Both of the above examples are based on concepts of how and why living organisms adapt in the way they do. It's an approach that is exactly counter to our traditional way of seeing, where we balance forces to control behavior and where there is no place given for how living things adapt. In the old way of seeing, the wayward person is coerced into proper behavior. In the new way of seeing the environment is altered in such a way that the person chooses to adapt to it in a friendly way And it works not just on individuals but on children, families, teams, religious groups, nation states; it works on anything that is alive and adapts, even on microscopic bacteria.
Seeing our relationship with bacteria differently
Paul Ewald points out in his book, The Evolution of Infectious Disease, that counterwill is not limited to children and nation states; bacteria, when threatened with antibiotics, develop resistance to them. Conversely, when we don't openly threaten them, but make it harder for them to get from person to person, they adapt in more friendly ways. We know now that our lives are made possible by our microbiome of bacteria living with us and in us that help guide our immune system's development, protect us from outside pathogens, as well as help us digest the food we eat. Ways to help this process of befriending bacteria include the use of frequent hand and nose washing, clean water, uncontaminated food, bed nets that prevent mosquitoes from feeding and spreading disease, and condoms for the same reason, because all too often we act as the infecting agent as we carry infections to our intimate partners.
Seeing medical symptoms differently
Also useful in this is the recognition that we have all inherited defenses that help us to survive in the game we are playing with our environmental recyclers: viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Defenses give us the edge according to Randy Nesse and George Williams, who show how hobbling them is a large part of Why We Get Sick. But defenses are often bothersome: A fever makes us uncomfortable, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea are both embarrassing and distressing, so is a runny nose, and we can make them go away with drugs, so why not? Because they are all defenses and they give us a survival advantage. Just as with your favorite football team, you don't hobble the defense if you want them to win. A fever is a primary defense when one gets an infection. Experimentally infected rabbits die more often when given the drugs we use ourselves to treat a fever. Experimentally infected snakes die more often when prevent from moving into the sun to warm up. Sure it's a bother, but a fever gives us a survival edge and is better honored that blocked. Same with the nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea of the insulted GI tract, and the rhinorrhea of the contaminated upper-respiratory tract, both of which are washing defenses. Oral rehydration, developed for the treatment of cholera and one of the greatest advances of medicine in the last century, optimizes the GI washing defense by keeping the tank full, and a nasal spray containing xylitol optimizes respiratory defenses by increasing the water supply in the nose and unhooking bacterial pathogens there.
All of these represent a different way of seeing that accepts living organisms as being more than mechanical, more than the objects that need to be balanced and coerced into proper behavior. A characteristic of all life is the ability to read and adapt to ones environment. It's about time we included that characteristic in how we cope with the living world around us.
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