As we have seen, orienting our lives to consumption creates a climate of superfluity and ennui. The problem is closely related to a crisis that is affecting the entire Western World now but mostly goes unrecognized, because more attention is given to its symptoms than to its underling causes. Having considered some circumstances under which persons become available to unacquainted others, we can examine the other side of the questions: when does the individual have the right to initiate overtures to those with whom he is unacquainted? Obviously, one answer is that one can do this when the other is in an exposed position. Another answer is that some of the persons who are defined as open tend also to be defined as “opening persons,” as individuals who have a built-in license to accost others. Just as the intentions of those who accost them are not suspect, so, in some cases, their intentions in accosting others may not be suspect. Priests and nuns provide one kind of example: police, who presumably will be able to produce a legitimate reason for the engagement after initiating it, provide another. Those who have responsibility for managing, or for guarding the entrance to, social occasions provide still another example, since they are allowed, and often obliged, to initiate engagements of welcome with all who enter, whether acquainted with them or not. Shopkeepers, in those societies that define shops, more than we do, as the scene of a running social occasion, may often find themselves in the host’s role, required to engage each entrant and leave-taker in a special salutation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

In Salt Lake City, Utah; you are still at leisure to notice what charming thing good manners are. As you step into a person’s home, you will greet the owner with “Peace be upon you,” and he and all who are withing hearing will reply with no fanatic exclusion, but in full and friendly chorus to that most gracious of salutations, and will follow your departing steps with the “God bless you,” the divine security. Their shops they treat as small reception-rooms where the visiting buyer is a guest—and sitting at coffee over their affairs will look with surprised but tolerant amusement at the rough Westerner who brushes by to examine saddle-bags or daggers, unconscious of the decent rules of behaviour. In our society, license to approach, like license to be approached, is taken (if not given) by individuals who for a period find themselves out of role. Here, license to initiate improper contact is merely part of the syndrome of license associated with anonymity, in the sense that an individual projecting an alien self is not fully responsible for the good conduct of that self. (In the same way, when he trips or slips, he projects a self from which he can dissociate his inner being.) Again we see a connection between exposed positions and opening ones, for the very alienation from his projected self that allows others to treat this self as approachable and expendable allows him to misbehave in its name. The falsely presented individual may, in fact, have a special need to make and to elicit overtures; in both cases he is able to transmit an appreciation that what he is appearing as is not his true self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Nor is it only when engagement is patently to the advantage of the person approached that emergency engagement with strangers occurs. In our society, as presumably in others, bonds between unacquainted persons are felt to be strong enough to support the satisfying of “free needs,” even where the person receiving the service is the one who initiates the counter that makes this possible A patent unthreatening need appears to provide a guarantee of the good intentions of the person who is asking for assistance. Thus, in our society, an individual has a right to initiate requests for the time of day, for a light, for directions, and for coin change—although, given a choice in the matter, the accoster (Mutual claims in regard to matters such as directions can be strong enough to cause some people to respond politely to direction requests from unknown persons.) is under obligation to select the individual present whom he is least likely to be able to exploit. Similarly, if an individual finds himself in a position where he badly needs hi apologies or explanations to be accepted, he then has some right to engage others. Liberty to apologize for accidentally inconveniencing another is also a liberty to present oneself in a proper light, even at the expense of communication rules. Thus, to parallel an earlier example, a man walking around in the grass looking for a key he has dropped has a right to comment on his predicament to a lone passing stranger to demonstrate that he is not improperly involved in some occult activity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The same kind of license occurs when an individual feels he has been mistreated in some way by an unacquainted other, and initiates a complaint, threat, or caution. While defense of one’s honour may work hardships upon the person against whom action is taken, the person who institutes such action is not suspect as far as communication rules are concerned. The aim of this system is to bring man to conscience. Conscience is a certain quality that is in every normal man. It is really a different expression of the same quality as consciousness, only consciousness works more on the intellectual side and conscience more on the moral (id est, emotional) side. Conscience helps a man to realize what is good and what is bad in his own conduct. Conscience unites the emotions. We can experience on the same day a great many contradictory emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, on the same subject, either one after another or even simultaneously, and we do no notice the contradictions because of the absence of conscience. Buffers are what prevent one “I” or one personality from seeing another, but in a state of conscience a man cannot help seeing all these contradictions. He will remember that he said one thing in the morning, another thing in the afternoon and yet another in the evening, but in ordinary life he will not remember, or—if he does—he will insist that he does not know what is good and what is bad. The way to conscience is through destroying buffers, and buffers can be destroyed through self-remembering and through not identifying. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

The idea of conscience and the idea of buffers need long study, but when speaking about the moral side of this system, what should be understood from the beginning is that a man must have a sense of good and bad. If he was not, nothing can be done for him. He must start with a certain moral sense, a sense of right or wrong, in order to get more. He must understand first the relativity of ordinary morality, and secondly he must realize the necessity of objective right and wrong. When he realized the necessity of objective permanent right and wrong, then he will look at things from the point of view of this system. Conscience is in the essence, not in personality, whereas magnetic center is in personality, not in essence. Magnetic center is in personality, not in essence. Magnetic center is acquired in this life. It is in the intellectual part of emotional center, though perhaps also in the intellectual part of the intellectual center, and it is built on B influences. “To awaken conscience does one have to eliminate buffers?” someone asked. When buffers are only shaken, conscience awakes. Sometimes people can discover their own buffers. If one has the right idea of buffers, one may find them. There is a great difference between excuses and buffers. Excuses may be different every time, but if the excuse is always the same, then it becomes a buffer. Buffers are connected with conscience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Conscience is a word we use generally in a conventional sense, to mean a sort of educated emotional habit. Really, conscience is a special capacity which everybody possesses but which nobody can use in the state of sleep. Even if we feel conscience for a moment accidentally, it will be a very painful experience, so painful that immediately we shall want to get rid of it. People who have occasional glimpses of conscience invent all kinds of methods to get rid of this feeling. It is the capacity to feel at the same time all that we ordinarily feel at different times. Try to understand that all our different “I”s have different feelings. One “I” feels that he likes something, while another hates it, and a third “I” is indifferent. However, we never feel these things at the same time because between the are buffers. Because of these buffers we cannot use conscience, cannot feel at the same time two contradictory things which we feel at different times. If a man does happen to feel them he suffers. So, in our present state, buffers are even necessary things without which a man would go mad. However, if he understands about them and prepares himself, then after some time, he may start to destroy the contradictions and break the buffers down. The breaking of a mechanical habit, whether good or bad, may be uncomfortable, because we have mechanical habits such as rules of conduct and more rules which we get from our education. In most cases, therefore, we do not experience conscience; we have too many buffers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

As I have said, they are partitions between our emotional attitudes, and experience of conscience means seeing a hundred things at the same time. Partitions disappear and all inner contradictions are seen at the same time. This is very unpleasant, and as the general principle of life is to avoid unpleasant sensations and realizations we run away from seeing them. In this way we create inner buffers. Contradictions seen other after the other do not appear contradictory; they have to be seen at the same time. We are machines and we must see where we can change something, because in every machine of every kind there is always a point where it is possible to begin. Sometimes people ask if there is anything permanent in us. There are two things, buffers and weaknesses. The weaknesses are sometimes called features, but they are really just weaknesses. Everyone has one, two or three particular weaknesses, and everybody has certain buffers belonging to him. He consists of buffers, but some are particularly important because they enter into all his decisions and all his understandings. These features and buffers are all that can be called permanent in us, and it is lucky for us that there is nothing more permanent, because these things can be changed. Buffers are artificial; they are not organic; they are acquired chiefly by imitation. Children begin to imitate grown-up people and so they create some of their buffers. Others are created unknowingly by education. If it were possible to put a child amongst people who were awake, he would fall asleep, but—in the conditions in which we live—imaginary personality of imaginary “I” generally appears in a child at the age of seven or eight. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Sometimes people ask whether we can see buffers in our present state of consciousness. We can see them in other people, but not in ourselves. Often times, the way to get people to cooperate is through stimulating competition. Our consciousness is very important in the work we are employed to do. Not everything needs to be tied to money, but we must foster in people a desire to excel. The desire to excel! The challenge! Throwing down the gauntlet! An infallible way of appealing to people of spirit. When anyone’s shadow darkens, they ought to feel immediately embraced and loved and lifted and inspired to go and be better because they know they are loved and because they have friends. We can create a greater sense of belonging as we reassure and include those who are new to an employment office or community. It can often break a person’s heart if someone comes and is very vulnerable, and the gets a cold shoulder or a lack of interest. That is tragic. We have to do better than that. When you choose to put yourself out there and make others feel like part of the team, you are blessing someone else’s life. This can encourage others at work to do their best to be more productive because they feel like they are a part of a fraternity that cares. All people have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward.  What greater challenge can be offered than the opportunity to overcome those fears? Sometimes we need a person with experience to show us how to preserver. It is important for us to humanize those we work with an interact with. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Pay and pay alone will never bring together or hold good people. The joys of having colleagues and taking pride in your production is often the key. In studying the depth of the work attitudes of thousands of people, the most motivating factor was the work itself. If the work is exciting and interesting, the worker looks forward to doing it and is motivated to do a good job. That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove one’s worth, to excel, to win. That I what makes footraces and hog-calling and pie-eating contests. The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance. The importance of knowing what to count as success is the point of an Army story about the new draftee who was an operations analyst in civilian life. After standing with fellow draftees in a long line to get their dinner plates washed and rinsed, the recruit went up to the old sergeant and explained it is inefficient to use two vats for washing dishes and two vas for rinsing them. It would be faster to use three vats for washing and only one for rinsing since washing takes more time than rinsing. The old sergeant looked with disdain at the new recruit, and said, “You’ve got it exactly backwards. I want them to stand just as much as possible. I can’t keep them running around all day, but the longer I can keep them on their feet, the better.” Clearly, selection of agents or strategies implies some metric of success. Agents need not attend to the measure. Animals can have many offspring out of motives far more compelling than the eventual adaptation of their species. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Fashion may be copied without much big-picture reflection by those adopting a new style. In such cases, success is actually defined by outside observers as “frequently copied.” Rather than specifying a success measure and copying what scores well, this approach measures success by numbers of copies. Biologists take this line when they assess fitness as number of offspring. In biology, survival defines what is fittest. However, in most of the situations we consider, performance measures are active in the minds of designers, policy makers, and other actors, whether they are acting inside the system or contemplating it from the outside. Recall the example of Linux software development, with its thousands of volunteers proposing solutions to specific problems in a massive operating system. Being able to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed solutions using clear measures such as speed and crash-avoidance was one of the requirements for such open software development to work. Typically, however, the assessment of alternatives in a Complex Adaptive System is not easy. In fact, there is usually more than one criterion that could be used to assess results. For a business, profit seems a natural measure of success. For a checkers player, winning games is a natural performance measure. Yet even in these examples, with success criteria that seem indisputable, complexity might be harnessed more effectively if other measures of success are used. In the business example, market share provides an additional measure that can be a useful supplement to profits. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

One reason is that changes in profits may reflect factors beyond the control of the company, such as improvement in the national economy. You might not want to attribute credit for increased profits to your new marketing campaign if you knew that your entire industry had prospered during a buoyant economy. An increase in your market share could provide a better indication than profits of whether you were doing something right—and what it was. We will also see below for our checkers example that there are measures of success that may be more effective than waiting for the outcome of the game. Our approach to harnessing complexity does not take any performance measure as “given.” It does not anoint any other measure as a highest goal. Performance measures can be seen as instruments that shape what events are likely to occur. Even the preservation of life is not a goal that trumps all others, as human willingness to die for principles so dramatically reveals. Since goals are not see as fixed, setting goals, the criteria that govern processes of selection, is one of the main interventions for those who would harness complexity. Our view leads to two important and uncommon observations about performance measures. First, it is valuable to appreciate that performance measures are defined within the system. They are modified (or maintained) and applied (or disregarded) by agents themselves. This observation is not a surprise to many experienced practitioners, who are well aware of the political work that lies behind measures later taken as givens. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Unfortunately, many efforts to apply complexity concepts to social systems give little attention to how performance measures are defined within the system. To see what we mean, consider the case of profit as one such measure. What may count as a profit depends on many factors, including what the law allows individuals to own, what social norms and religions define as morally fair, whether actual practices conform to those norms, what the tax code recognizes as legitimate costs, and whether society charges for disposal of the by-products of activity, sch as used motor oil or even carbon dioxide. We also regulate the scope of profit as a permissible goal. We largely removed profit from the decision making within American schools, hospitals, and prisons at the beginning of the twentieth century and are experimenting now with reintroducing it. A further consequence of performance measures being defined by the agents themselves is that there can be more than one measure active. In addition, the measures may be inconsistent and may change over time. Change that is seen as improvement by one type of agent may be seen as a loss by others. There are issues of variety in performance measures just as there are in other characteristics of agents and their strategies. When members of an organization assess a situation from different evaluative angles, they generate a greater variety of new possibilities that, if not excessive, can have great value for the organization. However, it is clear that beyond some level, variety in performance measures can also be a source of debilitating inconsistency and conflict. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

But one life to lay down for your country—how can an army get the enemy to believe that its soldiers will in fact lay down their lives for their country when called upon to do so? (By getting Americans to be ashamed to be American, and becoming unwilling to buy American cars, produce, meat and other goods and service; and to disrespect the American flag, the National Anthem, and other Americana and art, the enemy is using mental warfare to weaken the American spirit and army.) Most armies would be finished if each soldier on the battlefield starts to make a rational calculation of the costs and the benefits of risking one’s life. Other devices have to be found, and they include many of the ones above. We have already mentioned the tactic of burning bridges, and the role of punishments and teamwork in deterring desertion. Now we concentrate on the devices to motivate individual soldiers. The process begins in the boot camp. Basic training in the armed forces everywhere is a traumatic experience. The new recruit is maltreated, humiliated, and put under such immense physical and mental strain that the few weeks quite alter his personality. An important habit acquired in this process is an automatic, unquestioning obedience. There is no reason why socks should be folded, or beds made, in a particular way, except that the officer has so ordered. The idea is that the same obedience will occur when the order is of greater importance. Trained not to question orders, the army becomes a fighting machine; commitment is automatic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Th seeming irrationality of each soldier thus turns into strategic rationality. Shakespeare knew this perfectly well; in the night before the battle of Agincourt, King Henry V prays: “O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts; possess them not with fear; take from them now the sense of reckoning, if th’ opposed numbers pluck their hearts from them…” Next comes the pride that is instilled in each soldier: pride in one’s country, pride in being a soldier, and, perhaps above all, pride in the tradition of the fighting unit. The U.S.A. Marine Crops, famous regiments of the British Army, and the French Foreign Legion exemplify this approach. Great deeds from past battles fought by the unit are constantly remembered, heroic deaths are glorified. Constant repetition of this history is meant to give new recruits a pride in this tradition, and a resolve not to flinch from similar deeds when the time comes. Commanders of troops also appeal to a far more personal sense of pride of their men According to Shakespeare, King Henry V inspired his troops at Harfleur thus: “Dishonour nor your mothers; now attest that those you call’d father did beget you.” Pride is often an elitist emotion; it consists in doing or having something that most others lack. Thus, again, we have Henry V speaking to his troops before the battle of Againcourt: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; and gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

There is also the use of commitment through a combination of teamwork, contracting, and burning one’s bridges. Once again we turn to Shakespeare’s Henry V speaking to his troops before the battle of Agincourt. “That he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made, and crowns for convoy put into his purse: We would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us.” Of course everyone is too ashamed to take this offer up publicly. However, even so, by their act of rejecting the offer, the soldiers have psychologically burned their ships home. They have established an implicit contract with each other not to flinch from death is the time comes. Henry V’s brilliant understanding of how to motivate and commit his army to battle is reflected in success on the battlefield, even when vastly outnumbered. In 1986, when Allen Murray took over as chairman, the Mobil Corporation was America’s third-largest company. Like other oil companies, Mobil had, during the early eighties, launched a major drive to diversify. It brought Montgomery Ward, the giant retail firm, and Container Corporation, the packager. No sooner did Murry take charge than the axe began to chop. In led than two years he had sold off $4.6 billion in assets, including both Montgomery Ward and Container Corp. “We have gotten back to basis at Mobil,” declared Murry. “We’re in the business we know how to run.” Petroleum engineers, it turned out, were not terrific marketers of women’s clothing or paperboard boxes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The same questioning of function has now begun in government as well. What business calls “divestiture,” politicians the World over now call “privatization.” Thus, Japan’s government decided it did not need to be in the railroad business. When it announced plans to sell off the Japan National Railways, the employees struck. In a coordinated campaign of sabotage widely attributed to the Chukaku-ha, or “Middle Core,” radical group, signaling equipment was damaged in twenty-four places in seven regions, and travel in the Tokyo area was paralyzed. Fire broke out in a station. The railway union denounced the sabotage. Some 10 million commuters were inconvenienced. However, the plan went through, and the rail lines are now privately owned. The Japanese government also decided it did not need to be in the telephone business. This led to the sell-off of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, Japan’s biggest single employer (with some 290,000 jobs). When ownership of NTT was shifted from the public to the private sector, it swiftly became, for a time,  one of the World’s most highly valued corporations. Headlines outside Japan tell a similar story: Argentina privatizes thirty companies…West Germany sells off Volswagen…France divests itself of Matra, a defense manufacturer, along with such giant state enterprises as St.-Gobain, Paribas, Compagnie Generale d’Eletricite, and even Havas, an advertising agency. Britain sells shares in British Aerospace and British Telecom. Heathrow, Gatwick, and other airports are now run by a privatized BAA (Once the government-owned airport authority), and the government-operated bus services are now private. Canada sells stock in Air Canada to the public. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Seen in perspective, the privatizations to date amount to no more than a fleabite on a dinosaur’s hide, and even recently privatized firms could be renationalized in the event of a sudden change in political fortunes or a World-scale economic collapse. Nevertheless, a deep reconceptualization is under way—a first nervous step toward slimming down and restructuring governments in ways that roughly parallel organizational changes in the private economy. None of this is to say that privatization is the panacea claimed by Margaret Thatcher and free-market purists. It often carries its own long list of shortcomings. Yet, at a time when all governments face a kaleidoscopic, bewildering World environment, privatization helps leaders focus on strategic priorities rather than dissipating the taxpayers’ resources on a hodgepodge of distracting sidelines. Still more significant, it speeds up response times in both the divested and the retained operations. It helps bring government back into sync with the rising pace of life and of business in the symbolic economy. Privatization, however, is not the only way in which governments are, consciously or not, trying to cope with the new realities. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Aging—where does aging fit in the spectrum of difficulty? The deterioration that comes with aging is increasingly recognized as a form of disease, one that weakens the body and makes it susceptible to a host of other diseases. Aging, in this view, is as natural as smallpox and bubonic plague, and more surely fatal. Unlike bubonic plague, however, aging results from internal malfunctions in the molecular machinery of they body, and a medical condition with so many different symptoms could be complex. Surprisingly, substantial progress is being made with present techniques, without even a rudimentary ability to perform cell surgery in a medical context. Some researchers believe that aging is primarily the result of a fairly small number of regulatory processes, and many of these have already been shown to be alterable. If so, aging may be tackled successfully before even simple cell repair is available. However, the human aging process is not well enough understood to enable a confident projection of this; for example, the number of regulatory processes is not yet known. A thorough solution may well require advanced nanotechnology-based medicine, but a thorough solution may well require advanced nanotechnology-based medicine, but a thorough solution seems possible. The result would not be immortality, just much longer, healthier lives for those who want them. As we are face with the choice between a humane society and barbarity, between total nuclear disarmament and total, or best, massive destruction, the extension of one’s life is certainly something to debate about. However, I think it beats the “right to die.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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