Guanxi, social capital, relationships, and health, wealth

INTRODUCTION

If we don't understand the nature of life, we can't possibly reason correctly about the "health" property of it, let alone reason about finding cost-effective interventions to improve or sustain it.

The nature of life is not obvious. I believe we have it all wrong, and as a direct consequence of this we have flawed personal behaviors, corporate behaviors, and a flawed national policy and system of "health care." Until this error is fixed, our efforts to improve "health" will simply fail in baffling ways.

Where did we go wrong?

THE OLD MODEL OF LIFE

Biology 101 teaches us, and we absorb deeply, this model:

1. LIMIT: All life is made of one or more biological cells.
2. LIMIT: Cells are blobs of protoplasm surrounded by distinct walls that clearly separate the inside from the outside. Only cells that touch each other in a more-or-less fixed shape can form "higher" life forms.
3. LIMIT: Although humans and "higher" organisms are both made of cells and have an independent life of their own, even larger colonies or collections of higher life forms cannot and do not form even "higher" life forms with a life of its own.
4. LIMIT: Life can only arise from other life and be "passed on".
   
5. LIMIT: The algebra of living things only includes division -- one living thing can divide to form two living things, but two or more living things don't re-assemble into one living thing. (A notable exception is sperm and egg, which are each separately alive and yet reassemble into a single life form.)
   
6. LIMIT: all life forms die.
   

Although every one of these rules or limits or statements has "exceptions", the model is treated as if it is "essentially correct" and not questioned very much. I will challenge it much more strongly right now, stepping on the toes of tradition and religious faith in the process.

I will propose a much more general model of life that reduces to the above model in the the special case of looking at biological life on the surface of the earth today.


MY NEW MODEL OF LIFE

1. All life is based on processes that have at least one closed feedback loop which is self-aware and self-protective. There is not limit to the special case of biology. A computer network, a family, a corporation, a culture, a nation all are "life-forms" with such loops. One very important class of living entity is called a "relationship" between people. Another class of living entity is the relationship between cells in "an organ" or "a body system", such as the heart or the circulatory system or the digestive system. These are independently alive.
2. A living entity has fuzzy edges which extend outwards, possibly across great distances with gaps in between, to anything else that forms part of its closed regulatory feedback loops.
3. Essentially all living entities are in the middle of a hierarchy of life, encompassing smaller life-forms below, and comprising parts of higher life-forms above, simultaneously. Each "level" has a "life" (closed feedback regulatory loop) of its own, and there are also some loops (lives) which span multiple levels.
4. Life can be created on-the-fly, systematically, on purpose. It is not that hard to create new life. We do it all the time. Various aspects of life can also be extinguished on the fly. It is not that hard to damage or kill life forms. A Life-form becomes "dead" when its primary closed loop no longer functions.
5. Any number of living things can combine, and often are already weekly combined, into larger life-forms with separate independent lives of their own.
6. There is no reason a life form has to die.

So what? WHAT DOES THAT CHANGE?

First, if we recognize that people, corporations, and nations are all linked together into a huge multi-level life form, then we realize that it is not possible to have one part of this "healthy" while another part of it is "unhealthy." We are, basically, all chained to each other and our fates our linked.

Corporations are life-forms, as are nations, but they are not "separate" entities from "people."

It is true, for example that there is a "personal economy" and a "corporate economy" that have separate lives and interests in the very short run, but it is also true but unrecognized that there is a longer-time-span linkage between the two so that destruction of the personal economy in an effort to improve the corporate economy is simply self-defeating and self-destructive.

This means that it is nonsensical for "Public Health" to see corporations as "an enemy". Any solution that deals with personal or family health will collapse if the local economy collapses. Jobs are as important as medicine for personal sustainable health.

Similarly, it makes no sense for corporations to try to build a vibrant economy on the backs of and at the expense of people and the environment -- because, ultimately, they ARE people and if the people or environment are destroyed, the corporate entities and economies will die off as well. It won't work for corporations to try to become computer-based and get rid of all people, for reasons I'll get to later.

Similarly, people do not have "clean edges" where there is "my" health and "your" health. Every day scientists find deeper ways in which the health of "your neighbors" and "your friends" and "your friends' friends" contribute to and often even determine "your" health and "your" behavior. A cell with damaged DNA can go on functioning if it is surrounded by healthy cells that it interacts with strongly. The same is true for people.

"Our" health is not somehow contained within the boundaries of our skin. Things can go wrong with our health that are outside that boundary, and things can go right with our health that are outside that boundary. This is a cruicial fact!

It has been shown that, for an 60 year old American, making a new friend has a stronger impact on their survival rate and than dealing with smoking, drinking, exercise, and nutrition. This should not come as a surprise, with the new model of biology and life.


WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR NATIONAL HEALTH CARE POLICY?


I think it is evident that a set of interventions that improved interpersonal relationships ( life forms) would have more of a beneficial effect on our lives, morale, and "physical health" than most other interventions we can imagine (such as reduced drug costs or new insurance mechanisms.)

In other words, humans are part of a meta-biologicial ecosystem where the health of the relationship-entities sea that we swim in determines, effectively, the health of the protoplasm units we wear (our bodies.)

Similarly, in the business world, the sea of relationship-entities ("guanxi" or "social capital") is as important, or more important, than the individual roles and positions people have in determining the "health" of corporations and the regional and national economy.

Even on the departmental or work-team level, the relationship-sea, the ecology of life forms that occur "between" people is as important, or more important, than individual "skills and experience" in determining successful perception of direction and accomplishment of objectives.


CONCLUSIONS / RECOMMENDATIONS

Any strategy for personal health, corporate success, or a thriving national economy is doomed to failure unless it attends to the needs of the inter-entity life-form community as well.

"Relationships" are not just something that people "are" or "do" -- they are independent living entities that must be nurtured and which have their own "health care" needs and interests.

This is a much stronger mental model that can direct the attention and focus of policy in ways that will be much more successful at building a sustainable world than the old model.

Wade

How do we get anywhere?

Dances with Penguins - 2
Originally uploaded by Fotomom

Isn't there some tool that we could use so that our meetings always get us a little closer to where we want to go?

If we're going to get anywhere, we need to learn how to talk to each other. That's a conclusion I keep coming back to. With all these people, why can't we solve our own problems?

So, I come back to the side-point Professor Gary Olson made in class one day. He said that white-boards were proven to be very useful for making meetings get somewhere, but he hardly ever saw faculty or administrators use one when they met.

This is on top of arriving without a clear agenda, and working without minutes being taken of what was said.

Well, that's curious. Why is that? I mean, white-boards are really useful in removing ambiguity and bringing issues to the front where they can be seen by everyone. They help you leave the meeting with a common understanding of what was agreed to and a clear picture of what steps who is taking next.

So, I have to suppose that faculty and administrators prefer to keep issues hidden, prefer to avoid revealing conflict, and are happy to let everyone go off with their own misconceptions of what was decided and who is doing what next. And, I guess, it's OK in their minds that people who weren't at the meeting are now missing part of the picture and walking around misinformed.

So, let's start the "Five Whys" process and see if we can figure out what it would take to overcome this apparent social dysfunction.

So far we have:

• We have major social problems that aren't being dealt with, locally, at a department or corporate level, regionally, statewide, and nationally, or being dealt with way too late to be effective
  
• which is partly because: people don't get anywhere when they meet
• which is partly because: they don't use obvious tools like agendas, white-boards, and minutes
• which is partly because: those tools remove ambiguity which clarifies areas of conflict which is disruptive and unpleasant
• which is partly because: people aren't good at dealing with conflict so they avoid it.
• which is partly because: what?

I think part of the reason people have trouble dealing with conflict is that they don't think of it as "apparent conflict" and assume that it is "real conflict."

Because they think it's "real" conflict, they also think that the only way to survive is to "win", which means that everyone else must "lose", so they hardly want to be open and honest about their motivations. Most people also assume that everyone else is just like them, so they assume the same reasoning and motivations are behind what everyone else is doing as well.

We get some guidance from the superb book "Getting To Yes", which is about techniques that let the Soviet Union and the US negotiate during the cold war, when they hated and mistrusted each other.

The authors use the example of an orange that two kids are fighting over. Each wants the orange and "needs it" and "must have it."

On investigation of what they would do with it if they got it, one wanted to squeeze it and get the juice to drink, and the other needed the outside rind for some class project.

So, it turns out the "it" they were fighting over wasn't ever made clear enough to reveal that there were two "its" and one orange could satisfy both needs.

So, one problem the authors found is that people tend to jump to conclusions about what they think is the "only way" to do something that could "possibly" work. The conclusions are wrong, but are based on unstated or even unrealized assumptions or different life experience.

When the people can back off of their "positions" ( "I must have that orange!") and go back upstream a step to their "interests" ("I need orange juice!") new solutions suddenly appear to what was an "unsolvable problem."

If you keep on tracking back upwards one step after another, you end up coming back to basic needs, that people need to survive, to eat, to have clothing and shelter, etc. I think any negotiation has to start with the assumption that the goal in life is not the annihilation of the other party (which would be a position), but to figure out how to proceed so that the other party doesn't pose an on-going threat of annihilating me (an understandable and predictable interest.)

Many international conflicts are generated by the belief that the only way the other party will stop being a threat is if it is annihilated entirely, and that there are no other possible solutions to reducing the threat.

I'll look at other properties of rational ways to deal with conflict in other posts. Where I wanted to get in this one was to follow the chain of causality upstream far enough to see hope along one axis. So far, we've found that many of the reasons to avoid discussing conflict and actually resolving it are based in misunderstanding, unspoken assumptions, leaps of judgment about the "only way" something can happen, and perhaps hidden assumptions that the "only way" to reduce a threat to myself is to sabotage or eliminate someone else.

The humility required is being willing to accept that it is possible that somewhere you have leaped to some conclusion and leaped right past another solution you didn't see.

The belief required is being willing to accept that your own survival does not automatically require the elimination of someone else.

In other circles, maybe the realization is that your own wealth, empowerment, and happiness does not automatically demand dis-empowering everyone else. There may be other ways to survive and thrive and be legitimately happy and wealthy.

In fact, as I'll discuss in other posts, both health and wealth are bio-social constructs and if everyone else died, the wealth would be worth nothing and physiological and mental health would be impossible. And, just like our body doesn't have a "super-cell" that all the other cells bow down to and "obey", the planet doesn't need a "super-man" that all other men bow down to and obey. The whole concept of domination is fatally flawed, and has no biological or natural analog. Ecosystems can't make themselves subservient to one component, and the emergent power is so much larger than any component's individual power that subservience would make no sense. There is no "best" part of a mutually-dependent ecosystem.

(credits - photo Dances with Penguins, by Fotomom,
click on it to go to that site on Flickr., "dinner time" penguin photo by
Uploaded by c-basser on Flickr)