Movember V3.0

Ok, I have been sharing a very personal metaphor that maps the economy to an ecology. Have you seen it? It is a #Symbiocene metaphor if you will, hat tip Glenn Albrecht .

You can go back and see what I have written so far here .

In this post I explore what structures drive health outcomes in an ecosystem, and use that insight to unpack how structures guiding the evolution of our human systems might influence health outcomes. It is Movember, after all.

Let’s get our eye back in.

Give an ecology water (love) and good soil (ethics), and growing just about anything becomes possible - abundant life can emerge and flourish. Even further, with basic form and structure, dynamic self management of that ecosystem occurs.

The “self manage” is very important to dwell on. If we are working hard to manage the health of an ecosystem, there is probably something structurally working against us.

For example, an ecosystem needs top predators to create discipline across ecosystem relationships. They limit herbivore numbers, and push these larger heavy footed animals away from waterways, resulting in flourishing vegetation and water life (most famously, see https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ ).

Take top predators away, change the structure and balance of an ecology, and the work required to “manage” such an ecosystem becomes impossible - the ecosystem goes into decline. This is what we see in Australia with the explosion of kangaroo, deer and camels (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/06/how-kangaroos-could-be-jeopardising-conservation-efforts-across-australia ).

The structure of the landscape itself influences what emergent life is possible - the ratio of forest to grassland, the internal forest structure (height and density and diversity of species), and the contour or shape of the terrain. Steep grassland will support a particular mix of life, flat woodland another.

Where am I going with this? What has it got to do with health?

If there is a human health problem (and looking at lifespan markers, mental and physical health markers in young people in particular, we have to say there is), what is going wrong?

Leaning on the symbioscene inspired metaphor, we can speculate there is a lack of love, lack of ethic, and perhaps, some structure to our economy working against us. For example:

• Do our schools accommodate individual diversity and creativity? Or is the schooling system geared towards creating monoculture human product, ready for the workforce?.
• Do our workplaces ask us to check our humanity at the door, and to become “professional” at the desk? If so, this denies us a capacity to express ourselves fully, with our version of love or ethics. Over time, our emotional muscles can atrophy, becoming more and more the cog in a wheel cliche, and less and less capable of expressing our humanity at work or in family life (For an antidote see https://www.human-atwork.org/ , hat tip Richard Earl
• The structure and process of life increasingly organises around capitalism - consuming material goods as a path to happiness, in contrast to giving time or skill in service of others. You can argue this is challenging our ability to maintain ethics - the good soil upon which love can lead to flourishing. Symptomatically, volunteering is getting harder and harder to maintain (https://www.sbs.com.au/news/podcast-episode/australia-is-running-out-of-volunteers/ej22c4jlk ).?

There are powerful feedback loops in the above too - if the observations above are true, then a decline in ethic, rise in consumerism, the school as a breeding ground for professional workers, and places of work that deny human expression, reinforce each other and lock in evolutionary trajectories.?

These structures (school, family, community, work), create processes to life (our daily habits, from waking to sleeping), that are hard to get out of. The rat race, mortgage trap, conspicuous consumption… all well documented and understood.

Structure, dictates process, dictates culture and outcomes. It is “Reinventing Organisations” all over again - https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ , thank you Frederic Laloux

These structures and processes manifest as stress for adults, flowing into family and community life. With stress a major moderator of the immune system, including its influence on diet and lifestyle, it is no wonder health markers are in decline.

What has this got to do with Movember?

It is one thing to talk about mental health, its importance, raising awareness and getting regular check ups… all entirely valid and worthwhile tasks.?

But if we don’t address the deep structures - how our workplaces shape the humanity of our adults, the schools our children, how capitalism as an organising force crowds out our humanity and ethics (profit and status motive as primary) … we push on a string.

While family structures that depend on adults working 80+hrs combined a week under stress, denied the capacity to express themselves as human at work… While children are being taught compliance and conformity at school, living in a community devoid of spare time and money to give to others... While capitalism as the dominant organising force for society, crowds out more nuanced ethic….

We will struggle without human health - mental, physical and spiritual.

So what comes next?

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