this piece is a kind of meditation in progress to consider how to help us have a way to reflect upon what we put into our worlds as health interventions, as design ideas. Eg – if sedentarism is bad – an ergonomic chair isn’t the solution. And yet we still have a lot of chairs. why? we’re not stupid. Maybe – maybe – we just don’t have a good model for what’s really wrong about that. This reflection is an effort to explore a possible model to make it easier to test out whether looking at us, at the cellular level, might help make it easier to ask – how far off our designs are from supporting our basic essential healthful needs for life itself? Are we plants or animals? rooters or movers? And as the later, what supports that in our world? and what might need to be reconsidered if it does not? what do you think?
It finally hit me out for a walk one day working through some thoughts about cells and what makes us as animals – based on animal cells – as different from plant cells. We’ll come onto that.
Let’s consider on the larger scale than a cell what the biggest difference is between plants and us/animals: we move; plants don’t.
Why is that a huge difference? it’s about energy/metabolism – how we each stay alive. It’s fundamental. Plants get their main energy reaching to the light. Their external structures support being in one place – note those tough cellulose stems, the root system, their reproductive systems that work via interaction with other creatures quite often – whether for pollination or defication of the seeds via the processing through the guts of more creatures that move. Bet plant folks can think of even other differences that support the viability of non-moving living entities.
Animals – well pretty much any mobile creatures – need to consume materials – like plants – to convert that material into fuel for their metabolism. Animals, unlike plants, have to move to get to that fuel.
i don’t think this point about how we get energy – how we maintain life – can be overstated. Plants cells are wired for them to stay put – they’re rooters – to produce the energy they need for their cells to function. That’s what they need to live.
Animals are the opposite. Animals have to MOVE to forage for the resources they need to consume to transform into the energy their cells need to survive. We are MOVERS – movement is fundamental to our survival. Many many many many other systems that make up us are evolved to support that fundamental requirement of movement – they are optimized to move, such that movement is essential for health. Every organ system in our bodies is designed to support how we move, from how our bones stay healthy to the size of our guts for carrying food between stops, as it were – no kidding. Everything is wired around that cellular fundamental differentiator between our rooter eukaryote cousin.
When Movers are treated like Rooters
And yet – and yet.
Here’s the insight/shock on my walk – we are animals but we are increasingly designing our normal way of being to treat us as if we were plants.
Consider that a normal “office” set up is a chair, a desk, a monitor. Consider that entertainment is situated increasingly in a chair as a desk with a monitor – with controllers – or without the desk and a deeper chair and a monitor. Consider that our movement from one place to another is in another chair, being moved from one locale to another.
Increasingly however we are designing systems to ensure that we minimize movement – including for that primary need for fuel. We can now order food from anywhere anytime to come right to our door.
Potted Plants as the Increasingly Normal
SO here’s the ah ha and oh no moment: we are designing our worlds as if we are potted plants – where we get carried perhaps from one room to another to catch the sun in different rooms different times of the day.
This treatment of us is increasingly normalized – in the statistical sense. Consider that it now requires a certain level of temporal and capital affluence to move – to get exercise – because normal is sedentary. Most of us have to find that time on our own dime – if we have that time and assets to spend that time for our health as opposed to being with family, friends, or resting from long hours, and so on.
And how’s this going for us?
This plant-like sedentary norm is simply not how we are wired from the ground up – it’s antithetical to our cellular fundamental energy system. That simple, isn’t it? We do not have the cellular structures to thrive by not moving. In fact we break in so many ways.
Now lack of movement is not the only fundamental issue around health support – but it is we could argue primary. Because cells getting energy is primary to life. And systems are build on that to sustain that fundamental need. I’m repeating myself but it seems important: movement is about life – and that is about health.
Burn the Chairs; break the pots?
What is sort of amazing is that we KNOW this – for over a decade and a half science has reached the popular press with its research translated as “sedentarism is the new smoking.” And yet having watched many new builds and new offices poke up especially in educational institutions or research centers – what keep showing up are tables, chairs monitors; tables, chairs, monitors. Not that there aren’t other examples like belt lines for electronics to chemical assays to grocery cashiers to doctor’s offices – sit sit sit fricky dicky sit. Or some folks stand stand stand – the thing is non-movement. We design Pots for different times of the day. Why? in whose interests?
I’ve said for some time if we want folks to sit less, just burn the chairs – and really that’s just code for challenging us to re-consider what’s “normal” for our daily lives – which for most of us for most of our lives is dominated by work time. In these contexts what’s most normal? the chair and what goes with it like the desk, the monitor. It’s difficult to imagine rooms without chairs of one kind or another.
It seems this more recent ah ha of movers/rooters may say not just burn the chairs, but more broadly, “break the pots” – break or at least break out of our plant-like life style – that our FUNDAMENTAL action as animal cell based creatures – not plant based cell creatures – is to MOVE to stay alive and thrive.
once we start to move – to respect our cellular selves – everything improves – there’s enough science to support that as pretty much a given.
Is this design for Rooters or Movers?
Plants stay put – they reach for the sun; they put down roots – for their energy support for their lives. They are Rooters. Animals – including us – are Movers.
I’d invite you to ask yourself in your design work and / or in your engagement with what you set up as normal in your lives – just to ask yourself – is this thing you’re using or doing treating you like a rooter or a mover? Remember: we’re movers.
The science seems to show pretty clearly that one of the easiest paths to health – including mental health – is to be ourselves and to support being ourselves. From every cell in our body, we are movers.
Our challenge may be: how do we (re)design our worlds to be better aligned with our fundamental selves – as movers, rather than rooters.
Burn the chairs; break out of the pots; and just check in with ourselves: does this [fill in whatever your using/doing] treat me like a rooter or a mover? What are the things or processes in your world that make moving as effortless and normal as what treats us like rooters? If you made a list, what’s in each column? are they the same length? one much longer than the other?
Does that image of being treated as if we were potted plants resonate? Does thinking rooter or mover help reflect on your environment and what is made normal for your basic healthful interactions (and everything starts from movement as everything starts with metabolic need).
It’s something i’m trying out – as it sort of helps makes sense for me of just how screwed up our worlds are: like: oh! that’s why we’re so sick! our normals have the wrong fundamental model to align with – it assumes we’re plants rather than animals; rooters rather than movers.
So now what? How radical do we have to be to get back with who we are?
It’s a toughie, isn’t it? But that we were with that alignment for hundreds of thousands of years – gives some hope that we might reclaim some of that wisdom?
Go movers!