Zeitgeist: Moving Forward Page #11

But material fairness aside

there is something else going on

underneath the surface of inequality

causing an incredible deterioration in public health as a whole.

Well, I think people often are puzzled by the contrast

between the material success of our societies

- Unprecedented levels of wealth -

and the many social failings.

If you look at the rates of

drug abuse or violence or self harm

amongst kids or mental illness

there is clearly something going deeply wrong

with our societies.

The data I have been describing

simply shows that intuition that people

have had for hundreds of years, that inequality is divisive

and socially corrosive.

But, that intuition is truer than I think we ever imagined.

There are very powerful psychological and social effects

of inequality. More to do I suppose with feelings

of superiority and inferiority.

That kind of division...

Maybe going with the respect or disrespect

- People feeling looked down on at the bottom

which, by the way, is why violence is

more common in more unequal societies -

the trigger to violence is so often people feeling looked down

upon and disrespected.

If there is one principle I could emphasize

that is, the most important principle underlying

the prevention of violence

it would be "Equality"...

The single most significant factor

that affects the rate of violence

is the degree of equality versus the degree of inequality

in that society.

So, what we're looking at is a sort of

general social dysfunction.

It's not just one or two things that go wrong

as inequality increases

it seems to be everything, whether we are talking about

crime or health or mental illness or whatever.

One of the really disturbing findings out there in public health

is never ever make the mistake of being poor.

Or being born poor.

Your health pays for it in endless sorts of ways:

something known as the 'health socioeconomic gradient'.

As you move down from the highest strata

in society, in terms of socioeconomic status

every step down, health gets worse

for umpteen different diseases.

Life expectancy gets worse.

Infant mortality rate -

everything you could look at.

So, a huge issue has been

why is it that this gradient exists.

A simple obvious answer

which is, 'if you're chronically sick, you're not

going to be very productive

so, health causes drive socioeconomic differences. '

Not that in the slightest -

on the very simple level that

you could look at the

socioeconomic status of a 10-year-old

and that's going to predict something about their health

decades later.

So, that's the direction of causality.

Next one- 'Oh, it's perfectly obvious' -

poor people can't afford to go to the doctor...

it's healthcare access?

It's got nothing to do with that

because you see these same gradients

in countries with universal health care and

socialized medicine.

Okay next 'simple explanation':

Oh -on the average- the poorer you are

the more likely you are to smoke

and drink and all sorts of lifestyle risk factors.

Yeah, those contribute but careful studies have shown

that it explains maybe about a third of the variability.

So what's left?

What's left is having a ton to do

with the STRESS of poverty

So, the poorer you are, starting off being

the person who is one dollar of income behind Bill Gates...

the poorer you are in this country

on the average, the worse your health is.

This tells us something really important:

the health connection with poverty

it's not about being poor it's about feeling poor.

Increasingly we recognize that chronic stress

is an important influence on health

but the most important sources of stress

are the quality of social relations.

and if there is anything that

lowers the quality of social relations

it is the socioeconomic stratification of society.

What science has now shown is

that regardless of material wealth

the stress of simply living in a stratified society

leads to a vast spectrum of public health problems

and the greater the inequality, the worse they become.

Life expectancy:
longer in more equal countries.

Drug Abuse:
Less in more equal countries.

Mental Illness:
Less in more equal countries.

Social Capital - meaning the

ability of people to trust each other:

Naturally greater in more equal countries.

Educational Scores: Higher in more equal countries.

Homicide rates:
less in more equal countries.

Crime and Rates of Imprisonment:

Less in more equal countries.

It goes on and on:

Infant mortality obesity - teen birth rate:

Less in more equal countries.

and perhaps most interesting:

Innovation:
Greater in more equal countries.

which challenges the age old notion that a competitive

stratified society is somehow more creative and inventive.

Moreover, a study done in the UK

called The WhiteHall Study

confirmed that there is a social distribution of disease

as you go from the top of the socioeconomic ladder

to the bottom.

For example, it was found that the lowest rungs

of the hierarchy had a 4-fold increase

of heart disease based mortality

compared to the highest rungs.

And this pattern exists, irrespective of access to health care.

Hence - the worse a person's relative financial status

the worse their health is going to be on average.

This phenomenon is rooted in what could be termed

Psychosocial Stress'

and it is at the foundation of the greatest social distortions

plaguing our society today.

Its cause?

The Monetary-Market System.

Make no mistake:

The greatest destroyer of ecology...

the greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution...

the greatest purveyor of violence -

war - crime - poverty - animal abuse and inhumanity...

the greatest generator of social and personal neurosis...

mental disorders - depression anxiety...

Not to mention, the greatest source of social paralysis

stopping us from moving into new methodologies

for personal health, global sustainability

and progress on this planet

is not some corrupt Government or legislation...

not some rogue Corporation or banking cartel...

not some flaw of human nature...

and not some secret hidden cabal that controls the world.

It is, in fact:

The Socio-Economic System itself

at its very foundation.

[Part 3:
Project Earth]

Let's imagine for a moment we had the option

to redesign human civilization from the ground up.

What if, hypothetically speaking

we discovered an exact replica of the planet Earth

and the only difference between

this new planet and our current one

is that human evolution had not occurred.

It was an open palette.

No countries, no cities, no pollution, no republicans...

just a pristine, open environment.

So what would we do?

Well, first we need a "goal", right?

And it's safe to say that goal would be to survive.

And not to just survive, but to do so in an optimized, healthy

prosperous way.

Most people, indeed, desire to live and

they would prefer to do so without suffering.

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