Salutogenic Wonderland

I am one of many people who have loved ones and close friends suffering from preventable chronic lifestyle diseases. Treating chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) ( obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, stroke and pulmonary conditions ) costs billions of ringgits a year. The cost of treating these NCDs put an incredible burden on families and on our country’s economy and health-care system.

Many of these diseases are either preventable or can be cost-effectively managed if caught early. Our current approach is simply paying to treat chronic disease over the long term.

Instead, we could save money and suffering by encouraging behaviours that would stop these diseases before they start.

Everyone is surrounded by opportunities to be sick, stress is what determines why some people get sick and others never do. Health is a process composed of psychosocial factors, lifestyle, and experience. For all of biomedical science’s impressive achievements in treating illness, it has not been as successful in promoting wellness. Looking at our own city, Kuala Lumpur, we have built some of the most toxic and disturbing environments in our history.

In designing our environments, we can recognize that architecture can have an impact on health. What if the architecture of our homes, workplace and cities could actually make us healthier? What if it could help prevent disease? Reduce violence? Increase productivity?

It may be easiest to understand the word salutogenic by first defining its opposite. If pathogenic is disease-causing, then salutogenic is health-causing. Salutogenic design focuses on creating, enhancing and improving physical, mental and social well-being through well designed and planned environments — environments where making healthy, sustainable choices is easy.

The concept of salutogenic design moves beyond conventional notions of sustainability to encompass not just the building’s impact on the environment, but also its impact on users. It becomes another measure of good design, in addition to other measures such as profitable, efficient, sustainable, programmatically compliant, and dozens other measures of design success.

Salutogenesis, which is to say a belief that, in order to be healthy, you have to address the root of unhealthiness rather than merely treat the illness.

Designers can take this concept to incorporate salutogenic strategies into design on multiple levels.

Single buildings can accomplish this with natural light, viewsheds, ventilation, nontoxic materials, prominent and welcoming staircases rather than elevators, serene colors, and clear wayfinding signals.

Neighborhoods can relieve food deserts, include safe and well-lit sidewalks, and accommodate bicycle paths to make physical activity an easy choice, rather than an out-of-the-way recreational option. Cities can make room for town plazas, unfold according to a simple street grid, and replace congested arterial roadways.

I believe DBKL has practised salutogenesis in a small way with the aerial pedestrian walkway from Bukit Bintang to Chow Kit. Now lets take that walk to better health.

Being Children Again

I did not set out early morning on Merdeka Day to capture this picture. My Merdeka Day shots would have been the typical scene of Merdeka Day parade colours and gleaming faces of people from all walks of life at the parade.

Instead, a beautiful scene was there in front of me as if it had been set up and choreographed for a photo shoot. It was such an illustrative scene and so telling of what every Merdeka Day means to me – living under the strong foundation that our forefathers have built, carefree life in a pristine environment; prospering in freedom to pursue our dreams in a safe and peaceful country. What looms in the far horizon is for us to invent today.

Beyond displaying our Jalur Gemilang, every Merdeka Day is our moment to invent the future, building on the foundation created by those who fought for Merdeka, sacrificed for our freedom and prosperity. Inventing the future today is perhaps a great way of honouring those who fought and sacrificed for us.

How do we invent the future today? My answer is: pay more taxes and go beyond the superficial show of patriotism. Instead of just for nationalistic displays, let the flying Jalur Gemilang be the beacon of our commitment to our nation’s future. For our nation’s future is the future of our children and their children’s children.

What our nation’s future will be, depends to a large extent, on our capacity and capability to pay more tax and on the capacity and capability of our children.

So, Merdeka Day means independence from our own self-imposed limitations to develop our competencies, to gain new insights and to broaden our horizons. Merdeka Day means independence from indulgence in trivia (of which are plenty on the internet). Merdeka Day means independence from tendencies to celebrate mediocrity. Merdeka Day means independence from our selfishness to share knowledge and to contribute as responsible citizens.

Merdeka Day means being children again – being without inhibitions to explore, being free from mental constraints to pursue new dreams, being brave to invent the future.

Close Proximity, Minds Apart

Every time I stroll along the KT Waterfront at night, I would have my hands full arresting couples caught for khalwat or for making out in close proximity - that is, if I were a Pegawai Pencegah Maksiat.  But the sight of couples making out does not distract my  urge to compare the thinking process of the people who created this waterfront and the thinking process of those who created Singapore's Gardens By The Bay. 

The KT waterfront is indeed spectacular at night, thanks to the bright and vibrant artificial trees lining the waterfront. There's nothing as attractive in KT.

On closer look, the spectacle is just decorative lights in the form oftrees lined up in no particular artistic fashion - just planted without any further thought. Not much artistic value, no functional value. Not sure if the lights are meant to attract sotong for the candak sotong season.

Wonder what's the planner's or designer's vision is for the KT waterfront.

Singapore's Gardens by the Bay, is a 250-acre sprawling series of indoor and outdoor waterfront gardens. It is part of a not-so-simple plan to reinvent Singapore as a city in a garden. The idea is to create a sustainable garden in the city, generating a better environment for humans with a creative fusion of technology and nature.

The man-made mechanical forest consists of 18 supertrees that act as vertical gardens, generating solar power, acting as air venting ducts for nearby conservatories, and collecting rainwater. To generate electricity, 11 of the trees are fitted with solar photovoltaic systems that provide lighting and assist with water flow in the conservatories below.

These trees serve several purposes: they act as a vertical tropical garden, as the engine room for the environmental systems of the conservatory, and as rainwater receptacles. And yes, they light up at night!

The Supertrees, which vary in height between 80 and 160 feet, are made of four parts: reinforcement concrete core, trunk, planting panels of the living skin, and canopy. Just like non-mechanized forests, the large canopies operate as temperature moderators, absorbing and dispersing heat, as well as providing shelter to visitors walking below. This suite of technologies can help to achieve at least 30% savings in energy consumption, compared to conventional methods of cooling, according to the project’s website.

Special sky bridges connect a few of the trees, for those brave enough to walk above Earth at the height of the top of skyscrapers.

Are KT's city planners and developers brave enough to bridge the mind gap?

Basic Instinct

Salam Eid Mubarak :-) As our friends join the balik kampong exodus, I'm reminded of what balik kampong means to me.

My “balik kampong” means ascending to being human again. Each Raya Balik Kampong reminds me of the profound journey I took in my early secondary school life. In those days, every month I would balik kampong - a journey that took almost five hours on foot and a river crossing in a sampan.

On one of those occasions, I arrived home and handed over to my mum an application form for a scholarship of eight ringgit a month from my school. My mum took the form, tossed it into the wood fire as she was cooking (She didn’t need to read it as she is illiterate). That profound moment is the most spiritual thing on earth residing in me - my north star.

Recently, I was reminded of that moment as I took the Menara KH lift on my way to the KL office on the 25th floor. Together in the lift was a pretty lady and her colleague with a trolley load of Raya gift baskets and hampers. She was busy ticking off the names of recipients on her long list. If I were to receive one of those Raya gifts, my mum would ask if I earned it. Still, she would insist that I’m not entitled to it and that I should not even feel entitled to receiving free gifts or to things that I do not earn.

The sight of Raya gift hampers in the office cuts to the quick of my psyche with searching questions asked of my basic human soul - the question of whether I should feel that I am really entitled to many things in life such as having no obligation to pay income tax, or a parking space in front of the office, or a bumiputra status or a big office room or a company driver to do my personal errands, or hand-outs from the Government or Raya gift hampers from the vendors. Should I feel entitled to things even if I don’t earn them?

Feeling entitled has been woven into the fabrics of our culture as amplified by the “No Gift Policy” notice placed by a Fortune Global 500 company, Petronas. The notice is placed at the registration counter of the Petronas Twin Towers. (Petronas climbed to 68th spot on the Fortune Global 500 list, up from previous ranking of 86th).

When I receive a Raya gift hamper from a vendor, is it for me or for my office? Should I take it home or should I leave it in the office to be shared with my colleagues? As I balik kampong for the Raya, I hope my north star guides me to feel that a no-gift policy takes me to my basic human being.

Selamat Hari Raya, maaf zahir batin

Orgasmic Moments - New Indicators of Progress

If only Prime Minister Najib cares to measure how many orgasmic moments we have in a year. Isn't it our happiness and well-being the KPIs that matter most? Not GDP! Here's why.  
1.   Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, Stumbling on Happiness. Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

2.   Jack Welch, who is regarded as the father of the “shareholder value” movement that has dominated the corporate world for more than 20 years, has said it was “a dumb idea” for executives to focus so heavily on quarterly profits and share price gains. His comments, made in an interview for the FT’s series on the future of capitalism, come as the economic crisis has caused a radical rethinking by many leading executives and policymakers.

3. “Gross National Product counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising and . . . the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play . . . the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life wothwhile.” Robert Kennedy, 1968.

The above three topics may seem totally unrelated. However, upon putting my radical rethinking hat while considering Prime Minister Najib’s key result areas and gov’t KPIs in relation to measures of progress of Sarawak people, these three subjects are indeed, totally related. Governments, businesses and citizens must focus on what really make us happy.

Sarawakians must now set out a radical proposal to the new state government to guide the direction of modern Sarawak and the lives of people who live in them. In contrast to the conventional narrow focus on economic indicators, we must call on the new state government to directly and regularly measure people’s subjective well-being: their experiences, feelings and perceptions of how their lives are going, as a new way of assessing societal progress.
Some 40 years ago, in my kampong, my parents and siblings lived better, healthier and happier lives, despite no electricity, no roads and none of today’s modern necessities. We cooked over wood fire, got our water from the cool mountain stream and plenty of harvests from the farms.

Today, the rivers and streams have fewer fishes, we use too much pesticides in the farms, we live too much on credit with our education, house and car loans and we have to work harder to pay many bills and to cope with higher and higher costs of living. In all, I’m more miserable than I was 40 years ago.

The roads and electricity supply in the modern kampong today are not making our planet any better. In fact, these modern amenities only serve to increase our carbon footprint. We’ll be leaving to the future generations, a planet that’s degenerated and too costly to clean up. Our Malaysian education system is failing our children and educating them out of their natural creativity. And why can't the government hospital in Bau provide the same quality of clinical outcome as the Gleneagles Hospital or Cleveland Clinic?


Not only our beloved Sarawak, but the whole world is facing a breakdown of communities, environmental degradation, global warming, continuing poverty, and climbing rates of hunger. It is the perfect opportunity to reconsider development, progress, and purpose in terms of what is truly most important in life. Development is under scrutiny as a cycle of more production for more consumption to boost gross national product. There is an urgency to reconsider development in a broader, holistic manner and reclaim the concept of progress as genuine desirable change.

Economists, policymakers, reporters, and the public rely on the GDP as a shorthand indicator of progress; but the GDP is merely a sum of national spending with no distinctions between transactions that add to well-being and those that diminish it.

Mike Pennock from Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI) Atlantic argued that measures such as Gross National Happiness provide a guideline for developing a framework of national accounting where suitable monetary value can be placed on assets such as the environment and voluntary work. Thus costs and benefits can be calculated and accounted for in a balance sheet, and policymakers in turn cannot overlook vital aspects of human, social, and natural capital.

Some pioneering visions of alternative progress have emerged in Asia, chief among them the concept of Gross National Happiness as coined by Former King of Bhutan Jigme Wangchuck. Gross National Happiness has four pillars: the promotion of equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development; preservation and promotion of cultural values; conservation of the natural environment; and establishment of good governance. Gross National Happiness values are measured by tracking wellness in seven domains: economic, environmental, physical, mental, workplace, social, and political.

Currently there are two parallel global movements. The first can be characterized by the World Economic Forum, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, supporting traditional notions of development. The second is the World Social Forum, Gross National Happiness, and allied movements that seek to redefine progress.

The new Sarawak state government, as a mainstream policy-making body, can be more sensitive to alternative approaches and start to measure Gross National Happiness and translate the indicators and data into public policy.

If Sarawak’s new policymakers measure what really matters to people—health care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators of well-being—economic policy would naturally shift towards sustainability and real progress and happiness for all Sarawakians.

References:

Redefining Progress: Genuine Indicators of Progress

National Accounts of Well-being

Oxford University Human Development Initiative