Seven Positive Trends Amidst the Doom and Gloom   by Sohail Inayatullah

While there is a great deal of bad, indeed, horrendous, news in the world – global warming, terrorism, the global financial crisis, water shortages, worsening inequity – there are also signs of positive change.

GENOMICS

First, in genomics, the revolution of tailoring health advice has begun. One website for $400 provides detailed personal genetic information to consumers. It provides, “the latest research on how your genes may affect risk for common diseases and conditions such as heart attack, arthritis and cancers.” Once your genome is analyzed, you will also be able to “see your personal history through a new lens with detailed information about your ancient ancestors and comparisons to global populations today.”

This development in genomics is good news in that more information about your personal health future is available. Of course, these are just probabilities and should be used wisely, helping each person make better health choices today. Avoiding creating self-fulfilling prophecies of potential future illnesses would be a priority in teaching individuals to understand their genome map. Bringing wisdom to more information is crucial especially given forecasts that within 10 years every baby will be given a complete genome map at birth.

MEDITATION

Second, there is positive news in meditation research. Study after study confirms that meditation is not only of individual benefit but as national health expenditures keep on increasing (because of increased demand from an ageing population) along with exercise, low-fat vegetarian food and a close community, meditation as part of a national health strategy can reduce public health costs. For example, we know that studies show that regular meditators exhibit: 87% less heart disease, 55.4% less tumors, 50.2% less hospitalization, 30.6% less mental disorders and 30.4% less infectious diseases (Matthew Bambling, Mind, Body and Heart, Psychotherapy in Australia, February 2006, 52-59). There are even reports on the benefits of meditation for military care providers not a sector known for spiritual development. Meditation even changes the nature of the brain. Researchers at Harvard, Yale and MIT have found that brain scans reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that dealt with attention and processing sensory input. The structure of the adult brain can thus change suggests some. Indeed, research as well suggests that through meditation we can train ourselves to be more compassionate toward others. It appears that cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples’ mental states, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
While we have had anecdotal evidence of the importance of meditation, developments in MRI scanning have taken the research to new levels providing us with visual and repeatable (scientific) evidence.

SPIRITUALITY

Third, we are witnessing a rise in the significance of spirituality as a worldview and as a practice. Spirituality is defined broadly as a practice that brings inner peace and love for self and the transcendent as well as being inclusive of others, that is, it does not claim to be exclusive or in a hierarchy of who is above and who is below. In their book, The Cultural Creatives Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson go so far as to say that up to 25% of those in OECD nations now subscribe to a new worldview with spirituality as a central feature. Overtime this worldview will likely have increasingly tangible impacts on economic, transport and governance systems.

In their book, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1999), Ian Mitroff and Elizabeth Denton found “spirituality as one of the most important determinants of performance.” Of the 200 companies surveyed, sixty percent believed that spirituality was a benefit provided no particular view of religion was pushed.

Georgeanne Lamont’s research in the UK at ‘soul-friendly’ companies – including Happy Computers, Bayer UK, Natwest, Microsoft UK, Scott Bader, Peach Personnel – found lower than average absenteeism, sickness and staff turnover – which saved the businesses money. In one example, Broadway Tyres introduced spiritual practices and absenteeism dropped from twenty-five/thirty percent to two percent.

And: research shows a positive correlation between spiritual organisations and the bottom line – organisations that can inspire employees to a ‘higher cause’ tend to have enhanced performance because of the increased motivation and commitment this tends to generate..

HEALTHY AND GREEN CITIES

Fourth, we are seeing that while many problems are too big for national governments, local governance is thriving. Many cities are taking the future to heart. In Australia for example, Future 2030 city projects are slowly becoming part of the norm (Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Logan City, for example). Cities are broadening democracy to include visioning. Citizens are asked about their desired image of their city