I continue the series of videos made by Phil Hanlon, Professor of Public Health at Glasgow University. Check out all the video and writings on Phil’s Afternow website. I love this website – what Phil has to say is very important.

‘In this video Phil Hanlon suggests that the public health problems we now face (such as obesity, enduring health inequalities, the rise in mental distress, and increasingly problematic use of drugs and alcohol) have a common source: they are the result of the increasingly adverse effects of the mindset and approach which characterises modernity.

They can helpfully be thought of not as ‘diseases’ but as ‘dis-eases’, associated with modernity.  

He suggests that the biggest problem we face may be modernity itself, which means that the health and wellbeing issues which confront us can no longer be addressed by conventional forms of thinking, tools or approaches. 

We now face what might be called an ‘ingenuity gap’.  This is the gap between the problems we face and the adequacy of the tools available to create solutions.’