Wired vs. Wireless — Camilla Rees

28 February 2020

ben

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Categories: 5G, blog, community health, resilience

Wired vs. Wireless — Camilla Rees

Reinventing Wires, (full paper here, summary press release here) a paper by Timothy Schoechle, promotes fiber optic technology over wireless, but many have asked, “well, what about when you’re not in your home?” Here are my thoughts.

People can get access on their phones when out and about with 4G now. I doubt that is going away, at least very soon. Maybe when the ecosystem, and our brains, more obviously start crashing from so much RFR, things will change, but not immediately. This might not be too many years off. But for now, I think we can assume we will have cell phones and mobile devices. But do we need or want more antennas? And, importantly, should we not be curtailing our digital activities instead of expanding them, as the “Lean ICT – Toward Digital Sobriety” report recommends? It says, about digital trends and energy use, “Major global trends of all sectors combined paint an alarming picture.” The report says the explosion of video use is a main driver of this inflation, and that the ‘digital transition’, ostensibly to dematerialize the economy and lower energy usage, “participates in global warming more that it helps preventing it”. Increasing neighborhood antennas all around us will be enabling more and more mobile video downloads and faster download speed. It is crazy to enable more of these antennas from both an energy and health perspective!

The issue at hand is the buildout of the Internet access networks in our neighborhoods, which should be done with fiber, all the way to the premises, for many good reasons. There is no good reason why internet access networks should be wireless! As Tim Schoechle explains, wireless should be viewed as an adjunct service, and only for things that move. If we can install fiber to the premises, that is what we should be using. It eliminates so many problems. Use your cell phone when out and about. We don’t need all the new bandwidth and new 5G antennas, it can be argued, unless of course the real motive is the collection and monetization of data to fuel the advertising and marketing machine, and to enable AI and pervasive surveillance.

First, we need to be asking if we want these antennas, and all the erosion in the fabric of our society that comes with them. And if not, we need to make sure they don’t happen.

Also, as Re-Inventing Wires explains, as much as 50% of all Internet traffic today is fraudulent — botnets driving up visitor stats so advertisers have to pay more. (And the advertising industry is believed to be complicit in this.) Then, after that, you’ve got the videos, i.e. entertainment, accounting for much of the rest of the usage, and higher HD video that is also not needed either. Using a phone to make calls and for texting, is one thing, a utility; but using these devices for mobile entertainment delivery is not something that is so urgent that society should be bearing these costs and risks, I would contend.

Look at the harm the dopaminergic apps are doing to people, psychologically eroding us at the core. Gravely harming a whole generation of children, preventing proper development at key stages. I think we need to be looking at all of these issues and coming up with a scenario that works from all perspectives–a more limited telecom system that addresses key utility functions and that is not embellished with capabilities that only serve the marketers, proponents of AI and transhumanism agenda (i.e. the fantasy of the merging of man and machine). And that is facilitating integration with the wireless communications from the 58,000 satellites permitted to be launched into space. The telecoms are wanting the satellites to play a much more important role in our communications system, but think of how much simpler Fiber To The Premises would be?!

We need to be asking who is all this serving, and recommend reshaping of the telecom industry to meet the market needs–and only meet the market needs, not all these other purposes that are not aligned with our values, that most people don’t want, that are harming our physical and mental health in multiple ways, requiring exponentially more energy use, and interfering with atmospheric systems! It is Business 101 to focus on meeting the market’s needs. The communications industry has become totally corrupted and lost its way, driven by multiple outside forces, known and unknown, including proponents for population reduction, directed energy weapons, and more. We need to bring the whole picture into light to find possible paths out of the darkness.

Meanwhile, I am including here key points and the recommendations from the Re-Inventing Wires Press Release, which may be of interest:

Re-Inventing Wires illuminates why:

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has resulted in the reconsolidation of communications monopoly providers dominated now by a “triopoly” that has come to be even more limiting and detrimental than the original AT&T Bell System monopoly.
The privatized wireless market has failed to deliver adequate and sustainable connectivity, resulting in the U.S. falling in rank to #17 of 20 among developed countries in fixed broadband penetration as a percentage of the population.
Only a fiber-based broadband system can overcome the access inequality and second-rate connectivity currently impeding our nation in a myriad of ways. Optical fiber technology, comprised of wires that carry data encoded on light beams, is easily capable of delivering data rates that are orders of magnitude greater than cable, DSL and wireless. Wireline stays roughly two orders of magnitude ahead, i.e. about 100 times as fast, as wireless.
Wireless technologies are unreliable, vulnerable to security and privacy problems and prone to both latency and delay issues. Wireless provides poorer voice quality, artificial scarcity of service, unnecessarily high costs to the public, and, importantly, negative economies for speed. Due to collusion among dominant incumbent providers, the nation is now left with expensive, second-rate wired services for the rich, expensive, second-rate wireless services (or no service at all) for those who cannot afford wires, and no national effort to pursue advanced fiber networks that are being readily adopted by the rest of the world.
Local communities must build and finance broadband fiber networks, in the same way that state and local governments provide schools, streets, bridges, water systems, sewers and libraries. Fast, reliable internet access has taken on the same importance as other basic needs. States and cities must lead the way to a reliable, safe, resilient, energy efficient and affordable “information highway”. High-speed fiber networks should be funded by public funds, taxes, municipal bonds and grants from governments and foundations, not by private business with commercial conflicts of interest.
Copper wires have a very important role to play in extending fiber optic networks to the home, and tax-payer funded copper wire infrastructure should not be dismantled. The rhetoric about copper being “obsolete” is propaganda promoted by wireless carriers. New technologies such as VDSL and G.fast allow the older copper phone wires to outperform wireless and deliver fast gigabit data and also DC power, as well as in some cases achieving capabilities comparable to, or surpassing in some respects, optical fiber. Dismantling decades of investment in copper wires in the U.S. only serves the ambitions of the wireless companies, and should be prohibited.
The price of fiber build out in the U.S. may not be as high as represented when the performance improvements in both new and legacy copper and fiber are considered. A hybrid solution may be possible based on a fiber backbone with tails of copper, coax, and fixed wireless, especially if synergies with electric power system upgrades are factored in.
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) (FCC, 2010), an exhaustive report by the FCC that was to lay out a path to national broadband access, overstated the costs for fiber using the assumption of 100% penetration by new fiber, and then tried to justify a cheaper approach using wireless.
Investing for the future in fiber based internet access for communities pays off, such as in Chattanooga’s cutting-edge fiber network, where the municipal broadband system cost $220 million to develop, and thus far has translated into $865 million in economic growth for the city. Longmont, Colorado’s NextLight™ municipal broadband system is barely a year old but the availability of cheap ($49/month), symmetrical, neutral and fast broadband is already proving to be a magnet for business relative to neighboring communities.
Deployment of wired systems is being suppressed by regulatory politics and corporate business strategies that enrich the “triopoly” players Verizon, AT&T and Comcast. The triopoly has deliberately obstructed community and municipal broadband networks by sponsoring the adoption of state laws that preempt wireline competition from public municipalities.
The cost of internet access can be significantly reduced with fiber networks. Presently, by blocking municipal fiber, but at the same time declining to build it out themselves, the dominant carriers are able to “cherry-pick” the most profitable customers and maintain artificial scarcity and high prices—while rural communities and the urban poor languish on the wrong side of the “digital divide.” Community-based fiber networks can provide lower cost, affordable services to all.
Net Neutrality is essential. Business priorities and market power must not be permitted to preempt the public interest in the design and implementation of important basic infrastructure, thereby jeopardizing fair, equal and affordable information access for all citizens. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a former Verizon executive, is now calling the previous administration’s Net Neutrality common carrier policy “last century telecom regulation”. However, what he is advocating for is actually backward-looking 19^th century “robber baron” monopoly deregulation.
Wireless networks are energy guzzling and not sustainable. A wired connection (copper, DSL, cable, fiber) is the most energy efficient method to access the internet. An “explosion” in energy consumption, approaching 5–10% of world electricity supply, is now needed for the operation and manufacture of wireless infrastructure. The average iPhone, for example, uses more energy than a mid-size ENERGY STAR® compliant refrigerator, or about 361 kW-h counting wireless connections, data usage and battery charging. In the 3 years between 2012-2015 the wireless cloud increased its carbon footprint by the equivalent of adding 4.9 million cars to the road. Ironically, the global internet system is almost entirely dependent on an inefficient, polluting, and archaic energy source—coal. This irresponsible trajectory is entirely avoidable using fiber communications networks to the home.
Universal dependence on wireless systems leave people vulnerable in the event of power grid failure. In the event of a prolonged power outage, mobile devices leave people with no service, compared to landlines with independent power sources. These can offer reliable communication even when the grid is down.
The millions of planned 4G LTE antennas and experimental 5G millimeter wave antennas planned to be placed densely throughout metropolitan and rural neighborhoods by wireless companies in coming years, with all of the attendant risks, are not needed.
5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) are engines of forced obsolescence, intended to create lucrative public demand for more millions of new chips, apps, wireless devices and appliances. The Internet of Things (IoT) will also enable commercial interests to collect huge troves of data about the most intimate details of our lives, details that can be sold and/or captured by botnets. When critical systems are linked to remote actuators and/or cloud-based software, those links can become vulnerable, inadequate or inappropriate. IoT also raises many health and safety issues, such as what if a stove or oven is activated by a cell phone when something flammable is nearby? Or a hacker in China finds a way to control door locks, furnaces or the national grid system? The very concept of a wireless Internet of Things must be considered for what it is—in large part an unnecessary technology looking for a market and wireless industry cash cow.
New USB and premises wiring and cabling technologies for inside homes and buildings provide a secure and reliable alternative to Wi-Fi and other wireless access platforms. The ideal model for a national fiber system is fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC) or fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) whereby a fiber terminates on a gateway modem box at the curb or premises where digital data is then converted to Ethernet over copper wire. This gateway can efficiently separate out and deliver TV, voice telephone and Internet service within the home. New building wiring standards eliminate the need for both millimeter wave backhaul and wasteful 5G wireless systems.
Fiber and Energy Management Work Well in Tandem. Combining fiber access networks with local electric power distribution grids where possible enables sharing of poles and wires, and it enables control of community solar and premises solar-plus-storage. Fiber can greatly facilitate real-time energy management and it can help eliminate the high costs and reported health dangers of separate smart metering networks. Communities that already own their electric utilities will have great advantages and opportunities.
The proliferation of frivolous wireless uses, such as gaming, entertainment-streaming and advertising is currently causing serious spectrum deficiencies. As wireless spectrum deficiencies become a greater problem, wireless providers ramp up the fight over less-desirable frequency bands. No one yet knows what will happen to wireless spectrum requirements when 50 billion IoT consumer devices are Internet-connected. The greater the battles over spectrum, the more cell sites and DAS (small cell) wireless antennas are needed to stretch the spectrum and accommodate inefficient, energy guzzling wireless services. For this reason, as well, the hard wiring alternative to wireless must be pursued.
Wireless technologies may pose a lurking health ‘time bomb’ with wide-scale ramifications and costs, like tobacco, lead and asbestos. Presently, there are over 150 published scientific review studies, comprising thousands of studies, showing biological and health effects from electromagnetic fields. There has been little research on the biological and health effects of the planned 5G millimeter wave frequencies, and no testing of the 5G systems to be deployed, and scientists are weighing. Hard-wired internet access would eliminate these potential health effects and the associated health care costs.
Under the influence of the wireless industry, citizens have become entangled in a perpetual quagmire of voracious advertising. The World Wide Web has become dysfunctional, vulnerable, inefficient and wasteful. Customers are inundated with “apps” that continually nudge consumers to the newest wireless thing, encourage dependence on the energy-wasting ‘cloud’ and force rapid obsolescence of both hardware and software services. There is increasing alarm over the near and long term social, cultural, and mental effects of smartphones. These risks need to be better understood before diving into massive new deployments of wireless networks and devices.

Recommendations (from “Re-Inventing Wires”)

The central conclusions of “Re-Inventing Wires: The Future of Landlines and Networks” are:

Internet access in the United States has been hijacked by commercial interests and motivations that constrain its availability, quality, content, and media.
High-speed optical fiber-based Internet access network should be available to every community with a direct hard-wired connection to every household and workplace.
The Internet has become a basic public good vital to our society, and it should be available to all in a safe, reliable, fair, affordable, and energy efficient manner.
Wireless access service is not an adequate substitute for wires, and should be considered adjunct to wired.
So-called public-private partnerships inevitably tend to introduce inherent conflicts of interest between the public and private for-profit investors. Thus, in principle, community networks should be financed, constructed, and managed in a manner analogous to such public infrastructure as municipal water systems, sewers, streets, or libraries—keeping local governments in the driver’s seat.

Communities and policymakers must:

1. Invest in Fiber. It is recommended that communities invest in fiber to the home (FTTH), to break up the monopoly and triopoly in network provision.

Bring the fiber as close to the user as possible.
Take advantage of advances in wired technologies
Revive, renew, and expand the use of a ‘copper tail’ in the access networks and within homes and buildings wherever appropriate
Resort to wireless access only at endpoints, if at all, and primarily for things that move, or in situations where wiring is not possible or practical.
Invest in fiber to serve the public, not with the goal of serving wireless providers and investors.

2. Defend Net Neutrality. Net neutrality is a fundamental principle and a defining issue for the future of the Internet. Business priorities and market power cannot be permitted to preempt the public interest in the design and implementation of important basic infrastructure.

3. Repeal State Laws Impeding or Preventing Municipal Broadband Networks. Private, for-profit telecommunications monopoly corporations have obstructed community and municipal broadband network initiatives and at the same time, have failed to develop such broadband, resulting in monopoly, scarcity, excessively high costs, and inferior service.

4. Combine fiber access networks with local electric power distribution grids wherever possible. Community-based and municipal electric utilities are well poised to take advantage of synergy between fiber networks and local electricity distribution grids. They are both basic public utilities. Many of the same facilities can be shared and customer relationships are already in place. Local fiber networks can enhance and speed the transition now underway to renewable, sustainable energy. Publically-owned utilities are already accustomed to financing their own capital improvements.

5. Significantly reduce energy consumption using wired rather than wireless communications technologies. Internet energy consumption is growing at an unsustainable rate, with the biggest culprits being data centers and (most significantly) wireless access networks. The main energy culprit is wireless video. A wired connection (copper, DSL, cable, fiber) is the most energy efficient method to access the network. Access through WiFi increases the energy use. However, if wireless access is made through a cellular network tower, energy use soars. Wireless traffic through 3G uses 15 times more energy than WiFi, while 4G consumes 23 times more. Also, since as much as half of Internet traffic is fraudulent, addressing the present advertising business model of the Internet is also essential. Core and access network architecture needs thorough reworking for efficiency. Distributed data centers offer another way to reduce energy usage. In spite of, and often in opposition to, the position that the cloud is energy-efficient is a body of analysis demonstrating the that the wireless network’s consumption of energy is more prodigious than commonly understood and rapidly-growing, consuming an increasing portion of global electricity supply. Consciousness about energy efficiency must be central to our information highway.

6. Rethink the Internet of Things (IoT). The principal rationale for IPv6 is fallacious. The notion that all IoT devices can or should be directly interconnected is erroneous and problematic. IPv6 deployment is in large part a solution looking for a problem and a technology looking for a market. Further, the Internet of Things is set to trigger a whirlwind of investment and connected infrastructure growth that has the massive potential to grow operational electricity use of the Internet.

7. Develop standards for privacy and security. Industry and policymakers offer lip service to privacy and security but consistently fail to make the necessary investments and implement the technological solutions required to effectively address these problems because the costs of these risks are not visible or measurable and are not borne by the designers or operators. One advantage of optical fiber based internet it is can allow for a gateway that can assure security and privacy.

8. Abandon 5G wireless as it is unneeded by the public or the market. Promotional hype surrounding 5G wireless is a technology push likely driven more by planned obsolescence and selling new generations of chips, software apps, and smartphones rather than by any demonstrated public or market need that cannot be better met by simpler and more enduring wired infrastructure or still-emerging 4G LTE technology. The promotion of 5G is likely related in large part to the industry’s incentive to reallocate and resell millimeter wave television spectrum to reap enormous revenues and profits.

9. Raise awareness of known and unknown health consequences from pervasive microwave, and planned millimeter wave, radiation. Evidence of biological and potential health effects from electromagnetic radiation emitted by wireless technologies and infrastructure is adequate to warrant a major commitment throughout the telecommunications industry to understanding these risks, and to rethinking development efforts in line with the public’s best interests.

10. Find New Business Models to Support the Internet. The advertising-based business model has invaded the Internet over the past two decades. The internet has been rendered dysfunctional, vulnerable, and inefficient, and has resulted in concentrated corporate control and influence, reversing the original concept of a decentralized, distributed, open, democratic, egalitarian network providing access to knowledge and public discourse (Perry, 2016)

11. Local Communities Must Assume Responsibility for Creating Reliable, Safe, High Speed Internet Access. The nation’s wired communication infrastructure at all levels—rural, town, city and nation—constitutes an ‘electronic commons’ that is essential to commerce, education, jobs, the economy, social cohesion, communications, and international competitiveness. This infrastructure is at risk, and popular beliefs, social forces, policy choices, and private business decisions threaten to damage this precious civic asset.

Healing Communities and the Self-Care Multiplier

14 May 2019

Julian Gresser

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Categories: blog, community health, resilience

During the past few years there is striking scientific evidence of a “Strategic Triangle” of Diabetes 2 and 3 (the latter involving the hippocampus or memory center of the brain), cardiovascular illnesses, and Alzheimer’s. Indeed, the main pathologies of Alzheimer’s—senile plaque, inflammation, build-up of amyloid precursor protein, mitochondrial dysfunction, Tau particles, and advanced glycated end products leading to hyperglycemia—are all present in Diabetes 2 & 3 and many cardiovascular diseases, so much so to suggest the former two main killer diseases may be precursors, even enablers of the third.

This discovery opens the remarkable possibility for the first time of early detection and prevention of Alzheimer’s by more effective Self-Care strategies focused on Diabetes 2 and 3 and cardiovascular illnesses. Moreover, we have well established and reliable metrics to determine the efficacy of proactive strategies to detect, manage, and even reverse the first two, whereas we still do not have a safe, reliable, non-intrusive, and affordable biomarker for Alzheimer’s.

We also have strong data based on studies of centenarians in so-called Blue Longevity Zones in Ikaria, Greece, the Barbargia region of Sardinia, villages in Okinawa, Loma Linda, California, and the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. In all these communities, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s are almost non-existent. All of these Blue Zones communities display a common cluster of essential characteristics that can underpin a Self-Care program, including:

Strong sense of community supported by love (moai groups in Okinawa)
Healthy diet (largely veterinarian, heavy on black beans, fruits, and vegetables)
Regular exercise (i.e. movement)Various forms of meditation, including walking
Absence of heavy stress
Play and leisure
Generosity
Trust
Happiness, and
Love

As noted in other blogs in this series, play and leisure, kindness, generosity, and other measures that build Integral Resilience all strongly support parasympathetic engagement of the autonomic nervous system, which correlates with the body’s production of high levels of oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and enhanced vagal tone, and a correspondent reduction in cortisol, adrenalin, epinephrine, and noradrenaline, that are closely associated with inflammation. High parasympathetic engagement is increasingly recognized within both the established and alternative medical communities as an essential element in the body’s own self-healing capacity.

What key insights can we draw from Blue Zone studies for communities or organizations that are deeply immersed in the noise and busyness of the modern world? Focus on life-affirming behaviors that will build Integral Resilience in the Strategic Triangle. Measure the results based on standardized medical tests for blood pressure, hyperglycemia, eye exams (that can track vascular and mitochondrial changes associated with the Strategic Triangle), and steady development of your Integral Resilience Quotient (IRQ), which correlates closely with the resilience protocols of the American Psychological Association. Empower Yourself and Others to Pay Forward what you discover.

In next blog in this Five Minutes to Resilience™ series we will describe how this simple health literacy program, embodied in an app, can be rapidly multiplied and scaled across pilot local communities, linking an entire country through a Self-Care Multiplier Exchange.

Scientific References: (please click links below)

General—Lissa Rankin, MD, Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (2014) (on the biochemistry of placebo/healing role of the parasympathetic nervous system)

Senior Citizens Can Build Resilience Together

11 August 2018

Julian Gresser

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Categories: blog, community health, longevity, resilience

How Santa Barbara’s Senior Citizens Can Build Resilience Together

A Conversation with Julian Gresser, Chairman/ CEO of Big Heart Technologies and Dr. Gary Linker, Director Santa Barbara Center for Successful Aging

Gary: Julian, I am delighted to have this chance to explore the fascinating topic of resilience. Perhaps a good start is to define what you and I mean by resilience.

Julian: Good idea. The first thing that comes to mind for many people is an ability to bounce back from adversity. I like the bounce part, but why go backward to something that wasn’t so great in the first place? I view resilience as the capacity to bounce forward, to turn adversities to advantage.

Gary: I like this definition. It is dynamic and especially well-suited to our readers who face many medical, social, and economic challenges in aging.

Julian: I would like to suggest this basic proposition for our discussion: resilience is a core life competency that anyone can cultivate and easily apply in diverse ways.

Gary: Right out the gate, I must ask isn’t resilience a young person’s game, something that loses with age?

Julian: Not necessarily. The data from NASA and other studies suggest the opposite which may be counter intuitive. Resilience can hold steady, and in some cases even increase in advanced old age. Another common belief is that a loss of power inevitably comes with aging; but actually, this premise is also not necessarily correct. Even though physical power declines with age, we can still increase our inner power. I have trained with Chinese martial artists in their 80s and 90s who possessed amazing inner energy (qi) power. Resilience and such inner power naturally align.

Gary: I know what you mean. I just went to a Frankie Valle 4 Seasons concert. Frankie performed for 90 minutes. Guess what, he is 84! But, let’s get very basic here. I get up in the morning. What’s the first thing I can do to build my resilience?

Julian: Ok, let’s begin with physical resilience. if you do a Google search on the main diseases commonly associated with aging—diabetes, hypertension, cardiac problems, stroke, neurodegenerative illnesses, and cancer—you will find that all are closely related to a loss of resilience. The process is even intra-cellular. There is good evidence that mitochondria dysfunction correlates closely with an impairment of resilience.

Gary: So, what do I do?

Julian: You start to move. For when we move, we begin to change our relationship to the ground. As we get older, many of us have a great fear of falling. So, practicing getting up and lying down a few times, a brisk walk, dancing, taiji, even tango help to restore this dynamic positive relationship with the earth. I practice horse stance for 1-2 minutes. Horse stance is a half squat where I lower my center of gravity and connect to the earth, while neck and head are straight as if a line of thread is connecting me to the heavens. I also play with a Reflex Ball, which has taught me a great deal about play and resilience. The ball is attached to your head by a light cord. You strike it and it bounces back. You learn how to move rapidly or slowly in tune with the ball; there are some deep lessons here like “yielding power.” You strike hard, the ball comes back hard; yet, if you don’t react but give way, the ball will lose energy; and then you have your opening. The Bible says, “A soft word turneth away wrath.” The ball teaches us this. It is a mirror of our own developing resilience. Our readers may enjoy this Alliances short video.

Gary: I do agree that the cultivation of physical resilience is in part a personal practice; but as a therapist I am convinced, especially for seniors, the development of resilience is not a solo journey.

Julian: I agree with you. We have ample evidence that restoring a sense of meaning, belonging, and engagement is essential. Years ago, I was friends with a remarkable minister, the Reverend Mitsuo Aoki who was a professor at the Divinity School at the University of Hawaii. He cared for people in advanced stages of illness. He would tell me that when those in his care regained a sense of connection to community, healing began–not only in a spiritual sense, but also in many cases in remission or a complete return to robust health. This renewed sense of connection restored hope which engendered a positive attitude to their circumstances.

Gary: What are some practical ways you have found to build this sense of engagement to community? If I want to connect to others, how can I do that?

Julian: It starts with a specific attitude. Various studies show that “paying forward”—the act of selflessly passing on to others the good things that come our way– not only builds personal resilience but also generates a positive “multiplier effect” throughout communities. I first discovered this principle in my work in negotiation. In negotiation an important behavioral skill that can be developed is to reduce our dependency on others or circumstances (“field independence”), in other words to stay out of “need. Perhaps the most effective way to reduce neediness is to care for others. Charles Dickens wrote “No one is useless who can lighten the burdens of another.” Over the years I have been interested in tracking what happens when we reduce neediness and pay forward. I have discovered that good things tend to come to us in mysterious and often quite wonderful ways. I call it “Creating Your Own Luck.” It is a form of advanced skill that seems to show up as we develop resilience. I describe the process in detail in my online living book, Laughing Heart—A Field Guide to Exuberant Vitality for All Ages—10 Essential Moves.

Gary: What are some other simple things senior citizens can do to build or to restore resilience? For example, in another conversation we had discussed the role of beauty. How does that fit in here?

Julian: Ah, you are touching one of my favorite subjects. In fact, “Discovering Beauty” is number 3 in the 10 Essential Moves. Most people believe the enjoyment of Beauty is a passive process. But actually, discovering Beauty is itself a learned skill. The challenge is to expand our appreciation and enjoyment of what is beautiful. Most people can enjoy Beauty in a baby, a flower, the ocean, or a sunset. But can we also find beauty in ordinary things or difficult circumstances, in even ugly things? There is so much Beauty in the world to be discovered if we will only slow down and observe, rather than continually rushing through life. To me, this is one of the great opportunities of advancing age.

I have a friend who was the primary caregiver for his wife. She was declining rapidly from Alzheimer’s. When I spoke with him, he was despairing and close to burning out. Then his daughter moved back home and everything changed. He cherished the small moments of respite that gave him time and space for himself. He told me he began to discover beauty in little mundane things he had always taken for granted–like mowing the lawn or looking at products in the supermarket. Imagine selecting a detergent as an opportunity to discover Beauty! He was grateful again for his life.

Gary: It seems you are saying Beauty is connected to slowing down, being present to our current life experience; and that all of this helps us to reconnect to the world and to re-create ourselves. This renewed sense of connection is the foundation of resilience. If so, Nature must play a pivotal role in your work.

Julian: Nature is the archetypal teacher of resilience. The Wildling Museum in Solvang has just opened a special exhibit on “Regeneration and Resilience in Nature” featuring how the natural world here in the Coastal Area is gradually recovering from the Thomas Fire and mudslides. There is a famous Chinese poem that expresses well this insistent resilience of Nature from the crazy depredations of humans: “Although the kingdom was destroyed, the castle grasses and mountain flowers are once again in bloom.”

Gary: What about music? As you know, there is substantial work on the regenerative effects of music on memory, especially with people struggling with advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

Julian: As a musician (I play oboe d’amore) I am keenly interested in exploring the potentialities of music in developing resilience. The great masters, Bach, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven and others succeeded in transmuting their life force, or vitality into musical form, and the amazing thing is even today we can learn to “download” this same energetic power to fortify our own resilience. You and our readers can see for yourselves by simply listening to the excerpts under Move # 5. The performing arts are also marvelous means for communities to build and celebrate resilience. One of the members of our International Advisory Board members, originally a Russian expert at the Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, has studied this interesting phenomenon in depth. In performing arts festivals music, dance, joy, exuberance, play and engagement all come together in some marvelous alchemic process, and the result is resilience.

Dr. Roger Jahnke, a qigong teacher, author, and Chinese medical doctor practicing in Santa Barbara has written a very good book, “The Healing Promise of Qi” in which he describes in some detail how qi, or subtle vital energy, can transmit immediately across whole communities, especially when “heart” is engaged. In Western terms we might call it simply exuberance. The point is that when communities come together to celebrate anything that is imbued with heart and its attributes, joy, hope, love, play, and connection to our fellow voyagers, a deep community-wide and sustainable resilience occurs.

Gary: It seems in your view there are many roads to experiencing an enhanced sense of resilience. One other avenue that comes to mind is flow. Might flow have a role here?

Julian: Resilience as I experience it is also very much related to a sense of flow. Flow is the essence of our being. I believe you pointed out that for river rafters, the safe zone is in the middle is where the river flows easily and smoothly. Similarly, when we are in a harmonious flow, we move effortlessly. In Chinese culture this is referred to as Wu wei. But inevitably we are faced with obstacles and challenges. If we view these experiences as messages that we not in the flow, then we can adjust our perspective, look for the clues that the obstacles provide, and adjust accordingly. Heart, especially love, is a powerful energy field that can to melt obstacles. Thus, flow, Heart, love, and resilience are mutually reinforcing.

Gary: Can you help me connect a bit more directly resilience and Big Heart?

Julian: My colleagues and I have a name for what we have been discussing. We call it “Big Heart Intelligence,” or more simply “Integral Resilience.” When we open ourselves emotionally, the flood of energy surrounding the heart becomes activated. The human heart has an extraordinary ability to gather all the disparate parts, to see the world holistically. The dimensions of resilience we have been discussing—physical, emotional, energetic, cognitive, psychological, and spiritual—are all connected. When we enhance resilience in one domain, naturally it transfers to another, especially when the process is mediated by the Heart. We are currently developing a way to measure improvements in Integral Resilience and its associated Multiplier Effects.

Gary: Before concluding, I want your thoughts on how we can operationalize all of this. How can seniors in Santa Barbara, indeed the entire community, build resilience?

Julian. As you noted in our first meeting, it is all about engagement. We have developed a personalized, interactive, and intelligent online platform called the “CHME” (Community Health Multiplier Exchange) that will support the entire community in exploring, creating, learning, having adventures, challenging ourselves, making new friends, helping and caring for one another. Santa Barbara is blessed in so many ways. And surely one of our greatest treasures is the large number of talented people and dedicated non-profit organizations. But the present ecosystem is fragmented, vertically siloed by specialization, and unfortunately based on competition for limited philanthropic resources. In my opinion this is an outdated 20^th century model that is poorly equipped to address so important a challenge as successful aging.

But what if there is a more compassionate 21^st century path to motivate Santa Barbara’s diverse organizations to come together, to share ideas, products, and services, and thereby to enlarge the “pie” for everyone? This is not utopia. The technology and human resources required are all locally available; the cost, modest. The first beneficial and measurable outcomes in enhanced community resilience can be delivered within months. The first sign of an awakening resilience is to open ourselves to Seeing the Big Picture. Hopefully this interview will invite new comers to the conversation. I look forward to expanding our dialogue with those who attend one of our upcoming community presentations. The first will take place at Chaucer’s Bookstore on September 11^th @ 7:00 pm. The second is a public presentation at Vista Del Monte Senior Community on Tuesday, October 23^rd at 2 pm. Please come and invite a friend!

Center for Successful Aging
Dr. Gary Linker
Julian Gresser Books: Piloting Through Chaos Trilogy: Wise Leadership/Effective Negotiation (1985), The Explorers Mind (2013) and Laughing Heart. (2017)