On 7-Jan-09, at 1:22 PM, he wrote:
I am currently reading a book by Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist, on mindfulness. She states "much research in psychology has shown that people often ignore population-based information in favor of anecdotal, idiosyncratic information. If, when car shopping, we are shown statistics underlining the high quality of a Volvo but we know someone who has had trouble with a Volvo, we are not likely to give much weight to the group-based information."
I am not familiar with this literature from the field of psychology, but if it is correct, then at least when it comes to working with the public and wondering how we can communicate better and bring the public back into public health, that our evidence hierarchy (least effective - anecdotes > case control studies > randomized trials - most effective) needs to be flipped on its head as the public's prefered language of anecdotes is different - and perhaps until we can communicate better in that language, we continue to be like two trains passing in the night...
...
On 7-Jan-09, at 2:56 PM, he wrote:
I'm not familiar with that literature, but I would think that public opinion is more complex, i.e., people can be impressed and fooled by statistics, and that is one way to get them to buy. Whether an anecdote trumps that at the point of making a decision, like I said, don't know the literature.
Yet I have another point.
I'm not sure people necessarily need knowledge on the social determinants of health.
I think people fundamentally know what we are doing here, sort of a Plato inherent knowledge kind of thing.
Poverty, whether it 'will always be with us' or not, by definition, is an outrage, we're just numb, or choose to be.
And then there's the idea that if people knew more about the social determinants of health, they'd somehow change, I'm a bit of a pessimist on this issue.
What is needed now is FUNDAMENTAL change in who we are, and unfortunately, by definition as well, it appears that this presupposes individual change, the hardest of them all.
Think about it, what have you done today?
I was lucky, I live in the downtown of a large city, so I was able to walk to work. I will take a subway home.
Were you as lucky?
Did you buy all local grocery last time you visited your grocer?
Man oh man, I love bananas.
Did you vote?
Did any of you or your children get a i-phone, or some i-something or other, to be tossed in a landfill in 1 to 3 years time, so we can get some new ones?
I have a fancy i-pod.
Did you use, like Leonard Cohen said: the bags that time cannot decay?
And don't get me wrong, public opinion is a powerful agent of change, but I think we're beyond that.
It's fundamental now.
It's fundamental now.
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43 comments:
>>I was lucky, I live in the downtown of a large city, so I was able to walk to work. I will take a subway home. Were you as lucky?
Nope, I drive most places. However, for my work I tend to move several hundreds of pounds of stuff around on a frequent basis, and usually in the middle of the night, and often across provinces. So I don't have many options.
>>Did you buy all local grocery last time you visited your grocer?
Probably not. Two kids to feed = I buy whichever choice is the most cost-efficient.
>>Did you vote?
Yep! The incumbent won, as usual. (That's not me being cynical, btw)
>>Did any of you or your children get a i-phone, or some i-something or other, to be tossed in a landfill in 1 to 3 years time, so we can get some new ones?
Nope, they have no video games or electronics at all. Just things like lego, stuffed animals, and books. I have an ipod too, but I use the heck out of it for work purposes (given that I have to learn 15-20 or more songs a month on average, I really do need one).
>>Did you use, like Leonard Cohen said: the bags that time cannot decay?
I bring reusable (albeit plastic) bins to the store EVERY TIME. On top of not wasting bags, I find it far easier to deal with my groceries that way.
I should note that financial concerns (i.e. I'm poor and don't have much choice but to manage my money very tightly) drive almost every choice I make when it comes to this kind of thing.
And that is why it is called the social determinants of health.
I believe everyone should have access to water, food, heat, shelter, and education.
Should there be more listed here?
Meaningful political options! (That one may be the hardest to actually offer)
I think that c-dog not having a car is more about his environment than the environment. We are all products of our environments, right? If I lived and worked in downtown winnipeg I wouldn't need a car I guess. And some more metropolitan cities are designed for pedestrains.
My environmental choices today were minimal. Although I did eat the crusts of my son's toast. I don't drive an SUV. I like to recycle clothes. I don't like to use condoms(hehe).
But I am the ultimate evil. I design products to be manufactured in massive quantities for the fashion industry. New! New! New!
word verif: snucksta
You, sir, are a snucksta.
LOL!
Not to laugh at, but LOL!
Snucksta mthfka
Art is the root of all evil. The first time we used pictures to develop and communicate ideas, we started a snowball slide down the mountain, gaining momentum. The first cave drawing is the beginning of the lineage leading to slings, spears, and eventually nuclear weapons. Our ideas have gotten so out of hand that we are now controlled by them rolling faster, getting bigger as we go. I think the most obvious solution is to abandon society and revert to animal thought. How does a deer think? Not in language (by our definition?). This is not only highly unlikely, for us to be able to make that philosophical jackknife turn, but it would also suck. I try to be optimistic and just imagine we are on an alternative, a new, evolutionary path. We should be immortal super humans that can turn garbage (even plastic bags) into food with a machine (nanotechnology I think). We can easily repopulate extinct animals, cure disease, and perfectly calibrate the atmosphere.
Today I took a bus to the ski hill (which gets it energy from a gas run generator!) and rode a giant machine, so that I could ride my urethane, wood, plastic and metal sheet down a mountain, gliding on a slick petroleum product base through the snow. This entire industry built so we can go "weeeeee". I feel so guilty now, I'm gonna go have a coke.
ha ha. nice, thank you MC macro.
conception of any sort is, perhaps, the root of all evil. cognizance, and communication of that cognizance.
p.s. the name wolfboy was not chosen at random or by accident.
So you guys would prefer the "back to nature" solution over the "sci-fi" future?
Back to nature and sci-fi future are not incommensurable, in fact, they're exactly the same, if we did it properly.
...says you. I'm talking about 2 totally different things.
No your not, and that's where I believe you're wrong.
:)
"back to nature" is inevitable, sooner or later, when our brief blip of time on the top of the evolutionary ladder comes to an end, as everyone's time before us has ended.
so the question is irrelevant.
it will happen, like it or not.
it seems to me that getting ready for this, rather than endlessly fighting it through some utopian sci-fi future, is the wiser course of action.
that doesn't mean dismantle our cities.
but it does mean remembering that anyone stupid enough to go to war with nature the way we've done and continue to do will always lose, and lose in a big way.
no amount of sci-fi-ism, no matter how lovely it might seem, can give our planet an infinite "carrying capacity", so any advances in nano or other tech are only delaying the inevitable, and probably making what will come be even worse.
learning to grow our own food again, to get out of our reliance on a global economy that is clearly collapsing all around us, will do a lot more for the long-term well-being of the human race, imo, than splicing genes from scuttlefish into our bones to help us live wrinkle-free to 340 years old.
This kind of argument/discussion always makes me wonder: in what way is the human species not part of nature?
good question.
daniel quinn says: don't think you're any closer to nature when you're camping than when you're in a movie theatre.
i guess that nano-tech is sort of a way of trying to harmonize those two seemingly oppositional natures? of taking our natural brains and putting them to use in ways that will ideally render the so-called natural world as more useful to us.
but again, it comes down to sky's question, and so in my view, even nano-tech constitutes a war against ourselves.
i think that in trying to manipulate "nature" for the endless benefit of humans we only harm ourselves in the long term.
Exhibit A: The Green Revolution, in which well-meaning western scientists created new super-crops for Africa, resistant to drought, disease, etc, as well as other farming technologies such as fertilizers, irrigation systems, etc.
Now, in the short term, it's hard to argue that producing more and better food for Africa is a bad thing.
But in the long term, these well-intentioned scientists have caused Africa's population to increase from two hundred million in the 1950's to just under a billion now, putting huge strains on the environment, on health care, and on just about every service and system imaginable.
So... would you argue that the Green Revolution is good because it grew lots of food for Africa, or would you argue, as I do, that the meddling of well-intentioned scientists (not unlike today's nanotechies) has created unprecedented war, starvation, and human misery by every measure.
Does that mean we shouldn't have helped Africa grow more and better food?
I think any compassionate rational person would never argue that helping someone else grow food isn't a BAD thing (or at least I certainly wouldn't), but in this case, the results clearly speak for themselves.
Let me add that I oversimplified a mega complex series of problems, and that many argue that the Green Rev. never really took hold in Africa, and that India, where famine has been all but eliminated, shows the Green Rev was successful.
Social factors aside, I still argue that, even in India, we see why this doesn't work-- why our meddling produces long-term harm.
In addition to being overpopulated (to put it mildly), India has been completely deforested (something like 11% of its pre-Green forests remain) and is quite literally washing out to sea.
End transmission. :)
Transmission received and noted.
I have read that globally, farmers are switching from grain to canola growing for the sake of the "green" market. This has resulted in mass famine. When you trace the process of the production of canola based fuel, we are no further ahead in our "carbon footprint". If this is true. is it worth it? Society seems to have come to a point of quick fixitis. Not everything is like the internet. We need politicians with the balls to plant seeds of change, regardless of the popular vote at the time. The troubles our planet faces cannot be corrected in one lifetime, let alone an elected party's term. We are spinning tires, chasing our tails, treadmilling while the chance to make a real difference shakes its head and keeps walking.
I don't believe in the global warming theory. This rock and everything in this universe has been changing since birth regardless of our actions.If the planet wants to shake us off and start anew, I doubt we can prevent that. We CAN however affect situations like war, disease, famine, and pollution.
I too believe that humans just don't fit in this whole equation. Maybe we were planted?
To not believe in global warming is folly, and is tantamount to not believing in gravity. The science is there, at least as far as I have reviewed it.
Think of the biosphere as a chemistry experiment.
If you recall from high school, these things are very exact.
If you heat a certain a substance, let's say water, to 99.0 degrees Celsius, it will do something, if you heat it to 100 degrees Celsius, it does something completely different, and it turns out, that something different is quite violent.
Surely, we'll be boiled off per se, but that is no reason to say that we weren't responsible or that it means we're just a blip.
I have friends in the Arctic, and their stories are the best example of the major changes experienced in a very short time. A hunter friend of mine tells me that over the last three years, the flow edge (or sea ice), has been located in significantly different places than it would be expected, a change that is not reasonable, considering their own mythology has told them that the flow edge will be here and there at certain times.
Again, too much empirical evidence, micro and macro. You should review it if you really want to make a statement which is arguably based on your hunch and not on a reasonable assessment of the issue.
In the end, stable systems (i.e. the biosphere), are just that, stable, and when they go wonky, they tend to veer off the track, something vicious.
Word verification: dessiver
I meant global warming soley caused buy us. We have no proof that it is not a natural process. I do believe that the climate is changing! I knew I was going to be shot at for that after I went to bed. lol
i was at the doctor on wednesday for a physical (new doctor - the first we've spent any time talking). He related to me entirely through anecdotes (about his family, health issues, his experience with other patience) during our hour together. he belongs in a robertson davies novel it was lovely.
after the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, buildings and people were devastated. ...But the city became a virtual greenhouse and plants overgrew everything.
boo-yah muthanatcha!
The earth is generally believed to have existed for approximately 4.5 billion years. The universe itself is calculated to be somewhat more than 13 billion years. In other words, the earth itself has persisted for approximately 1/3 of the entire age of the universe.
Evidence of photosynthesis occurring on earth dates 3 billion years, or 2/3 of the history of the planet, or at least 1/5 of the history of the universe.
So, the existence of life, on THIS planet, covers an impressive and continuous span of time. Both the earth itself and the life upon it have shown remarkable resilience and stability.
Just something to think about...
Re: the comment by Anonymous above my previous one...
The DMZ in Korea, between North and South, has become a de facto nature preserve.
From wikipedia: "Except in the area around the truce village of Panmunjeom and more recently on the Donghae Bukbu Line on the east coast, humans have not entered the DMZ in the last fifty years. This isolation has created one of the most well-preserved pieces of temperate land in the world, an example of an involuntary park."
I heard that in northern Russia, after they detonated their test nuclear bomb, several years were filled with severe mutations (one-eyed, three legged beasts), but after that, everything pretty much returned to normal, and life flourished, shocking most scientists, as the Geiger counters were still off the scales. G-dda love life persistence.
Is that why I look at this blog 30 times a day?
:)
well, yes, anon, and Sky, of course life has and will continue to show resillience in the face of all odds.
i've seen this "hiroshima" process enact itself on clear-cuts, where an entirely new ecosystem springs up within weeks of a forest being cut down.
but my particular concern, as a human being myself, is for human being life--my own, and that of those who will come after me.
and we have pushed the planet's carrying capacity to sustain human life to its limits and probably beyond.
I find it kind of puzzling that many people are very concerned about us being "at war" with nature, that we are destroying the planet - and yet, for many, like wolfBoy, their main concern is actually the survival of human life, indeed their OWN life (don't take that personally, please, you just articulated part of that position).
I really do think that the "man vs. nature" dichotomy that we have set up has to fall, before we are to be able to do ANYTHING truly substantial about any of this.
You are in a battle, and it's called life!
You must see that!?
And this does not diminish our capacity as stewards of the land.
well, obviously i too am quite aware of the HUman vs nature dichotomy.
in fact, it forms one of the core ideas of the novel i've been writing for several years.
my point was that Life itself will do just fine, as illustrated by the many examples listed here, but that human life--my own and those who will come after me--is a bit more tenous that the greater capital-L Life.
the ability of 6.5 billion people to live on this planet exists within a fairly narrow window of temperature, precipitation, food resources, access to clean water, etc.
small shifts in that balance will have catastrophic effects.
that doesn't suggest that i believe in a human vs. nature dichotomy. what it suggests is that our belief in this false dichotomy has put us at war with nature, and that war will very directly effect OUR ability to continue to survive on this planet.
and i don't think that's necessarily the most important part of this equation, but if we have any concern for the world our children will inherit (which i know, of course, that you do), then it needs to become a central question in this debate.
war with the planet = war with ourselves.
every piece of plastic and discarded battery we toss into a landfill doesn't just kill the fishies-- ultimately, it kills us.
therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls.
it tolls for thee...
Recognition of the fragility and brevity of human life - both on the level of the individual and the species - is oddly comforting.
Perhaps not recognition, necessarily - but acceptance.
We can make it!?
I know we can.
Gulp.
Fragility and brevity is not comforting to me either.
:)
My resilience in the face of certain death is.
heh.
acceptance of it, and resilience in the face of it.
maybe both are good.
in any case, we're all gonna die.
p.s. what's the record for comments on a post? anyone? anyone?
this thread made me think of this talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ1dECu5sSc
here's the paper... check the hannover principles
"i think the ultimate question is the native question - 'when do humans become tools of nature?' " - william mcdonough
Gee, do I ever wish I could have jumped into this one earlier. I've been away, up in the Himalayas on a staff retreat. It was of course exquisitely beautiful and positively wondrous. This is obvious, yet these words are almost painfully inadequate in their descriptive power.
The same could be said for the entirety of my experience here. As I read over your discussion I can't help but think that India is perhaps the ideal geographic, cultural, and economic setting to situate these ideas.
All exists on such a scale here that the reality of humanity's relationship with the earth must almost be forcefully avoided, if ignorance is to be somehow preserved.
Although who's to say what witnessing this sort of reality would do to you, or her, or everyone. Some people think it's depressing and protect themselves through ambivalence. Some people come and go and all they see is filth, people, and suffering.
Confronted by human life on such a scale, who's to say what you would see.
I think that the question of shifting human behaviour for the survival of our species is a much deeper process than most westerners realize. Every little bit does count, of course. I will always feel better by leaving a shop without a plastic bag in hand. Yet there is so much more to our collective survival than this. Population is an issue. Everyone knows this in the west. I knew this before coming here. But I never really understood the scale of its devastation in all respects of human wellbeing. That being said I completely disagree with the notion that past agricultural advances should be identified as reasons for population growth. People were starving then and people are starving today. People don't have children because they have lots of food. The opposite is unfortunately much more common. (There's plenty of empirical evidence to support this, although I do wish I had an anecdote.)
The problem with these agricultural advances is that they are often perceived as complete solutions to poverty and hunger. Left alone, they will only act as a new ingredient to the same cycle of death and survival.
Am I off topic here?
Nice post CQ.
not off topic, nope, but all empirical evidence will point to a few basic facts, namely:
food supply and population growth are intextricably linked.
there is 1 billion people in india today b/c there is the food supply to support that--albeit at often-meagre standards of living.
50 years ago there was 200 million people in india b/c there was only enough food for 200 million people (again, often in meagre quantity, but still enough to sustain life).
the population in india has more than quadrupled b/c of increased food, and also b/c of vaccinations that have decreased infant mortality rates.
you don't need to believe it, ren-- but it's a graph-able fact that forms one of the underlying structures for the science of demographics.
aside from that, how we go about fixing this is something no one really has much clue about.
consume less? reduce population growth? sure, but...
It has to be much more complicated than simple food quantity. You state food "supply" - and I think that is an important distinction, as it can include things such as how food is moved around, who it is available to, etc. But that is more than whether there is simply "enough" food. For all I know, there is far more than enough food on this planet to sustain us all quite well, and many many more of us. The questions are myriad - what form is that food in, who can access it (and control it), who can afford to make it available to themselves, etc. etc.
There is more than enough food.
Distributional problems are at issue here.
I agree with you c-dog.
I think often that food distribution is the problem, but that is also taking a position that some countires "can't" produce enough food, and some countries can. In some cases there are problems due to natural causes (drought) or human causes like War, but in some countries, and here I'll cite Jamaica as an example, there was more than enough land and human power to produce food. Being able to produce your own food was complicated by international market policies and the agreements that are made between corporations, governments and non governmental agencies, especially in countries that need aid.
Post-colonial Jamaica asked the World Bank and the IMF (I think) to help them, and the policies of those organizations (in cooperation with corporate interests of the United Fruit Company, Dole, Chiquita forced polices in these countries that destroyed the agriculture and dairy sectors.
Not surprisingly, Jamaican shoppers ended up buying Idaho potatoes and Wisconsin milk, Pineaples from Hawaii.
Then,to add insult to injury, when Great Britian offered tarrif Free Banana trade to Jamaica, (as a way to apologize for colonization I guess) Chiquita and others said this was unfair, and in the end through pressure tactics and with cooperation with United States (Bill Clinton was in power at this time), they forced tarrifs, which made local Jamaican farmers unable to compete. That industry had been booming with the tarrif free trade, but because Britian only bought Jamaican bananas, the other companies said it was cornering the market or something.
In the end, the banana farmers lost everything...
So, it's about distribution, but it's also about current globalization policies and who controls them and who's benefits.
A documentary that illustrates this is Life and Debt... you can see it on Google video.
Most people are probably not aware of it, but from what I gather spending time in the Caribbean (and not in Jamaica, btw) there is a component of Rastafarianism which revolves around self-sufficiency in terms of living off the land. I remember meeting one younger guy in particular, who lived in the bush off of whatever food he could gather by himself. He didn't beg, he didn't seek handouts, and he didn't farm - he just gathered food when he needed it. I don't know how long he would be able to keep up such a subsistence lifestyle - or whether any of us could sacrifice our lifestyles for that. But certainly there is a lot of capacity, in certain places as has been pointed out, to do just that.
I think you are very correct in identifying the factor of control... and I envied this guy, because there was no one in control of his life aside from himself and, I'm sure in his mind, god (or nature, take your pick).
yeah life + debt is an excellent movie!
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