perception. For do we not evolve as a species as we might as individuals?

As an infant, we are part of our mother. Hence the Earth is the centre of the universe and we are part of it. In the next stage, we have to separate from her and grow our own persona. This is the Newtonian world that we live in now. But the selfish teen has to grow up and have enough empathy to bond with a mate and to put their children first. This is what we have to do now.

To develop as a species, we have to put the teen years aside.We have to reach that stage in our species development that individuals do.

I think that we are at the end stages of our "Teen Age" years as a species. It is why we like shiny things. This is why we seem to be working against our best interests. We are Teens. Teens don't do Complexity!

As Dave Snowden's Cynefin model suggests, we are applying engineering principles to Complex and to Chaotic issues.

So how can we change this Teen perception? I think first of all it may help to see some tangible examples of how nature really does work and how there is so much more to see that what we can see with our eyes.

Here are just a few glimpses.

 

We think that what we see when we look at tress are trees. But we don't see this. All trees have a local communication system below ground that is part physical and also part funghi. There is also a hierarchy of trees in this system. So when we clear cut, we destroy this part. 

The tiny Fig Wasp is the only way that this giant fig can reproduce. It is so small we can barely see it with the naked eye. This huge tree and this tiny wasp are part of an ivisible network that extends above the ground where the other hidden treee network lies. 

Here then is a larger part of this hidden network that involves all mammals and of course us.

We are part of this tree network.

We live a mutally dependent life with trees. They are not just lumber. They are essential for life.

And inside us, our lungs are like tree too!

There are like this because this shape does the job of respiration of gasses best in the natural world. 

I hope that this tiny illustration has helped you see this one example of the hidden world of connections that make up how things really work.

Once we "Get" this, then we can start to make sense of how the world really works. We can get unstuck.

It all starts with you and me. As each of us "see" this, we bring the human species closer to that Tipping Point when we all "see".  In fact maybe only 15% of us have to see this to Tip the system.

This is why I am working on human health. For it is a personal arena where each of us can experience the truth and the effectiveness of this new world view,

I "knew" all of this for years. But only in my mind. When I applied this to taking charge of my health, I embodied this new understanding. It became real to me.

It is hard for each of us to change education, government, bureaucracies, defense etc. But we can take charge of our own health. It is in our own power to live inside the new world view. I promise you that once you experience this change, your life will improve immediately.

Please try it.

Here is how I did this.

 

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Why life is an illusion today - Why we are so stuck

I am back after a summer of reflection and family.

Here is a short slide deck that has helped me understood why we are so stuck today. I see now that the Buddhists are correct. Life as we know it is based on an illusion. This illusion is that we are all separate objects. So if we don't like what is going on in Syria we bomb it. If you are ill we treat the sympton etc.

This  deck is very short - hope you see what I see. And glad to be back

Please forgive the odd thing with slideshare - they have somehow removed the image of the solar system????

 

Does big change ever happen from the bottom up? Why you will fail if you try there first

I received an email from a student today asking me to comment on the power of transparency and citizen engagement in the revisioning of Detroit. Many people today believe that this bottom up and fully open way is the only way to start a project now.

My response to her was that this is not how big change really starts. The masses are vital but they enter the game late in the war between the 2 systems. This is the time for transparency. It is their support that drives the Tipping Point. Here is the classic diagram used by Rogers in his book on Diffusion - the science behind The Tipping Point.

The bottom chart - the distribution chart - shows when the masses join. It is around the Tipping Point and not before. 

This is how major change starts. Not with the mass but with the Innovators and the Early adopters. It's all trial and error: for real change is a complex process where the final end state cannot be known. Only people who are comfortable with complexity can do this early work.

The barrier to the new is that the masses need the known. So it is no good asking for their opnion at the outset. They can only see what they know. All they can know is what is now

It's a Cynefin situation.

I think we can lay the population along this spectrum.

The Innovators are comfy with Chaos. This usually means a failure of the old system and a crisis. A crisis such as Detroit no longer works as a city. They act, sense and respond. They use an evolutionary process to discover the new from a hypothesis. This might be that we can grow food in the middle of the city. But the unknown is how to do this in practice. There are no mass of urban farmers yet who have all the rules.

The Early Adopters are comfy with Complexity. They probe sense and respond. Patterns appear and rules start to appear in retrospect. They see what works as an result.

Then come the  Early Majority are comfy with the Complicated. They dig deep and settle the rules when they are hard to understand. They start to make the complicated more simple. With a clear set of rules for what works, it is possible for the next layer to join in. This is when the Tipping Point takes place.

Then the Majority or the mass can play.

This is when you need transparency and mass engagement and not before. If you go too early all you will do is annoy the people who cannot deal with Chaos and Complexity - which is most people!

Isn't this just like evolution?

Here is the detail of what I see as a universal process. 

• You need a crisis - I have found that real change rarely happens until a person or a place gets to the bottom - vis addiction etc - Detroit is the leading urban contender for that in the US. The old system has to have a failure point. You don't get off the Titanic unless it is sinking!

• You need to stop looking out there for a saviour - The next part of this is that people have to give up hoping for "Them" to fix it or them - they have to see it as their own role or no one

• Most people cannot act - they are trapped by inertia and by their mindset or they are attached to the old system and cannot let go.

• Many people have their status and living embedded in the old and will attack the new - even it this means their own "death". We see this so clearly in media where the old guard will fight against the new. We see this in cities that will close down home gardens.

So even though Detroit is at THAT place - most people cannot participate at ground zero in making it a new one. Bottom up mass participation AT THE OUTSET is a fantasy - I can think of NO example of this taking place in history or in nature. We like to think that it does but as Rogers shows, that is just not how real change happens.

So what is the process that does work? Here we look to the process of evolution

• There is a crisis - It has to be clear that the old does not work anymore. This offers the space for the new to emerge. Think of a forest that had had a fire. If the old system is still vibrant, the best that can happen are a few experiments. If Detroit had been vibrant, there would be no space for gardens or tiny businesses. The costs would be too high. The old system would be too vigilant.

• Start small - A small group of people who are not trapped by inertia who can see ahead for a period of years and who can imagine what they have never seen - Think Columbus - Think Pasteur - try some small experiments. When and if they fail, they modify them - they keep on. 

• Experiment - Several of these start to work - we see for instance in Detroit that urban food systems are working - micro farms - using land and buildings that are derelict - micro businesses in derelict or abandoned buildings or in space that is next to being free

• These successes attract attention. In some cases bad attention where the authorities use old bye laws to stop this. In many cases good attention - here is the evolutionary part - others tell the story and others copy them. The meme starts to spread.

• NOW the next layer of people start to see what they could not see before and they might get involved. Not as founders but as members and users

• Now the official part of the city has to get aligned. This is where Detroit is now. All the old laws that govern the city often work against the new. They impose too high a cost on the tender new. The question now is will the new admin kill the baby?

• There will be a fight - Often the old forces still have more money and resources than the new. The desire to raise tax revenues might kill the new off. 

• This is where the larger group of people need I think to be engaged - now it is possible to show them the choice of the old or the new

Think of this process in the context of how America was founded.

• The masses did not get on the boat until 1880 when the place they went too had been built and the way there - though hard - had also been built

• The early explorers were nothing like the people who came in 1880 - they also came to a place that had yet to be built - many experiments were tried - most failed - Innovators and Early Adopters - America was still Chaotic and Complex

• The early towns and states were the expressions of the success of the early adopters - the probing and senseing

• They then had to break with the old to expand properly - the War of Independence - a democratic act - but recall that 1/3 of the people did not want this and there was in effect ethnic cleansing - the Empire Loyalists went to Canada - the old had to be beaten back

• Now the big expansion west began - they had been locked in the East before - the same process all over again - Explorers, pioneers and then wagons and then trains

• Then Civil war between the culture of the old and the culture of the new - The new never seems to win without a bloody fight. This happens late when the leaders of both sides have access to their own mass movement. 200 years of religious wars in Europe are an example. 

• With the war done - the new was on the front burner and the west was opened up and the state ethnically cleaned the native population in the way. In that case the old had no power. Now it was simple for the masses to come to America and the masses came - all 50 million of them between 1880 and 1914.

The same process works in all fields - look at medicine

• Until 1860 the big idea in medicine was that disease was spread by smells - the Miasma theory - made a kind of sense but was wrong and meant that as millions came off the land and moved to the city, as a result of the agricultural revolution in the early 1800's, they were mainly condemned to die of cholera and typhoid. Life expectancy in London was less than 25. But no one questioned this: even though the situation got worse - Just like today, when no one questions our own approach and the epidemic of chromic illness grows exponentially

• In the 1860's ONE doctor, John Snow proved that cholera was spread by something in water. Even though his proof was conclusive, and he was the Queen's doctor, the official theory held

• The London sewers were built to stop the smell after a crisis that affected the elite - the Thames stank so much that the MP's could not use the House of Commons

• But while the sewers were being built people like Pasteur were discovering germs

• In the meantime, the system persecuted doctors who suggested that infection was not caused by anything other than by smells - Dr Semmelweis etc - Ideas have immune systems - it takes great bravery to step outside the norm - the people who hold onto the old are not stupid they are trapped in a system and they will fight to the death to defend it

• Whet changed the system was that MOST people could now see for themselves that the new was better - THIS again is the time when the mass of the people count

• The sewers + Pasteur + Lister = success that all can see so all can now change the system - the old guard have to go along

 

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Which cultural world do you live in today - Which will be best for you?

In 1830 if you lived in America on the frontier you lived a very different life to the one that you had left back in Europe. But to get to this new life, you had to get on a ship, get to St Louis and then take a wagon train out west.

There were two worlds The Culture of the Old world and the Culture of the Frontier

Today this split in culture is back. The difference is that there is no ocean or continent to cross. Today the ocean is in our minds.

The frontier is here now. Enough people now live the new or aspire to it to make it a future that most of us might take in time. Remember, after the railway was built in the 1860's 50 million people left the old world for the new in the next 50 years. Once the tipping point is reached a better offer for life will beat the lesser.

Here are 2 short descriptions of the Old World and the New. Just to make it honest, I used to live in the old and thought it was the only way - so I am not being judgemental here.

The Old World

In the old country, you have a job or see the job as central. So you accept that you work away from the home for an organization. You have a lot of debt. You have student debt, car debt. You don't have a mortgage because your student debt prevents this. You rent. You live in a big and expensive city because this is where the jobs are. You have to put your kids into school because you work outside the home. You both commute for 2 hours each a day.

Your kids are 10 and 12. They have no idea what they want to do later in life. They do nothing around the house. The boy doesn't read very well and has had behaviour problems at school where is is profoundly bored. You have been advised to put him on Ritalin but have refused. When they are 18, it is anticipated that a 4 year residential BA will end up with $100,000 of debt. Unemployment for 18 - 35 year olds is now 23% and is expected to climb to 50% in 10 years as technology and globalization continues to kill jobs.You expect that the education system will be there but you don't know how you will pay for it.

You expect the   system to be there but you don't do anything to take care of yours self. You rely on processed food because you don't know how to cook well and you don't have the time or energy to prepare meals from scratch. You are both over weight and pre-diabetic. Your kids are both over weight. You don't sit down together to share any meals. There is not a single member of your family that lives closer than 1,000 miles away. You expect the system to look after you when you are old.

In the last 2 winter's there have been terrible storms and you have lost power for weeks. You are pissed off with the the mayor and the utility. There have been layoffs in both your workplaces and you worry about your jobs. You have have no savings. Your debt makes that impossible.

The New World

In new you don't have a job and nor do you seek one. You work at home and you make things. You are a coder. Your spouse works in a co working space near your home. She is a personal coach. You are both artisans with deep skills. You are deeply connected to your customers on a personal  basis. You have no debt. You have a small home. You own in a small community where housing is affordable. You educate your kids at home and with several other families close by. You don't have a home classroom.

They learn by getting engaged by what is going on. You read to them all the time as small kids and they both learned to read well by 6. By 10 it is clear what they are really interested in. Your son is mad for drones and you have built several together and he has been using the CAD side of you Mac to drive the 3D printer to make many of the parts. Your skill as a programmer has been invaluable. He watched you work ever since he was an infant. You had him on your knee coding as he learned to read. He is selling them now to a few adults and has a small business of his own. Your daughter is fascinated by carpentry. This is something that you know nothing about but your neighbour is a carpenter and she got the bug by hanging out with him. She is his apprentice and works full time as such. She can do that at 12 because she does not have to attend school. All the math that she needs comes via her work. Your 10 year old has to read at a college level to learn more about design and has the math skills of a math grad. They have never had a lesson.

You eat real food and take care of your health. All at home cook. Your wife's mother lives with you and she does a huge amount of work in the garden where you grow most of your veggies and raise chickens. All the kids have jobs to do in the family household economy. Your extended family have been moving ever closer to you in the last few years and you can now see them all the time. Your dad and mum live very close to you and host a large family meal every 2 weeks. You have a very small car and the kids bike around town.The family own a van and a truck and many of the larger tools that you all need jointly.

All the family have good health. They eat well and have a complete social world. They all use their bodies. They all have a lot of time outside from work to just hang out. The surplus cash flow goes into making the family more resilient. Last year you all built a large green house on your brother's place. The larger family share this. This year the family will buy a large wood splitter so that all the wood you use for heating can be bought in 8 foot lengths and cut up and split by you all. The family supply the labour. In large items like this, the family share in the cash costs. As a result the family are not exposed to the global food system and only in a small way to oil costs. The family use almost nothing from the state and are largely self sufficient.

So which world will be best for you over the next 50 years?

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Can a conventional organization become a network? A Case Study

I have been posting a lot recently about how networks work. My new book is all about why and how the Network model will take down all those that organize traditionally. So what to do?

You have a traditional organization. Can you change to become a network and so survive the revolution? I think in most cases the answer is no. But with the right leadership - FROM THE TOP - you can do it. This post is about the context of one organization that had had the right leadership and has made this transition.

It is The Nine Network for Public Media in St Louis - Formerly KETC Channel Nine.

TV as we know it is the typical traditional organization. You watch what we think is good when we choose and all you do is watch. Appointment media like that is dying. But The Nine Network of Public Media in St Louis is no longer that kind of station. Yes they still do TV but the choice is massive and you can watch it all on your terms and you can also participate. But this is still nothing.

The Nine Network is much more than a TV station that has taken advantage of the digital realm. It is doing more.

First of all it is becoming the local community convenor to deal with important local issues. It started by helping people tell their own stories such as what they did in the war. The breakthrough project was when Nine took on ther Mortgage Crisis at the outset. It called the meeting of all who could help and created the space to help the community help itself. This was so successful that CPB funded a national program where stations, radio and TV, in the worst hit parts of America became the local facilitator of the community. Now Nine is involved in Education and Healthcare.  Many other stations see this role as Connector as their future too. Here is Ideastream in Cleveland - another leader. 

Secondly it is putting the public into Public TV. It has a school that teaches the public how to tell stories on video. 

Thirdly it is connected to the St Louis Public Radio station. St Louis Public Radio. The two stations are physically linked in adajacent buildings and are building a Commons between them to enhance their role as Connectors of the Community.

Fourthly, 9 hosts the local online newspaper - The Beacon - that is full of journalists who could no longer work for a paper!

These local relationships are not one organization but are a real network. They are separate but together. They share resources. They look after each other.

So what was the context for this change? First of all there was the leadership issue. Jack Galamiche at then KETC was a man who saw what had to be done. Tim Eby, who had been chair of NPR, was the new leader at St Louis Public radio. He had sponosored the project that had all the stations in the NPR system look into the digital future. It is my experience that without the right kind of leadership at the top, traditional organizations have no chance.

The second was having the right kind of context. What would success look like? What could be the goal and so what then was the work to get there.

This was the context that we worked from. I think that any traditional organization can look at these slides and find a goal and so a path for themselves - provided that the leader wanted to do this AND could bring their board along too.

You will see that at the heart of this work is a shift in culture. There is no harder work. You will also see how, if you can agree to make this shift, how you then schedule work to help you make the transition. For we cannot change our culture by an act of will. We can only acquire new habits. We have to work our way into the new.

Culture map copy from Robert Paterson

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This is the future of health science and this means the end of corporate health science

Every week there is an article in the media claiming that this or that new health science study shows that something is good or bad for you. It's confusing. But have you ever thought about how these health science projects are funded? The days of scientists like Newton sticking pins into their own eyes to find out how the eye works are long gone. For many years, if your project could not end in a patentable treatment or process, there was no money.

Medicine was captured by the reductionist camp of science that looked only for a direct linkage between cause and effect. Medicine was captured by a corporate ideal where is there was not a product or a process to be sold, there was no interest and so no money. 

That is until now!

This Indiegogo Research Project illustrates the future of health reserach and the return of real science. Here is why I think this:

• It asks an Open Question - What sets of behaviours give us the best gut health and in what context? It tests no one thing but tests all. It looks at what will emerge. This is how we have to examine Complex systems. And our health and our bodies are Complex systems by definition.
• It is an Open Approach - We are invited in - Anyone can join for the larger and the wider the scope, the more the chance that Emergence will take place. The scope even includes our dogs! 
• The funding is provided by the people who have an interest in the results and not in one POV that seeks to find a commercial use.
• When done, because the approach is so wide - all diets, all ancestry, all levels of society and even cross species, we will know, for the first time, what diets and what social context is best for optimal gut health. . There will be no more doubt about this or that.

Such an approach, remember, looks at Health and not Health Care. The assumption is that how we live drives our health. There is no pill or any treatment to sell. There is only information that we can all use or not as a matter of choice to be more healthy. 

Here is another example - The D Action Study - that is looking at how Vitamin D - another thing that costs almost nothing - affects our immune system.

Not only is the money now available, but the approach to science lines up with the reality of health and human systems. Health is a complex topic that can only be approached using methods that enable us to cope with Complexity. 

Source: Dave Snowden - Cynefin

The Cynefin framework has five domains.^[11] The first four domains are:

• Simple, in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense - Categorise - Respond and we can apply best practice.
• Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense - Analyze - Respond and we can apply good practice.
• Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe - Sense - Respondand we can sense emergent practice.
• Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act - Sense - Respond and we can discover novel practice.

Traditional organizations, by their culture, can only work in the Simple and the Complicated quadrants of life. Medicine and Health as we know it today live in the Simple and Complicated Quadrants. This is why it is great at fixing us after a car accident but cannot cope with chronic illness.

No reductionist approach can cope with any Complex problem. Complex Problems demand Hacking. Hacking our own health will become something that we all will get good at. We will become Hacker of our own health like the brilliant Larry Smarr.

 

We will become less and less dependent on the institution of health. Just as we are of the media and soon universities

This will drive the revolution in health that will make the revolution of the 19th century seem minor.

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Hacker/Navigator? The Missing Role in Organizations?

Want to stop having boring or stupid meetings?

You are spending your precious weekend on a retreat to discvover your organization's values? You are spending the day meeting about a new product. Your team is meeting to bond. Oh the horror! Most of my memories of such meetings are nightmares. Over cheerful and manipulative facilitators. The demand for action now! The knowledge that the important issues have not been spoken of. The feeling that I have been herded into a decision that was set before the meeting began. The Posing! The Boredom!

When I read Johnnie Moore and Viv McWaters new book on Facilitation, I wished that I could go back in time and share this gem with my then bosses. They might have been able to set more realistic expectations. I wish that we could have selected the facilitators because we knew what was in this book and so avoided the worst of them. I wish I had known this too, so I would not have been such a fool as well.

The book is short, succinct, easy to follow and personal. It is the summation of many years of master work.

Don't have another wasted meeting - get your copy here.

 

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Traditional organizations are Reductionist by culture. They need to have cause and effect lined up. They need to feel that effort on its own will deliver a result. They are obsessed with focus and efficiency.

So how then can they use Big Data and Social Media effectively to discover things that are real but are not obvious? How can tech firms sell Big Data Solutions and Enterprise Social Media and expect a reductive culture to use this technology well?

Source: Dave Snowden - Cynefin

The Cynefin framework has five domains.^[11] The first four domains are:

• Simple, in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense - Categorise - Respond and we can apply best practice.
• Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense - Analyze - Respond and we can apply good practice.
• Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe - Sense - Respondand we can sense emergent practice.
• Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act - Sense - Respond and we can discover novel practice.

Traditional organizations, by their culture, can only work in the Simple and the Complicated quadrants of life.

The value of Big Data is to discover "Emergent" and to test Novel properties. To see things that cannot be seen as an act of deliberate study. The Value of Enterprise Social Media is also to reveal Emergence and to test Novel properties from the crowd of employees and all those that touch the enterprise.

People embedded in the reductionist mindset cannot do this. And if they could, the culture of the organization will force them to be more deliberate and so miss the emergent. They are not allowed to play either and so cannot test the novel.

Image Source Peter Fryer

How do you get around this culrtural blindness? I think that a good start is to have a Hacker Department. Euan Semple was at one time, Hacker in Chief for the BBC. Peter Rukavina has just been appointed Hacker in Residence for UPEI.

What happens is that this can start a viral infection in the culture. So long as Euan was at the BBC, with no real power, he could and did make a massive impact. Since he has left, the BBC is reverting. Look at Andy Carvin at NPR! Andy's influence has been huge and mainly because his bosses let him get on with stuff. Who would know what his work on Twitter in the Arab Spring would lead to?

A tiny Trojan Mouse, such as Andy Carvin at NPR, Euan Semple or Peter Rukavina, can make a huge difference and move the entire organization.  Tiny new things that contain the seeds of change.

If I was a CEO and wanted to create value from Big Data or from Social Media, I would set up a small office that reported to me and look for my own hacker in residence to be the agent and chief hacker. I would let them have a lot of space and time to discover things and I would give them access to everyone and to everything.

If I was the CEO of a big data firm or a firm that offered Enterprise Social Media, I would have a stable of such hackers and I would lend them out on yearly terms to my clients. 

I would do this because I know that a reductionist eye cannot see emergence or play enough to see novelty. I would do this because the new competitive issue is not efficiency but in seeing the emergent and discovering the truly novel. 

We see this in science. Most of science today is confined by a redutionist approach. All of this will be over turned in the next decade by other scientists who can cope with working in the Complex and the Chaotic sectors.

So even if you as the CEO may be stuck there too, you can at least use logic to know that having a Euan, and Andy or a Peter will be good for you.

 

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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

Networks and Trust - The New Evolution

Last week, prompted by pressure from my son to be more clear about networks in my upcoming book - You Don't need a Job - You need a Need a Network - some new thoughts pushed their way to the front and I wanted to share them with you in sketch book form.

Please help me get them more clear.

The Network Effect and the Trust Network Effect - There is a difference that is important. In the standard network effect, the value of the network to each member is linked to the growth of the connections. It is transactional. So the more phones that are connected to the network, the more valuable the network is in utility to each member. This is the mechanical approach to networks.  

For many people that I see using social media, this is their only goal. Many try and get as many "friends" as possible. If you are a real A lister - this works - you have influence. But for most people, having 7,000 friends on Facebook or Twitter doesn't mean a thing - IF YOU NEED SOMETHING.

I have been working a lot recently using Indiegogo and observing people who seek to raise money using crowd sourcing.

In every case that I have seen so far, the campaigns that worked had activated their core circle of trusted people who themselves had such a circle - who had such a circle and so on. It was this inner circle that did the work. The campaigns that just threw the ask out to the general network, tended to fail. There was no power to the general ask for help. 

Why is this? If I have 3,000 friends on facebook - why don't they help me - they say they are committed but they don't act?

I think of my own behaviour. I will only act if a few people that I know well and trust ask me. For the rest, the answer is always no. How small is this group? Maybe 8 and no more that 30+ depending on the context.

This is my real network. I only act on strong ties not weak.

It may extend further on occasion to people who used to be in the inner circle but for whom time has passed and they have moved further out. So an ex close colleague or friend can call out of the blue and I will be ready to act. They remain people who have been trusted, Any of you who have served in the military will know this. When a ex shipmate or buddy calls, you go back immediately to where you used to be in trust.

I am seeing that this inner circle of trust is the "leverage". You have to pay attention to your reputation and to your inner network. To get you have to give. It's all barn building. 

A high quality inner network is the goal.

This quality is all based on trust. So if I am right, then the drive for many friends is a waste of time and is based on the simple view of the network. We are not simple, we are complex humans! No Trust - No Commitment or Action.

The New Super Trust Leverage - Trust Platforms - What is new then and what I think is the Highland Park Game Changer - are platforms that create this level of trust among people who have never met!

Airbnb is a good example. Here is a platform that enables you to offer your place for rent to strangers. Etsy is another. Here is a platform that enables you to sell your crafts to strangers. Amazon is enabling a new publishing system for the "small" author. Visa is another. Visa is a platform that enables a retailer to take your money safely.

They key to all of these platforms is that they mediate and maintain high levels of trust. Thus enabling us to DO THINGS with small vendors and to be small vendors on a global scale.

They also do this at a very low cost. No Budget hotel chain can compete with Airbnb in price and value. No storefront with Etsy. No publisher can do what Amazon is doing for the small author. This trust mediation gives both sides of the transaction a deal that is impossible for the Factory model to replicate.

There is also a huge secondary impact. That is, as each of us buys from another in trust platforms, the trust that was at first mediated, becomes real. We tend to go back to the same places on Airbnb because we get to know and like each other. We get in touch with authors who use Kindle and start to have a real relationship with them.

So what I see is that the product of each successful transaction in trust platforms is the exponential increase in trust. This in turn increases the utility for all. The line between provider and consumer becomes blurred. This then is when an author can get crowd funding to help him write the new book! This is when the farmer can pre-sell his crop or meat in the spring for delivery in the fall.

The value is not confined to the connections alone but to the overall trust in the system.

This is the game changer. This is a much much better deal for all than the Highland Park system. It was Highland Park that overthrew the old local and artisan system because it was then a better deal for all. So I think Trust Platforms will overthrow the Highland Park world. 

Highland Park was the new factory that Henry Ford opened in 1910 that had all the new features of the Production Line installed. It was the DNA of the process that would be at the heart of all modern institutions. Mass Production killed the small and the local because it could offer a car for much less money than one made by hand by artisans. It also gave a large unskilled work force much more money than a day labourer job could. Both sides of the mass market were created.

This better deal meant that The small and the local got pushed to the fringe. The family farm nearly died. The local paper died. The bakery, dairy, butcher, general store, iron foundry all died. The local banker who knew everyone was no longer needed. The local doctor who had a stake in the health of his community was no longer needed. The local diner that held the community together was no longer needed. All were replaced by Highland Park. And so we ended up Bowling Alone - for as community died, so did Trust.

All became simple transactions. 

We all came to depend on a few vast organizations for all that is important for us. Vast organizations that not only do not care for us but work only for their own needs now. For the Highland Park Contract has been broken. Now most of us have the wages of day labourers, if we are lucky! Now most of the products and services are of low quality or worse, hurt us. 

We are ready for something better and something better is here. 

It's early days. It is maybe the equivalent of 1920. But I see Trust Platforms taking over the role of Highland Parks. They will do this because they are a better system. They offer more value to all. The evolutionary Tipping Point is 20%. Each time the trust platform takes 20% of the gross out of the sector, the Highland Park alternative will fall. 20 employees at Craigslist did this and look what happened to the mass production newspapers.

When 20% of kids  choose the Platform rather than school, most of the universities will fold. When 20% of us stop going to the doctor for our chronic illness, how will they and big pharma cope? Coming will be a local food system that is based on trust and real food. When 20% of us buy all our food locally, how will Big Food cope?

Highland Park is trapped by their fixed process costs. With a 20% loss of gross and a trend of lower gross as the network grows, they cannot stand.

Evolution will work quite well and has a good chance of solving what seems to be the impossible world situation in front of us.