Kinship Medicine
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For fans of Braiding Sweetgrass, The Future We Choose, and The Blue Zones, a book about the effect our relationship to nature has on our well-being and health. Our modern way of living is incompatible with our survival. Most of us intuitively know this truth, but almost everything in our society encourages us to ignore it. Dr. Wendy Johnson confronts this undeniable fact and breaks down how we think and act every day in ways that undermine our individual and collective well-being. The antidotes to many of the causal factors of poor health—loneliness, industrial diets, systemic inequality, fear of death, profit-based healthcare—are relational, with each other and with the living earth. Through evidence from public health, sociology, anthropology, human ecology, and her experience as a family physician, Dr. Wendy Johnson will show you how: We must incorporate an “ecosystem” perspective into modern medicine What you ingest and where you live can reinforce or upset your body’s delicate balance Eliminating one organism in an ecosystem can affect all the others Histories of trauma can be passed down for generations Rekindling our relationships to non-human life is essential to our well-being Being closer to death can release some of its power over us Actions of communities will be stronger and more lasting than any individual efforts You will leave with a clear vision of what a new society might look like, methods to accomplish this transformation, and concrete examples of where it is being done successfully.
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We are sick; we are tired; and we are sick and tired of the increasingly downward spiral we're in. Johnson addresses our unwellness from many perspectives, using a systems-level view to converge on an integrated picture of what ails us, how we got here, and where we need to focus if we want to fix things. She draws from her experiences as a medical practitioner and an acequia community member. She cites up-to-date research, and she's done her homework: the text is well dotted with end notes in all the appropriate places, and those references are current and relevant.
Johnson's argument boils down to the undeniable fact that humans evolved as cooperators, not just with each other but with our environment: awareness of surroundings, and recognition of reciprocal needs and responsibilities, is what kept our ancestors alive and even thriving. The hijacking of social norms by self-absorbed greedy individualists has cost us dearly. This will not come as a surprise to most readers, since we tend to self-select... but it might be news to some of our less aware friends-and-relations, so this is a book to read and then pass along strategically.
What was a surprise to me was Johnson's inspiring final chapters. She asserts that we already have the principal tool we need to address our situation: imagination. Since imagination does not spring ex nihilo, she provides a helping hand: examples of successful (albeit small-scale) cultural shifts that have led to progress. Maybe you, or someone you gift this book to, will envision a step-by-step path to a healthier planet and a healthier us.
I felt uncomfortable in two dimensions. First, the privilege: access to trees and birds and land and silence will never be possible in a planet of N-billion humans. Second, the privilege: the precautionary principle espoused in chapter 11 has a strong anti-development hint to it. Both of these issues are much too complex to go into here; and, to be fair, Johnson acknowledges them to some extent. I can live with my discomfort, because the book's assets—its arguments, evidence, insights, and above all its intriguing final chapters of promise—far outweigh the negatives.
Thank you North Atlantic Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.