Yesterday I watched a really good documentary on TV. Incidentally it supported my personal views on how we humans should reorganise our society both politically and in practice. We have a lot to learn from these baboons!
It is ironic that a baboon troop can rise above "how it's always been done" and flourish and that we humans, as a species, are taking so long to learn. We flaunt our "big brains" and "rising above animals" for what? To perpetuate a way of living that is making most of the world inhabitants miserable (looking for proof? switch on the news).
Results like these are, if anything, black and white proof that there are both good and bad ways to organise a social group.
The documentary was aired on Swedish TV yesterday on "Veteskapens Värld" watch it here:
http://svtplay.se/t/102814/vetenskapens_varld
Blurb:
"Den orättvisa stressen
Livet i en babianflock är inte alltid så hälsosamt för den som står längst ner i rang. Det vet neurobiologen Robert Sapolsky som har studerat babianer på nära håll. Men stress slår också till extra hårt hos människor som befinner sig långt ner i hierarkin. En långtidsstudie på 28 000 människors hälsoutveckling i Storbritannien visar att social status spelar en avgörande roll för hur vi mår. Stressen sätter sig i blodet, i hjärnan, den borrar sig in i kroppens celler och gör oss sjuka. Programledare är Mia-Marie Hammarlin. Gäst efter filmen är Monica Åberg Yngwe, doktor i folkhälsovetenskap.
Programinformation
Se de bästa vetenskapsdokumentärerna som finns på den internationella marknaden."
---
Killer Stress website:
http://killerstress.stanford.edu/
On the site is a great clip that pretty much sums up one of my favorite parts of the documentary. Where his original thought that "low rank = more stress" is not as simple as it appears to be. The answer turns out to be more complex than this. Low-ranking individuals that have a lot of friends and spend a lot of time grooming each other can be in good health and have low stress at the same time as a high-ranking individual can have high-stress if this individual is highly aggressive and very reactive.
---
Article from:
http://www.pbs.org/remotelyconnected/2008/09/stress_portrait_of_a_killer.html
"Killer Stress"
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
BY AMANDA HIRSCH
About the author
Author's site
My name is Amanda, and I am a workaholic.
-- a recovering workaholic, that is.
I used to live and breathe work; when I wasn't physically at the office, I was there in my mind -- wondering if the email I sent struck the right tone, strategizing how to get through the next day's to-do list. The smallest annoyance could send me into a fury. (I hear I was a lot of fun to live with.)
I'm better now, but I share this autobiographical insight so you know that when PBS invited me to review "Stress: Portrait of a Killer," I had more than a little bit of personal interest in the topic.
The program is a co-production of National Geographic and Stanford University starring Dr. Robert Sapolsky and a host of other researchers studying the science of stress, illustrating how our social status affects our stress level. This is true for all primates, it turns out, not just humans; to wit: in a baboon troop, dominant males are far less likely to exhibit stress than their subordinate troop-mates, as evidenced by the increased presence of stress hormones in subordinates' blood. A study of government workers in Great Britain shows similar results: the lower your rank in the civil service, the more likely you are to exhibit high levels of stress, and its attendant health issues -- even though all workers have access to the exact same level of medical care.
Stress, we learn, is closely related to feelings of control. We see the senior civil servant who controls her own workload tending to her lush garden, remarking that she's never had any real health problems; contrast this with the lower-level worker who's out sick half the time, and talks about feeling so overwhelmed by his workload that it's like skidding in a car on ice.
The film contrasts these social and psychological sources of stress with the biological origin of stress as a survival response. Think of the zebra, stressed in the wild when the cougar comes a' hunting; its heart races, and its body shuts down all but the most essential processes, flooding the zebra's system with the stress hormones that help it propel itself to safety. Unfortunately, we humans have the same physical reaction in situations where our sense of control - not our survival - is at stake.
The results are dire. As the body goes into emergency mode, it shuts down all non-essential processes, including things like growing and healing. It's one thing to shut these processes down while you run from a cougar, and quite another to shut them down for days or weeks at a time. Accordingly, research study after research study links high levels of stress with severe health problems, from blocked arteries to ulcers, not to mention diminished mental capacity - it turns out stress kills brain cells. As one of the researchers, Dr. Carol Shively, concludes, stress isn't an abstract concept -- it's a critical health issue demanding serious attention.
.
So, how do we fix it? I like Dr. Shively's advice best: the answer, she says, is to change our values as a society. We need to stop prizing ambition over all else, and celebrating the over-achievers who can walk and chew gum and type on their Blackberries all at the same time. But is such a fundamental change in our values and behavior possible?
One troop of baboons, we learn, was able to pull it off - to change the fundamental nature of their society and reduce stress all around. When the troop's alpha males all died - victims, tragically, of tuberculosis, which they got from tainted meat in the dumpster of a nearby nature lodge - the remaining males did something amazing: they were nice. More to the point, they weren't aggressive toward subordinates; suddenly, being a subordinate didn't feel worse than being dominant. The troop as a whole became more harmonious; as rank became less related to quality of life, the baboons who were lower on the totem pole were able, simply put, to chill out.
As Dr. Sapolsky summarized: the cause of stress isn't just your rank, it's what your rank means in your society.
The program's lessons resonate for me. For example: even though I was a manager at my former job, which sounds pretty alpha, I was a middle manager, with a lot of responsibility and no real authority. What's more, the politics of my organization drained me. Now, as a freelancer, I expend far less energy assessing or defending my rank (my dog is happily subordinate). I control my own schedule, and fill my days with activities of my choosing - balancing time spent on work with time spent writing for pleasure, practicing yoga, performing with my improv troupe, volunteering, and more.
Clearly, there's no one-size-fits-all prescription for a low-stress life. For some people, freelancing would be more stressful than working in an office. The take-away, then, is to look at your own life, and figure out how to reduce your own sources of stress - and, how to reduce the stress you may cause other people (in other words: how to be a nicer baboon).
What do you think? Can you see parallels between the research in the program and your own life? Share your thoughts using the comments feature below
----
Description of documentary below taken from:
http://www.pbs.org/stress/
A National Geographic Special
Stress: Portrait of a Killer premieres Wednesday, September 24, 2008. Check Local Listings to see when it is airing on your local PBS station.
Robert Sapolsky and an olive baboon share a quiet moment on the Talek River, July 2007 (Credit: John Heminway)
The stress response: in the beginning it saved our lives, making us run from predators and enabling us to take down prey. Today, human beings are turning on the same life-saving physical reaction to cope with 30-year mortgages, $4 a gallon gasoline, final exams, difficult bosses and even traffic jams — we can't seem to turn it off. So, we're constantly marinating in corrosive hormones triggered by the stress response.
Now, scientists are showing just how measurable — and dangerous — prolonged exposure to stress can be. Stanford University neurobiologist, MacArthur "genius" grant recipient, and renowned author Robert Sapolsky reveals new answers to why and how chronic stress is threatening our lives in Stress: Portrait of a Killer, a National Geographic Special. The hour-long co-production of National Geographic Television and Stanford University was produced exclusively for public television.
In this revelatory film, discoveries occur in an extraordinary range of places, from baboon troops on the plains of East Africa to the office cubes of government bureaucrats in London to neuroscience labs at the nation's leading research universities. Groundbreaking research reveals surprising facts about the impact of stress on our bodies: how it can shrink our brains, add fat to our bellies and even unravel our chromosomes. Understanding how stress works can help us figure out ways to combat it and mitigate negative impacts on our health.
Coveted female Saffi and dominant male York enjoy the shade of the banks of the Talek River. Masai Mara, Kenya, August 2004 (Credit: Randy Bean)
For over three decades, Robert Sapolsky has been working to advance our understanding of stress — in particular how our social standing (our place in various hierarchies) can make us more or less susceptible to the damaging effects of stress. Throughout the film, he weaves the grim realities of the impact of chronic stress with his wry observations about 21st century life.
"The reality is I am unbelievably stressed and Type A and poorly coping," says Sapolsky. "Why else would I study this stuff 80 hours a week? No doubt everything I advise is going to lose all its credibility if I keel over dead from a heart attack in my early 50s. I'm not good at dealing with stress. But one thing that works to my advantage is I love my work. I love every aspect of it."
Robert Sapolsky prepares to draw the blood of an anesthetized baboon as Masai villagers look on. Masai Mara, Kenya, August 2004 (Credit: Randy Bean)
The film is based partly on Sapolsky's best-selling book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: Stress, Disease and Coping. In addition to his professorship at Stanford, Sapolsky is a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. He is also the author of Monkeyluv, A Primate's Memoir and The Trouble with Testosterone, a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist.
Scientists from the University of North Carolina, the University of London, Rockefeller University and the University of California, San Francisco share their compelling insights into how stress impacts the body, giving stress a new relevance and urgency to our increasingly complex lives.
For more information about stress and Robert Sapolsky — including clips from the documentary, a video Q+A, links to podcasts, books and more experts on stress — visit the film's Web site at http://killerstress.stanford.edu/.
Find out how much you know about killer stress. Take the National Geographic Stress Quiz.
See how professionals balance stress with success at a LinkedIn "Answers" forum begun by Robert Sapolsky.
Stress: Portrait of a Killer was co-produced by Stanford University and National Geographic Television. The partnership is the first of its kind in the country and features a major research university joining forces with a distinguished production and educational institution to create original and compelling programming in the areas of science and technology for television audiences.
The senior executive producer of Stress: Portrait of a Killer was John Bredar. It was written and directed by John Heminway. The executive producer from Stanford University was Randy Bean.
Funded and Produced by:
© 2008 NGHT, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Text by Randy Bean and Ellen Stanley. Photos courtesy of John Heminway and Randy Bean.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar