don's report archive

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Grant Donovan's Outrageous Opinions
Monday August 11, 2003

Albert Einstein remarked that the world has more to fear from bad politics than bad physics. In this new age of health-enhancing possibilities, when self-managing lifestyles are available (but rarely selected) for the purposes of reducing morbidity (health education) or to enhance optimal health (wellness), bad politics remains a greater fear than bad physics, or bad medicine. Maybe health educators should learn more about and pay more attention to physics, as well as politics. Both science and politics very much affect the quality of American life, and it is life quality that ought to be the focus of health promotion.

Failing that, the next best approach might be to keep people like the eminent Australian health promoter and polymath Grant Donovan around to write outrageous opinions that spark reactions and thus get people to think about things they otherwise would ignore. I regularly invite Donovan to publish such opinions in the newsletter I produce (the Ardell Wellness Report), and an interview with him can be enjoyed at this site. A few years ago, I got Donovan to offer his opinions on the relevance of physics, chaos science, butterfly effects, strange attractors and random self-assembly! I suggested to him that he might make the case that these are matters every wellness advocate should master. He wrote an interesting piece that, not surprisingly, got a lot of reaction. Perhaps you might enjoy an abbreviated version of this creative piece.

Donovan suggested we consider the chaos worldview, a system of thinking popularized in such works as Order Out of Chaos (Prigozine and Stengers, 1984) and Chaos: Making A New Science (Glieick, 1987.) He said that these works and the theory of chaos in relation to order would enable wellness advocates to better understand how small inputs can produce large outputs in a turbulent and chaotic world. As examples, he noted how at the personal level a little physical activity has been known to improve the whole physiological and psychological status of many individuals. Conversely and paradoxically, blind, unvarying and dogmatic adherence to formulas for exercise, diet, sleep and so on led many to what he called "the House of Health Paranoia."

Donovan suggested that most people are drowning in health information. He asked what is likely if Naisbitt's 1984 Megatrends prediction proves accurate, the one about increasing numbers of scientists and "more powerful information systems" doubling the volume of data every twenty years? He wondered if our heightened sensitivities might set off chains of complex reactions leading to unpredictable (and, by implication, undesired) outcomes? "Are we," he asked, "in a pirouette of scientific sophistication, generating a health mega-mess?"

In The Frontiers of Management (1986), Drucker suggested, "economists never know anything until twenty years later." Why would this apply any less in matters of lifestyle change? Will the psuedo evils of salt, sugar, cholesterol, red meat, sex, heroin and death be unmasked in the future? With rampaging technology, who can predict the speed and extent of confusion likely to be generated among exposed populations?

Of course, we all welcome the conveniences of being able to fly, drive, shower, cook, wrap garbage and generally contribute to overall pollution levels. We sense that the preferred choices today could have unknown, unattractive ramifications for the future. The best chaos guesstimates suggest the changes in world climactic conditions will be almost unperceivable right up to the point of sudden catastrophe. The "butterfly effect" implies a straw (or butterfly) will eventually break the camel's back and we won't even see it coming.

Donovan likes to shock people, so he carried the idea to the next level when he suggested that, in a random and rather chaotic way, smoking might be a good way to die before the next big bang. He questioned the wisdom of investments to persuade, cajole and otherwise discourage people from smoking. Quoting Donovan, "They are going to die anyway (like all vestal virgins of health promotion.) It's their choice -- so why care, providing they don't smoke near us?"

He wrote that the same goes for anyone else who wishes to engage in risk behaviors. Let him/her take the informed risk and die. The rest of us can choose to die healthy. If the economic viability of health systems is a real issue, then voluntary euthanasia, by any means, may be the only worthy solution. All other complex answers are fraught with chaotic consequences leading on all paths to higher and higher costs.

In a never-to-be-perfect world, there is an absence of perfect solutions to problems. Donovan urged that we settle for imperfect answers and be happy if we can add a bit (or a lot) of fun in our short existence. People who take everything seriously are a bigger health hazard than smokers.

Donovan concluded,

Fun at home, fun at work and fun at play. Who knows what wonderful times could be had in the wellest of well worlds if every person took responsibility to have as much fun as possible? Unfortunately, some scientist type somewhere is probably prioritizing different aspects of fun into factor groupings and producing a general fun test which, when administered by a trained psychologist, will lead to strict behavioral prescriptions -- and proscriptions. Eventually, fun will be found by another mechanical researcher to cause cerebral cancer and will be subsequently banned by medical authorities.

I suspect that our only saving grace will be new generations embracing chaos and finally figuring out that random intuition surpasses the mathematics of scientific reductionism when it comes to personal wellness decisions.

So, what might be the chaos message as interpreted by Donovan? If it's fun, not illegal and feels good, maybe you ought to do it. As you can imagine, not everyone was enthusiastic about this message, but many found it amusing and thought provoking, and what's the harm in a bit of that?

Be well. Enjoy.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MEANING DOMAIN under the skill area of play. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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