A day in the life

Trapped. Queued. Shopping... Looking at a plastic basket full of imported groceries, I find myself contemplating how fast I could escape this situation should I want to. I wonder if the sun is shining outside, and in about five minutes time, when I have paid for my temporary solutions, I will find out if it does.

But then I sat up. I was in bed. Nightmares always make me rather groggy when I wake up, so it takes a short while before I distinguish this moment from the last in the string of conscious experiences. The sun was indeed shining outside, and I feel it now warming my hair ever so gently as I bend down again resting on the elbows. I know what comes next, but the delicate grace of the consuming familiarity has to be overpowered, before I can get up and do what must be done.

Going to the bathroom for a quick leak, and I will have my breakfast afterwards. Some progressively charming people would refer to it as “a cheap golden spa with the doctor”. Reviewing the numbers popping up on the mirror as I wash my hands, I find that my recent diet has been a bit too sugar-heavy, so instead of just leaving, I tab the recommended meal touch pad.

Jumping into a pair of nano-fabric shorts and a t-shirt I feel the short chill, before I venture into the garden outside. The sun shine really is lovely today. Like a never ending and never beginning kiss on the cheek from the love of your life. But after dwelling on such a rather poetic notion for a short while, my stomach lets out a brief growl shoving me back on track. So I sign in with a finger print on the pad next to the hydroponics, and upon recognising that I asked for a recommended meal, lights beneath the artificial soil quickly appear, highlighting the necessary fruits and vegetables for my breakfast. I sheathe my hands into the gardening gloves on the desk and take to gather the components.

I must say I do not care much for the compliments I get from my kitchen, just because I went with the suggested meal to balance my vitamin intake, but I guess some concessions have to be made, if it helps other people be motivated towards a better a diet. I could just tell my kitchen to stop giving me those messages, but I like to be reminded of my own attitude. And of course there is the added bonus that fewer and fewer people have to see doctors now. I reckon medicine will easily transition into a focus on preventative treatment and health maintenance in my life time given where we are now.

Leaving the house I greet the neighbour coming home. She has apparently already been out and about on one of the new city roamers. These vehicles never seize to amaze me. Plated with a photovoltaic shell, just like almost every road is now, they run entirely on sun light, but the interesting part is that this has completely vamped society, and I think this is why people get up so early in the morning now, even though there is no labour left to do. These bikes never stay stationary for longer periods of time, and yet they have a fascinating break down rate of close to zero.

So when she gets out, I jump in and articulate my destination to the receiver. When I get to the university, I quickly traverse the stairs in anticipation of the study group I have been preparing for all week. “Applied Teraforming” has become my new hobby, and I hope to one day become sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject to teach it myself. Although most classes are now taught by the students themselves on a rotation basis, it is suggested that one takes a number of classes on a specific subject, prior to leaving the student roster and entering the the student-teacher roster.

Regarding “Applied Teraforming” I tend to day dream about a production team of developers and programmers working with me to realise my dream of a computer game, that tasks players with cultivating the best possible environment on a given planet, drawing raw data and calculating impacts made by player decisions from the global database. In turn this could become applied teraforming, if the record setting players' designs would be submitted back into the database for engineers and ecologists to review as possible schemes for real space exploration. But that is just my personal goal, and if it is to be, then I am sure I will eventually find the people I need for such a team to start working.

Later this week I did sign up for another study group called “Beyond exchange”, but I am actually considering not going. The people are very nice, but I do sometimes feel that I spent a bit too much time on that subject before Liberation, so I am not sure I would learn much from a thorough analysis into the socialisation process concerned with human interaction and that stuff. It just always seemed like a given to me that it would obviously work out in the end, even if we did not have anything left to threaten each other with.

However, I do see the merit in the course, because we certainly did not evolve past the exchange based culture as soon as we technically could have. And if I do go, it will be to explore how the transition seems to be going based on recent findings. Most of the previous advocates of exchange came around after strife and famine were ended, but some still cling to the idea that humans are categorically egoistical, and the only reason we are currently functional in a cooperative society is because it benefits ourselves the most. I guess they could be right. But then again, the results speak for themselves. All the psychiatrists either chose another education or shipped off to the Americas to work with transitional conflicts over there, simply because the need here fell like never before a few years after Liberation.

What amuses me greatly is when I get back home and do my exercises before dinner. I was always one of those lazy kids who were never properly motivated by the physical socio-dynamics, but now that I can track my progress on a bar that slowly builds towards the next level, I find myself working out almost every day. It is purely recreational though, but I do not see why that would be a bad thing. The results are that my ulcerative colitis is kept in check, and my body has never been healthier. To think I was pretty much addicted to junk food and computer games before Liberation. Now I feel in shape, and not because I have to impress anyone but myself.

So for dinner tonight I believe I will treat myself to a soy burger with a quinoa bun and a relish of kale and pees. Afterwards I try to stay motivated towards a short session of meditation. After training for a while I can tell it helps me stay curious and open minded, but when there is no bar tracking how well I do it just gets a bit too intangible sometimes.

So have a nice evening friends. I will see you in class for “Steady-state patterning”.

Functional Sociology

Marketing 101 will teach you that relating to success can achieve success. So in my moment of weakness I have decided to let myself become rigorously inspired (steal) the name of my new favourite concept: Functional medicine.

Watch this following presentation by Dr. Mark Hyman and then continue with this post to witness my attempt at expanding on his perspective. It is a piece on health care looked at in a refreshing way, because it brings back the scientific method to a field that has long been like a library, as opposed to a vibrant, dynamic art of complimenting health systems through research which medicine should be.



I am no scientist. I hold no degrees and though I may be studying at a university right now, I will hardly have anything professional to say on neither the medicinal matter nor the sociological matter, as I am studying IT which is about as far from health as you can get in the sphere of knowledge. Or well it is not, but you get my point. However, this will not stop me from comparing this piece of science to my own theory of how societies work.

Because I believe that if Mark Hyman was working in the field of sociology rather than medicine, he would be suggesting that we start using a systems approach to how we govern our societies. He would point out that we are currently upholding thoughts and ideas on how to treat societal issues that are centuries old if not millennia.

Hyman says that diseases do not exist. Not in the sense that we understand diseases. They are not bad things that just happen and have to be treated. They are the responses of your own body attempting to deal with an imbalance. What does that mean? It means that diseases are currently understood in a way that does not help us with anything other than categorising the fallout they produce.

From this perspective we can try and understand diseases in a new sense. Diseases are the general categories we deal with when we collectivise symptoms, a package of symptoms that when appearing simultaneously makes up a collection of unwanted physical reactions in a body and we label that a certain title, like cancer or pneumonia, so we can quickly reference how we normally proceed with treatment. 
But perhaps we should start looking at causality instead? Because you can cure as many symptoms as you want, it will make no difference if you load your diet with the wrong food, get no exercise and maintain a stressful position at your job. Conventional methods do attempt this. But they will never succeed because their perspective is based on a per case basis.

A diagnosis will be damn hard to do if you cannot identify the problem, and you mainly do that by looking at symptoms. I do the same when I build web pages or software solutions. I try to recreate the issues brought up to me by a client on my own screen, so I can see the "leakage" and seal it. This is a symptom-oriented treatment and it works only in secluded, primitive systems. 
You could probably relate this to problem solving in your own life as well. Issues are easy to deal with on a per case basis so long as they are kept in a neat and orderly pile. As soon as they are no longer kept in that neat and orderly pile, you will start experiencing a growing sense of stress, whether or not you get the symptoms is irrelevant, because you can no longer manage the entire pile mentally. This is the reason you started using the systems approach that led you to conclude that the neat pile would be optimal in the first place. Even if this happened subconsciously, it did happen none the less.

Attempting to be bold I will now directly attack a major paradigm that is older than I care to try and guess at.

Crime does not exist. Not in the sense that we understand crime. It is not a bad thing that just happens and has to be dealt with. It is a response given by parts of the social community caused by an imbalance in the system. What does that mean? it means that crime is currently understood in a way that does not help us with anything other than categorising the fallout it produces.

From this perspective we can try and understand crime in a new sense. Crime is the general category we deal with when we collectivise incidents of violence, whether material as physical violence or intangible as theft. It is a package of social symptoms that when appearing simultaneously makes up a collection of unwanted social reactions in a community and we label that a certain title, like murder or embezzlement, so we can quickly reference how we normally proceed with treatment.
But perhaps we should start looking at causality instead? Because you can imprison as many people as you like, it will solve no problem if you load society with inequality, bridge no differences and maintain consumption patterns at the price of social capital. Conventional methods do attempt this. But they will never succeed because their perspective is based on a per case basis.

And crime is just one single element on a list of the issues society is attempting to handle in this fashion, with a less than optimal result yielded in almost every case, due to faulty measures believed to be correct. I could draw this same parallel with obesity, teenage birth rates, mental health, child well-being, social mobility, drug abuse etc.
I believe you understand my point by now though, so I see no reason to repeat myself further. If you want you could try doing it yourself and you will start to see an emerging pattern. 

This is the basis of a systems approach. It is the mechanisation of problem solving, the automation of re-indexing, and it frees up your time as a mental librarian and gives you more time to do abstract work on solving new and exciting issues instead.

Experiments

Today I learned of an experimental dietary treatment for a chronic disease I happen to suffer from, and among other things it made me consider just why exactly there are so few dietary treatments going on. Obviously everything is experimental at first. One can have a scientifically backed expectation towards the outcome, and in medical science one probably should, but it will be experimental none the less. So the wording is not my issue. What I take an issue with is that treatment such as this is natural. Now I for one am not the one to label tradition as something positive in and of itself, however, I do entertain the following philosophy.

The body appears to be a bio-mechanical machine hard wired to sort out internal problems. This is scientifically proven, so there is not a lot of philosophy contained in this. But then the general belief goes on to denote that the mind is what we have for external problem solving. What I would propose, however, is that the mind is very much involved in both. How we think and feel will change patterns in how our body works. You can tell by the countless studies in psychology that proves rises and drops in various types of body-functions based on the mood swings of the test subjects. Stress is the big subject now, and it is very related to our physical well-being. For instance placebo pills in some cases work to rid the patient of self-inflicted symptoms. The mind is a powerful tool.

So returning to the subject of diet again, I would venture the guess that the fuel for the body should be very much a factor in how well the inner machinery works to keep itself healthy. Most people already know this, so instead I will try to be a little more abstract.

As a society we hold a common responsibility to work to further the understanding of everyone of what their diet should and should not contain. It is quite possible to poison the body into a state of weakness exposing it to a wide variety of diseases, both the ones commonly known to be related to unhealthy life-styles like diabetes and the more complicated diseases. Now I am not attempting to preach that a healthy diet can keep you disease-free. But I could certainly preach that it would help. I will refrain from that at this point though.

About the responsibility, one could hope that society would realise it as a duty to keep its inhabitants as healthy as possible. This is why the free market model is counter-productive when it comes to collective health. In the book The Spirit Level the first basic graph introduced is one that shows how the GDP of nations only work proportionally with standards of living below a certain threshold. It bends off at a point where people start being able to take care of themselves, and this means that some of the poorest countries out of the richest ones (western ones, generally) are very equal to the much richer ones.. The point to make here is that the idea of rapid expansion and consumption only gets us to a certain point. This cannot be stressed enough, because it is the principle argument that the neo-capitalistic machinery we have installed to run our world for us, serves us no longer and today it is in fact an inhibitor to our true potential.

Do some research on your own. Next time you go grocery shopping check out how expensive it would be for you to buy only organic food highly based on fibres and less based on meats and dairy. You will note that it gets a lot cheaper for you if you buy unhealthy, non-organic products because this is what industry can produce cheaply. It is a lot cheaper to produce long-lasting (genetically modified, filled with additives) food products than it is to produce short-lasting (natural) food products that would benefit the consumer much more.
Considering the value of money today, you could say we are actually making it a rewarding game to try and spot the better deals and shake up a good price. The exact opposite of what people should be doing. And then we ask ourselves why sickness, depression and cancer rates all are off the chart now.

A doctor I spoke with today concerning this experimental diet actually told me that he had patients who had gone to Thailand on vacation, and while there they experienced almost complete remission in their symptoms. His thoughts on the matter were that the patients had been staying outside of general tourist areas and therefore been eating locally produced, natural meals loaded with vegetables and without a lot of meat. It should come as no surprise that this is much better for the body, but what should come as a surprise is that these conditions are regarded as unsuccessful in normal terms, because that rural area was probably highly impoverished and this is the reason for their inability to import fizzy drinks and mass-produced meat.

This is especially relevant to consider during this period of global economic unrest, because now is when we simply should not and cannot accept, for the sake of the future heirs to this planet, a continual lowering of quality in our food. It is unacceptable, and just like it was an economic bubble that burst, so too will the health bubble burst when we not only have the demographic issue of too few working people versus too many retired people against us, but also the issue of too many sick people versus too few healthy people.

As a future project I would like to blog for a week about a healthy, easy diet. Be sure to check back as February will most likely feature such adventures.