From Strength to Strength
In his book, From Strength to Strength, Arthur C. Books illustrates how our two “intelligences” peak in different human seasons. This is based on work published in 1971 by Cattell (Abilities: Their Structure, Growth and Action). Our “fluid intelligence” is the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems—raw smarts. This peaks in the first half of life. “Crystallized intelligence” is the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past and according to these authors increases with age through the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s (and may not diminish until quite late in life, if it all). This of course has also been described for millennia as “sage wisdom.”
I propose that our current “crisis” in healthcare will be solved by a transgenerational “think tank” that uses BOTH the raw smarts of youth with the wisdom of years of experience.
Upstream Well-being Solutions is my contribution to the discussion. I desire to give back to my community to help find “upstream” solutions to help foster both institutional health, and individual and family well-being.
My unique contribution to the discussion is prior experience in a resource poor country where non-physician primary healthcare clinicians were leveraged decades ago, 32 years of serving a rural community on PEI as a family doctor, experience as an early adopter of computerized medical records, and lastly as an occupational medicine physician where I saw the key role of employers in their workers’ health.
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