Somethings it is better to remain quiet and listen. Knowledge has been known to enter the mind through the eyes and ears. Shake a mixture of salt and water and, if there is not too much of it, the salt will soon disappear—dissolved in the water. However, shake a mixture of water and an oily substance and something quite different occurs. The oil does not dissolve and disappear; instead, if forms droplets dispersed throughout the water. This tendency toward the formation of droplets is not confined to oils, nor is shaking always necessary to elicit the phenomenon. Substances of large molecular weight—proteins, for example—will spontaneously aggregate to form discrete droplets in water These spontaneously formed droplets are called coacervates (from a Latin verb meaning “to heap up”). They have recently been the focus of considerable attention by those concerned with reconstructing the history of the development of life. A.L. Oparin, for example, a Russian biochemist and pioneer in the field, has emphasized the suitability of coacervates for a major role in the development of preanimate organizations of matter. For one thing, the droplets can form even through the initial water mixture contains only a tiny proportion of the large-molecular-weight ingredients. For another, the droplets frequently exhibit impressive stability, maintaining their structural integrity despite considerable agitation and mechanical stress. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the molecular electric forces which lead to the formation of a droplet in the first place frequently contribute to its spherical surface the properties of a selective or semipermeable membrane—certain kinds of molecular types may even move through the surface more readily in one direction than the other. These properties, when taken in conjunction with other physical and chemical characteristics of droplets, probably caused coacervate formation to have a major effect on the course of chemical development in the primordial pools. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Let us consider the consequences of coacervate formation in an early lake of high chemical activity—one in which extensive catalytic processes had developed and a considerable range of organic and inorganic products had been formed. We would expect that some of the coacervate droplets would contain a mixture of many of the various substances indigenous to the pool. Although the surrounding membrane would hold the mixture together, the kind of selective permeability just described might still permit some degree of molecular transfer between droplet contents and surroundings. A very simple kind of membrane selectivity, for example, would permit small molecules to pass through the droplet surface in either direction but make it difficult or impossible for large molecules to do so. Consider the consequences of such a property. As the droplet floated around in the water it would encounter large numbers of amino acid, nucleic acid bases, the even simpler organic constituents of carbohydrates, fats, oils, and other forms of energy-rich molecules, as well as inorganic molecules, of hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and the like. All these molecules, being comparatively small, would pass through the surface membrane into the interior of the droplet. There they would be exposed to a relatively high concentration of the catalysts whose large molecular weight contributed to the formation of the droplet in the first place. This would cause some of the entering material to combine into the more complex molecular configurations of simple proteins, carbohydrates, fats, oils, and nucleic acids. And, of course, autocatalysis would result in an appropriate addition to the store of the enabling catalysts themselves. However, the new molecules, being too large to pass out through the semipermeable membrane, would remain trapped in the droplet. Thus the droplet would tend to grow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

We can even regard the process involved as a primitive form of metabolism: “food,” in the form of a simple organic and inorganic molecules floating around in the pool, is taken into the droplet through its surface membrane, or “skin”; the food is transformed into more complex organic material; the newly formed complex material enlarges the droplet, causing “growth.” We can ever add an excretory function to our list. For probably not all the raw material passing into the droplet from the outside would be employed in the catalyzed chemical activity; the remainder, possibly supplemented by small-molecular-weight by-products of the reactions, would represent the “excrement” or “waste material” and would be passed out of the droplet through its surface membrane. What would be the ultimate consequence of the growth processes? That would depend largely on what happened to the membrane as the droplet grew. To this point we have been able to ignore certain complications related to the formation of the surface of the droplet. When the material enclosed within the surface contains not just one kind of heavy molecule but a mixture of different kinds of relatively complex substances, then the normal operation of the physical forces that control the interaction of molecules will almost inevitably cause a certain separation and organization of the contents of the droplet. Specifically, some of the ingredients will tend to concentrate in the interior where they are not in close contact with the surrounding water, while other materials, because of the electrical structure of their molecules, will have a strong tendency to be found on the surface in intimate contact with the water. It is this second class of material that determines the membrane properties. In the specific example we are considering, the droplet requires an adequate supply of a kind of material that us capable of forming a surface of suitable porosity—permitting admission of the “food” molecules from the outside but not permitting escape of the complex products of the metabolism. If the catalyzed chemical reactions underlying the growth of the droplet were deficient in their rate of production of such membrane material, growth would be limited—the droplet would fall apart when the available membrane substance would no longer stretch to cover the increasing contents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

If, on the other hand, the products of the reactions included too high a proportion of membrane substance, the surface layer might ultimately become too dense and impermeable, thereby shutting off the supply of food to the growing droplet and placing an upper limit on its attainable size. In addition to such internal effects, there would be various environmental factors that could influence the growth process. Agitation of the water could be expected frequently to break up large droplets into smaller ones, much as we can emulsify an oil/water mixture by severe shaking. Changes in temperature, in the abundance of the inorganic ingredients supplied by volcanic activity or erosion, in the supply of the atmospherically generated organic components—these and other natural event could profoundly speed up or slow down the metabolism of the coacervates. Nevertheless, under suitable conditions these droplets could survive and grow. Once their internal chemical processes included reactions resulting in appropriate catalysts for the synthesis of complex molecules of out of simple ones at ordinary temperatures, these new bundles of chemical activity would have been free from any necessity for fortuitously neighbouring volcanic hot spots. At the same time, the remarkable enhancement of the concentration of the catalysts and other large-molecular-weight products, made possible by the confining membrane, would have resulted in a rate of chemical activity in a typical droplet that was tremendously greater than that in the pool from which it came. The activity and relative self-suffiiency of the coacervates must have had a far-reaching consequence: they were capable of survival in the open seas! And there would have been many opportunities for members of the new rugged species to reach the ocean waters. The coacervates would in effect be “weaned” from their incubating pools and swept into the great outside World whenever a pool drained to the sea by stream or river, or when a seismic cataclysm reunited a smaller body of water with a larger one. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Once in the open sea, there was nothing to prevent these new and improved droplets from growing (although perhaps more slowly, because of the lower concentration of nutrients). Ultimately, the large droplets, by the moral operation of the laws of physics related to weight, size, and surface tension, would tend to break up into smaller ones. Probably most of the new smaller droplets would lack a mixture of ingredients properly balanced to support growth, and “death” would ensure: continuous wear and tear would ultimately destroy such inert units and return their contents to the sea. However, occasionally some of the new smaller droplets would escape from their disintegrating parent with a mixture of catalysts and other substances of proportions that would sustain growth. This would amount to a form of “reproduction” of the coacervates! Are we to regard these primitive droplets as the first single-celled living organisms? If so, we have come a very long way in support of our thesis that biological phenomena are completely explainable in terms of the ordinary laws of physical science. For the coacervates are clearly nonvitablistic. At no point in the reconstruction of the almost incredibly slow developments that finally culminated in these curiously lifelike bags of chemicals have we had to invoke any nonphysical principle. Yet we have been inexorably led to forms having typically biological properties. The coacervates eat and eject waste products; they exhibit metabolic processes that posses a certain degree of chemical complexity; they grow; they reproduce their own kind; they die. If they are not living organisms or at least progenitors of living organisms, then nature would appear to have played an unusually malicious joke on the modern scientist who attempts to understand his biological heritage. The belief in the straightforwardness of nature that underlies all scientific research must impel us to continue along the path of speculation that has brought us successfully to the present point. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

In the introduction of the next report, we will address ourselves to a consideration of how physical principles resulted inevitably in natural selective forces that have been given the name evolution and how the evolutionary process operated to accomplish the gradual development of ever-more-lifelike aggregations of matter. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. What can two people do in one room? I look around me at the elegant emptiness. Teak parquet floor, a stately ebony piano asserting a dignity and certainty I cannot find in my own life, carpets from Persia, Bukhara, the Caucasus, Shiraz, Durbend, Turkoman, on the wall a Tekke, colour of old blood, intricate geometric patterns skewed here and there by the errors and improvisation of the distracted, hungry, and perhaps—who knows?—lovesick nomads clustered about their desert tents on those high, wind-racked Kirghiz steppes. Where are they now, those sad faces starting out of that wasteland? What has become of their reality, whatever it was? Once. Only once, and never again. The recurring comforts us. The singular breaks our hearts, must not be missed. With frail hands, and oh-so-suggestible minds, their vulnerable hearts create something eternal. Can human beings shape a variant reality beyond the onrushing transience, hold it safe against the weight that leans against these walls, the massive onslaughts to come? Can they make their glittering transcendence last? One day all this will be only a memory. We will look back, to find garden or gulf, forest or desert, immutable contours then, now being shaped out of will and desire and fear, of thinnest air and hazardous dream; and whether that then-unalterable landscape proves to have been vaporous fantasy or true love will follow upon the leap we now do or do not make. Sometimes it seems that all my analyzing, which aims to control experience, is but a shadow play on the surface of experience. It controls nothing, it but measures my demand that experience be understandable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Life trips humanity, many are in a maze, every day a new mystery. We will wrap interpretations around the peculiar shapes that impact on us, try to subjugate them, reduce them to order. We clothe experiences Presented with a hunchback, one can, good tailor that so many are, cut a coat to fit but our many coasts correct no deformities, nor tell us anything of the peculiar shape of the next customer one shall have to deal with. How to live? Who knows the question knows not how. Who knows not the question cannot tell. Who knows the question lives in conflict, makes choices, sees that each choice obliterates its opposite, and has learned that the needs of the individual and the needs of others contend and intersect in ways so complex and confusing that no sure answer is possible. Who knows not the question is mute. The birds in flight cannot instruct us, nor the shy deer, nor the cobra poised to strike. They know how, know so unreflectively they cannot tell. We cannot go back. Those who live for themselves alone, unburdened by the needs and rights of others, observing the rules only to the degree required to say out of jail, always in a running skirmish with the group but never in conflict within themselves, they know how, know without ever having known the question: Whatever, buddy! I have got mine, now you get yours. However, the question that cannot be answered cannot, either, be shelved. We cannot stop living until we have learned how. The train is moving. No itinerary, no briefing, no classes for beginners. We are on our way. Our first improvisation is our one chance to do it right. Eubatus was a superb athlete who “knew” what all his competitors “knew”—that the seed was a vital fluid and releasing it weakened the body. He may not have studied the great philosophers and medical writers who dispensed this wisdom, but he and his cohorts had absorbed their teachings. So had their coaches, who appreciated the specific advice the philosophers gave the sportsmen. These trainers applied their knowledge to fashioning programs that would maximize performance. In the fiercely competitive World of athletics, where winners were their city-state’s superstars and victory or defeat carried ominous international significance and symbolism, the stakes were enormously high. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Greek athletes were living testaments to sound minds in sound bodies, revered (when they won) by their countrymen and admired (even in defeat) by philosophers, who lauded their immense discipline and self-control as qualities to be emulated. Their celibacy, in particular, was esteemed. Plato, for instance, reaved about Olympic victor Ikkos of Tarentum, who “because of his desire to win, his ability, and courage in his heart along with self-control…never touched another living being in the entire course of his training.” The same was also true, Plato added, of several other notable sportsmen, despite the fact they were citizens of less refined states than Athens and “possessed much strong drives” for pleasures of the flesh. In ancient times, Olympians were so intent on maintaining celibacy that some practiced ligature praeputti, tying back the foreskin. Such humans looked peculiar, as Dionysus remarked to them in Aeschylus’ Theori Isthmiastae: “Cum decuratas, tanquan murium caudas, mentulas vobis video”—I see your pricks cut short just like the tails of mice. “You have practiced hard…you have not been slack but have trained properly.” Presumably Dionysus spoke with authority, for except in the earliest years when they wore shorts, Greek athletes took pride in competing without clothes. Their vaunted celibacy was not the only strategy Greeks employed to excel in sports. For centuries, the month before competing, they observed an austere and unvaried vegetarian diet of cheese and figs. They also exercised, rested, and maintained a schedule comparable to those of ambitious athletes everywhere. However, the vital force-rich celibacy was especially important, and as they worked out and competed, they could feel it powering their muscular strength, making them, as one first-century commented, “bold, daring, and strong as wild beasts.” They were equally aware that activity involving pleasures of the flesh for athletes, even those with superior physiques and skills, were so weakened by losing their seed that they became “inferior to their inferiors.” After all, it was the seed, when possessed of vitality, that made men manly, hot, well-braced in limbs, hairy, well voiced, spirited, [and] strong to think and to act. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The power of seed in athletics, as in life, had various theoretical sources. From the sixth century B.C. until well into the early centuries of Christianity, Greek philosophers and medical thinkers constructed theories about the seed and the weakening effects of losing it. The Pythagoreans and Kroton medical-school thinkers located semen in the brain and spinal cord, which meant that discharging it would specifically undermine those two vital areas of the body. Democritus’ pangenesis theory took a ubiquitous perspective and saw seed in all parts of the body, so that excreting it would dilute a man’s overall strength. The third major concept was hematological and propounded by writers from Aristotle to Galen. The seed was created from the best elements of the blood, and blood might even be the conveyer of each mortal’s spirit. The obvious effect of losing such an indispensable fluid was to severely undermine the whole man. No matter which of these precepts a coach or his athletes subscribed to, the end result was the same: celibacy was essential. A doctrinal subtext was the Greek belief that pleasures of the flesh with a woman was both debilitating and contaminating. This alone was reason enough for an ambitious young man to abstain. Pleasures of the flesh with anyone was too dangerous. Even nocturnal emission drained their involuntary victims. In his work On Athletics, philosopher Philostratos counseled wet dreamers to exercise cautiously and rebuild their strength, since they now have a deficit in their system. Heroic Greek athletes were often known for their feats of celibacy as well as their triumphant races and matches. Ikkos of Tarentum, who won the Olympic pentathlon in 472 and afterward established himself as a coach, was commended by Plato for his abstinence involving pleasures of the flesh. Cleitomachus of Thebes, who won three Olympic crowns for wrestling and boxing, and who in 216 B.C. surpasses even these achievements by winning three events on the same day, was famous for his chastity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Cleitomachus could not tolerate even a ribald story and would spring up and out of the room if someone began to tell one. In fact, he was even repelled by the sight of dogs coupling in the street. The great interpreter of dreams, Artemidorus of Daldis, concluded his book on them with the cautionary tale of an athlete who dreamed he had castrated himself and subsequently achieved glorious victory. The athlete construed this to mean he should remain celibate and so abstained completely. As a result, he won many more prizes, but when he grew cocky and indulged in pleasures of the flesh, his winning streak ended and he “retired ingloriously” from the competitive stage. The triumphant Greek athlete, splendid his chaste nakedness, was also the unwitting fountainhead of the legacy that endures to this day, the belief that conserving semen will enhance strength and improve performance. Ironically, the athlete had only to control his urges for others until the race was done, when he was given free rein to indulge his lust. The average Greek citizen neither aspired to celibacy nor admired it, except as an instrument to hone the state’s finest sportsmen. Champions such as Cleitomachus, who abhorred pleasures of the flesh at any time, were exceptions to their culture’s rule. So were certain philosophers and their acolytes, who idealized abstinence. Women, excluded from this sperm-derived perspective except as agents of lasciviousness, could only look on as the lovely Lais did. However, over two millennia later, when the Olympic torch signals the opening of yet another Olympiad, lusty but abstinent young competitors are modern disciples of the ancient Greek legacy. After having discovered its religious dimension in the unconditional character of the moral imperative, and the religious source of the moral demands under the dominance of agape, we now must ask whether there is a religious element in the process of moral motivation. The question leads immediately to the concept of law. The unconditional moral imperative confronts us as the sacred more law. It appears as the only justifiable motivation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Any other motivation would seem to introduce conditions that violate the character of the moral imperative. We have already trespassed against this restriction with respect to the source of the ethical demands by establishing love as this source, without surrendering the formal strictness of the Kantian principles. We must now do likewise with respect to moral motivation. The question leads immediately to the concept of law. The unconditional moral imperative confronts us as the scared moral law. It appears as the only justifiable motivation. Any other motivation would seem to introduce conditions that violate the unconditional character of morality. This is the basic point of view of Kant’s rigoristic (not Puritan or Pietist) ethical theory. It would reduce the religious element in morality to the unconditional character of the moral imperative. We have already trespassed against this restriction with respect to the source of the ethical demands by establishing love as this source of the ethical demands by establishing love as this source, without surrendering the formal strictness of the Kantian principles. We must now do likewise with respect to moral motivation. As the linguistic form itself indicates, the moral imperative has the form of a commandment and, if generalized, a law. We have discussed the term “law” in connection with the natural laws of morals, and distinguished from the physical laws of nature. This difference extensively influences the problem of moral motivation: the moral law is experienced as law only because humans are estranged from the structural law of one’s essential being, namely, to become a centered person. This law belongs to one. It is one’s nature. And it would never become a commanding law if one did not try to break through it. However, if one is estranged from it, if one contradicts it in one’s existence, it becomes a law for them—“Thou shalt love…” If love determined of being, if it were a structural law with which we were one, it could not become a law that commands or an expression of the moral imperative. It would be an expression of our being, one with it, and not standing in opposition to it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

We can use this understanding of the law as a key to two biblical stories of great symbolic power—one, the temptation of Adam, and the other, the temptation of the Christ. In the story of the Fall, God forbids Adam to eat from the tree of knowledge (which is also power). We ask: why is this prohibition necessary? If Adam had been one with his true being, the negative command would not have been necessary. However, as a man, he had the freedom to contradict his true being. In his condition of temptation he had not yet done so, but the tendency was in him, which means that he was already separated from the natural unity with God. The law appeared when the first symptoms of separation appeared, and the innocence of the created state being in God was shaken. The law was a warning, a summoning back to original innocence. However, by this very fact the innocence was no longer innocence. However, by this very fact the innocence was no longer innocence. Neither was it guilt. It was on the boundary line of both, and the name of this boundary line is “desire.” This analysis of innocence, desire, and law can also be applied to one of the most problematic stories of the Gospels, the story of the temptation of Jesus. Some theologians deny the seriousness of the temptations; others affirm it, but are not aware of the consequences of their affirmation. In declaring with the New Testament and most classical theology the seriousness of the temptations of Jesus, we must acknowledge that they are expressions of his true humanity. They should have protected his image against the seemingly irrepressible Monophystic trends in all Christian churches—that is, against the theological error strongly supported by popular piety, which is to see in Jesus a god, walking on Earth. However, if the temptations of Jesus are taken seriously, the question arises whether their seriousness presupposes a separation from that unity with God that determines his whole life and makes him the selected “Son.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The question can be answered by reference to the Adam story. Serious temptation presupposes desire for that by which one is tempted. Jesus, like Adam, stood between innocence and guilt, on the boundary line of existence where the commanding law appears. And Jesus quotes commanding words from the Old Testament against Satan. With this insight into the two different meanings of law, law as structure and law as the demand to actualize this structure, we approach the question: has the law in the second sense a motivating power for the fulfillment of the moral imperative and its concrete demands? The answer, like the answer to the question of the ultimate principle of the content of morality, must be developed along several levels. For it is complex, representing the profoundest tensions in religious experience and in the history of Christianity. The general questions is: can the commanding law, which presupposes the contrast between our essential and our actual being, motivate us to transform ourselves in the direction of reuniting the actual with the essential? The firs logically consistent answer: it cannot! For the very existence of the commanding law is based on that split. The law (in the following sections used only in the sense of the commanding law) is an expression of humans’ estrangement from their true nature. How would it then be able to overcome this estrangement? This logically unavoidable answer is also the psychologically experienced answer: The command to be good does not make us good. It may indeed drive us toward evil! At present, however, our society is setting for the first time in its history into a rigid class system. (Somewhere we missed out on equality, and this is now threatening our flexibility and stability.) It is not that individuals may not move from grade to grade—there is perhaps even more individual mobility than ever. However, the statuses themselves are more rigid; there is less easy gradation, and there is less opportunity to make less easy gradation, and there is less opportunity to make one’s unique “classless” place. One is more definitely in or out, and in a more definite rank. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

At the bottom are the poor, “outside” of society. Next are those groups who are in the organized system of production: Those who are “in” but could not care less about the production and distribution, like the factory operatives. These are paid the lower-middle-class wages, say between $32,048 and $53,413. (For high earners, a three-person family needs an income between $106,827 and $373,894 to be considered upper-middle class. Those who earn more than $373,894 are rich.) The lower-middle class buys on credit and have to keep on the job to make both ends meet. If the work week is shortened to thirty hours, without a commensurate loss of income, there is evidence that they get other, part-time, jobs to buy still more refrigerators. The next status who are “in” are the Organization Humans proper, whose hours, throughout, families, play, and peace of mind are dedicated to maintaining their positions in their particular firms and pushing upward there or in some other firms. Salary $106,827 to $373,894. It is this group—the junior executives, for instance—that we have compared to the juvenile delinquents for their safe conformity and competitive individuality. We shall see that another important trait in common is having no real activity, but living by role playing. (W.H. Whyte, Jr., the Hesiod of this tribe, pleads for individuality to offset the conformity of organization life He, rather cynically, fails to see that such polar “individuality” is the conformity by which humans advance; it is one-upping. The only offset to the organization is nature or worth-whole objects; but the necessary, useful, and pleasant, and the good, true, and beautiful are not much mentioned in this book.) At the top, finally, are the nine hundred managers—figure from Fortune magazine—whose task is to minimize risk and maximize production and sales. Also the fifty governors, the federal staff, heads of foundation, etcetera. It will be seen that these three statuses in the organized labour, entertainment, government, bigger education, etcetera) are engaged primarily in keeping the system itself running and slowly expanding. The most self-aware of its members are the middle-status intellectuals, among the advertising humans, sale team, and junior executives; and they described the system as the Rat Race. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

So W.H. Whyte, Jr. and J.K. Galbraith, however, describes it differently: “Among the many models of the good society, no one has urged the squirrel wheel.” It is interesting to contrast the different species of imagined rodents between those who are running the race and the scholar who is contemplating with wonder. However, there is another large class: those who do not properly belong to the system and are not yet submerged into the poor “outside” of society: this is the vast herd of the old-fashioned, the eccentric, the criminal, the gifted, the serious, the men and women, the rentiers, the freelances, the infants, and so forth. This motely collection has, of course, no style or culture, unlike the organization that has our familiar American style and popular culture. Its fragmented members hover about the organization in multifarious ways—running specialty shops, trying to teach or to give other professional services, robbing banks, landscaping gardening, and so forth—but they find it hard to get along, for they do not know the approved techniques of promoting, getting foundation grants, protecting themselves by official unions, legally embezzling, and not blurting out the truth or weeping or laughing out to turn. They have no style at all, and it is understandable that neither they nor their usually rather irrelevant enterprises make much headway in the market, the universities, entertainment, politics, or labour. Besides, they often speak a minority language (also known as the universal business langue), English. This is roughly the class structure of America in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. It seems most functional to speak of three classes, the Less Affluent, the Organization, and the Independents; and of three statuses within the dominant class, the Organization. Viz.: I. Organized System: Workers, Organization Mortals, Managers. II. Less Affluent. III. Independents. What the World needs is more geniuses with humbleness. Leaders stand up for their beliefs. They practice what they preach. They show others by their own example that they live by the values that they profess. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

During the past 50 years, emphasis around the World has shifted from suicide treatment to suicide prevention. In some respects, this change is most appropriate: the last opportunity to keep many potential suicide victims alive comes before the first attempt. The first suicide prevention program in the United States of America was founded in Los Angeles in 1955; the first in England, called the Samaritans, was started in 1953. There are now hundreds of suicide prevention centers in the United States of America and in England. In addition, many of today’s mental health centers, hospital emergency rooms, pastoral counseling centers, and poison control centers including suicide prevention programs among their services. There are also hundreds of suicide hot lines in the United States of America, 24-hour-a-day telephone services. Callers reach a counselor, typically a paraprofessional, a person trained in counseling but without a formal degree, who provides services under the supervision of a mental health professional. Suicide prevention programs and hot lines respond to suicidal people as individual in crisis—that is, under great stress, unable to cope, feeling threatened or hurt, and interpreting their situations as unchangeable. Thus the programs offer crisis intervention: they try to help suicidal people see their situations more accurately, make better decisions, act more constructively, and overcome their crises hot lines and also welcome people who walk in without appointments. Although specific features vary from center to center, the general approach used by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center reflects the goals and techniques of many such organizations. During the initial contact, the counselor has several tasks. Establishing a conductive relationship: As callers must trust counselors in order to confide in them and follow their suggestions, counselors try to set a beneficial understanding, interested, nonjudgmental, and available. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Understanding and clarifying the problem: Counselors first try to understand the full scope of the caller’s crisis and then help the person see the crisis in clear and constructive terms. In particular, they try to help callers see the central issues and the transient nature of their crises and recognize the alternatives to suicide. Assessing suicide potential: Crisis workers at the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center fill out a questionnaire, often called a lethality scale, to estimate the caller is under, relevant personality characteristics, how detailed the suicide plan is, the severity of symptoms, and the coping resources available to the caller. Assessing and mobilizing the caller’s resources: Although they may view themselves as ineffectual and helpless, people who are suicidal usually have many strengths and resources, including relatives and friends. It is the counselor’s job to recognize, point out, and activate those resources. Formulating a plan: Together the crisis worker and caller develop a plan of action. In essence, they are agreeing on a way out of the crisis, an alternative to suicidal action. Most plans include a series of follow-up counseling session over the nest few days or weeks, either in person at the center or by phone. Each plan also requires the caller to take certain actions and make certain changes in one’s personal life. Counselors usually negotiate a non-suicide contract with the caller—a promise not to attempt suicide, or at least a promise to reestablish contact if the caller again considers suicide. Although popular, the usefulness of such contracts has been called into question in recent ears. In addition, if callers are in the midst of a suicide attempt, counselors will try to find out their whereabouts and get medical help to them immediately. Although crisis intervention appears to be sufficient treatment for some suicidal people, longer-term therapy is needed for most. Id the crisis intervention center does not offer this kind of therapy, the counselors will refer the clients elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Many clinicians believe that crisis intervention techniques should also be applied to problem other than suicide. Crisis intervention has emerged during the past three decades as a respected form of treatment for such wide-ranging problems as teenage confusion, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual assault victimization, and spouse abuse. As Third Wave produced a mass society, the Fourth Wave de-massified us, moving the entire social system to a much higher level of the diversity and complexity. This revolutionary process, much like the biological differentiation that occurs in evolution, helps explain one of today’s most widely noted political phenomena—the collapse of consensus. From one end of the industrial World to the other we hear politicians lamenting the loss of “national purpose,” the absence of the good old “Drunkirk spirit,” the erosion of “national unity,” and the sudden, bewildering proliferation of high-powered splinter groups. The latest buzzword in Washington is “single issue group,” referring to the political organizations springing up by the thousands, usually around what each perceives a single burning issue: abortion, gun control, rights for various groups of people, school busing, nuclear power, and so on. So diverse are these interests at both the national and local levels that politicians and officials can no longer keep track of them. Mobile-home owners organize to fight for country zoning changes. Farmers battle power transmission lines. Retired people mobilize against school taxes. Feminists, Chicanos, strip miners, and anti-strip miners organize, as do single parents and anti-prom crusaders. A Midwest magazine even reports formation of an organization a particular Liberation Movement. Simultaneously, national ass organizations are having the trouble holding together. Local churches are not following the national lead any more. A labour expert reports that instead of a single unified political drive by the AFL-CIO, affiliated unisons are increasingly mounting their own campaigns for their own ends. The electorate is not merely breaking two splinters. The splinter groups themselves are increasingly transitory, springing up, dying out, turning over more and more rapidly, and forming a testy, hard to-analyze flux. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

In Canada, says one government official, “we now assume the life-span of the voluntary organizations will be six to eight months. There are more groups and they are more ephemeral.” In this way, acceleration and diversity combine to create a totally new kind of body politic. These same developments also sweep into oblivion our nations about political coalitions, alliances, or united fronts. In a Third Wave society a political leader could glue together half a dozen major blocs, and expect the resulting coalition to remain locked in position for many years. Today, it is necessary to plug together hundreds, even thousands, of tiny, short-lived as well. It may cleave together just long enough to elect a president, then break apart again the day after election, leaving him or her without a base of support for one’s programs. This de-massification of political life, reflecting all the deep trends we have discussed in technology, production, communications and culture, further devastates the politicians’ ability to make vital decision. Accustomed to juggling a few well-recognized and clearly organized constituencies, they suddenly find themselves besieged. On all sides, countless new constituencies, fluidly organized, demand simultaneous attention to real but narrow and unfamiliar needs. Specialized demands flood in to legislatures and bureaucracies through every crack, with every mailbag and messenger, over the transom and under the door. This tremendous pile-up of demands leaves no time for deliberation. Furthermore, because society is changing at an accelerating pace and a decision delayed may be far worse than no decision at all, everyone demands instant response. Congress, as a result, is kept so busy. The men and women meet each other coming and going and it does not allow for a coherent train of thought. Circumstances differ from country to country, but what does not differ is the revolutionary challenge posed by the Forth Wave to obsolete Second Wave institutions—too slow to keep up with the pace of change and too undifferentiated to cope with the new levels of social and political diversity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Designed for a much slower and simpler society, our institutions are swamped and out of synch. Nor can this challenge be met by merely tinkering with the rules. For it strikes at the most basic assumption of the Third Wave political theory: the concept of representation. Thus the rise of diversity means, that although our political systems are theoretically founded on majority rule, it may be impossible to form a majority even on issues crucial to survival. In turn, this collapse of consensus means that more and more governments are minority governments, based on shifting and uncertain coalitions. The missing majority makes a mockery of standard democratic rhetoric. It forces us to question whether, under the convergence of speed and diversity, any constituency can ever be “represented.” In a mass industrial society, when people and their needs were fairly uniform and basic, consensus was an attainable goal. In a de-massified society, we not only lack national purposes, we also lack regional, statewide, or citywide purpose. The diversity in any congressional district or parliamentary constituency, whether in France or Japan or Sweden, is so great that its “representative” cannot legitimately claim to speak for a consensus. One cannot represent the general will for the simple reason that there is none. What, then, happens to the very notion of “representative democracy”? To ask this question is not to attack democracy. (We shall shorty see how the Fourth Wave opens the way to an enriched and enlarged democracy.) However, it makes one fact inescapably plain: not only our Third Wave institutions but the very assumptions on which they were based are obsolete. Built to the wrong scale, unable to deal adequately with transnational problems, unable to deal with interrelated problems, unable to keep up with the accelerative drive, unable to cope with the high levels of diversity, the overloaded, obsolete political technology of the industrial age is breaking up under our very eyes. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

New wealth systems do not come often, and they do not travel alone. Each carries with it a new way of life, a civilization. Not just new business structures but new family formats; new kinds of music and art; new foods, fashions and standards of physical beauty; new values; and new attitudes toward religion and personal freedom—all of which interact with and shape the emerging new wealth system. American today is spearheading just a new civilization built around a revolutionary way of creating wealth. For better and worse, billions of lives around the World are already being changes by this revolution. Nations and whole regions of the globe are rising or declining as they feel its impact. Today millions of people around the World dislike or even hate America. Some fanatics wish to incinerate the United States of America and everyone in it. (That is why it is important to create community, love thy neighbour, and have national pride.) The reason they give for hating us range from its Middle Eastern policies, and its refusal to sign various international treaties to what they regard as its imperial ambitions. Yet even if given peace reigned in the Middle East, even if all the World’s terrorists turned pacifists and democracies flowered like dandelions, the rest of the World would still view the United States of America with trepidation at best. This is because the new wealth system the United States of American is developing, by its very nature, threatens old, embedded financial and political interests around the World. Moreover, in the United States of America the rise of the new wealth systems has been accompanied by controversial changes in the roles of women, marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and other groups. Because America’s emergent culture promotes greater individuality, it is seen as a threat to community. Worse yet, because it has loosened come of the traditional gender, moral, political, religious, and lifestyle constraints placed on the individual during earlier economic eras, it is seen as dangerously seducing the young into nihilism, license and decadence. In short, the combination or revolutionary wealth and the social cultural changes so far associated with it may have more to do with global anti-Americanism than the usual litany of reasons cited by the media. The revolutionary wealth system, however, as we will see, is no longer an American monopoly. Other nations are racing to catch up. And it is not clear how long the United States of America will retain its lead. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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