“Resilience and Transformation:
preparing Australia for uncertain
futures”.
Panel on “Individual,
Societal and Systems
Resilience”
Bob Douglas
Chapter 11: Why are some people more resilient to
health problems than others?
• Does peoples’ “sense of control” modulate the
operation of other risk factors and treatment
effects?
• Contrast sense of control with “learned
helplessness”
• A health care system that promotes resilience is
one in which people sense control and feel a
sense of ownership about their health and the
factors that bear on it.
Chapter 19 Pandemic preparedness and
resilience
• Are we, prepared for the kind of disruption
from the emergence of unanticipated
pathogenic agents spreading rapidly through a
non-immune population?
• Need to build subsidiarity into our responses.
• Unwieldy nature of our federated system of
governance.
• Actions that could enhance short and long
term resilience
Escalating global disruption
• Stretching global resources beyond capacity to
cope with growing human population.
• A constellation of “wicked problems.
• Climate change, extinction of ecosystems,
inappropriateness and instability of economic
systems human inequity and starvation.
• Being largely ignored by Australia’s political
and economic systems.
Most Australians remain unaware of these perils.
Transform Australia
• Opinion Leaders Roundtable in Sydney recently.
• Transformative change in the Australian mindset
and in the human systems that drive our society
are urgently required.
• Shift in the national mindset needs to be
cognitive ethical and spiritual in its dimensions as
well as practical in its operations.
• The group commented on a draft vision and
manifesto for the kind of transformation that will
be needed.
Changing our dreams and narratives
• We live our stories and our dreams.
• Our mindsets depend upon them.
• If we are to change the human mindset we must
change the narratives and dreams that dominate
our culture.
Old Dream
• I am the king of
the castle and
you’re the dirty
rascal
New Dream
• We share the
world with all
humans and other
living things
Old Dream
New Dream
• Competing and • Caring for
winning is
people and the
what makes for environment is
a great world
what makes for
(for some)
a better world
(for all)
Old Dream
• Owning things
makes us feel
really good
New Dream
• Sharing things
makes us feel even
better
Old Dream
Dream
New
• Bigger and more • Small and
manageable
are
are better.
better still
Old Dream
New Dream
Love, Joy, Peace
Money can buy and Security
nearly anything can’t be bought
with money;
they come
through caring
relationships
Old Dream
New Dream
• Humans can do • We are now
anything if
setting our
they set their
minds to live
mind to it
well within
constraints of
the planet
Old Dream
New Dream
Growing the
The economy is
economy is what our servant not
makes the
our master.
world go round.
Growth at the
expense of the
environment is
unacceptable
Old Dream
• The whole
world is here
for humans to
conquer and
exploit.
New Dream
Humans depend
on nature to
nourish and
sustain us.
Conclusion
• We need somehow to introduce new dreams and
narratives of this kind into the national psyche
• Only then will we generate the impetus for the
kind of system change that will make us more
resilient.
• And enhance our societal well being.
• We need to confront the marketers of the old
dreams and trump them with positive dreams
that are more compatible with long term survival
of our species.