Conference Earth - A decade of action
|
Business and Economics shape the World Globalisation The current model of globalisation, dictated by neo-liberal economics and the 'Washington consensus', is colliding with local cultures. The drive towards so-called 'free trade' is fundamentally at odds with local economic sovereignty, social customs and values, as well as traditional agriculture, indigenous rights and the protection of the environment and its biodiversity. The fundamental issue is the very economic model underlying today’s globalisation of technology, trades and markets. Critics from many diverse perspectives agree that, in the free trade model, the pricing of goods and services traded does not reflect the full costs of the social, environmental and cultural disruption caused. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US Government and the World Trade Organisation all refuse to recalculate prices and reconfigure economic indicators, such as GDP, to account for these costs, which contribute towards the deterioration of human well-being. In contrast, civil society groups throughout the world are committed to the idea of preserving human identity and enriching biological and cultural diversity. TRANSITION TO A SUSTAINABLE CIVILISATION To be truly sustainable, a civilisation must learn how to harness and assimilate the explosion of knowledge and wisdom being facilitated by the World Wide Web. It must learn how to reap the potential benefits arising from the fact that any individual now has the ability to access virtually the whole of global knowledge. A sustainable civilisation would enable medical doctors and health professionals to support a form of medicine which is integrative, health giving and affords individuals the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. There would be an emphasis on preventing or arresting the development of degenerative disease. Poverty and Culture According to the UN Development Report, Australia is second only to Norway as the world's most desirable country in which to live. Part of the UN Development program, the report measures 162 countries according to a range of factors such as life expectancy, education levels, healthcare and income. But there is no room for complacency. Research undertaken in 1999 by the University of Canberra National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM), on behalf of the Smith Family welfare organisation, showed that 1 in 7 Australians were living in poverty. Most likely to live in poverty were those on welfare, those with three or more children, sole parents or the unemployed. The researchers warned that the risk of poverty is greater for children than adults, with 14.9% of dependent Australians living in poverty, compared to 12.9% of adults. The Key To Culture Often, the key to culture is found in the early experience of the child. It is also dependent on pre-natal factors, such as the mother’s nutrition, her experiences during pregnancy and the kind of relationships she has - whether they are integral and stable, or unharmonious. After birth, the forms of child rearing, social stimulation, love and care contribute significantly to the child's future happiness. Our children are currently being born into a world that is threatened by many, many adverse factors. The threats the global community has to deal with in the next hundred years are famine, global spread of disease, civil and international wars, competition for scarce resources, civil disorder caused by growing inequality, housing shortages, a highly materialistic ethos and even the possibility of human extinction. Human beings have already changed the environment of the planet radically, and have caused the bio-extinctions of many other species. If current trends continue the picture will get worse. The projected extra six billion people in the next twenty years, predicted for 2020, will need more room to live and grow food. If there are more of us, there will be less room for plants and animals - less room for the tropical rainforests and the planetary biodiversity of species. Human beings are causing extinctions at 100-10,000 times the natural rate. This is the greatest wave of extinctions since the dinosaurs were annihilated at end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. Yet politicians generally do not think about the very long term, or even about the next generation. Perhaps the maximum time span they can think of is three years, which may be the tenure of their political term. Power of the Human Mind The human mind is the most under-used resource we have. Other resources may be finite, but the human mind is not, and, relative to its potential, it is the least used aspect of humanity. A sustainable civilisation needs to acknowledge the power of the mind, as well as quality of life for all human beings. I believe that the term ‘mind’ has to encompass the bio-mind or the complete human being. Globalisation The current model of globalisation, dictated by neo-liberal economics and the 'Washington consensus', is colliding with local cultures. The drive towards so-called 'free trade' is fundamentally at odds with local economic sovereignty, social customs and values, as well as traditional agriculture, indigenous rights and the protection of the environment and its biodiversity. The fundamental issue is the very economic model underlying today's globalisation of technology, trades and markets. Critics from many diverse perspectives agree that, in the free trade model, the pricing of goods and services traded does not reflect the full costs of the social, environmental and cultural disruption caused. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US Government and the World Trade Organisation all refuse to recalculate prices and reconfigure economic indicators, such as GDP, to account for these costs, which contribute towards the deterioration of human well-being. In contrast, civil society groups throughout the world are committed to the idea of preserving human identity and enriching biological and cultural diversity. The Economics of Happiness Different approaches to the study of economics have been evident in the way quality of life has been measured. In his 1974 paper, the economic historian Richard Easterlin formulated what later became known as the Easterlin Paradox. He showed that, above a very low level, economic growth does not seem to improve human welfare. Later evidence appeared to confirm this: Americans were no more likely to describe themselves as happy in the 1990s than they were in the 1940s. Economist Andrew Oswald at Warwick University, England, in his 1997 paper, 'Happiness and Economic Performance', stated that well-being in industrialised nations appears to rise as national income grows, but the rise is so small as to be sometimes undetectable. Moreover, unemployment seems to be the largest source of unhappiness. This suggests that governments ought to prioritise the reduction of joblessness; in a country that is already rich, policy aimed instead at raising economic growth may be of comparatively little value. In his most recent paper, Oswald asked whether money makes people happy. He showed that those who won lottery money or received an inheritance had a higher mental well-being in the following year, with a windfall of 50,000 pounds being associated with a rise in well-being of 0.1 and 0.3 standard deviations [CHECK]. However, he concluded by saying that the question of whether these happiness gains wear off over time remains a good one. It is interesting to note that the parameters he employed were dependent on the British Household Panel Survey, which consists of questions that could just as easily be asked by a GP who wanted to find out whether patients were depressed or not. They were also based on stress reactions, and did not appear to quantify attributes such as basic personality type, cultural acquisition, creativity, levels of actualisation and educational attainment. Quality of Life and Culture We can see that culture affects quality of life, and that individual quality of life is enhanced by a person's ability to be educated and brought up in a warm, caring environment. Another study found that dementia occurs at a much higher rate amongst people with learning disabilities than it does amongst the general population. This is independent of the association between dementia and Downs Syndrome. A further study examined the relationship between individuals' perceptions of the care they received from their parents to their subsequent health over a 35-year period. The participants were male undergraduates at Harvard University, and the results showed that those identified in mid life as suffering from the common degenerative diseases of Western society had, whilst in college, given their parents significantly lower ratings in terms of "parental care", being "loving and just" and being "hardworking, and clever". It is obvious that intellectual stimulation and loving, caring support from family, friends and the community at large is extremely important for the general well-being of the individual, as well as for the prevention of intellectual deficit later in life. Healing the Stressed Society If people could begin to understand the intimate connection between the mind and body they could then realise that each of us has the ability and the power to affect not only how we feel, but also the course and outcome of illness. This has particular significance in terms of the pre-eminence healing could take in creating a more successful, dynamic and sustainable society, particularly in Australia. Until very recently, the connection between mind and body that was the cornerstone of Hippocratic medicine was ignored in all Western medical schools. It was in the 1930s that Cannon discovered the bodily fight-and-flight syndrome, a reaction to any perceived threat by a living organism. Subsequently, Canadian Hans Selye defined stress as the non-specific response of the body to any demand. In the 1970s researchers began to understand that flight-and-fight and stress responses were related to a variety of human disease states. More recently, with the work of George Solomon at Stanford University, Robert Aider at the University of Rochestor, and Candice Pert at John Hopkins, a new field has been mapped called psychoneuroimmunology, emphasising the interconnection between the mind, brain and immune system. George Engel, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Rochestor, has studied hundreds of patients with chronic disease over a period of twenty years. He found that 70-80% of these people, who had suffered from heart attacks, cancer, stomach ulcers, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis and other conditions, had all experienced extended periods of helplessness and times when they felt like giving up. The vulnerability of the human being is found even at the earliest age. Tiffany Field and her colleagues at the University of Milan Research Institute showed that premature infants who were massaged several times a day for ten minutes demonstrated a 47% weight gain, and were able to leave the hospital six days earlier than other prems who received only the customary hospital care. This saved the hospital costs of $10,000 per baby per day. The Control and Moderation of Stress In quality of life assessment, therefore, we have to understand that control and moderation of stress is a prerequisite for people who wish to live long, fulfilling lives. On top of this, what quality of life surveys have not addressed is happiness and health. Happiness is not even touched on in quality of life assessments, for example in the World Bank's dissertations and research on poverty. It is interesting to note that, in terms of physiological change, humanity has barely moved out of bodily integrity. That is to say that the primitive physiological drives for survival, flight-and-fight and hunger are the basic modus vivendi for most of humanity. What we need to emphasise and encourage in the creation of culture are the dynamic needs that Maslow so aptly describes in his dynamic hierarchy: safety; belongingness and love; esteem; and self-actualisation. Our current culture is a rapacious assault on people's senses - a belief system advocating success at any cost, competition, and exploitation of people and environment. This is why I feel that healing, in a context of mind/body medicine, is the key to creating a more sustainable and vital culture. A nation that is actively involved in its own healing, and thereby creating a unique culture, is more able to satisfy and enhance its creative needs. Such a nation would be able to set an example to the rest of the world in terms of its creative performance and economic success. The essential ingredient is the development of a culture based on physiological happiness, which would then become the determinant for self-actualisation, for both the individual and society. This reduction of stress would also save billions of dollars currently directed towards of the prevention of cardiovascular disease, cancer and other degenerative diseases of western society. The Healed and Creative Nation So we can see that the healer has the potential to become a significant player in the building of a knowledge-rich and creative nation. Everyone who comes to see a physician could be helped to understand the emotional, environmental, work and social stresses that contribute to their illness. They could be advised about proper nutrition and exercise, and taught relaxation techniques, self-hypnosis and other appropriate strategies for self-awareness, self-regulation and self-actualisation. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the UN, talked recently about the unsustainable ecological footprint that humankind currently has on the planet. The population is currently at 6,169,232,000, and increasing by about 438 every ten minutes. "Humanity must solve a complex equation," Annan said. "We must stabilise our numbers, but equally importantly we must stabilise over-use of resources and ensure sustainable development for all." Australia has a much smaller population than most other industrialised countries. In the 1960s, Sir MacFarlane Burnett and Sir Mark Oliphant wrote Challenge to Australia, in which they expressed their belief that the country could become self-sustaining. It had all the ecological parameters, a range of different climates and a vast system of wilderness that could be encouraged to develop in such a way as to enable itself to become ecologically pristine, as well as supporting a human population sustainably. A Centre for Humanness, Global Vision and Leadership for the Youth of the Future The Centre For Change is dedicated to the highest aspirations of humanity, and deals specifically with encouraging the finest qualities of humanness, global vision and leadership for the youth of the future. It is also a Centre for Humankind and the Cosmos. This is a concept that our former patron, Sir Mark Oliphant, highly espoused. In a letter to Dr Ellis in 1989 he wrote, “Ultimately, this earth can be saved for humankind only if people are prepared to live with nature rather than upon nature. We have been taught that this world and all plants and creatures thereon were created for man’s use; that he was given dominion over all other forms of life and that he must go forth and multiply. It is now clear that if he follows that belief, his extinction is inevitable. Therefore, his whole relationship with Earth, with nature, must change rapidly. But, relationships between individuals, or between man and his environment, are intellectual and of the spirit, rather than of material gain or loss. Consciousness of that relationship must be improved rapidly by all means within our power. Recognition of the one-ness of life on Earth, of its beauty and its sanctity, must be spread by an almost messianic revolution. The creation of awareness, of consciousness, of the need for change, needs a focus, a place from which it can radiate throughout the globe. ” I believe that our Centre is a focus for change, and can be an example to the world of how the 21st Century Renaissance human being can live in harmony with society and the environment through the practice of healing and the reduction of stress. A Centre Espousing Healing and Reduction of Stress Our Centre is devoted to research into the following modalities:
The Centre, as Sir Mark Oliphant has said, will be a focus of awareness that can spread throughout the planet. The groundwork done here would then enable the Australia of the 21st Century to become a global leader - the most creative renaissance nation in the world, filled with the hope and self-actualisation that flows from the enhancement of every single person in the country. Dr Michael Ellis |
