"What happens if we as a society simply carry on as we are, for the most part unwilling or unprepared to understand the complex dynamics between the social brain and the social conditions in which we grow up, live, work and age?"

In the late 19th Century, the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius proposed that human activity which added CO2 to the atmosphere could substantially warm the Earth. Fifty years ago there were many in the science fraternity who knew that human-induced global warming was occurring and why. However, whether fifty or two hundred years ago, while the process was already underway, we the general populace were largely ignorant of it - or, to be precise, ignorant of it in a particular way. While there may have been in-the-street discussion in the 1950s or 60s about relevant longer-term changes in weather patterns, what these conversations in all probability did not describe was the underlying causes, dynamics and future implications of human-induced global warming. What we might call the 'folk' or popular ways of describing weather and climate just didn't capture the relevant facts and concepts. Today, even though our collective response remains far below what is required, at least the tools to describe the real problem have entered the wider public mind.

I want to claim that this situation has a parallel in the social domain, except that on this matter we are still where we were with global warming a few decades ago. There are certain underlying dynamics of our nature and psychology as an evolved social species which, depending on how they move over time, and respond to social conditions, are powerful determinants of individual and social well-being, social behaviour, and our future prospects for social sustainability. To be more precise, we are normally equipped by nature to develop certain basic capacities for what I will call social intelligence. These natural capacities are realised in the structure and activities of our brains, and are employed everyday in the business of navigating social environments. To a significant extent they operate below the level of conscious awareness. The way these capacities are developed, sustained and exercised over time is highly sensitive to social conditions, from the micro-world of the family to the virtual world of media imagery. And, of course, in the way they operate to shape our behaviour, they play a significant role in shaping the social environment too.

Most importantly for present purposes, these capacities can also be under-developed or distorted, and when this occurs over a period of time it is likely to result in psychological distress, mental or physical illness, or maladaptive and destructive social behaviour. A range of factors can contribute to these outcomes, some of them to do with a person's external circumstances, some to do with the internal dispositions or resources they bring to those circumstances. The popular conception of 'stress' points to some of the relevant issues here, but as a society we have not yet embraced anything even close to an adequate understanding of what 'stress' is, the circumstances which can give rise to it, and how it can affect us. For the moment, let me say that the brain and body systems which produce 'stress' arousal, operating in short doses, can and do play an active and useful role in everyday social intelligence. Briefly put, they contribute to social learning, and modification of behaviour in response to social cues. However, there is an absolutely crucial difference between this potentially positive role of mild, acute (short-term) stress, and the likely effects of extreme and/or chronic (long-term, repetitive) stress arousal. For the purposes of social and political analysis, understanding this difference and its flow-on implications is a key to unlocking a deeper and more accurate understanding of what is going on in our society, and what we can do to improve it. It is a key to understanding how the social conditions we create can support the realisation of competent social intelligence, or undermine it and in the process compromise our individual and social ability to do many of the other things we have reason to value. Here I will focus on 'social conditions' as commonly encountered in developed liberal-democratic countries such as Australia, because that is the political link I want to make. However, I believe the analysis below is applicable to interpreting human responses to many other kinds of conditions.

Our everyday descriptions and explanations of behaviour - so-called 'folk psychology' - loosely capture some elements of social intelligence. Indeed, on reflection, it would be very surprising if this were not so. However, I nevertheless maintain that as a society we do not have readily to hand a usable, scientifically-grounded understanding of these particular, crucial aspects of the interaction between brain and social environment. We just don't see or interpret ourselves and our society in this way. In a very real sense, the issues to which I refer remain largely opaque to popular or political understanding.

Just as previously with global warming, a body of scientific evidence exists to support these claims about social intelligence, but for the most part it remains confined within a relatively narrow community. The translation of this information into a form suitable to effective sociopolitical action also does occur - especially in the field of public health - but again has not penetrated our political thinking enough to make enough of a difference.

Furthermore, as I will discuss later, there is a particular political wrinkle to this issue. Existing political ideologies maintain deep investments in certain core beliefs about human nature and social psychology. When relevant information about our social intelligence is exposed then, again, one sees that these forms of 'political folk-psychology' typically capture some pieces of the picture. Thus the problem lies not in their being absolutely wrong in any simplistic sense. However, as I shall explain, on the whole our political belief structures are a liability to the extent that they fail to capture in a suitably coherent way enough of the real facts about what is going on, and how certain social, economic and cultural conditions of modern societies are undermining widespread realisation of capacities for social intelligence. (This failure only really becomes clear when one views these beliefs from a new perspective - so you will need to take that assertion on trust for the moment.) The way we conduct our political and economic affairs is powerfully constrained by basic beliefs about human nature and behaviour, many of which are watered down versions of philosophies expounded tens or hundreds of years ago. Some of these beliefs have not kept up with contemporary scientific evidence. In some ways, our view of ourselves as a polity which operates on rational grounds, informed by science, is a convenient idealisation, masking a serious gulf in understanding between science and our political culture (notwithstanding the current fashion for 'evidence-based policy'). The inadequacy of our political beliefs - embedded in both ideology and methodology - is now an obstacle to meaningful and effective political action, in response to some of the major social challenges, threats and opportunities of our time. Both left and right dimensions of our political culture have a case to answer in this regard, but the greatest risks arise through our continuing attachment to the neo-liberal ideology of the so-called new right, which has dominated Anglo-American and international politics for the last forty years. For liberal-democratic countries such as Australia, I will suggest that a significantly modified form of social-democratic politics represents the best way forward from our present position.

In what follows I will firstly set out a basic description of what I believe 'social intelligence' is and how it works and then examine the social and political implications. The ideas are based on a recent doctoral project using research from cognitive neuroscience, psychology and epidemiology. However, this is not the right venue to be describing the details of such material, and citing large numbers of empirical studies. Therefore, I will describe processes in the brain at a broad functional level; in other words, in terms of what certain structures do to process and store information, respond to social stimuli, modulate mood, and control behaviour.

Social Intelligence

Basic competencies of social intelligence typically involve a number of brain functions, interacting with each other to subserve the process of navigating everyday social environments. Firstly, there are executive control functions, largely carried out by structures in the upper lateral parts of the frontal lobe. These parts of the brain operate to guide and maintain goal-directed activity over time; catching a bus, washing the dog, cooking a meal. They are the site of working memory, which 'holds' and keeps active the cognitive representation of a goal, so that 'lower-level' motor activities can be coordinated towards that end.

Secondly, also in the lateral parts of the cortex, especially the parietal lobe, are functions to do with what I will call social imaging. It appears that a number of structures in this area are commonly engaged in a process of representing the self-in-social-settings. This may be in the form of memory of past events, or reading people's behaviour in relation to one's own in the present, or using past learning to imagine future social interactions. So-called 'mirror' neurons in the motor cortex and other areas contribute to this social imaging function. These are groups of neurons which become active both when a person performs a particular action and when that person simply observes the same action performed by someone else. It is believed these neurons may play an important role in helping us to understand and predict the goals of another person's actions, because our brains can simulate (or model) the action, as if we ourselves were performing it. At a certain level, one can say that the brain does not strongly discriminate between actions as they are performed, imagined, or simply observed in others. On the whole it is abundantly clear that human intelligence (not surprisingly) is highly sensitive to other people as foci for cognitive attention, and whenever we are in any way interacting with or simply imagining other people, these social imaging functions will be actively at work. Furthermore, the way these things operate in adults extends on a positive bias for paying attention to other people as sensory stimuli (especially faces and eyes) that is built into the brain from birth.

Thirdly, there are structures toward the underside of the frontal lobe which work in league with other sub-cortical structures in carrying out evaluation functions. In basic terms this firstly involves recording (learning) associations between particular environmental settings or stimuli (e.g. objects, sounds, smells, etc), unpleasant or pleasant events occurring in association with those stimuli, and the arousal of motivated behaviour to avoid the unpleasant outcome or attain the pleasant one. Secondly, these associations can be re-aroused, on the occasion of encountering a similar enough situation or cueing stimulus, to, in effect, predict the associated pleasant or unpleasant outcome, and trigger preparatory arousal of the appropriate form of motivated behaviour. When this function is active, and predicts a potentially aversive outcome based on past learning; then via sub-cortical structures such as the amygdala, signals can be sent to other parts of the brain to interrupt the current behaviour, and switch to an alternative. The amygdala can also trigger arousal of the body's stress response systems, leading to the release of 'stress' hormones from the adrenal glands, including adrenaline and cortisol. (This is sometimes - unhelpfully I think - referred to as the 'fight or flight' response.) The evidence suggests that this evaluation function, including the prediction of aversive outcomes based on previous learning, plays a vital role in decision making processes during everyday social behaviour.

And finally there is what I will call a behaviour change function, carried out by interlinked cortical and sub-cortical structures located toward the centre of the brain. These structures can, in effect, receive signals from the parts of the brain carrying out evaluation functions, and act to stimulate and focus motivated behaviour toward desired outcomes or, conversely to rapidly interrupt and modify the current behaviour, if a potentially aversive outcome is predicted.

Considering these several functions together, it cannot be emphasised strongly enough that, in the normal course of things, human intelligence is very deeply invested in the relationship between self and other. And the whole cognitive, emotional and behavioural orientation of the brain can undergo rapid change, depending on how we perceive the behaviour of others toward us and how we behave towards others. It is also most useful to understand that, as we pay attention to, 'read' and evaluate the social environment, the brain is in effect constantly anticipating or predicting what is going to happen, based on current information from the environment and past learning. When events occur which suggest something unpleasant might happen, or which just run counter to current predictions, this will trigger evaluation functions and arouse attention, cognitive effort and behavioural motivation to 'do something!' in response. Consider how you would feel if, at a party with friends, you suddenly notice across the room someone you had an angry, unresolved argument with at work a few days before. Your heart rate and blood pressure would increase. You would become acutely aware of where the person is in the room. Your mind would start to rapidly work on how to respond; where to go, what to say.

How do these various functions operate together in the business of navigating everyday social environments? Firstly, we can say that the average, competent adult is likely to have learned and stored a large array of behavioural 'routines' or schemas tailored to achieving everyday objectives within familiar social settings. These will be represented and coordinated in working memory and implemented via the lateral PFC motor-control hierarchy, as we undertake everyday activities.

Whenever we are around other people, the chances are that our social imaging and evaluation functions will also be aroused and active; 'modelling', predicting and evaluating the goal-oriented behaviour of others in relation to one's self. Whether aware of it or not, we will be monitoring people's eyes, expressions, words and tone of voice, gestures and actions. Let's focus in particular on the evaluation dimensions of this for a moment. When some stimulus occurs which predicts a pleasant event - say, you see someone you like; they notice you and smile - then this is likely to increase positively-oriented behavioural arousal in the broad sense towards attaining the rewarding state, namely a warm interaction with that person. Conversely, let's say that in the context of moving along some familiar goal-oriented trajectory, some perceptions of or thoughts about another person trigger a negative association (and predict an aversive outcome), or simply run counter to one's current implicit expectations of 'what happens next'. This could be something quite subtle; a look, a movement, or a question you weren't expecting. It could be something perceived as putting you at risk of social isolation or criticism. What happens then is quite crucial. The evaluation system, via the amygdala, generates a form of neural warning signal, which typically operates to do a number of things. As described above, it will lead to an acute arousal of the body's stress response systems and release of stress hormones from the adrenal glands. It also will tend to stimulate arousal in those structures which carry out the behaviour change function. What this is able to do, in effect, is to interrupt and inhibit the current behaviour, to assimilate the changes, and (hopefully) to help shift behaviour accordingly, so as to resolve or avoid the anticipated negative outcome. As mentioned above, evidence from research suggests that these processes are involved in most everyday decision making where there is any emotional or motivational investment in the outcome. Thus, it would appear, affective structures such as the amygdala play a significant part in competent social decision making. People with discrete damage to the relevant 'evaluating' parts of the cortex or to the amygdala, can display quite normal general intelligence and awareness, but nevertheless tend to miss social cues, behave in a socially insensitive manner, and make decisions which are impulsive, often disadvantageous to their own goals and interests, and socially inappropriate. In other words, the deficit here seems particularly marked for social decision making - about actions which involve or impinge on other people. In basic terms we can say the evaluation function assists competent social decision making because, in effect, it renders the decision maker 'suitably' sensitive to social cues and the interests of others.

Clearly, this contrasts with the conventional picture of decision making (as used in economic theory and other places) as a wholly unemotional process of conscious, 'rational' calculation over explicit costs and benefits. However, it would equally be a mistake to think that higher-level cognitive processes, including conscious deliberation, play no part in everyday decision making or for that matter in social intelligence more broadly. Instead, it is better to think of a two-way process in which the (mostly) sub-cortical affective processes - driving broad changes in behavioural motivation and emotion - interact with cortex-based cognitive processes; so that both 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' influences are possible. For example, recent neuroscience research suggests that the interpretive attitude taken to emotionally arousing stimuli can influence the arousal of the amygdala, either up or down. For example, people who deliberately interpret pictures of hospital patients as involving danger to a close friend or relative have much higher amygdala arousal that those who interpret them in a detached way, or as leading to a positive outcome.

As we mature, and acquire greater social-behavioural competence and flexibility, we can also learn new associations between situations we encounter and affective arousal. As behavioural competence grows and changes, situations previously found to be negatively arousing and stressful can cease to be so. The development of competent social intelligence involves acquiring some capacities to, we may say, self-regulate one's own affective arousal and behaviour in response to attractive or aversive stimuli. These mature capacities are acquired via learning in a social environment; they cannot just be taken for granted. Although I won't go into it here, I believe an understanding of these issues in the terms outlined has much to say about some of the basic essentials of effective childrearing and early education.

There is obviously much more about all this that might be teased out and further discussed. There is much in the research of social cognition, decision making, motivation, or what have you which remains to be understood. Notwithstanding these caveats, however, I believe this brief sketch captures some of the main processes and functions underlying basic elements of social intelligence; and I use the word 'basic' with deliberate intent. For now, in order to achieve the goals of the article, it is necessary to move the discussion on a few steps.

The Vulnerability of Social Intelligence

As I have tried to make clear, the nature of the brain and the operations of social intelligence render us acutely sensitive to social stimuli of all kinds. This sensitivity can certainly work for us, and contribute to a social intelligence which is broadly disposed to deal with other people in a responsive, constructive and flexible manner. However, it can also be a double-edged sword, and render us vulnerable in various ways to the vicissitudes of our social relationships. The functions of social intelligence can be distorted through adverse experiences, whether in childhood, adulthood or both, and in effect diverted along a different trajectory, with the potential to produce various outcomes, all of which we commonly regard as problematic: common forms of mental illness, socially maladaptive or addictive behaviour, overly aggressive or passive behaviour towards others, and states of personal distress and unhappiness. Just as with competent social intelligence, the realisation of these kinds of outcomes is also determined in significant part at the interface between the individual and his or her social circumstances. And if these effects proliferate through a society, one can readily see it is likely to have real and important socio-political implications. Before we get to those issues, however, it is important to understand a little more of the nature of the basic vulnerability.

I suggested above that one of the roles of the evaluation function is to pick up on information predicting a possible unpleasant event (based on prior learning), and assist in 'driving' rapid modifications of behaviour aimed at avoiding or resolving the 'problem'. And it is what other people are doing, or what we are thinking about other people, which will be the main source of such information. The amygdala, and arousal of the body's stress response system, plays an important part in supporting these aspects of social intelligence. However, evidence from neuroscience research also shows that chronic hyper-arousal of the amygdala - that is, longer-term continuous or repetitive arousal above the normal awake-and-moving-around level - can lead to increased growth in amygdala neurons, greater sensitivity of the structure to external stimuli, and longer-term changes elsewhere in the brain. And these changes in the amygdala in particular have been consistently shown to be symptomatic of many of the more common kinds of mental health disorder, including depression and various kinds of anxiety disorder. On the whole, there is a wealth of evidence which strongly suggests that chronic arousal of the amygdala and the stress responses system plays a significant part in the on-set of these conditions.

What kinds of external conditions are likely to cause chronic amygdala arousal? There are two general kinds of situation that I would point to in particular as likely causes of these effects. The first is when a person is exposed over a period to a situation where they (courtesy of the evaluation activities in their brain) are anticipating something unpleasant, but as it happens they don't recognise or have available any way to behaviourally respond, in order to successfully avoid or resolve this anticipated outcome. In other terms we might say that they don't have (or see) any way to gain control over a stressful situation. For example, imagine a woman who has been occasionally subject to violence from her male partner over a few years, but who for some reason cannot bring herself to leave the relationship. It is quite likely that a person in this situation will, consciously or unconsciously, undergo repetitive anticipations of a repeat episode of violence. A particular time of day, a room in the house, a day of the week all might act as associative triggers for the evaluation system and other parts of the brain in this way, including arousal of the amygdala. Or imagine a wheat farmer subject to an extended drought and the failure of crops overall several years, and faced with major debts. He can't facing selling up, and he can't make it rain. Think of a person who's told she'll be laid off at work in a few months; or a family who can't keep up the mortgage payments.

The second kind of situation is perhaps more subtle but just as important. It involves the kinds of activity that many people would see as a normal part of everyday life, and that is engagement in extended periods of aroused, goal-directed behaviour in the wider social world of workplace, school, neighbourhood, shopping centre, train or freeway. And we should not forget to include regular and extended periods of exposure to the virtual social world as well. In all these settings, the social imaging and evaluation functions of your brain are likely to be repetitively aroused, and especially so in response to any activity where there is something socially and emotionally 'at stake'. Even if nothing 'bad' happens or is immediately expected to happen, the parts of your brain involved in reading and evaluating the social environment are likely to be going though fluctuations of increased arousal over these extended periods. Constant day-by-day exposure to these kinds of settings represents a form of background load, such that relatively small changes in circumstances or the cumulative effects of exposure over time may be enough to bring on one or other of those conditions we refer to as mental illness. And an important allied issue here is whether this kind of activity is adequately balanced with other times of relaxed, socially non-demanding activity, or just rest. Recent data on working hours in Australia suggest that, for many people, it is not.

These descriptions are not meant to exhaust the possibilities by any means, but to identify two kinds of conditions which are common in developed, liberal-democratic societies, and likely to be contributing to adverse effects on mental health and social behaviour across a significant portion of the population. (Although I won't go into it here, there is strong evidence to suggest that chronic hyper-arousal of the stress response is also a major risk factor for a number of physical health conditions including heart disease, diabetes and obesity.)

The Wider Social Context

The social and political implications of these matters become more explicit when this picture of social intelligence and its vulnerabilities is considered beside public health research conducted at the population level. Here the overall picture, consistently supported by a large body of research, is firstly that, within most nations of the world, the rates of common mental health problems are highest among those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, and then decrease as one goes up the scale. In other words, the people most likely to have a mental illness are those at the lower levels of income, household wealth, or educational attainment - people who are in relatively low-paid, insecure forms of work, or unemployed, who live in insecure forms of rental housing, or with inadequate access to public transport or other social services. And this is not just about those on the lowest rungs of the social ladder. In a major study of over 10,000 British public servants - all of whom had stable employment, reasonably good pay, access to free public health services, etc - rates of mental illness were found to be higher amongst the lower employment grades. (The notion that it's the highest paid executives who suffer the most stress is really a myth.) And interestingly, in relation to my comments above, having more limited control over one's work environment was found to be a particular risk factor in its own right.

Beyond these issues of socioeconomic status, there are also consistent differences found in the incidence rates of these conditions among parts of a population defined by other criteria. For example, mood and anxiety disorders tend to be more common in women than men, while with conditions such as alcoholism the pattern is reversed. Rates of many conditions tend to be higher in groups which are socially or economically marginalised; indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, or new migrants. Thirdly, at an international level, there is evidence to show that the overall rates of mental illness within national populations vary considerably between countries, and on the whole countries with greater income inequality tend to do worse than those which are more equal. It would appear, for example, that rates in the U.S. or Australia are two to four times higher than in some comparable OECD countries in Europe.

In recent years agencies such as the World Health Organisation have developed a measure to quantify what is called the 'burden of disease' in various parts of the world, by estimating the overall amount of life years compromised by physical or mental illness, or lost altogether because of premature death, within a particular population. According to this analysis, mental illness is now recognised as one of the top two or three causes of disease burden worldwide, and especially so in wealthy countries. Recent studies suggest that in the U.S., up to a quarter of the population is subject to a diagnosable mental health problem within any one year! This not a marginal issue.

Now, I would emphasise that a range of factors can and probably does contribute to the onset of a mental illness in any one individual. Not withstanding that, however, the proposition here is that exposure to various kinds of conditions of life, more common at the 'lower' end of the socioeconomic spectrum are a significant factor in their own right. Why; simply because such conditions tend to exploit the vulnerabilities discussed above. On top of the demands of everyday life on stress arousal, the on-going demands of getting by with low income, private rental housing, insecure work, no work, work where you exercise little control or what have you, and perhaps doing so with limited education or a lack of social supports, tend to be experienced as a source of chronic stress. Although not everyone will respond to such circumstances in the same way, these tendencies show up in populations. And that is why one needs both a picture of the neuropsychology of social intelligence, stress and chronic stress in the individual and the population-level evidence available through large scale public health research. And with both elements in view, one finds there is now a strong and compelling convergence developing between empirical evidence in cognitive neuroscience and public health, affirming that chronic stress arousal, brought on by extended exposure to challenging, hard-to-control social conditions, is a major risk factor in its own right, increasing the likelihood of mental and/or physical health problems. The evidence for this relationship is strongest in relation to the more common mental health problems such as the range of mood and anxiety disorders and substance abuse, and to some of our major physical health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. However, there are good reasons to suppose that it is also implicated in a range of other commonly identified social problems such as domestic violence or other violent crime, and other behaviours such as addiction to gambling or pornography.

Alongside the potential effects of stressful social conditions on adult psychology and health, there is another whole dimension to the problem; namely the way adverse social conditions can impact on children. Some of the obvious issues to consider are the likely effects of early abuse or neglect within families, and effects of violent media. Again, I would suggest, it is highly likely that the evaluation and stress arousal processes discussed above are involved in the way exposure to such conditions contributes to mental health and behavioural problems. Children exposed to adverse conditions early in life are likely to develop defensive coping behaviours and increased stress sensitivity, which then compromises their ability to function well in other settings, such as school. In other words, what may occur here is that an important element of competent social intelligence, namely the acquired ability to self-regulate one's states of affective arousal in response to social stimuli, is distorted, or under-developed. Other things being equal, this is then likely to carry over into increased vulnerability to social stressors, maladaptive social behaviour and/or mental illness in adulthood. Beyond these brief comments, however, I can only say that this is an area which warrants far more attention than I can give it here.

So, what does all this mean for the way we understand and interpret our society? What does it say about the way we conduct our social, cultural and economic affairs? Considered from a public health perspective, we all know that environmental conditions such as lack of sanitation or clean water supply, exposure to disease pathogens, or poor nutrition can and do have major effects on health outcomes in populations. In Australia and other developed countries we are fortunate to have largely resolved those problems. Furthermore, there is no doubt that our relatively egalitarian history, and commitment to public programs of education, health care, income support, housing and other basic services has and continues to have substantial benefits for sustaining and improving public health. Measures to control food quality and improve work conditions are also important factors. There is good reason to value these achievements and recognise the part they have played in our increased longevity, and social wellbeing. However, the business of understanding and responding effectively to our current needs requires a basic recognition of another dimension in the dynamics of our social development. Alongside the gains made for society at large by public efforts to improve the level and equity of material living standards, and through formal protections against various forms of exploitation or discrimination (and despite our continuing growth in average material wealth - according to conventional measures), there is an additional dynamic at work in the relationship between socio-political conditions and social wellbeing. (Indeed, the very fact of our making gains in these other areas now exposes this 'other' dynamic in a particularly pointed way.) Fundamentally, it is not about material or formal conditions as such (although it is influenced by those things), but about the relationship between our neuropsychological dispositions and our social conditions and relationships, as we experience them, and develop and learn within them. When society is viewed through this lens, one sees that various aspects of our present social, economic and cultural conditions are acting to exploit the vulnerabilities of social intelligence, and thereby undermine both social and individual well-being. There is currently a growing tendency in this direction, with the ability to propagate itself within social groupings and across generations.

Key aspects of our social conditions implicated in this process include: relatively wide disparities in income or level of education, insecure housing or employment, social isolation, individual carrying of risk, demanding or low-control work conditions, relationship breakdown, domestic violence or abuse, and violent or exploitative media. And it is likely also that the way we experience, interpret and attempt to cope with such proximal conditions of life is further influenced by broader cultural factors such as competitive individualism, racism, xenophobia and sexism (although this is harder to establish empirically). Such conditions, insofar as they are understood to 'get inside our heads' and affect health via a path of psychological experience and chronic stress, are sometimes referred to as 'psychosocial' conditions. And right now we are generating some psychosocial conditions which are increasingly inimical to psychological development and well-being, and the widespread realisation of competent social intelligence. We are eroding our societal ability to produce people with the basic capacities required to maintain constructive, equable social relations, and their own psychological equilibrium. The most damaging psychosocial conditions are generally visited on those subject to socioeconomic disadvantage. In some quarters, I suggest, there are families and communities which, as things stand, have effectively lost the ability to raise healthy, psychologically well-adjusted children.

The Politics of Social Intelligence - Neo-liberalism

When we consider how our social and economic conditions have changed over time, we must also consider a recent, major turn in our political history; the shift in Anglo-American and international politics during the 1970s and 80s to take up the so-called 'neo-liberal' economic prescriptions of economic theorists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman as the new conventional wisdom - replacing the Keynesian economics of the post-WWII era. This change was driven in large part by the election of the 'new right' Thatcher and Reagan governments in the early 1980s, and continued by leaders such as John Howard and George W. Bush. While not all of the social issues and changes alluded to above can be laid at the feet of this shift in our political fortunes, there is no doubt that the ideology and policies of these Governments has had major effects on many of the social conditions (as psychosocial conditions) which are known to affect psychological and physical health outcomes in populations.

The typical set of neo-liberal policy prescriptions includes: limiting the role of the State and maximising the role of free markets, privatisation of public services, decreased public spending on such things as public housing and transport, welfare payments and primary health care, an increased role for the private sector in education and health services, and deregulation of labour markets. The record of neo-liberal governments during the past 40 years makes it abundantly clear that these policies will generally widen the gaps of socioeconomic inequality, and increase the likelihood that people will be subject to stress-inducing conditions such as insecure housing and employment or heightened work demands, especially at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. At the same time those sectors of the population have found themselves with more limited access to quality public education and health care services. It is also clear that neo-liberal governments have shifted the cultural climate, and fostered a more individualised, competitive view of society. Evidence that such changes have undermined public health can be found in the fact that many of the European social democracies which have resisted the neo-liberal turn and maintained strong, egalitarian public programs and regulation of the market have much lower overall rates of mental illness that do countries like the U.S., the U.K. or Australia.

Furthermore, not only does a neo-liberal ideology tend to work these kinds of effects on social condition but, at the same time, it is built on certain basic suppositions about the way the world works which, in effect, severely limit its capacity to even begin to recognise the issues I've outlined. While the nuances are always more complex, I think the essential 'roadblock' to an adequate neo-liberal understanding of our situation can be characterised in fairly straightforward terms. Firstly, at the level of socioeconomic and political relations, neo-liberals are fundamentally committed to the idea of a free market economy as a self-guided, self-correcting system, where the competitive efforts and choices of autonomous individuals, both as producers and consumers, drive production toward areas of high consumption demand and away from areas of low demand, and keep prices in parity with what people are prepared to pay for some particular good. The essential role of the State on this conception is to use its coercive powers to maintain social order, protect private property and so forth: basically to maintain the background conditions which the market requires to function efficiently and otherwise to get out of the way. It is expected that this will generate major differences in people's economic positions, because - so the story goes - individuals who happen to have more saleable talents will be rewarded accordingly. Indeed, this is not only expected but regarded as useful and appropriate because such differences are seen as the spur which generates incentive and underpins the economic dynamism which, in the end, will make us all better off than we otherwise would be. Thus to accept that wide differences in socioeconomic conditions (and other intended features of a competitive, deregulated market system) are actually implicated in damaging the health and wellbeing of substantial numbers of citizens, and undermining social cohesion, is an absolute anathema to this belief structure. It challenges fundamental suppositions about how 'the system' is supposed to work, and what is more it introduces unwelcome reasons for the State to intervene in market outcomes in order to reduce inequalities.

Furthermore, this neo-liberal political sociology is attached to and feeds other yet more basic beliefs about human nature; about 'who we are' and 'who I am' and why we behave as we do. In particular, it attaches to compelling intuitions about us as autonomous, self-determining, choice-making individuals. It appeals to beliefs about the 'self-made' person who pursues their private interests against a neutral background of wider social or economic interactions, and succeeds or fails entirely according to his or her own efforts and talents.

And finally, for those who have wealth and power, these just-so stories are a convenient way to justify their own position, if only to their own conscience; to say not only why it's not morally objectionable for them to have so much while other have so little, but why they represent a positive good. 'If it weren't for people like me - the "winners" who drive the competitive system along - other people would likely be worse off.' The neo-liberal worldview provides its own internally coherent explanation of why the people 'at the bottom' are not successful: the occasional person may suffer injustices and be held up unfairly, but as a general rule the people who didn't succeed are those who either have less saleable talents, or just didn't try hard enough. In either case, there is nothing about the organisation of the system as such which is implicated in determining how well a person does compared to others.

Now, let me emphasise that if this picture captured nothing about the real world then it would not have been as persistent as it has been. The fault of the neo-liberal worldview, in a nutshell, lies with not with it being simplistically, wholly wrong, but with it being an idealised and ultimately utopian view of human nature and behaviour, which ends up explaining the world of socioeconomic interaction in a highly partial way. One key ingredient that is missing, I suggest, is in essence quite simple but nevertheless absolutely critical; and that is an appropriate recognition and understanding of the difference between looking at and explaining social variation from an individual and a population perspective.

The point may be neatly made with an analogy, adapted from the writings of the English epidemiologist, Michael Marmot. Let us say we have two garden beds, one filled with fertile soil (bed A), the other with nutrient-poor soil (bed B). We sow the two beds with a single variety of poppy seeds, water them equally, and ensure equal amounts of light. When the flowers reach maturity, differences in growth and health between two individual flowers from the same bed - given that they grew in the same environmental conditions - might lead us to suspect a genetic difference as the most likely explanation. However, a difference in average growth and health between bed A and bed B would recommend a different explanation, being that the two groups grew up in different soil conditions. Each of these approaches is appropriate to explaining aspects of difference amongst the flowers. Each points our explanatory efforts towards quite different causal factors. Globally, of course, we may also reasonably suppose that both genetic and environmental factors were at work in shaping the variation in growth and health across the whole population of flowers. (And if we simply didn't know about or test for the difference in soil conditions we might very well be tempted to explain all the variation by appealing to individual differences between the flowers.)

The basic neo-liberal disposition is to believe that competitive market conditions apply more-or-less equally to all over time, and thereby operate over differences between individuals (their personality traits, innate or learned talents, efforts and/or personal choices), and produce socioeconomic differences as a by-product of that interaction. Within the terms of the analogy they want to explain everything in terms of differences between individual flowers. That is what fits with the intuitive picture of the self-made, autonomous individual.

However, to follow the analogy a little further, we can say that in fact all the flowers had some level of vulnerability to reduced growth and compromised overall health because of poor soil conditions, while at the same time granting that (just as with the flowers in bed B) differences between individuals might render them more or less vulnerable in this way. No doubt a biologist could quantify both the general vulnerability and the differences in terms of the mechanisms the flower uses to take up vital nutrients from the soil and covert them into cell growth, etc. And it is in virtue of this general vulnerability that the plants in bed B did less well on average than those in bed A.

One main point of setting out the picture of social intelligence above, and describing how the relevant brain functions may be affected by external conditions, is to describe what I believe is one quite basic and more or less universal way in which human beings are normally vulnerable to chronic stress and compromised health under certain conditions. There is no contradiction in allowing at the same time that innate or acquired differences between individuals may render them more or less vulnerable when exposed to similar circumstances. And the evidence from public health research on mental health provides strong evidence that chronically demanding, stressful social conditions do exploit that vulnerability in the populations exposed to them, even though individuals may be differently affected. We may wish it were not so, but there it is.

The ability to interpret the interactions between people and social settings from both an individual and a group or population perspective, and thus to come to terms with the relationship between broad-scale socioeconomic conditions and differential health outcomes across whole populations (and differences in the extent to which competent social intelligence is attained), is an essential tool for effective economic, social and health policy. And although I have argued that those committed to a neo-liberal worldview are, as a political grouping, probably most averse to embracing such a view and its ethical and political implications; no doubt there are many others active within our political structures who are unfamiliar with, or reticent to employ, this way of looking at things. As I hope is now clear, when the full implications of the evidence are teased out, serious challenges emerge for the whole conduct of our cultural, social and economic affairs. This may be especially so for countries like Australia or the U.S. in particular which have so embraced neo-liberal ideology in recent times, but to a significant extent it would also be a challenge for many governments around the world. And, at a different level, it would present significant challenges to the hitherto standard practices of international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, and the neo-liberal prescriptions they have imposed on developing countries as a condition of loans; although, for present purposes, I will keep the discussion focused at the level of the nation-state.

Finally another philosophical issue of relevance here lies with a view often implicit within the social policy arguments of those on the right; that recognising the effects of adverse developmental and social conditions on health and social behaviour, especially among those of lower socioeconomic status, is somehow portraying them as passive victims of circumstance, with no responsibility for their own actions. And, as a corollary of that, it can be suggested that, if people are seen in this way, then it can be used to justify the gradual introduction of the 'nanny State'; managing every element of people's lives to somehow protect them from themselves. This is both unwarranted and simplistic. It is entirely appropriate to desire that people do take active responsibility for their own lives and actions, and the effects of their actions on others. It is entirely appropriate that our legal system generally holds individuals responsible for their actions. It is entirely to be desired that people develop the kinds of capacities for competent social intelligence which offer resilience to adversity, and help people navigate the ups and downs of life. However, the capacity to be resilient, and to be empathetically sensitive to the effects of one's own behaviour on others (which I suggest actually underpins active, intelligent responsibility-taking), cannot be just taken for granted. These capacities too are developed in individuals, and the extent to which they are realised in populations will also be sensitive to the kinds of conditions to which people are exposed. In fact, I would suggest, the realisation of competent social intelligence as I have described it is likely to support the attainment of these desirable qualities. If advocates of individual responsibility want people to exercise these capacities then they ought to take account of, and take some responsibility for, the kinds of social conditions in which they are realised.

The Politics of Social Intelligence - Social Democracy

By contrast with neo-liberal ideology, a social-democratic (or a 'social-liberal') philosophy upholds egalitarian, universalist principles of genuine opportunity and decent standard of living for all. These are commonly expressed in political commitments to programs of public education, health and housing, regulation of the labour market, well-funded pension and unemployment support, and so on. Underpinning these commitments is a fairly pragmatic view that public spending in these areas is a prudent, long-term investment in some of the fundamental capacities for social cohesion which liberal-democratic States require to sustain themselves. As a political philosophy, social-liberalism originally developed in response to the extreme inequalities of wealth and poverty which emerged in the first period of 'classical' laissez-faire liberalism, during the industrial revolution. It understood well (then) that leaving a free market, capitalist system to its own devices will tend to produce stark inequalities of wealth and social conditions; which are not only morally dubious but in fact are likely to produce very significant social costs (including opportunity costs).

According to the analysis ventured above, then, one would expect the implementation of these social-liberal political commitments (as compared to the performance of a neo-liberal system) to reduce population exposures to socioeconomic conditions implicated (as psychosocial conditions) in undermining psychological and physical health: insecure or poor quality housing, low income, insecure employment and unemployment, poor access to health or transport services, low educational attainment and relatively high degrees of economic inequality. And indeed, there is evidence that this is so. If one looks at measures of public health and social well-being in those social democracies which best exemplify a social-liberal philosophy (especially the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries), they are generally outperforming by a substantial margin recently 'neo-liberalised' countries such as Australia, the U.S. and the U.K; including in relation to mental health.

As it happens, of course, Australia and the U.S. have (for the moment) turned back toward the centre-left side of the political spectrum. Although the social-democratic parties occupying that space have clearly shifted to the right in some respects, and adapted to the prevailing neo-liberal orthodoxies of the recent past, they are nevertheless still taking some steps to dismantle the neo-liberal policy architecture of their predecessors. In this context, it seems to me that there are a few key questions to ask. Are current, real-world forms of social-democratic politics really an adequate response to the kinds of social dynamics and risks outlined above? Although this politics is likely to be a definite improvement on neo-liberalism, are there dimensions of the relationships between social conditions, chronic stress, health and wellbeing which it is not well placed to recognise or address? And if there are these limitations, what changes are required?

To begin, we can say that, to the extent that increased priority is given to the 'standard' suite of social-democratic policies and programs mentioned above, with an emphasis on reducing socioeconomic inequalities and inequities, then this is very likely to have important, preventative and beneficial long-term effects on population health. And at least we can say that such measures have a recognised place within the range of activity which a contemporary social-democratic Government is prepared to contemplate. (Although, that is not to say that they'll necessarily be implemented adequately and/or effectively.) However, without wanting to skate over these issues, I want to move to describe several areas where I believe commonly practiced forms of social-democratic politics falls short of what is required, and is not well placed to respond adequately to the real scope and nature of the problems I've described.

Firstly, many social-democratic Governments (including in Australia) continue to expend the bulk of their day-to-day concerns on the project of 'growing the economy' within an increasingly volatile and fluid global framework. And, for reasons I've outlined, the carrying out of this project as our primary social purpose is not easily dissociable from growing problems with basic forms of social intelligence and individual well-being. Some of the social and economic conditions we are creating as part of our economic project are causal contributors to this social effect. It is true that the most urgent reasons for a shift away from our societal addiction to growth, and our frenetic consumption of resources, are to limit global warming and adapt to a post-fossil fuel economy. The general tone of the critique from a social point of view is more to say that we are operating on a seriously flawed (and often tacit) assumption; that our growth project, as conventionally understood and measured, is and will remain an effective means to deliver a society in which people are generally able to flourish, live a satisfying life, and raise new generations equipped to carry on that legacy. Even if the environmental imperatives were not as they are, on social grounds alone this assumption is just not warranted. On a whole number of recognised measures the evidence is now abundantly clear; while increasing levels of public health and wellbeing do typically correlate with economic development up to a point, the two lines then tend to diverge. More and more growth and material wealth does not equal more and more wellbeing. On the contrary, in many wealthy nations, there is in fact a growing disconnection between the growth project (as we presently pursue it) and desirable social outcomes. Furthermore, substantial and increasingly expensive false economies are occurring, as we propagate social conditions in which people fail to thrive, and then try to pick up the pieces afterward through expensive, remedial health, welfare and justice systems. We need a social and economic project which is reinvested with an understanding of the social conditions required to promulgate basic capacities for social intelligence. We need a social project which is redefined with a different sense of practical purpose and priority.

Secondly, on a point allied to the first, social-democratic Governments need a more coherent and psychologically astute understanding of what it is they are trying to do, and what will be most effective, in the kinds of social services they do deliver; including those which in one sense or another are targeted at the less well off. Even though the delivery of services in areas such as education, social housing, public transport, health, unemployment support and so on are indeed important, in our current conditions they are not enough. And if they are construed as 'enough' - as an adequate set of Governmental and societal responses to social needs - then such a construal to some extent misses crucial aspects of the equation - no matter how worthy or well-intended it might be. The key point to grasp here is this: from a perspective which recognises the importance of the psychosocial, one can still say that the presence or absence of certain material conditions - secure housing, access to well-equipped schools, adequate income, etc - are crucial determinants of the psychosocial environment. So if access to these conditions is lacking, it will play out in negative effects on population health. However, in present day environments there are other factors at work too, other parts of the psychosocial environment, which are having effects of their own and may in fact detract from the benefit people might otherwise get from having access to adequate housing, schooling and so on. There are two main issues here which warrant attention. One, that an erosion of resources for social intelligence, and a concomitant uptake of maladaptive social behaviour can, as it were, become 'condensed' within micro-social spaces of families, neighbourhoods, gangs or other social groupings. Thus these groupings can propagate a micro-social environment which is damaging and dysfunctional for its members and, especially as it manifests within families, is likely to be perpetuated across generations. 'Background' conditions of socioeconomic inequality have very likely contributed to the formation of such groupings, but that does not mean that the problem can be easily solved by remedial change to those conditions alone. It may very well be that the psychological resources within such a grouping are at a point where, even if there are improvements in their access to public housing, education or health services, employment, etc, there may not be enough in the way of immediate capacity to take up and benefit from those opportunities in a sustained way. Thus it may be the case that some form of more decisive intervention and intensive support is required for the time it takes to interrupt the momentum of pathological relations, and assist people to begin to rebuild some personal resources, behaviours and social relationships conducive to well-being. Those who, whether from the political left or right, critique such actions as an unacceptable interference with civil liberties or rights may or may not have a point depending on the circumstances, but they should also recognise that self-determination, in order to be a force for good in someone's life, requires in practice certain kinds of basic psychological and behavioural resources (for social intelligence) and a reasonably stable social environment, neither of which can simply be taken for granted.

Secondly, there are good reasons for thinking that such 'pockets' of social dysfunction are in fact just the more severe part of a more widespread social phenomenon, where a range of relatively recent changes in social and economic conditions across society at large, coupled with some loss of relevant skills and capacities within families themselves, are impacting negatively on our overall capacity to raise children in ways which are conducive to social intelligence and general cognitive development. For example, evidence strongly suggests that various forms of direct, loving interaction and play between parents and young children provide crucial material for basic functions of social intelligence, such as tracking other people's attention, gestures and facial expressions. When both parents work, when the TV is used as a babysitter, when Mum or Dad are preoccupied with their own tasks or recreations, when there is no extended family available; the cumulative effect may be that these interactions just happen much less often. It seems to me that many contemporary social-democratic Governments have barely begun to acknowledge the significance of this issue, and its implications for the future if, as now, it remains largely unaddressed.

Further to this, a third main issue to mention, again in relation to 'background' conditions not often addressed within standard social-democratic programs, concerns the beliefs, social norms, ideas, messages and images which are propagated through a social grouping as information. One of the outcomes of social and political change over the last several decades is a strengthened cultural view of ourselves as individual agents (and families) operating in a competitive, atomised, economically stratified society. There are many ways in which this meta-cultural view is able to infiltrate our everyday interactions with, and perceptions of, those around us, and by courtesy of our acute sensitivity to social norms and behaviour, create sources of acute or chronic stress. The tendency to keep up with social norms of home ownership, consumer goods, travel and so on means many are functioning in a climate of high personal debt, where the margin for error is slight. For those unable to meet these kinds of implied social expectations, one suspects that alongside the everyday demands of getting by, there is an insidious awareness of difference; of 'what I haven't got that others have'. On another front, large scale empirical studies have shown that competitive hierarchical workplaces are also likely sources of chronic stress, especially for those toward the lower end of the hierarchy, who tend to have less control over their work conditions.

Another concern with the cultural environment lies with ideas about and portrayals of 'other kinds of people' circulated via various forms of mass media. We are subject every day to images of violence and aggression, which (as previously noted) at a certain level of brain function are not neatly discriminated from the actions of those with whom we are directly interacting. It is perfectly possible, and indeed quite likely, that descriptions of some 'other' person or group as somehow antagonistic or fundamentally alien to 'us' - as terrorists, paedophiles, criminals, extremists or what have you - may tap into the evaluation functions in our brains and, by constant repetition, contribute to chronic stress. In both of the above dimensions of culture, of course, the actions and ideological dispositions of political leaders and governments can exercise considerable influence on the overall tenor of cultural conditions. Our propensities to be psychologically and affectively aroused by presentation of apparent threats can be, and routinely is, exploited for cheap political gain.

As a final point, it is clear that chronic stress arousal not only increases risks of mood and anxiety disorders but can also increase a person's propensity for addictive behaviours (and this may be especially so for men). Basically, it would seem that such behaviours can be found to offer a certain kind of superficial, short-term psychological relief from the heightened sense of anxiety that can accompany chronic stress; although in the longer term addictions tend to make things worse rather than better. And the fact is that we now have a far greater degree of access to potential sources of addictive attachment. Alongside traditional favourites such as alcohol and tobacco, various other legal and illegal drugs are widely used, and the three other major issues for concern are on-line gambling, gaming and explicit pornography, all of which of course are available 24 hours a day.

What Should a Social-democratic Politics Do?

For all these kinds of reasons, it is important for social-democratic institutions and people who actively support a social-democratic politics to face up to some significant changes in the way that politics is conducted. The challenges can be conceived both in terms of general operating principles, and more specific changes in spending priorities, policies and programs. On the former point, it must be accepted that driving economic growth (conventionally considered) as a supposed means of securing social well-being and a better 'standard of living' for the less well off is now inadequate to the reality of our position. Above a certain (in fact fairly basic) level of material wealth and opportunity, it's a range of other factors which begin to matter much more. The superficial power and confidence embodied by our skyscrapers, freeways, McMansions, and plasma TVs are masking a creeping erosion of the basic psychosocial 'infrastructure' which helps sustain our human relationships. The growth project is busy adding a new penthouse to the roof, while ignoring what the added weight is doing to the foundations. And on an allied point, the project of trying to ensure that the less well off keep up with the wage-levels, material standard of living, consumerist values and expectations of the better-off is not really on the mark either. Limiting socioeconomic inequality definitely does matter (a lot), but that certainly doesn't require that the standard of equity be the material 'standard of living' of the current upper-middle class. And of course for environmental reasons that standard is just not feasible in any case.

Furthermore, although the traditional forms of egalitarian, social-democratic public policies and programs are important and must be properly funded and maintained, they are not enough, and indeed in some ways are currently not well-targeted at the real problems. Social-democratic Governments and political actors must come to recognise and truly understand the sociological, economic and political significance of disparities not only in material conditions or formal protections, but in psychosocial conditions. I am convinced that, along with adaptation to climate change, this is a step in political understanding and genuine socio-cultural development our societies need to take.

Perhaps most importantly of all, especially in countries where neo-liberalism has been and continues to be influential, social-democratic governments and political parties must recover a genuine sense of moral responsibility for the common public good, and reclaim a legitimate role for the State to provide universal public services and to intervene where necessary in the conduct of the market economy.

In more practical policy/programmatic terms, I believe there are a number of immediate, interrelated changes required to what we do now. I have emphasised the potential public health benefits in universalist programs of public education and public housing; so improvement or extension of those may well be appropriate. Beyond that, it is widely recognised in most wealthy democracies the vast bulk of Government spending on so-called 'health' services is currently put into expensive, remedial forms of treatment for existing forms of ill-health. There must be a fundamental shift in thinking and priorities here, to place greater emphasis on preventatively addressing and alleviating the 'upstream' effects of adverse social, economic and psychosocial conditions on child development, and mental and physical health across populations - especially at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. It is becoming increasingly clear that only this kind of preventative action can genuinely address the unsustainable growth in the costs of 'downstream' remedial health care services; not to mention other kinds of preventable costs in areas such as policing and the legal system, education, welfare payments, foster care, and so on. Primary health care and health education services delivered at a localised level are an essential part of this picture. As part of this effort, a far greater priority must be given to support, education and services for families with young children - and ideally, one suspects, this ought to be dovetailed with existing service outlets for childcare and primary education. Ultimately, dealing with issues in the family/early childhood environment is a far more efficient use of resources, because it can circumvent so many problems later in life.

Apropos of several points in the discussion above, there is a range of areas where regulation of private sector activity is likely to be the most effective and direct route to achieving preventative gains in public health over time - by reducing the damaging effects of various psychosocial conditions on social intelligence and well-being. Areas to be considered for stronger regulation (or improved forms of regulation) include: progressive taxation; minimum wages and working conditions, including paid parental leave and maximum working hours; access to alcohol and gambling through licensed venues; access to on-line porn and gambling; and the advertising and sale of junk food.

Long-term unemployment is a significant risk to mental health and overall well-being, and needs to be addressed with measures such as appropriate financial support and access to services while unemployed, along with remedial education and training, and financial incentives to re-join the workforce.

Finally, there is an absolutely crucial point to be made about the role of government, and the goal of a healthy society, which transcends specific arguments such as those above about the how and why of family support, early education, health care, industrial relations, housing or what have you. Notwithstanding my points above, I would strongly suspect that Governments could take up some or all of these suggestions, and while it would make a difference, it would not be enough. Why not? All of the points above more or less fit within the current kinds of institutional divisions between Government ministerial responsibilities, public agencies, and publicly funded services. But some of the things which need to be done insistently cut across such divisions. And in any case, surely in the end we're not just looking for a society where governments and the agencies and service providers just 'do more (and more)' in one sense or another. The rebuilding of the necessary 'social infrastructure' of mutual support, care for children, healthy places, work-life balance and so on is not a task which Governments can simply carry out on our behalf. Civil society at large must engage itself in and take a significant measure of responsibility for this social project. Furthermore, there are all the imperatives of climate change to consider, as we try to imagine our way into a society which has massively reduced emission of greenhouse gases.

For all these reasons I suggest, we must pay more attention to the way we physically occupy the landscape and, most importantly of all perhaps, the way we design our cities - with a view to making places conducive to living in ways that are genuinely sustainable, both in environmental and social terms. Not only can the 'infrastructure' of our lives work to reduce effects on climate, it can conduce a greater quality of sociality, mutual support, community, and egalitarianism; all known to be protective against common forms of mental illness. Without going into any detail, this is to envision a social and urban infrastructure where people experience themselves first and foremost (but not only) as a member of a 'human-scale' community, and generally tend to conduct a greater proportion (but not all) of their activities on that scale. In other words, it is to propose that we redesign and gradually reorganise our cities as a collection of such communities. Within such a model, one can then think at different scales, where some bits of the infrastructure serve only one community (like combination primary school-child care-early education centres), others service a number (like hospitals), and still others (such as the public transport system) serve them all. This is not utopian, but a necessary and practical step to enable us to address multiple problems in a coherent way. With effort, I believe it is the kind of vision through which the resources of civil society might be more effectively engaged in a project of social renewal. But the business of leading and coordinating such change must fall to Government, and it precisely is not something which readily fits the conventional divisions between Ministerial responsibilities and public agencies. It requires an overarching plan, to which Government as a whole is committed, and which then informs, guides and limits activities in each particular portfolio area. The World Health Organization program of 'healthy cities' has already inspired much positive activity in this direction, but it all need to become much more embedded in the everyday thinking and activity of government at all levels.

With all of the issues I've raised, along with the profound challenges of responding to climate change, it seems to me that, as human societies, we would be very well-served to definitively claim and adopt the local or regional scale of human relations (whether social, cultural or economic) as the fundamental building block of a healthy, sustainable social order.

Conclusion

I am asking the reader to consider the possibility that 'underneath' the variability between individuals in their thoughts and beliefs, desires and emotions there are certain basic ways in which we respond to our social circumstances. Depending on the ways these go - in an individual or in large numbers of individuals - they can make a big difference to that person's ability to feel well, to be mentally and physically healthy and to conduct reasonably flexible responsive, constructive relationships with others. When our capacities for social intelligence (and self-management of our affective responses) are under-developed, when our cognitive-affective equilibrium becomes unbalanced because of chronic stress and the constant demands of trying to keep up with our own life demands, this is likely to cause problems; for health, for our subjective sense of well-being, or for behaviour toward others. The demands of chronic stress arousal can lead to mental illness. It can change how we feel and think. In certain circumstances it can in fact render us more susceptible to violent behaviour, addictions, or even to the superficial attractions of simplistic or extremist ideologies. These things are symptomatic of changes in brain functions mediating the basic dynamics of behavioural motivation, attraction and aversion, and involving some brain structures (like the amygdala) which have remained largely unchanged in the mammalian brain over millions of years of evolution. Why; because they serve basic functions in shaping our cognition and behaviour as members of a social species.

Contrary to superficial appearances and expectations about how happy we're all supposed to be, I believe a growing number of people in our society is harbouring deep feelings of weariness with, or numb detachment from, the constant demands of the world; and the presence of threats and uncertainties which our individual actions seem unable to resolve. Those people who at any one time are subject to the more severe and protracted feelings of anxiety and sadness or detachment we label as mental illness are in fact only one part of a wider spectrum of effects which reaches far further into the population than most of us would be prepared to contemplate. In a country such as Australia there are many things we do well in this regard; to foster what I call social intelligence and to limit people's exposure to social conditions likely to distort or undermine social intelligence in the ways I've described. But, just as with climate change, we must consider the trends, and ask what our current direction as a society bodes for the future. And just as with climate change, we can only do that as a society if we are armed with a clear understanding of the key variables which, depending on how they change, are able to drive results along different trajectories. And so we come again to the political dimensions of the problem.

What happens if the levers of political and economic power in society are largely operated by people whose choices, attitudes and behaviours are strongly constrained by folk-psychological beliefs about who we are, and why we do the things we do? These beliefs may be tacitly accepted or actively endorsed (and go on to affect one's behaviour) because they are couched within a shared ideology or set of group norms, seem to resonate with one's own experience, or conveniently justify privilege. Indeed, long-standing political beliefs may also become embedded in the practices and methodologies of institutions to the extent that they appear (or disappear) as common sense, conventional wisdom, or just the way we do things around here. And then, what happens if these apparently convincing intuitions are inadequate to a more complex and subtle reality? Well, then we are subject to a serious risk; being that the conduct of our political institutions and deployment of public resources goes on being filtered through a form of working social theory just at a point when events are shifting in ways that theory is in no position to adequately explain or respond to.

I say the current epidemic of common forms of mental illness and other social dysfunction in our society is just such a case in point and that, for various reasons, the political psychology of neo-liberalism is especially poorly placed to even being to contemplate the fact that the socioeconomic and cultural conditions its political prescriptions have in a real sense intended to bring about (informed by a utopian theory of how the world works) are actually implicated in causing serious psychological distress, maladaptive social behaviour, and mental and physical illness in a substantial portion of the population. However, amongst our political leaders, it is no only neo-liberals who will find this reality difficult to contemplate, because of course it represents a challenge to the overall economic project of continuous economic growth, and the widespread perception of ourselves as competitive individuals who desire and can cope with a more or less constant imperative to 'go forward', compete, work harder and acquire ever more material goods. It challenges the view of the person with a mental health problem as merely suffering an organic condition, and a defined illness, which comes about because of some regrettable combination of their genetic dispositions, their life history and behaviour, and a balance of chemicals in their brain but certainly nothing to do with us, and the social conditions we promulgate together.

What happens if we as a society simply carry on as we are, for the most part unwilling or unprepared to understand the complex dynamics between the social brain and the social conditions in which we grow up, live, work and age, unwilling to understand what's at stake in that relationship? Well, we then put ourselves in danger of gradually and blindly blundering into a situation where the noise becomes the signal, and our social conditions become increasingly toxic to psychological equilibrium and well-being, and the resulting deficits in or distortions of social intelligence are promulgated from one generation to the next.

Matt Fisher is currently working as a Research Officer at the Southgate Institute for Health, Society & Equity, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia. He is also active in the Australian Green’s Party. Matt can be contacted at matt.fisher@flinders.edu.au.