We are unwell, dis-eased and messed up

which is why we keep getting things wrong

The space was lit by dozens of neons as the sunlight couldn’t find it’s way in, the inhabitant received vitamin D supplements to compensate for the lack of natural light. The air was being circulated by pumps as there was no natural ventilation. The space was occupied, heavily crowded,the inhabitants had less than one square meter of space each. Surgical interventions were being done without anaesthetic, teeth clipping, castration even. The stench overwhelmed the ventilation system and the noise from the inhabitants was deafening.

These inhabitants live in even smaller spaces, they are brightly lit 18 hours a day. These individuals can’t move around, most have brittle bones and liver damage, they are also subjected to surgical operations without anaesthetic.

These denizens have more freedom to move around but abide in structures that are badly made and too hot in the summer and too cold and damp in the winter. The inhabitants get access to outside space but this is polluted by a variety of gases and micro-particles. They are often forced to live in very densely populated areas and are principally fed with foodstuffs that have negative impacts on their health.

None of the above live in environments to which they are evolved and adapted, as a consequence they live in conditions of chronic stress, which mean they need continual medication. Indeed most of the physical and psychological diseases that afflict them are due to this mismatch between the environment to which they are evolved and the environment and conditions that they live in.

Pigs, hens and us.

All living things have an impact on their environment yet it’s difficult to think of an animal that does this in as negative a way as we do. The only example that springs to mind is the Great oxygenation event around 2 billion years ago when cyanobacteria produced enough highly reactive free oxygen to bring about the first mass extinction and a loss of around 80% of the species around at that time. It also paved the way for oxygen breathing animals such as us. A big difference between us and the cyanobacteria is that we know we have been changing environments in such a way as to make them increasingly inhospitable to us. Many, if not most, of the artificial environments we have created cause us to sicken and too often die prematurely. We have destroyed, polluted, corrupted huge areas of the planet and as a consequence we have done the same to ourselves.

The Hunter-gatherer messed things up.

I’m not going to bring up simplistic ideas such as the ‘noble savage’ but simply point out that underneath a superficial veneer of ‘modernism’ we still carry with us a legacy of hundreds of thousands of years of adaption to a particular lifestyle. Take the so-called ‘flight or fight’ reflex as an example, when we were confronted by a dangerous situation this reflex kicked in and brings along with it a few temporary physiological changes. Increased blood flow to the muscles,increased blood pressure and heart rate, faster blood clotting and increased muscle tension to name a few. Sensory input stimulates the amygdala, which triggers a response in the hypothalamus. There is a hormonal cascade and the adrenal gland gets going pretty much straight away. All good stuff when having to get away from a predator, not so good in an urban environment where we are under a constant bombardment of ‘flight or fight’ provoking stimuli. Studies have shown that the continual stress of urban living causes changes to the amygdala which becomes dilated and over-stimulated. This is not a good thing and makes us ill or more ill.

When we transitioned from being nomadic hunter-gatherers we changed our diets which caused us problems straight away. We became smaller and less robust, tooth decay became a major problem and each time we domesticated an animal we picked up it’s internal parasites. We then started to urbanise and to pack ourselves into areas that developed population densities well beyond those to which we are adapted. The tale goes on but basically and in a similar way to the pigs and hens to which I alluded at the beginning we are ill and have been for 8000 years or so and it keeps getting worse. Occasionally, when one type of pollution gets to bad we act but simply change the form of pollution. The London smogs once so visible have been replaced by toxic ‘forever chemicals’, invisible poisonous micro-particles and all the rest. What is strange is that we know this and yet keep doing it.

Our most revered philosophers were, seen from this point of view, people who were, and are, unwell trying to understand an animal which was and is profoundly sick. We can imagine a philosopher battery hen trying to make sense of it’s species when all along the behaviour of it’s fellows is aberrant and tragically deformed by it’s environment. We struggle along trying to make sense of things forgetting to take into account that we are dis-eased, unwell, un-whole and trapped into an absurd cycle where we seek solutions but simply make things worse. This is pretty weird because we are intelligent enough to sort the mess out and move onto a path where we reconstruct our systems to make them positive for both our health and well being and those of the biosphere in which we live.

Tribalism and nationalism.

As hunter-gatherers we used to hang around in smallish groups and appreciated meeting other groups as we’ve long known that in-breeding isn’t a good survival strategy. Then we invented private property, inheritance and fear of ‘strangers’. We became increasingly tribal, warlike, insular and competitive, things that throughout modern history and in today’s world serve us poorly. In this the 21’st century there are still wars between nations and amongst different groups within nations. Wars, conflicts and strategies designed to ensure access of a given nation to resources and land. As we destroy or damage these resources conflicts and geo-political manipulation by nations states become more frequent and more extreme.

Technophilia

Being unwell we don’t properly analyse things, burning coal is bad for the climate so let’s switch to renewables. According to short-sighted analysts we need to maintain, as far as possible, current levels of energy production so we need to cover the landscape with wind turbines and photovoltaics. Fabricating, installing and maintaining these technologies means using oil, yet we are told that the ‘oil must stay in the ground’ if we wish to avoid catastrophic climate change. Some ‘business as usual’ but ‘greener’ technophiles contend that nuclear power is the only real way forward, ignoring the cost overruns, construction delays and the fact that uranium extraction, transport and processing produce considerable quantities of greenhouse gases and pollution.

Each technological solution we have developed has had negative consequences and technophile apologists will simply reply that we will soon find a technological solution to the problems created by any given form of technology. It’s all a ridiculous roundabout and people are suffering and dying because of it. Some cities in India have installed jet turbines to blow the smog up and away from the urban areas others are toying with the idea of seeding clouds to bring rain that will wash the pollution out of the atmosphere. In UK cities we find ULEZ, ultra-low emission zones where older and more polluting cars are fined if they are driven in ULEZ’s, types of vehicles owned by lower income households. Strangely enough many of the different planet destroying, ridiculously big and heavy SUVs can be driven in ULEZs.

Peugeot 5008 weight 1429 kg

Other problems associated with cars such as microparticles from tyres, the oil dependant road construction and maintenance and the physical danger to other road users and pedestrians are simply ignored. Trying to deal with symptoms rather than the causes has to stop.

One thing that is pretty general is that the costs of the different strategies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution fall principally on those people who are already struggling to make ends meet. This is one of the major reasons why many of these measures are opposed by the general public and have led to nationwide and local protest movements.

Solutions?

A community led, prosocial paradigm shift.