America is among the most violent of the so-called civilized nations; our homicide rate is three to ten times higher than that of the nations of Europe. An important cause of this is the influence of that frontier brutality which we are the heirs of. We need a new kind of physical courage that will neither run rampant in violence nor require our assertion of egocentric power over other people. Whether an individual is allowed to enter a region, such as a room, or is excluded from it, one will often be required to show moral courage, which generally abhorrers violence and some kind of regard for the physical boundary around it, when there is one. Of course, theoretically it is possible for boundaries like thick walls to close the region off physically from outside communication; almost always, however, some communication across the boundary is physically possible. Social arrangements are therefore recognized that restrict such communication to a special part of the boundary, such as doors, and that lead persons inside and outside the region to act as if the barriers had cut off more communication than it does. The work walls do, they do in part because they are honoured or socially recognized as communication barriers, giving rise, among properly conducted members of the community, to the possibility of “conventional situational closure” in the absence of actual physical closure. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

A glimpse of these conventions can be obtained by noting a fact about socialization: children in our middle-class society are firmly taught that, while it is possible to address a friend by shouting through the walls, or to get one’s attention by tapping on the window, it is none the less not permissible, and that a desire to engage anyone in the region must be ratified by first knocking at the door as the formal means of making entry. Windows themselves may provide an opportunity for partial participation in a situation and are typically associated with an understanding that such a possibility will not be exploited. Deviations from this rule can, of course, be found. In Sacramento, California, visiting seamen, described by some in the community as “of the lowest type,” would sometimes walk around cottages, and peer directly into the windows. After dinner we went down to the railroad again, and took our seats in the cars for Cosumnes River College. Being rather early, those men were curious in foreigners, came (according to custom) round the carriage in which I sat; let down all the windows; thrust their heads and shoulders; hooked themselves on conveniently by their elbows; and fell to comparing notes on the subject to my personal appearance, which as much indifference as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much uncompromising information with reference to my own nose and eyes, the various impressions wrought by my mouth and chin on different minds, and how my head looks when it is viewed from behind, as on these occasions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

A chief characteristic of courage is that it requires a centeredness within our own being, without which we would feel ourselves to be a vacuum. The “emptiness” within corresponds to an apathy without; and apathy adds within corresponds to an apathy without; and apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice. That is why we must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic. In the many mental hospitals where the nurses’ station is a glass-enclosed observation post, patients must be trained to keep from lingering around the windows and looking in on the life inside. (Interestingly enough, no hospital rule prohibits staff from looking out at a patient through these windows, thus maintaining an official form of eavesdropping.) The fashion of using “picture windows” for walls has, of course, introduced its own social strains, requiring great morale on both sides of window to ensure conventional closure; there are many cartoon illustrations of consequent problems. It may be added that failure to recognize a region boundary is often associated with according to those who are improperly observed the status of nonpersons. Where walls between two regions are known to be very thin, problems of reticence become pronounced. Sometimes open recognition will be given to the communication possibilities, with person talking through the wall almost as though they were all in the same social situation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

An analysis of an American semidetached housing development a suggests: “Developing our picture of neighbour linkage by ear from the comments of residents, we find that it is possible in these houses to entertain a neighbour’s wife by playing her favourite records with the gramophone or an iPhone turned to loud, or to mind her children or invite her to tea, all through the party wall.” Here, of course, we see some of the special functions of sight: those on the other wise of the party wall may not be present, or, if present, may not be attending, but it will be impossible to see that in this case. We are living at a time when one age is dying and the new age is not yet born. We cannot doubt this as we look about us to see the radical changes in mores involving pleasures of the flesh, in gender roles, marriage styles, in family structures, in education, in religion, technology, and almost every other aspect of modern life. And behind it all is the threat of the atom bomb, which recedes into the distance but never disappears. To live with sensitivity in this age of limbo requires courage. A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do these things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings—namely, to influence our evolution through our awareness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Years ago the General Electric Company was faced with the delicate task of removing Charles Steinmetz from the head of a department. Mr. Steinmetz, a genius of the first magnitude when it came to electricity, was a failure as the head of the calculating department. Yet the company did not dare offend this man. He was indispensable—and highly sensitive. So they gave him a new title. They made him Consulting Engineer of the General Electric Company—a new title for work he was already doing—and let someone else head up the department. Mr. Steinmetz was happy. So were the officers of G.E. They had gently maneuvered their most temperamental star, and they had done it without a storm—by letting hm save face. When one “saves face,” they retain respect and avoid humiliation. Letting one save face! How important, how vitally important that is! And how few of us ever stop to think of it! We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticizing a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to be the other person’s pride. If we let ourselves experience the evil, we will be forced to do something about it. It is a truth, recognizable in all of us, that when we do not want to become involved, when we do not want to confront the issue of whether or not we will come to the assistance of someone who is unjustly treated, we block off our perception, we blind ourselves to the other’s suffering, we cut off our empathy with the person needing help. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Hence the most prevalent form of cowardice in our day hides behind the statement, “I did not want to become involved.” Whereas a few minutes’ thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person’s attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting! Let us remember that the next time we are faced with the distasteful necessity of discharging or reprimanding an employee. Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. Hurting a person’s dignity is a real crime. Man lives under a great many laws—physical, physiological, biological, laws created by man himself and so on, until we come to the laws of personal life and finally to imaginary “I.” This is the most important law which governs our life and makes us live in the non-existing seventh dimension. A great many forces or influences act on a man at any given moment, though people are chiefly controlled by imagination. We imagine ourselves to be different from what we are and that creates illusions. However, there are necessary laws. We are limited to certain food and to certain air, to a certain temperature and so on. We are so conditioned by influences that we have very little possibility of freedom. It is necessary for us to change our inner attitude. People who live exclusively under A influences and who take B influences, if they meet them, on the same level as A influences, usually die in this life. They may be physically alive but that does not mean that their essence can develop. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

“Do dead people look like everyone else? Do they live as we live?” Quite, yes. Because they have soul and the remains of essence. They can insure themselves!” “You spoke previously of creating a permanent ‘I.’ What do you mean by that?” I mean that when you say “I” you can be sure that it is the same “I” each time. Now you say, “I want this” and half an hour later you say, “I want that.” The “I” is quite different. There is one thing—you—and there are many imaginary “I”s. You is that really is, and you must learn to distinguish it. It may be very small, very elementary, but you can find something definite and permanent and sufficiently solid in yourself. If you remembered all that has been said, you would remember yourself at the end of ten weeks. For instance, take the study of false personality. This is one of the quickest methods. The more you understand false personality the more you will remember yourself. What prevents self-remembering is, first of all, false personality. False personality cannot and does not wish to remember itself, and it does not wish to let any other personality remember. It just tries to stop self-remembering; takes some form of sleep and calls that self-remembering. Then it is quite happy. False personality is something special; you are opposed to it. False personality must be made to disappear or, at any rate, it must not enter into this work. This applies to everybody and everybody must begin in this way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Firs of all you must know your false personality and you must not trust it in any way—its ideas, its words, its actions. You cannot destroy it but you can make it passive for some time, and then little by little you can make it weaker. False personality does not really exist but we imagine that it exists. It exists by its manifestations but not as part of ourselves. Do not try to define it or you will lose your way in words, but it is necessary to deal with facts. Negative emotions exist but at the same time they do not exist; there is no real center for them. This is one of the misfortunes of our state. We are all full of non-existent things. [Someone said that he sometimes doubted the genuineness of this interest in the work; he might by lying to himself.] Only you can answer that, and only if you do not forget the fundamental principles by saying “I” about something when it is only one “I.” You must get to know other “I”s and remember about them. If you forget this you forget everything. So long a you remember this you may remember everything. Forgetting about this is the great danger, and one slight change in something is sufficient to make everything wrong. Some groups of “I”s are useful, some are artificial and some are pathological. All people play roles; each person has about five or six roles which one plays in one’s life. One plays them unconsciously, or if one tries to play them consciously, one identifies with them very soon and continues to play them unconsciously. These roles together make the imaginary “I.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

False personality is imaginary “I.” [Somebody asked where higher states of consciousness could produce more thoroughly bad people or more thoroughly good people equally.] No, that is wrong. Bad people can be produced only by increase of mechanicalness. Self-remembering cannot produce wrong results provided the connection is kept between it and other ideas of the system, but if one omits one thing and takes another thing from the system—for instance, if one seriously works on self-remembering without knowing about the idea of division of “I”s, so that one takes oneself as one (as unity), from the beginning—then self-remembering will give wrong results and may even produce wrong crystallization and make development impossible. There are schools for instance or systems which, although they do not formulate it in this way, are actually based on false personality and on struggle against conscience. Such work must certainly produce wrong results. First it will create a kind of strength, but it will make the development of higher consciousness an impossibility. False personality either destroys or distorts memory. Self-remembering is a thing which must be based on right function. At the same time you must work on the weakening of false personality. Several lines of work are suggested and explained from the beginning and all must go together. You cannot just do one thing and not do the another. All are necessary for creating this right combination, but first must come the understanding of and struggle with false personality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Suppose one tries to remember oneself and does not want to make efforts against false personality, then all its features will come into play, saying, “I dislike these people; I do not want this, I do not want that,” and so one. Then it will not be work but quite the opposite. If one tries to work in this wrong way it can make one stronger than one was before but in such a case the stronger one becomes, the less is the possibility of development. Fixing before development—that is the danger. We are thus not dealing with hobbies, do-it-yourself movements, Sunday painting, or other forms of filling up leisure time. Nowhere has the meaning of creativity been more disastrously lost than in the idea that it is something you do only on the weekend. The creative process must be explored not as the product of sickness, but as representing the highest degree of emotional health, as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves. Creativity must be seen in the work of the scientist as well as in that of the artist, in the thinker as well as in the aesthetician; and one must not rule out the extent to which it is present in captains of modern technology as well as in a mother’s normal relationship with her child. Creativity is part of self-remembering and is the process of making, of bringing into being. Now this intensity of awareness is not necessarily connected with conscious purpose or willing. It may begin in dreams or at an unconscious level. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

The makes source—any data, information, or knowledge that is communicated requires a source or sender; a set of channels or media through which the message flows; a receiver; and of course a message. Power players intervene at each of these points. Take the sender. When a letter arrives in the mail, the first thing we usually wan to know is who sent it. The identity of the Sender is, in fact, a crucial part of any message. Among other things, it helps us decide how much credence to give the message. This is why the “Masked Source Tactic” is so frequently used. An ostensibly nonpartisan citizen group that sends out millions of fund-raising letters may actually be financed and controlled covertly by a political party. A political action committee with a fine-sounding name may be run by the lobbyist for a rapacious industry. A patriotic-sounding organization may be controlled by another nation. Both the KGB and he CIA covertly channel funds into publications, labour unions, and other institutions in targeted countries and help set up friendly organizations. The “Masked Source Tactic” is the basis for front groups of all political stripes. However, masking the message-sender can take many forms, in many different settings, from business boardrooms to prison cells. An imprisoned murderer once described how she could bring power to bear on a jail guard who was harassing her. She could, she said, write a letter of complaint to the prison warden. However, if the guard found out, life would be made even more miserable for her. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

She could also, she said, go over the warden’s head and write to a politician complaining of brutal treatment, and pleading with him to put pressure on the warden to call off his guard. However, this was even more risky. “Fortunately,” she observed in a memorable phrase, “prisons are filled with idealist. And so,” she said, “I could get another inmate to write to the politician for me,” thus concealing the real source of the message. Officials throughout business and government play variations of this fame. When an underling “pulls rank,” using a superior’s name (often without authorization) to gain an advantage, he or she is using the Masked Source Tactic. A classic twist on the Masked Source Tactic influenced U.S.A. policy during the Vietnam War. It was used in 1963, when a report prepared by Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor advised the President and the nation that “it should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel” by the end of 1965. This forecast was bolstered by data supposedly originating in Saigon. What readers of the report were not told is that much of what was datelined Saigon had been prepared in Washington, the transmitted to Saigon so it could be sent back to Washington looking as though the data actually came from the field. The source was disguised to lend the data greater authenticity. A special class of Masked Source messages are outright forgeries. Seldom used in everyday bureaucratic warfare, it is well known in international affairs where strange forgeries have on occasion changed history—like the Zimmerman Telegram that helped propel the United States of America into World War I. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

In 1986, the U.S.A. State Department publicly exposed as forged a document that described a “confidential” meeting at the Pentagon. It quoted then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger as saying that SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, would “give the United States…the ability to threaten the Soviet Union with a knockout blow.” If true, the quotation would have bolstered Soviet arguments against the SDI program. However, the document was a fake circulated in West Germany (presumably by the Soviets) as part of the public campaign drumming up sentiments against SDI. Another forged document about SDI turned up in the Nigerian press. More recently an anti-Japanese forgery turned up in Washington Congressman Tom McMillen rose in the House of Representatives to read what he called an “internal, high-level Japanese government memo.” Ostensibly addressed to the Prime Minister from his “Special Assistant for Policy Coordination,” the memo called for Japanese investments in the United States of American to be planted in congressional districts where they could be used to influence the U.S.A. politics. Nothing could have been better calculated to intensify Japan-bashing in the United States of America. However, rather than a Japanese government document, it turned out to be an embarrassing fiction traced to Ronald A. Morse, an official of the Asian program of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. Morse said that he had written it merely to illustrate, in a dramatic way, what he believed to be current Japanese attitudes. He claimed he had told its recipients the document was bogus. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Markets and demonstrations illustrate how strategies can be selected very quickly. Typically, selection at the strategy level is faster and less costly than selection at the agent level. Nevertheless, these differences are tendencies rather than inevitable consequences. So, by way of counterexample, large corporations are often faced with new products from start-up competitors. They sometimes find it quicker to create new divisions or small spin-off firms to make a comparable product rather than modifying existing lines of activity to produce it. In effect, this is a case where agent creation may be faster than strategy copying. Although the differences we have mentioned are only tendencies, they are rooted in the added difficulty that is typical for creating full agents. Hence it is often important to compare possibilities for selection at the agent and strategy levels. A further difference between selection at the two levels involves problems that commonly occur in inferring exactly what is to be copied. There are myriad ways that selection can go awry and incorrectly reward an agent or strategy that was not responsible for a success. Such failures plague selection at both levels. However, one important difference does occur. Agents are collections of strategies. Successful agents generally use strategies that are mutually compatible. The interaction among those strategies does not have to be understood if selection is at the level of the agent, copying all its strategies. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Biological selection of whole agents capitalizes mightily on this fact, but so can identical replication of franchised business units. Selection at the strategy level generally demands higher quality of inference. How many of the agent’s action patterns must be copied to replicate the success? Which ones? To obtain the same low defect rate as a rival firm, which of their quality control procedures should be emulated? Selection at the agent level, on average, is more context preserving than at the strategy level. In Complex Adaptive systems, where many results derive from effects that multiply other effects, context preservation can work to retain and spread synergies that are not fully understood. We made a related point in a past reports when we observed that the longer time horizons of those in authority create a common context for coordinating the faster actions of those they supervise. There we were examining agents’ activities. Here we are examining the selection that follows from their success or failure. We have argued that there are tendencies for selection at the agent level to be more costly, slower in elapsed time, and more context preserving. The first two effects are often not wanted, while the last one frequently is. This can set up a tension in which a designer or policy maker who has some freedom to influence the level of selection may have to trade off the various factors. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

To take an example: Supposed that you want to discourage a dangerous behaviour such as violating crucial safety regulation. We have usually considered selection for positive traits, but here we can look at negative selection. At the level of strategy, selection may correspond to punishing the action pattern. Each detected instance of rule breaking could be heavily fined, for example. On the other hand, agents could be negatively selected in response to their violations. An offering employee could be suspended, transferred, or even fired. These forms of removal will make the agent less likely to be copied. Taking the agent out of circulation and making the effort of replacement typically costs more and takes longer than simply changing an agent’s strategy. If the safety violation is integrated with other strategies—for example if the agent’s entire work style used a set of methods now considered unsafe—simply punishing the violations may not discourage the behaviour, so removal may be worthwhile. If the violations are more a matter of “fashion”—for example, not wearing a hard hat in order to look fearless—pushing the action itself may be the preferred approach. Schemes to amplify success are nearly always imperfect. Selection at the level of agent and selection at the level of strategy are families of mechanisms that have somewhat complementary strengths. Agent selection often works on longer time scales—faster is not always better—and preserves variation and context. Strategy selection isolates key patterns that can be more easily and rapidly copied. #RandolphHarrs 16 of 21

Thus it is not surprising that there are many hybrid systems, where selection is found to be operating at both level in a single population of agents. Many species of birds and mammals seem to select at both the agent level, by conventional natural selection, and at the strategy level, by processes of cultural diffusion, which operates at a much faster times scale. In the human case, cultural evolution is so rapid and effective that we tend to ignore the continuing operation of natural selection. At the other extreme, we often do not notice cultural aspects of an animal population. However, close observation relevels striking cases, such as the English birds that discovered how to peck through foil milk bottle caps. Their discovery spread across the entire country within a few years. Hybrid systems such as this have tremendous advantages. Herbert Simon has argued that they are so beneficial that we could expect biological evolution to create individuals with increased susceptibility to following strategies suggested by others. Even though this “docile” quality makes it possible to take advantage of individuals who possess it, that can be outweighed by the tremendous gains of adding cultural selection of strategies to natural selection of agents. These observations on complementary strengths and hybrid selection systems have a cumulative implication. When there is room to alter selection process, it can be wise to look for changes to the system that could diversify it, adding fast elements if its selection processes are slow. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

If the past processes are not succeeding, it can pay to add slower elements that sustain new context. As an example of adding fast elements, organization that rely heavily on change through personnel turnover are often ripe for improved trading of employee “war stories.” A series of failures in piecemeal importing of “best practices” might suggest brining in a new supervisor experienced in how the various routines form an interlocking system. As with many other interventions we discuss, hybridizing selection processes is not guaranteed to be better, but it is often a beneficial focus of attention. Natural law imposes limits, but so does the nature of human beings. These will continue as long as people do. Reproduction is a deeply ingrained instinct enforced by the march of time, which ruthlessly discards the genetic material of all who neglect it. Many would argue that the Earth is already overpopulated and that is why land prices and housing is so expensive. While nanotechnology could enable the current population, and even a great increased one, to live more lightly on Earth, there will still be limits to Earth’s capacity. The norms of human life are shaped by ancient patterns: high rates of infant or childhood mortality have been facts of life for millennia, and having many, many children has been a way to ensure that one or two will survive to work on the farm, and to care for you in your old age. Of course, many parents tend to use and abuse their adult children these day. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Large families naturally become traditional. And that is why generational housing is being built, where in some large homes they also have an apartment added on inside of the house, so adult children or parents can be part of the family home, without feeling like a guest or being a burden on the home owner. And also, it gives the homeowner a chance to have a true office at home. When modern medicine and reliable food supplies change those conditions—as they have, in cultural terms, virtually overnight—behaviour does not shift as quickly. The result is the Third World population boom. In Western countries, where there has been time for behaviour to adapt, a huge family is the exception. It might seem that our problem is solved. Molecular manufacturing can make everyone wealthy, and wealthy populations today have stable or shrinking populations. The Earth can support more people with advanced technologies, and these will also open up the vast room and resources of the World beyond Earth. Would that this were true. If 99 percent of the people in a population respond to wealth by reducing childbearing, the population will indeed stabilize or shrink, for a whole. However, populations are not uniform. What of the 1 percent, say, who are member of a minority group with different values? If that minority group has a growth rate of 5 percent per year, then in ninety-five years they will be the majority, and in one thousand years their population will have grown by a factor of 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000, if resource limits or genocide have not intervened. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Not that the Hutterites of North America, a reasonably wealthy religious group viewing fertility control as a sin and high fertility as a blessing, have managed an average of ten children per woman. Given enough time, exponential growth of even the smallest population can consume all the resources in reach. The right to reproduce is often regarded as basic, as illustrated by the outage at reports of forced abortion in the People’s Republic of China. The Hutterites and many others regard it as part of their freedom of religion. However, what happens when parents have more children than they can support—does redistribution solve the problem? Of course, in America, some women sell babies to get new cars and stuff like that. However, if reproduction is not forcibly suppressed, and if resources are forcibly and repeatedly redistributed so that each human beings has a roughly equal share, then each person’s share will steadily shrink. Even given the most optimistic assumptions regarding available resources, with a policy of resources redistribution and unlimited reproduction, the amount per person would eventually be insufficient to sustain life. This policy must be avoided, because if it is followed, it will kill everyone. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

As soon as we grant that any entity is entitled to certain rights—whether that entity be a human child, an animal, or some future artificial intelligence—the question arises of who is responsible for providing resources to support it when it cannot do so for itself. The above argument indicates that a policy of coercion by some central power to compel the entire population to support an exponentially exploding population of these individuals would lead directly to disaster. Ultimately, this responsibility must rest with the entities’ initiator: the designer of the artificial intelligence, the owner of the pet, the parents of the child. No new technology can magically remove the limits imposed by natural law, and thereby lift the burden of human responsibility. Every time a technology solves a problem, it creates new problems. This does not mean that the change is neutral, or for the worse, of course. The Salk and Sabin Vaccines for polio virtually destroyed the iron-lung industry, and the pocket calculator virtually destroyed the slide-rule industry, but these advances were worth the price of some economic adjustment. Molecular manufacturing and nanotechnology will bring far greater changes, placing far greater strains on our ability to adapt. We should not be surprised when basically beneficial applications make someone miserable. Our lives are largely centered around problems. If we can solve many of these problems, the centers of our lives will shift, creating fresh problems. We have sketched some of the issues of change and adaptation more to raise questions than to offer solutions. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21