An invisible population of individuals without fixed abode.

1. An invisible population of individuals without fixed abode. Adapted from a contribution to the ‘complexity’ conference ‘Modes of Thinking’ (Paris, France: http://modes.isce.edu/ May 2013), available at: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByBNWxF1cB5oRUVNeDRUdVVFd28&usp=sharing dr m bouchon, Topologic Ecologist & field researcher drmbouchon@gmail.com

2. What our usual explanationsdo not show The ‘way up’, linked to development, ‘advancement’ and Complex-Adaptive-Dynamic frameworks of systems that ‘have to survive’ have some unforeseen consequencesin daily life: Hidden counter-productive effects ‘Falling’; Life impairing effects on the body’s vegetative functions  An increasing population invisible to statistics drmbouchon@gmail.com

3. Undescribed older populationof Vehicle Dwellers • Partial-Itinerants in the outback and travelling highways,on the edge of the societal world, is way of living without fixed abode that is undescribed in academic literature. Often inadequately judged as a ‘preferred’ nomadic lifestyle, a ‘choice’ made against stability or sedentarism, it can be motivated by stress and ‘Human Pressure’ under many guises, and a pressing absolute need connected to health, to live outdoors and walk, ‘away from people’ (crowding). These are very different from ‘Grey Nomads’ but like them, make short stays on edges of towns to restock supplies. This situation is economically, societally, and medically invisible. Our usual explanations miss, for example, the overtaxed capacity to adapt to and participate in organised society in the expected ‘regular’ ways.There is no adequate model known to ‘The Community of Science’ to understand this. • On the other hand, Homelessness in cities is known, studied, and includes both young individuals and families, too often morally judged as a result of ‘bad’ decisions/behaviour. ‘Sleeping rough’ in a vehicle on the edge of town, after falling into instability, induced by a ‘last straw’ event (often an injury in a normal life) leads to another forced way of homelessness, with employment loss and chronic health difficulties, physical and mental (as opposed to temporary diseases). This is little discussed or surveyed. In both these cases, social support, programs, and emergency services are inadequate. They do not support emerging ‘out of survival mode’ but reinforce it. drmbouchon@gmail.com

4. Surviving in a vehicle • Among those without fixed abode, some are lucky enough to see their situation coming and have sufficient means to set up their vehicles for long-term living. Many itinerant older men living outside urban areas invent very clever ways to improve their vehicle’s functionality as a shelter. • Others are thrown into vehicle dwelling without warning or preparation, and without means to adapt it. • Either way, this increasing population has no access to shelter or land, and are penalised in many ways. Older women simply are not there, because post-menopausal diminishment, - which actually requires walking much more than for men - is so drastic that it makes them incapable of living without shelter – they end up in insalubrious ‘house-arrest’ style accommodation. drmbouchon@gmail.com

5. Fallen through the cracks of safety nets link ‘Homeless’ in insalubrious conditions: ‘Itinerant’: at 80 years old, 8 years in healthy nature No place to be: Why? drmbouchon@gmail.com

6. ‘Wrong decisions’? 80 years old: 8 years being pushed on, looking on the roads for a place to not be forced to ‘move on’ …or just too much having to adapt, and little choice At the edges of ‘The Real World’, of the fabric of the ‘World of Human Organised Society’ [WHOS], ‘what choice’? ‘What purpose’ is there in the daily chaos of just trying to survive the organised pressures and denied access to basic resources, land, trying to keep up with the ‘speed of change’, cope with the multi-factor societal rules and complications? Such situations work differently than dominant or mainstream society. In these conditions, choice is taken away. drmbouchon@gmail.com

7. Choice lost, not ‘wrong’: just unable to ‘keep up’ This occurs in an imposed ‘larger context’ often ignored: • Withinthe organised societal context of physical/lifestyle constraints and binding social rules that create marginalisation • Under difficult living conditions that impose stress (the physiological survival mode), denying stability & establishment of a place in society and on land • Pushed to the edgeinto disturbance, pushed to limits of physiological resistance, systematically & repeatedly pushedto extremes of human resilience – ‘That’s how Life works’ is the story. • But those pushed too farare blamed for their perturbed ‘stress adaptation’ or social adaptation capacity and their entire lives devalued because of the consequences: Others react negatively (e.g. deny ’earning a living’ to the ‘unstable’, deny rental, social exclusion, deny treatment for women with diffuse syndromes told ‘It’s all in your head’, ignored by society, etc.) The most basic physiological needs are too often ignored. drmbouchon@gmail.com

8. The most basic and pressing needsof Vehicle Dwellers Access to: • Land to stay (instead of car parks, rare free camps time-limited, being forced to ‘move one’ to another place where ‘unwanted’ is still the slogan) • Hygiene and conditions salubrious enough to take care of injuries • Shade to keep fresh food, for persons and pets, for vehicle itself • Shelter from difficult weather, wind, rain • Proper nutrition and Fresh foods (difficult to keep from rotting, costly in small amounts) • Water sources (taps, hot shower) • Safety (from hooligans, but also well-to-do people’s complaints, pressures from rangers and police to ‘move on’… which only displaces the problem) Note: Vehicle Dwelling imposes such physically harsh living conditions that no woman past age 50 appears able to bear them. These individuals are usually older men, sometimes younger and with a dependent child. drmbouchon@gmail.com

9. Adaptation, survival, complexity “I think the next century will be the century of complexity.” Stephen Hawking – January 2000, cited by Sanders Link “Complexity science […] represents a dramatic new way of looking at things; not just looking at more things at once. Insights from complex systems research provide a new theory-driven framework for thinking about, understanding and influencing the dynamics of complex systems, issues and emerging situations. Complexity science represents a growing body of interdisciplinary knowledge about the structure, behavior and dynamics of change in a specific category of complex systems known as complex adaptive systems — open evolutionary systems in which the components are strongly interrelated, self-organizing and dynamic. […] To survive, the system as a whole must adapt to change.” T. Irene Sanders, Executive Director - 2003 Link Can all situations can be modelled in terms of survival?... But ‘living’ is very different from just ‘surviving’ under Human Pressure. drmbouchon@gmail.com

10. Focus on survival, critical, emergency… If a general perspective can be detoured from its context and used outside its domain of validity, it will be. This must be taken into account by thinkers to reduce the far-flung ‘butterfly’ consequences. The chaos-complexity & dynamic-adaptive frameworks applied out of their domain of validity cause the same problems as Darwin’s adaptation. Originally Darwin studied small physical variations, not large ‘change’, and adaptations to local physical conditions, not global, large or sudden trans-Formations of human behaviour, mind, society, or economies. His ‘adaption’ does not apply logically to habituated brain-driven survival reactions to ‘adapt to stress’ or chronic psycho-socio-economic compensations, all of which lead to deformation and degenerative disease, rather than generate new species. Are we back to the old dominant Eugenics cultural messages ? “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” “Keep up or be left behind” “Survival of the fittest” drmbouchon@gmail.com

11. Pushing the envelope… too far The adaptive / complex frameworks relate to critical survival & organised large groups Applying these ‘higher’ organisation frameworks to individuals with sensitive physical needs that are never met, leads these into daily life difficult conditions, not improvement. They do not belong in the domain of validity described by social and medical sciences (normality), and are not included in policies. They do not usually organise in groups and do not fit the ‘best models’ of human behaviour that fit ‘most’ people and groups. The dominant societal direction of winding ‘up’ does not take into account that ‘higher’ functioning is already at work in the life of some people with sensitive system, body, and brain, and cannot handle more without profound damage and ‘falling’. Pushing them higher pushes them too far, into crisis instability. Note: ‘The envelope’ is a geometric notion that can be modelled by a topologic ‘Boundary’. drmbouchon@gmail.com

12. The common model of ‘adaptation to stress’ is inadequate for people subject to crises The Ups & Downs of societal life can lead to catastrophic life crises, chronic syndromes, and worsening Up/Downs. A practical model describes how this works. In the ‘not well understood’ chronic flaring syndromes that affect sensitive individuals in general (e.g. fibromyalgia), the medical and social habit of seeking ‘balance’based on: ‘dope dampen’ (Eisinger & Dupond 1996 Link), supposed to facilitate ‘adaptation to stress’, can actually worsen the Up & Down pattern and induce bipolar disorder, for example. This strategy exhausts both body /personal resources, creating ever increasing resonant crises and ‘economic loads’. Findings from Ph.D. on models of body, health, and the ‘physical world’ at human scale([Bouchon2008 PhD thesis , Bouchon 2011) drmbouchon@gmail.com

13. Counter-productive effect of the generalised focus on survival and critical frameworks: Why are our ‘best models’-driven actions ‘never quite’ enough? Why can’t we ever catch up with the damage? The counter-productive consequences of waiting for crisis before acting are disastrous for the physical world (body, planet): What could be done simply, here and now, to prevent reaching limits & critical conditions is not done, is made a practical impossibility, until too late, and crises are systematically induced. Topologic Ecology models this progression with an animated geometry and gives access of ‘Basic Options’ that do not establish instability and do not create a hidden domain ofexclusionfrom both society and health. drmbouchon@gmail.com

14. ‘Basic’ topologic geometry ‘gauges’ globally the approach of boundary conditions, and how not to reach crises. It allows to do what needs to be done before the situation becomes a crisis or act somewhere in which the problem is not yet measurable.It gives access to the less resource-costly ‘Basic Options’. Thank you http://research-wildlife-humans.yolasite.com/ Work adapted from visual materials in Ph.D. thesis dr m. bouchon (UWS, 2008) and the Topologic Ecology research program and fieldwork developed since. drmbouchon@gmail.com

15. References Sunshine Coast Daily (Australia). 2011. Homeless camping out.http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/homeless-camping-out/1177575/ Eisinger J, Dupond JL. Faut-il doper les fibromyalgiques ?[Article in French] [Should patients with fibromyalgia be doped?]. Rev Med Interne. 1996. 17(12):977-978. Stephen Hawking. 2000. Cited in http://www.complexsys.org/downloads/whatiscomplexity.pdf T. Irene Sanders. 2003. What is complexity?http://www.complexsys.org/downloads/whatiscomplexity.pdf Bouchon m. ‘Nexial Topology’ situation modelling: Health ecology and other general perspectives. 2008 thesis. University of Western Sydney, Australia. http://sites.google.com/site/bouchon2008thesis/ This presentation Bouchon M. (2013 May). An invisible population of individuals without fixed abode.PowerPoint presentation (16 slides) adapted from a contribution to the conference ‘Modes of Thinking’ (Paris, France: http://modes.isce.edu/ May 2013) and including some fieldwork findings. Corresponding author dr m bouchon (Ph.D.) email: drmbouchon@gmail.com