Destructiveness appears in two forms: spontaneous, and bound in the character structure. By the former, I refer to the outburst of dormant (not necessarily repressed) destructive impulses that are activated by extraordinary circumstances, in contrast to the permanent, although not always expressed, presence of destructive traits in the character. The most ample—and horrifying—documentation for seemingly spontaneous forms of destructiveness are on the record for civilized history. Disagreement seems to be a cornerstone of human interaction. In most cases, disputes are revolved calmly and civilly with little more than heated emotions and words being exchanged. However, this is not always the case. In some instances, there is a breakdown in verbal problem solving and a violent physical altercation occurs. Research shows that the outcome severity of these violent confrontations (id est, lethal versus nonlethal) can hinge on everything from luck to the level of emotion and force that are present in the situation. Most lethal altercations do not start out with death as an intended outcome. Instead, most murders manifest themselves as assaults gone awry wherein an unintended fatality results from an overly efficient weapon, an errant blow, or the blind rage of the moment. As such, it is best to think of the crimes as assault and murder as comprising a single conceptual category wherein varied degrees of negative consequences are possible (id est, injury versus death). #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

According to the Model Penal Code (American Law Institute, 1962, p.125), a person is guilty of a criminal homicide if he or she “purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently causes the death of another human being.” Most jurisdictions distinguish between three grades of homicide: murder, manslaughter, and negligent homicide (although the label may vary). These gradations are shaped by the element of criminal intent, with murder referring to a purposeful or knowing material state, manslaughter referring to a condition of recklessness, and negligent homicide encompassing those acts committed under a state of unjustifiable risk or “negligence.” This three-pronged definition leaves room for noncriminal homicides, as in the case of a state-sanctioned killing (id est, capital punishment, wartime killing, or lethal force on the part of a law enforcement officer). The law also recognizes a private citizen’s right to use deadly force against another person where it can be shown that failure to do so would likely result in his or her own death (id est, self-defense). Involuntary intoxication and insanity are legal defenses that speak to a private citizen’s inability or lack of capacity to form criminal intent and thus, in extreme cases, have been used as criminal homicide defenses. Lawmakers have also long frowned upon nonlethal means of physical problem solving. As far back as the ninth century, judges are known to have sanctioned instances of battery (defined as unjustified offensive touching), and assault (defined as attempted or threatened offensive touching) among the populous. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Over time, these two legal categories grew together into what is today commonly referred to in criminal codes as criminal assault or assault and battery. In most jurisdictions, one is guilty of assault and battery (shortened hereafter to assault) is one purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently engages or threatens to engage in an act of offensive touching against another person. Criminal statutes differentiate between simple and aggravated assault as a way of allowing the state to factor in the amount of harm that is caused by a given attack. The Model Penal Code (American Law Institute, 1962, p. 134) defines simple assault as any attempted threatened, or completed act whereby an individual knowingly, purposely, recklessly, or negligently cases bodily harm to another. This statutory provision is generally invoked in response to minor fights or fisticuffs. Conversely, the Model Penal Code states that the more serious criminal offenses of aggravated assault occurs when a perpetrator purposely, knowingly, or recklessly seems to “cause serious bodily injury” to another. Central to this more flagrant offense category is the presence of a deadly weapon or any violent behavior that demonstrates an “extreme indifference to the value of human life.” Practically speaking, a charge of aggravated assault is usually reserved for potentially lethal violent encounters or those requiring medical attention. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Each year, the federal government conducts the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). This study uses a complex sampling strategy to query tens of thousand of households about their victimization experiences over the past year. The survey asks about a wide variety of violent and property offenses and is used to generate victimization estimates (raw numbers and rates) for the entire U.S.A. population. Data from the 2021 NCVS suggest that nearly 4.9 million assaults (3.7 million simple assaults and 1.2 million aggravated assaults) took place in America that year. All total, those two offense categories constitute 20 percent of the 27.4 million total criminal victimizations and 82 percent of the violent victimizations (id est, robbery, rape, and assault) that occurred that year. This translates into victimization rate of 27.4 victimizations per 1,000 persons or households. About 46 percent of violent victimizations were reported to police in 2021, higher than 2020 (40 percent). No other form of violent crime registers a victimization rate this high and theft and burglary are the only other forms of major crime to post higher victimization rates. Put it a different way, data suggest that one in every fifty-five Americans was a victim of criminal assault. The FBI estimates that an aggravated assault occurred every 34.8 seconds. Although assaults tapered off from 1993 until present from 31.5 simple assaults per 1,000 persons/households, these same victimization reports are of little help when it comes time to assess the scope of the homicide problem—dead individuals cannot tell tales. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Our best source of homicide data is the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). The homicide rates generally increased through the 1960, and 1970s (reaching an all-time high of 11.6 per 100,000 persons in 1980), and homicide rates had decreased rather steadily over three decades to 5.5 per 100,000 in 2000, but we experienced a sharp uptick in 2020 to 7.8 per 100,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that U.S.A. residents face a one in 154 chance of being the victim of a homicide during their lifetime. There were 22,900 homicides in 2021. Thus, unlike assault, homicide is a relatively rare criminal event comprising 1 percent to 2 percent of the roughly 1.5 to 2 million violent crimes that are reported to the police annually. Homicide and assaults have long been largely urban phenomena with the highest rates reported in major metropolitan areas. For example, 80 percent of the homicides in 2021 took place in locales with a population exceeding 50,000 persons. America continues to lead in murder and assault rates. Our nation’s sizable murder and assault rates are due a few factors. High levels of economic and racial inequality, the proliferation of the illegal drug trade, and a culture of violence that is clearly manifest from a “code of the streets.” Social inequality can effect levels of homicide and assault. The strongest democracies and wealthiest countries have traditionally experienced the highest homicide rates. Moreover, factors such as poverty, chronic stress and frustration, and relative deprivation are contributing to the high homicide rates that are experienced in our inner-city, minority neighborhoods. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The illegal drug market is contributing to our nation’s high rates of interpersonal violence. Drug deals and competition over drug markers add to a culture of lethality. Over 50 percent of the murders that occurred in New York City and Washington D.C., are directly linked to the cities’ illegal drug trade. Factors such as rising poverty rates and the proliferation of the drug markets (especially crack cocaine) have led to the emergence of a code of the streets in most urban areas. They observe that blocked opportunities and mounting frustrations have slowly lead to the emergence of alternative core beliefs and values. Many inner-city youth no longer view earning potential and educational attainment as viable sources of social capital. Instead, a steadfast willingness to engage in violence or a menacing public presence becomes the primary source of self-respect and cultural capital for these youth. Contrary to public perception and television portrayals, interpersonal violence—be it murder or assault—is generally not associated with high levels of skill and precision. Most homicide and assaults are spontaneous acts of rage. Most assault take shape as low skill, low tech confrontations. More often than not, offenders enlist their bare hands to inflict their injuries. In 2021, there was an absence of weaponry in 70 percent of all assaults—6.4 percent involved a firearm, and 5.6 percent a knife or sharp object, and 4.6 percent a blunt object. A decidedly different portrait emerges among those assaults during which serious bodily injury was incurred (id est, aggravated assaults). Here, victims reported that a weapon was present 94 percent of the time. Guns were the tools of trade in 27 percent of these cases, knives or sharp objects were present 24 percent of the time, and blunt objects in 19 percent of the cases. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Why is vengeance such a deep-seated and intense passion? I can only offer some speculations. Let us consider first the idea that vengeance is in some sense a magic act. By destroying the one who committed the atrocity one’s deed is magically undone. This is expressed by saying that “the criminal has paid his debt”; at least in theory one is now like someone who never committed a crime. Vengeance may be said to be  magic reparation; but even assuming that this is so, why is this desire for reparation so intense? Perhaps man is endowed with an elementary sense of justice; this may bebecause there is a deep-rooted sense of “existential equality”: we all are born from others, we were once powerless children, and we shall all die. Although man can often not defend himself against the harm others inflict upon him, in his wish for revenge he tries to wipe the sheet clean by denying, magically, that the damage was ever done. (It seems that envy has the same root. Cain could not stand the fact that he was rejected while his brother was accepted. The rejection was arbitrary, and it was not in his power to change it; this fundamental injustice aroused such envy that the score could only be evened out by killing Abel.) However, there must be more to the cause of vengeance. Man seems to take justice into his own hands when God or secular authorities fail. It is as if in his passion for vengeance he elevates himself to the role of God, and the angels of vengeance. The act of vengeance may be his greatest hour just because of this self-elevation. Cruelties like physical mutilation, castration, and torture violate the minimal demands of conscience common to all men. Is the passion for vengeance against those who commit such inhuman acts mobilized by this elementary conscience? #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

People are not always prepared to obey. Usually we have a bad will. We very seldom have good will. There are many things mixed here. One does not know how to think about will. With one side of you, your realize that you are machines, but at the same time you want to act according to your own opinion. In that moment you must be able to stop; not to do what you want. This does not apply to moments when you have no intention to do anything, but you must be able to stop if your desire goes against rules or principles, or against what you have been told. It is important to realize two things: that we cannot “do” and that we live under the law of accident. In most cases people think they can “do,” that they can get what they want and that it is only accidental that they do not. People think that accident is very rare and that most things are due to cause and effect. This is quite wrong. It is necessary to learn to think in the right way, then we shall see that everything happens and that we live under the law of accident. In relation to “doing,” it is difficult for us to realize, for example, that when people build a bridge that is not “doing”; it is only the result of all previous efforts. It is accidental. To understand this, you must think of the first bridge that Adam built and of all the evolution of bridges. At first it is accidental—a tree falls across a river, then man builds something like that, and so on. People are not “doing”; one thing comes from another. If you remember that you can do nothing, you will remember many other things. Generally there are three or four chief stumbling-blocs, and if you do not fall over one, you fall over another. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

“Doing” is one of them. In connection with this, there are some fundamental principles which you must never forget. For instance, that you must look at yourself and not at other people; that people can do nothing by themselves, but—if it is possible to chance—it is possible only with the help of the system, the organization, persona work and study of the system. You must find things like that and remember them. To remember these things, imagine yourself start to make plans to do something. It is only when you really try to do something differently from the way it happens that your realize that it is absolutely impossible to do differently. Half of the questions asked are about “doing”—how to change this, destroy that, avoid this and so on. However, enormous effort is necessary to change even one small thing. Until you try you can never realize it. You can change nothing except through the system. This is generally forgotten. Everything happens. People can do nothing. From the time we are born to the time we die things happen, happen, happen, and we think we are “doing.” This is our ordinary normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to “do” something come sonly through the work, and first only in oneself, not externally. Even in oneself, “doing” very often begins by not doing. Before you can do something that you cannot do, you must not do many things which you did before. “Does one sometimes have a choice between two possible happenings?” Only in very small things, and even then if you notice that things are going in a certain way and decide to change them, you will find how awfully uncomfortable it is to change things. So you come back to the same things. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

“When one really begins to understand that one cannot “do,” one will need a great deal of courage. Will that come from getting rid of false personality?” One does not come to this understanding just like that. It comes after some time of work on oneself, so that when one comes to this realization one had many other realizations besides; chiefly that there are ways to change if one applies the right instrument at the right place and at the right time. One must have these instruments, and these again are only given by work. It is very important to come to this realization. Without it one will not do the right things; one will excuse oneself. Open collusion is, of course, a phenomenon observed frequently in mental wards. In the years 1776, the parish officers of Frindsbury applied to me for advice in the case of a maniacal patient confined in their workhouse. This unhappy object had been very desperate and had committed many acts of outrage and violence; was naturally of strong, muscular shape, and rendered much stronger by his present complaint. He had overpowered almost everyone before the could properly secure him, which was now effected in a very extraordinary manner. He was fastened to the floor by means of a staple and iron ring, which was tied to a pir of fetters about his legs, and he was hand-cuffed. The place of his confinement was a large lower room, occasionally made use of for a kitchen, and which opened into the street; there were wooden bars to the windows, through the spaces of which continual visitors were observing, pointing at, ridiculing, and irritating the poor maniac, who thus became a spectacle of public sport and amusement. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Just how does one go about generating a threat that involves a risk? In the past, we talked about mixing one’s moves, and suggested several random mechanisms that could be used when selecting one from the range of actions being mixed. We might try that same idea again. For example, suppose that during the Cuban missile crisis, one in six is the right risk of war for Kennedy to threaten. Then he might tell Khrushchev that unless the missiles were out of Cuba by Monday, he would roll a die, and if six came up he would order the U.S.A. missiles to be launched. Quite apart from the horror of this picture conjures up, it just will not work. If Khrushchev refuses to comply, and Kennedy rolls the die and six comes up, the actual decision is still in Kennedy’s hands. He still has the powerful urge to give Khrushchev just one more roll of the die (“let’s make it two out of three”) before Armageddon. Khrushchev knows this, and knows that Kennedy knows that, too. The credibility of the threat collapses just as surely as if the elaborate mechanism of rolling the die had never been mentioned. As essential insight is that when a sharp precipice is replaced by a slippery slope, even Kennedy does not know where safety lies. It is as if he is playing nuclear Russian roulette instead of rolling a die. One number leads to disaster but he does not know which one that is. If the number comes up, he cannot change his mind and roll again. With rational opponents, no one would ever cross the nuclear brink. However, it is possible to fall down a slippery slope by mistake. Brinkmanship deliberately hies the precipice by creating a situation that is slightly out of control. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

The risk in brinkmanship is therefore fundamentally different from the element of chance in mixing your moves. If the best proportions of your tennis serve are 50:50 between forehand and backhand, and you toss a coin before a particular serve and it comes up heads, you have no reason to feel happy or sorry about the fact. You are indifferent as to your action on each occasion; it is only the unpredictability of individual occasions, and the right proportions of chance, that matter. With brinkmanship, you are willing to create the risk before the fact, but remain unwilling to carry out the threatened act if the occasion arises. To convince your rival that the threatened consequences will occur, you still need other devices. The most common is to take the actual action out of your control, It is not a matter of “If you defy me, then there is a risk that I will choose to do such and such.” Instead, it is “If you defy me, there is a risk that such and sch will happen, however much both of us may regret it then.” This the credibility of brinkmanship still needs a device of commitment; only that device contains within it a coin toss or a die that governs what happens. This conjures up the image of an automaton or computer that will act in response to the roll of a die—an unlikely scenario. However, many circumstances, a generalized fear that “things may get out of hand” serves the same purpose. Kennedy does not have to spell out exactly how a chance of Armageddon will be created. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Soldiers and military experts speak of the “fog of war”—a situation in which both sides act with disrupted lines of communication, individual acts of fear or courage, and a great deal of general uncertainty. There is too much going on to keep everything under control. This serves some of the purpose of creating risk. The Cuban missile crisis itself provided instances of this. For example, even the president found it very difficult to control the operations of the naval blockage from 500 miles out to 800 miles off the shore of Cuba in order to give Khrushchev more time. Yet evidence based on the order to give Khrushchev ore time. Yet evidence based on the first ship boarded, the Marcula (a Lebanese fighter under charter to the Soviets), indicates that the blockade was never moved. Nor did Defense Secretary McNamara succeed in persuading Chief of Naval Operations Anderson to modify the Navy’s standard operating procedure for a blockade. As recorded in Graham Allison’s book Essence of Decision, McNamara explained to Anderson: “By the conventional rules, blockade was an act of war and the first Soviet ship that refused to submit to boarding and search risked being sent to the bottom. However, this was a military action with a political objective. Khruschev must somehow be persuaded to pull back, rather than goaded into retaliation.” Allision continues with his portrait of the meeting: “Sensing that Anderson was not moved by this logic, McNamara returned to the lined of detailed questioning. Who would make the first interception? Were Russian-speaking officers on board? How would submarines be dealt with? #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

“What would he do if a Soviet captain refused to answer questions about his cargo? At that point the Navy man picked up the Manual of Naval Regulations and, waving it in McNamara’s face, shouted, ‘It’s all in there.’ To which McNamara replied, ‘I don’t give a damn what John Paul Jones would have done. I want to know what you are going to do now.’ The encounter ended on Anderson’s remark: ‘Now, Mr. Secretary, if you and your Deputy will go back to your offices, the Navy will run the blockade.’” The standard operating procedures for a naval blockade may have imposed a much greater risk than Kennedy desired. This is where it is important to realize that the crisis was not a two-person game; neither the United States of America nor the Soviet Union was one individual play. The fact that Kennedy’s decisions had to be carried out by parties with their own procedures (and sometimes their own agenda) provided a method for Kennedy to credibility commit to taking some of the control out of his hands. The ways in which a bureaucracy takes on a life of its own, the difficulty of stopping momentum, and the conflicting goals within an organization were some of the underlying ways in which Kennedy could threaten to start a process that he could not guarantee to stop. Speaking of threatening to start a process that one cannot guarantee to stop, President Vladimir Putin announced, on 21 February 2023, that he has suspended a landmark nuclear arms treaty with the United States of America because they are supporting Ukraine, while Russia is at war with them. Putin is threatening to resume nuclear tests. “The elites of the West do not hide their purpose. But they also cannot fail to realise that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield,” he told his country’s political military elite. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

One of America’s funniest humorists, Art Buchwald, once imagined a meeting of spies in the Cade Mozart in East Berlin, including George Smiley, John le Carre’s famous fictional character. “Does anyone know who’d like to buy the plans for the Warsaw Pact defense of the northern corridor?” Buchwald has Smiley ask. “Forget it, Smiley,” comes the reply. “There’s no market for defense secret anyone. The Cold War is over and Moscow is giving away Warsaw Pact plans, not buying them. The Buchwald column was amusing, as usual. However, the loudest laugh must have come from the World’s real, as distinct from fictional spies. For among the boom businesses of the decades ahead, espionage will be one of the biggest. Spies are not only here to stay, we re about to see their entire industry revolutionized. As the entire society shifts toward a new system of wealth creation based on knowledge, informational functions of governments mushroom, and certain types of stolen knowledge, secret knowledge, are worth more, not less, to those who need them. In turn, this will challenge all conventional ideas about democracy and information. For even if we leave aside covert action and domestic surveillance, and focus instead on the “pure” work of the find a system emerging that goes beyond anything we have previously known as espionage. Just how far beyond become clear when we glance briefly backward. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

At times of conflict, it is especially important to have a health population. Did you know that medicine can be safer too? Drugs often have side effects that can do permanent damage or kill. Nanomedicine will offer alternatives to flooding the body with a possibly toxic chemical. Often, one wants to affect just one target: just the stomach, or perhaps the ulcer. An antibiotic or antiviral treatment should fight specific bacteria or viruses and not damage anything else. When medicine achieves the sophistication of immune machines and cell-surgery devices, this will become possible. However, what about medical accidents and side effects? Molecular manufacturing will make it possible superior sensors to tell medical researchers of the effects of a new treatment, thereby improving testing. Better sensors will also help in monitoring any negative effects of a treatment on an individual patient. With care, only a few cells would be damaged and only small concentrations of toxic by-products would be produced before this was noticed and the treatment corrected. The resources of nanotechnology-based medicine would then be available for dealing with the problem. With biostasis techniques available, even the worst medically induced illnesses could be put hold while a treatment was developed. In short, serious medical mistakes could be make far rarer, and most mistakes could be corrected. The conclusion that follows from these examples of oil spills, chemical plants, and the effects of medical treatments is straightforward. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Today, our comparative poverty and out comparative technological incompetence press us in the direction of building and using relatively dangerous and destructive devices, systems, and techniques. With greater wealth and technological competence, we will have the option of accomplishing what we do today (and more) with less risk and less environmental destruction: in short, being able to do more, and do it better. With better-controlled technologies, and with an ample measure of foresight and concern, we will even be able to do a better job of recovering from mistakes. It will not happen automatically, but with normal care we can arrange for our future accidents to be smaller and less frequent than those in our past. However, Nanotechnology also raises the specter of what have been termed “extraordinary accidents”: accidents involving runaway self-replicating machines. One can imagine building a device about the size of a bacterium but tougher and more nearly omnivorous. Such runaways might blow like pollen and reproduce like bacteria, eating any of a wide range of organic materials: an ecological disaster of unprecedented magnitude—indeed, one that could destroy the biosphere as we know it. This may be worth worrying about, but can this happen by accident? #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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