The Evolutionary Advantage of Empathy

 

McWilliams said he generally doesn’t believe in handouts, but in disaster situations, the government “should be there for us.”

I forwarded this story to a libertarian friend of mine who had no sympathy; like some of the commenters, this friend suggested the farmer should have gotten the right insurance.  If they didn’t, it sucks to be them.  “If my house burns down,” said this friend, “should I expect government to buy me a new one?” 

This friend has also told me it’s fiction that China’s rice fields are drying up, or that climate change is shrinking the glaciers that feed China’s rivers.  Climate change is pop-science, folk trying to scare up dollars so they can do pop-research and make some easy profit.  Of course, my friend’s a staunch advocate for a Free Market, though he doesn’t believe in advocating for one.  Advocacy is too much like socialism.  And clearly, China’s approach hasn’t served its interests well.

Yet, this friend lives in a society.  Tax dollars clean his streets, remove his waste and protect his property from squatters or thieves.  He, like everyone that isn’t a hermit, relies to some degree on societal collaboration.  It’s not a handout, though – it’s collective living.  Can he individually afford to buy food from abroad if there’s none available locally, due to drought?  If supply lines are completely cut, if his house burns down, if he loses the ability to support himself and provide saleable value to society, is he on his own? 

Of course he isn’t.  If his house burns down, his friends (including me) would donate items, maybe hold a fundraiser.  If he’s injured, some of our resources will go to making sure he isn’t left behind.  It would feel wrong to do otherwise.  In fact, when we see examples of people being mistreated or not supported in times of need, we get angry.  If, that is, we see them as people, like us.  Empathy, it appears, occurs in a context of commonality.  You have to recognize that another creature can experience the world in the same way you do to have compassion for them.

It’s not just us that engage in empathetic behaviour; gorillas will go so far as to dismantle traps and warn others, even other primates, of the threats traps present.  There must be an evolutionary advantage to altruistic behaviour; otherwise, it wouldn’t be so common.  Genes don’t think in terms of systems, though – sheep didn’t develop wool so that we could make wool clothes any more than sea anemone and clownfish developed a symbiotic relationship for proactively altruistic reasons.  These traits were developed for selfish gains, with the collaborative aspects being advantageous but unintended side-effects.

What, then, could be the selfish justification for empathy?  What’s in empathy for me?  Here’s a thought:

Theory of mind and empathy allow us to understand and avoid consequences that impact others within our social context.  If we say “so what” to the challenges of others, are we paying attention to avoiding those consequences ourselves?  If we feel superior/distinct/removed from our peers, what incentive do we have to learn from their mistakes?

Mel Brooks famously said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger.  Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.”  Because tragedy is something that happens to us that is beyond our control; comedy happens to someone else.  If it had been you cutting your finger, lord knows it would be a result of inattention on your part.  If it had been Brooks falling in the manhole, it was because someone else didn’t cover it up, or distracted him, etc.  In war, soldiers always think it’s someone else who will get shot; in accidents, it’s always someone else that will fall victim.

On the other hand, if we empathize, we can internalize.  If we could picture ourselves in the shoes of the man falling into a sewer, we can consider causes and context and hopefully, plan to avoid such consequences ourselves.  If we can empathize with the neighbour whose house burns down, we can put ourselves in their shoes and perhaps learn how to proactively avoid that happening to us.  The act of wanting to help would be a sidebar, but a useful one.  When we are motivated, through selfish interests, to look after others, we help foster a climate where the same level of empathy gets returned to us.  Then, we can share.  Then, we can specialize.

Which brings us back to our farmer.  Government isn’t some nebulous entity that exists separate from people, any more than politicians are non-humans that don’t think and feel the way we do.  Government, ultimately, is a tool of specialization, an aggregate for collective interests.  We do want government to be there when we need it, but if we don’t proactively support government, that won’t be the case.

This is equally true for ideas as it is for financial resources.  When we starve government of ideas – or when government starves itself of ideas – we’re essentially denying our collective interests.  That’s all well and good in times of plenty, but when a crisis hits – and it always does – the only way forward is together.

Love thy neighbour – it’s more than a commandment, it’s a social imperative.  We can either live together... 

Puzzling Behaviour

See if we can connect the dots between:

  - A gut-instinct that makes one feel like apocalyptic closure is inevitable.


  - A single-minded focus on individual interests.


  - The urge to model behaviours we see as empowering to our inner inclinations (mafiosos copying the
    Godfather, shooters dressing up as Bane, Kick-Ass, any kid that plays make-believe)

  - A lack of in-depth consideration of broader consequence, to ourselves or others.

  - An inconsiderate amount of attention being paid to risk.

  - Violence.

There's a puzzle here that isn't too hard to put together; we just have to be conscious in doing so.  Like any 3D puzzle it's easiest to start with the pieces at the centre.  Where does behaviour originate?

How Fit is Rob Ford?

“We must use every legal means to make life for these thugs miserable, to put them behind bars, or to run them out of town,” Ford said in a statement. “We will not rest until being a gang member is a miserable, undesirable life.”

Ostracize.  Contain.  Punish.  These are Rob Ford's solutions to gang-related crime.  The underlying principle is that some people are bad seeds and need to be removed from society to prevent harm to everyone else.  It's not an a-typical social conservative position to have.  It goes along with the idea that government is oppressive to the individual and that taxation disincents people from working and innovating; if they got to keep more of their money, they'd work harder to get even more money.  Greater prosperity will result in greater demand, more jobs, and more prosperity for everyone.

So - on the one hand, we need to remove bad apples so as not to spoil the bushel.  On the other, we shouldn't regulate behaviour, because that impedes good behaviour through resentment, etc.  Some people would say that taking away social services and regulation (minimum wage, education requirements, etc) but punishing people for crimes that are fostered by socio-economic conditions is ridiculous; you're punishing people, essentially, for their lot in life.  It's not fair.  It makes more sense to be proactive, to educate, accommodate, etc and avoid crime in the first place.  Reactive behaviour comes too late.

It all depends on what kind of society you're trying to build.  There actually is a case to be made for the Rob Ford model of society - it's called "survival of the fittest."  It's basic evolution - the strong will rise to the top no matter what and the weak or unruly will be eliminated (or locked away/run out of town).  By culling the weak/unprosperous, only the successful will be left.  It's not trickle-down economics; it's cut-the-bottom-off economics.

There's a problem, though - consciously or not, social conservatives are applying biological evolutionary rules to society.  Society is a different animal entirely, with different rules.  See, if society were designed for the "fittest" to survive, it would actually the ones who kill, steal and cheat that would get ahead.  They're the toughest; they're willing to do whatever it takes to win.  Think about it - do back-stabbing and dog-eat-dog competition result in the smartest, most social, most innovative people climbing corporate or social ladders?  From a different angle, does wealth make one immune to the impact of a riot, or an epidemic? 

Despite what laissez-faire free-marketers would have us believe, we actually have had a Rob Fordesque society in history - just look at medieval Europe, or before that, Rome for two examples.  People aggregated where there was opportunity, but when they're solely out for themselves, they aren't looking after the interests of their neighbour; waste goes into the street, work gets done to the lowest price and the least amount of work, etc.  Disease, fires, looting, etc were significant social problems.  The challenges of many people living in close quarters actually fostered the climate of centralized coordination and regulation that is government.  The "free market" model isn't what we're moving towards - it's what society is moving away from.

The only way for a truly free market society to thrive is if people live at a distance from each other - each to their own plots, free to make and enforce their own decisions without being impacted by the actions of their neighbours.  A feudal society, in short, with everyone lord of their own castle.  That's the position of the Ontario Landower Association folk.  There's a problem with that model, too - when people are left to their own devices, independently, they actually don't need to innovate as much or share their innovations; after all, new ideas aren't going to be picked up until someone proves them, and where's the profit in the proving process?  The reason that innovation has continued to pick up speed is due at least as much to social density as it is to any other factor.

Innovation is a social phenomena.  Literally; the part of our brain that motivates pro-social behaviour is the same one that allows for innovation and executive function (the ability to proactively plan).  The part of our brain that is the seat of emotions (biological drives that motivate us to react, like locking people up after a crime is already committed) stores memory, but doesn't foster connection-making or active solution-creating.

Social conservatives don't trust hope, because hope implies change.  They're thinking with their reactive brains, primarily; there's no way to quantify hope and really, there's no evidence in the world that can convince them you can reform a criminal through education and restorative justice.  By the same token, progressives get frustrated with the "with us or against us" mentality of the socons; why can't they see where progress can take us?

Evolution isn't a ladder - neither the reactive nor proactive brain are better than the other.  Both have their uses, context-determined.  It just so happens that in an increasingly dense social context, the ability to plan is a really useful tool to have.

Ford says the best social program is a job - but you can't get a job unless you can prove you're able to do the work.  How do you get the training, the experience, the dare I say it, social skills?  Through social programs.  The more educated a society is, the more equitable resource access is, the more prosperity there is for everyone and less violence.

It's not that Rob Ford's model is wrong; it's just that he hasn't followed it through to conclusion.

A Social Illness: The Crime of Being Sick

As the conversation ended, they tried to explain what it’s like to be poor and disabled in Ontario. “It’s like you’re always being judged and found guilty of some crime,” Koo said. Smith gave it a name: “the crime of being sick.”

Recently, I was hit by a car.  I was very lucky in that I bounced back.  Even then, the challenges I face in trying to get myself back to full functionality are not slight.  The fact that the guy who hit me got off without any repercussions didn't help any.  Worse - this fella belittled a police officer during the process of the investigation.  The driver, Ryan Bornstein (not his real name, but the name he gave me), is a lawyer - knowing the rules, he knows how to skirt them.  He broke the law, lied about it, lied about his name and is facing zero legal repercussions.  It doesn't occur to him that there should be any; for Mr. Pseudonym, the very concept of responsibility doesn't enter the picture. 

Now, magnify that sentiment a million fold. 

"I never give money to homeless people. I can’t reward failure in good conscience."

"I'm not concerned about the very poor."

"His private, personal religious views would not interfere in his role as an MLA.”

As a society, we aren't making much of an effort to encourage responsibility on the part of the empowered; the 1%, as it were.  The prevailing logic asks us - why should we?  Those at the top were successful.  It's everyone else that needs to step up their game.  To the victor go the spoils, etc.  Don't whine if you lose, just play dirtier next time.  The 1% certainly feel that it's the poor and the disenfranchised that own all the responsibility for their lot in life.  The failures of the 99% are due to their own incompetence, sloth, short-sightedness or a lack of moral fortitude.  The idea of disability through physical illness hardly registers; most people refuse to acknowledge the idea of mental illness as a problem.

Well, Mr. Bornstein is hardly the quickest bunny in the forest.  By seeking to immediately and fully abdicate responsibility, he's opened himself up to a host of challenges in the court of public opinion.  Of course, that's an outcome you risk when you underestimate your opponent.

Here's my question back to those folk who either see themselves as social puppet masters or completely removed from the goings on of the rest of society; if success comes through toughness and toughness implies the ability to get ahead at the expense of others, does that not imply there will always be those who are left behind?  The bear's going to get someone, right?

It sure will.  This is reality the supposed rain makers of the world seem blind to.  When you see yourself as history's actors, after all, you get to make reality up as you go, right?  You can always trade in your production crews.  What these players don't ask themselves is, how long does 'always' tend to last?

If you look at history - pick your revolution, pick Civil Rights or Apartheid or the rise of Fascism and the entirely justified and forceful response to it - you see that the answer is, "not as long as you might think."

This, then is the crossroads we're at right now.  The disenfranchised, fueled by the connectivity of the Internet, are only going to live with feeling helpless for so long.  As their ranks swell with the formerly-successful who have been marginalized in our polarized times, those disenfranchised troops will sooner or later be rallied into taking action.  Maybe it will come at the polls; somehow, that doesn't seem likely.

Occupy has been dismissed as disorganized, having no clear objective and being largely a rallying point for those who don't want to make any efforts on their own behalf.  That may be partially the case, but no revolution begins as a fully-formed organization with clarity of purpose.  That all comes over time and generally gains momentum after hitting some kind of tipping point.

I would expect, in the not-too-far-distant future, that a spark will light off our social powder keg and incite a societal brush fire.  This could be a political scandal that is too egregious to ignore, but so far, such scandals have only proven to be kindling.  It will likely take something more dramatic to wake the sleeping beast.   It's happened before; it'll happen again.

We could avoid all this, of course, if we simply stop and think far enough ahead.  The long-term trend is encouraging in this regard; even as every new regime tries to rewrite history, more and more people have access to accurate versions of yesterday's mistakes.  With every bust, we do look a bit further down the road, but I don't think we have our eye on the destination quite yet.

There's only one way forward.  Disagree with me all you want; just don't blame the messenger for your own failure to heed the message.

Motivating Innovative Success

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out.  Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again.

Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear the sound of a helicopter.

Captain Ed Freeman is coming for you.

Even after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come.  He's coming anyway.

Occupy.  Davos.  Goldman Sachs.  ORNGE.  The Knowledge Economy.  Mental Health.  Public Health costs. 

Everyone I talk to is looking at individual, structural problems and wringing their hands in worry about what to do next.  Some of these folk are equally looking ahead at the emerging reality of the Knowledge Economy and wondering how we can get from here to there.

All these pieces are connected.  Like playing three-dimensional chess, we have to stop looking at individual social issues and see how they fit together into a holistic puzzle.  To do that, we need to revisit our understanding of how we can move our pieces and what strategies will help us get past our two-dimensional thought box.

The best place to start is with motivation.

“You eat what you kill” is a standard phrase in consulting land.  For employees in many a field, the rule tends to be that performance is rewarded by bonuses; if your colleagues get bonuses and you don’t, it’s because you’re a failure.  While financial reward might be good for pushing people to produce more, faster, or to be more aggressive in sales, it turns out financial reward is not the best motivator for innovative success. 

Many will say that statement flies in the phase of standard wisdom – money has always been success' reward.  For these people, I leave you two stories to consider; heliocentrism and evolution.  You can keep breaking down a pull door because you can’t push it open, but there might be an easier, more effective and less stressful way to get where you want to go – success in innovation, leadership in the Knowledge Economy.

“Money is like blood in that it has to circulate, otherwise it’s meaningless.”

     - Margaret Atwood

LEARNING

Nothing comes from nothing.  Creative ideas don’t magically pop into people’s heads, fully-formed.  If you want people to innovate, you have to provide them with raw material they can absorb and time to properly synthesize.  This can’t be a one-off affair; it has to be a life-long thing.

Fortunately, there are pretty good models out there to help make this happen in an affordable, accessible and efficient way.

MEANING

Bring meaning into work.  While we like to differentiate between what we think motivates people at different stages of their life and in different roles, that’s largely a social construction.  What really motivates, say, a volunteer to give 200% is the same thing that motivates employees.  You gotta give them some skin in the game.

Having done a lot of time recruiting and supporting volunteers in my time, there are three things that are proven to keep them coming back for more:

1)      Recognition.  They aren’t tools, they're people.  Engage them as such.  Get to know them, learn about why they're volunteering and what their other interests are.  You never know where a potential for cross-pollination will arise and you’ll surely never find it if you don’t ask.

2)      Food.  Volunteers should always have access to at least snacks and drinks, like juice, coffee and tea.  It’s not hard to add some crackers and fruit to the mix.  The less your team needs to think about what and when to eat, the more cognitive energy (and physical strength) they have to dedicate to your cause.  The same holds true for employees, and the best employers always have a coffee/tea machine, some snacks and definitely a microwave and fridge.

3)      Meaningful work.  People get frustrated when they feel they are digging and filling in holes for no purpose.  They need to understand what the point is.  Having said this, if you’re delivering something with meaning that every volunteer or employee can latch on to, people will spend hours stickering cards in support of that cause.  You still want to mix up the tasks a bit and allow people to be challenged; you also want to set the example by having the people at the top of the food chain sitting down and do the grunt-work with everyone else.

One of my favourite campaign memories involves a long, tired night of stickering U-Vote-Ats for a provincial by-election in the GTA.  The exhausted team was sitting around a table, beavering away when my boss of the time, the former MPP for Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry came in and sat down to sticker with us.  Jim Brownell sat there for hours, making silly jokes with the rest of us and just stickered.  It’s no wonder that people would travel across the province to support him, too.

LEGACY

Why do we have sex?  To leave progeny behind.  The same holds true for ideas; consciously or unconsciously, people who get engaged want to be leave something behind or be a part of something bigger than themselves that they feel has a good chance of enduring.  It’s the human equivalent, I think, of lekking behaviour.

If we can grasp this concept, consciously, we can build in legacy and meaning into work design.

My dad, a retired research historian, told me about a talk he was asked to give to one group or another.  He was asked what his fee was; my dad suggested to me that he didn’t have a fee and that the idea hadn’t occurred to him.  He enjoyed sharing his expertise on the subject; that was his motivation.  I told him he was missing an opportunity.  Iif he doesn’t need the extra cash and believes in his cause, why not has his fee be a donation to a charity or organization of his choice?

At the recent THINK2012 conference hosted by the amazing ORION Network, guest facilitators were paid in donations to causes they believed in.  It’s a good motivator; there’s no reason you can’t apply this in the workplace, too.

I would suggest that you want to give employees what they need to live, comfortably, and make sure salary always fits within that comfortable quality-of-life range.  Particularly if you’re a creative industry, though, tie success to meaning and legacy; give your workers public credit for what they accomplish, plus an opportunity (through donations-as-bonus) to build legacy by giving back to their community.  Remember, quality-of-life isn't about cash, it's about access and interaction.

If we’re all doing this proactively and benefiting from the process, that means government will have to spend less and charities will be able to spend less on marketing.

There’s really nothing new to the idea of proactively motivating your team to do what’s in your/your company’s best interest.  It’s been around since the days of Sun-Tzu.  All we need do now is make sure this wisdom is applied to the 21^st Century context:

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting.

Walking the Walk

What do you communicate when you walk?

I know I gauge body language at least as much as words; it's the subtle ticks, gestures and postures that let me know if you're being honest, obfuscating, avoiding, disengaged, etc.

Words have power, but they're only a thin wedge of what makes communication.  Communication is a two-way street, too - what we convey, consciously or unconsciously, sends a message.

Quick little example - you roll your eyes at someone with the intent of indicating you dislike what was said or the person in general.  Your signal out is your point of view, but remember, the recipient is looking to relate that information in their own context.  Therefore, an eye-roll could say that you are a rude, disengaged person; that could be the message that gets shared about you down the road.  If you're shouting to assert authority, the message being received is that you're volatile; not the best brand to have.

Be conscious of your behaviour and its impacts; not just the ones you want to have, but the ones that will actually be picked up on, too.

Good On Lisa Raitt: Addressing Occupational Mental Health and Safety

"Too often people just suffer in silence. As Minister of Labour, I'm looking at a range of policy and program options to better address mental health challenges in the workplace."

  - Lisa Raitt, Canada's Minister of Labour

It's happening.  Slowly, agonizingly so, but as the idea of cognitive labour and mental fitness starts to gain hold, it's gaining momentum.

I have predicted elsewhere that a broad-based move towards mental fitness promotion, particularly as it relates to work and work performance, is on its way.  It has to be; the nature of labour (not to mention society) is shifting from repetitive, physical and quantity-based to creative, cognitive and innovation-based.  Just as work design at the end of the 19th Century impeded production by fostering sickness and injury, today's work design and motivational tools actually impede the type of production the market is looking for.  We need a proactive mental fitness strategy if we're to keep moving forward.

The Industrial Revolution fostered the labour movement, which in turn sparked the introduction of workplace health and safety and benefits like health care and sick leave.  It was good business, but it also had the advantage of improving productivity and employee satisfaction.  The Knowledge Economy similarly relies on cognitive function in new, demanding ways - to help people realize their full potential (providing greater returns for their employers), we have to start accommodating mental health.  There's a reason why we have a recognized mental health crisis now, when cognitive labour is in demand.

There's only one way forward and that's to break down the stigmatic silos around mental health, which in turn means re-evaluating the way we understand what the mind is and how our biology, environments and accommodations impact mental health/cognitive function.  It will be a challenging process that will make many feel uncomfortable, but it's the right thing to do from a policy, performance and moral perspective.

This goes beyond personal interest, beyond partisan interest, beyond mandate and even the limitations of ability we set for ourselves to this notion of something called the public good.

Lisa Raitt sums it up nicely: "Let's think beyond duty. Each and every one of us has a role to play in creating workplaces where diversity and special needs are accommodated and respected."

Kudos to people like Lisa Raitt, but also Don Drummond, Michael Kirby, Kevin Flynn, Christine Elliot, Gerrard Kennedy and the countless people who work and live with mental health challenges every day. 

Let's move forward together; more importantly, let's make sure we leave no one behind.

Am I hopeful?  Certainly - but that's because I understand the way cognition produces hope.

We're finally connecting the dots between stigma, mental health, health care, social growth, diversity, education, service delivery and innovation.  It's a good time to be alive.

UPDATE:  It should come as no surprise that Lisa Raitt has personal experience with mental illness.  This isn't an ooh-ahh, we must look at her differently thing; if she had diabetes, or developed cancer, or caught a cold, we wouldn't stigmatize her.  Nor should we now.

Sidebar - there's a funny thing where people advocate for causes that they know - I sit on the Board of Directors for an organization that helps children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing and the vast majority of my co-Board Members have deaf family members.  As mental health/mental fitness becomes more normalized, I think we're going to see an increase in proactive advocacy, which is how it should be.

Mental Health, the Knowledge Economy and the Cognitive Labour Movement

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

  - Benjamin Franklin

Last night, I had the privilege of attending a Why Should I Care discussion around the theme of Mental Health – its Challenges and Solutions.  There was a lot of focus spent on the fact that mental health and addictions are the underfunded cousin in our national health care strategies.  One of the speakers, Dr. Paul Garfinkel, said that while there is presently an upswing in public sector engagement and funding, he’s seen this same boom-and-bust cycle of interest come and go in the past to no lasting effect.  Priorities shift, he suggested; new generations of political and business leaders, police chiefs, etc. lose the thread, then it’s back to square one.

Another key theme discussed was the fact that, as I’ve posted elsewhere, natural resources might be a get-rich-quick scheme that will work in the short term, but that isn’t going to sustain us over the long-term as we continue our social progression from a manufacturing/industrial based economy to the Knowledge Economy.

These two points are linked.  What what we’re experiencing now is something similar to the first rumblings of the labour movement of the last century, or other labour-related movements that came before it.  Whereas it was physical harm that led to protest and eventually led to a more humanely-designed, more productive manufacturing/industrial work environment, we’re now repeating the cycle from the angle of mental stress and mental illness.

New Relationships in the Workplace

Creativity, innovation, out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to process and synthesize are the skills the market is demanding now.  An Internet check on the most frequently asked interview questions provides an insight into the "real world" out there with questions such as: What do you look for in a job? Why should we hire you? Define success at work? How do you feel that your education has prepared you for this job? to Why is a manhole cover round?

The focus of labour is therefore shifting from individual success (dog-eat-dog competition) to collaborative achievement.  This is fundamental for nurturing innovation.  Ideas don’t form in a vacuum; they require inspiration, exposure to diversity, critical thinking.  Like building a nation, collaboration simply cannot occur without a collective meaning that people can rally behind and a social framework to encourage sustainable growth. 

As an example, look at the boom-and-bust of Political Parties; they get into power on the backs of employees and volunteers that have drunk the Kool-Aid, really believe that together, they can build a better province/nation/community.  As power progresses through elections, the bright-eyed staffers become jaded or disengaged and new bodies that come in are weaned on a culture of “us-vs-them”, with very little in the way of idealism surviving the cut.  If you want an example of this, just look at Canada’s Federal Liberal Party.

Collaborative achievement, out-of-the-box thinking and candle-problem solutions require a different skill set then those typically seen as desirable today.  Before, employers wanted “hungry”, confident people who could take charge, force results through, maybe break a few eggs in the process.  There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance; arrogant people aren’t prone to listening to and contemplating the ideas of others.  When competition is the focus, our reactive brain take charge, our blinders go up and we miss lateral possibilities that are only visible when we consider the notion that maybe our way isn’t the best way - maybe someone else has valuable insight.

How many leaders achieved success by being tough, competitive and aggressive?  How many of them are good at fostering innovation and collaboration between their employees?  How much emphasis do they put on life-long learning?  The carrot-and-stick approach of bonuses/raises or demotions/firing might speed up work, but it doesn’t provide the kind of motivation needed for innovation or critical thinking.

What’s happening now is that these A-type personalities are downloading responsibility for value-add to their employees.  “I want you to think up new markets and innovative opportunities – and your bonus will be tied to your success.”  It’s an approach that won’t work, because at a neurochemical level, it can’t.  The naturally creative people will still produce, but in a less focused way.  For everyone else - pressuring them to be innovative is like throwing a kid in the deep end of the pool and telling them to jump.  This approach is going to further frustrate already frustrated employees, exacerbating already-high levels of workplace stress.

The response will be a public backlash, not unlike the rising tension that nurtured the physical labour movement.  We already see the social tension rising with Occupy, street violence, work-to-rule and strikes.  As little bits and pieces of policy up the friction, people will respond with increasingly reactive, limbic-based behaviour.  When the consequences become dire enough, decision makers will start to realize that a John Woo standoff isn't their way out and will move to appease the masses with some proactive cognitive-labour legislation and programming.  Given the connection between mental illness and social service uptake (many conditions being treated as, say, cardiac illness have a strong mental illness component), politicians and the bureaucracy will begin to see solutions to our fiscal woes in proactive mental fitness strategies, essentially taking the lead out of the water instead of trying to cure lead poisoning.

Employers will also come around to what the stats are already telling us – that properly designed workplaces and more humanely-designed work foster better, more innovative performance, help employee retention and reduce sick days.  Police are already starting to see the benefit in mental health awareness training for the satisfaction, safety and success of their front-line officers; as this trend continues, they’re going to start looking to the rest of society to do more, keeping people with mental illness from ending up in police confrontations in the first place.

You can add to this the growth of mental health curriculum in Ontario’s school boards and the rise of Social Emotional Learning as a component of education, particularly at younger ages.

What Comes Next

Mental health isn’t just about sickness any more than overall physical health is.  You can train your muscles to do more and do it with greater ease – the same holds true for our grey matter.  As we aren’t paying attention to how our brains work and how our social environment and lifestyles impact our cognitive development, we’re creating unnecessary harmful strains that make us less effective collectively.  That’s a trend that can’t last if we’re to be competitive in the Knowledge Economy.  The outlier leaders in our society are going to see the potential of proactive mental-health strategies and new tools to help empower people to use their grey-matter better and things are going to change.

Look for:

- Open-sourced training opportunities and work-time dedicated to exploring other interests tht can enhance your job performance and contributions.

- Cognitive workplaces that are designed a bit more like libraries, with a comfort feel, individual and collective workstations.  Work culture will become a bit freer; employees will have margins and timelines but greater freedom on how they spend their time

- Corporate collaboration - increased specialization that works in tandem with other parties.  This will lead to a reduction in duplicaiton, gaps and overlaps.

- More focus on team-building; work will consume more of people's time, but they'll get more meaning from it, too.

I see it as only a matter of time before such things become more common-place.  The only question, really, is how hard we’re going to resist the tough medicine that will ultimately make us all better.

The Limbic Baby

"A growing body of research indicates that babies are much more tuned into their environment than we realized."

This really shouldn't come as a surprise.  Human babies are the product of tens of thousands of years of primate evolution; like all baby animals, they come hard-wired with inherited mental models that help them survive.  A baby goat can walk in short order; baby turtles have natural directional tuning.  Our latent abilities just run in a different direction.

Human babies are, physically, helpless - they can't even eat on their own.  What they can do, though, is ascribe value to behaviour and infer what it means to them.  We're built to be socially manipulative.

Mothers are sources of food and safety, so it's good to know who they are and give them some positive feedback (or withhold it to incite a behaviour change on their part).

Understanding happy and angry behaviour (in people, dogs, whatever) helps determine what's a threat, what's an opportunity and what's merely a curiosity.

Another cute little baby fact - babies get bored.  In fact, they cry when they're bored.  Their little brains are rapidly building synaptic connections, perceiving and linking the sensory stimulus of their world within their expanding mental reference library.  If you give their brains nothing to do, it's like flooring the pedal with the emergency break on.  

The thing to remember is that each of us started as babies; all our cognitive hardware has been built around that same, hard-wired reactive system.  As such, we're all programmed to respond to certain stimuli in a pre-determined way.  We can shape these responses, to a degree, when we understand the process - problem is, so few of us do.

If you doubt that at all, look at the four pictures here and think about how the different elements of each made you feel. 

You see my point.