It seems that some people have trouble with feeling joy. Many individuals are convinced that life must be painful. They resent any good feelings in themselves or others. Although the existence of violence against women is now publicly acknowledged, the experience of being battered is poorly understood. Research aimed at discovering the incidence and related social variables has been based on an operational definition of battering which focuses on the violent act. The Conflict Tactic Scales (CTS) developed by Straus, for example, is based on the techniques used to resolve family conflicts. The Violence Scale of the CTS ranks eight violent behaviors, ranging in severity from throwing something at the other person to using a knife or gun. The scale is not designed to explore the context of violent actions, or their meanings for the victim or perpetrator. With notable exceptions, the bulk of sociological research on battered women has focused on quantifiable variables. Interviews with battered women make it apparent that the experience of violence inflicted by a husband or lover is shocking and confusing. Battering is rarely perceived as an unambiguous assault demanding immediate action to ensure future safety. In fact, battered women often remain in violent relationships for years. Why do women stay in abusive relationships? Some observers answer facilely that they must like it. The masochism thesis was the predominant response of psychiatrists writing about battering in the 1960s. More balanced studies of the problem have revealed the difficulties of disentangling oneself from a violent relationship. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

These studies point to the social and cultural expectations of women and their status within the nuclear family as reasons for the reluctance of battered women to flee the relationship. The socialization of women emphasizes the primary value of being a good wife and mother, at the expense of personal achievement in other sphere of life. The patriarchal ordering of society assigns a secondary status to women, and provides men with ultimate authority, both within and outside the family unit. Economic conditions contribute to the dependency of women on men; as of 2023 U.S.A. women tend to earn 20 percent less than their male counterparts, which is better than in 1978 when women earn 42 percent less than what men earned. The position of women in U.S.A. society makes it extremely difficult for them to reject the authority of men and develop independent lives free of marital violence. Marital and cultural conditions are the background in which personal interpretations of event are developed. Women who depend on their husbands for practical support also depend on them as sources of self-esteem, emotional support, and continuity. However, sometimes battered wives are not able to escape abusive relationships because they are supporting their husbands and cannot afford to support their minor children if they were to leave the relationship. And often, adult families’ members often little if any moral support, and certainly not any financial support. Some members of the family even view the woman as a deviant to make it easier to rationalize the abuse. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

The term battered woman is used to describe women who are battered repeatedly by men with who they live as lovers. Marriage is not a prerequisite for being a battered woman. Many of the women who enter shelters are living with, but often times not legally married, to the men who abused them. Marries and their unofficial counterparts developed through the efforts of each partner to maintain feelings of love and intimacy. In modern, Western cultures, the value paced on marriage is high; individuals invest a great amount of emotion in their spouses, and expect a return on that investment. The majority of women who marry still adopt the roles of wives and mothers as primary identities, even when they work outside the home, and thus have a strong motivation to succeed in their domestic roles. Married women remain economically dependent on their husbands. At their income peak at age 47, married men earn an average of $86,502 per year. Married women who are 47, meanwhile, earn almost $51,000. Given the high expectations and dependencies, the costs of recognizing failures and dissolving marriages are significant. Divorce is an increasingly common phenomenon in the United States of America, but is still labeled a social problem and is seldom undertaken without serious deliberations and emotional upheavals. Levels of commitment vary widely, but some degree of commitment is implicit in the marriage contract. When marital conflicts emerge there is usually some effort to negotiate an agreement or bargain, to ensure the continuity of the relationship. Couples employ a variety of strategies, depending on the nature and extent of resources available to them, to resolve conflicts without dissolving relationships. It is thus possible for marriages to continue for years, surviving the inevitable conflicts that can occur. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

In describing conflict-management, we must distinguish between “role induction” and “role modification.” Role induction refers to conflict in which one or the other parities to the conflict agrees, submits, goes along with, becomes convinced, or is persuaded in some way. Role modification, on the other hand, involves adaptations by both partners. Role induction seems particularly applicable to battered women who accommodate their husbands’ abuse. Rather than seeking help or escaping, as people typically do when attacked by strangers, battered women often rationalize violence from their husbands, at least initially. Although remaining with a violent man does not indicate that a woman views violence as an acceptable aspect of the relationship, the length of time that a woman stays in the marriage after abuse begins is a rough index of her effort to accommodate the situation. In a U.S.A. study of 350 battered women, the median length of stay after violence began was four years; some left in less than one year, other stayed as long as 42 years. Battered women have good reasons to rationalize violence. There are few institutional, legal, or cultural supports for women fleeing violent marriages (and the few that do exist also help abusers to continue torturing the women, and sometimes they even participate by giving away their save location, giving offenders keys to their apartment and the financial and government documentation on the women’s identity, they tease them, threaten them, stalk them, sexually assault them, pimp them, steal their male, rob them, extort them, hac their email, vandalize their cars so they cannot seek medical attention, get to work, or visit their children, they try to force drugs on the and poison them, and even bankrupt them so they have no place to go). In a survey of 150 battered women, 90 percent said they “thought of leaving and would have done so had the resources been available to them.” Eight percent of the sample indicated previous, failed attempts to leave their husbands. Despite the development of the international shelter movement, changes in police practices, and legislation to protect batter women since 1975, it remains extraordinarily difficult for a battered women to escape a violent husband determined to maintain his control. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

At least one woman, Mary Parziale, has been murdered by an abusive husband while residing in a shelter; others have been murdered after leaving shelters to establish new, independent homes. When these practical and social constraints are combined with love for and commitment to an abuser, it is obvious that there is a strong incentive—often a practical necessity—to rationalize violence. Previous research on the rationalization of deviant offenders had revealed a typology of “techniques of neutralization,” which allow offenders to view their actions as normal, acceptable, or at least justifiable. A similar typology can be constructed for victims. We have assigned the responses of battered women we interviewed to one of six categories of renationalization: (1) the appeal to the salvation ethic; (2) the denial of the victimizer; (3) the denial of injury; (4) the denial of victimization; (5) the denial of options; and (6) the appeal to higher loyalties. The women usually employed at least one of these techniques to make sense of their situations; often they employed two or more, simultaneously or over time. (1) The appeal to the salvation ethic: This rationalization is grounded in a woman’s desire to be of service to others. Abusing husbands are viewed as deeply troubled, perhaps “sick,” individuals, dependent on their wives nurturance for survival. Battered women place their own safety and happiness below their commitment to “saving my man” from whatever malady they perceive as the source of their husbands’ problems. The appeal to the salvation ethic is a common response to an alcoholic or drug-dependent abuser. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

The battered partners of substance-abusers frequently describe the charming, charismatic personality of their sober mates, viewing this appealing personality as the “real man” being destroyed by the disease. They then assume responsibility for helping their partners to overcome their problems, viewing the batterings they receive as an index of their partners’ pathology. Abuse must be disturbed while helping the man return to his “normal” self. One woman said: “I thought I was going to be Aaliyah. He had so much potential; I could see how good he really was, and I was going to “save” him. I thought I was the only thing keeping him going, and that if I left he’s lose his job and wind up in jail. I’d make excuses to everybody for him. I’d call work and lie when he was drunk, saying he was sick. I never criticized him, because he needed my approval.” (2) The denial of the victimizer: This technique is similar to the salvation ethic, except that victims do not assume responsibility for solving their abusers’ problems. Women perceive battering as an event beyond the control of both spouses, and blame it on some external force. The violence is judged situational and temporary, because it is linked to unusual circumstances or a sickness which can be cured. Pressures at work, the loss of a job, or legal problems are all situations which battered women assume as the causes of their partners’ violence. Mental illness, alcoholism, and drug addiction are also viewed as external, uncontrollable afflictions by many battered women who accept the medical perspective on such problems. By focusing on factors beyond the control of their abuser, women deny their husbands’ intent to do them harm, and thus rationalize violent episodes. “He’s sick. He didn’t used to be this way, but he can’t handle alcohol. It’s really like a disease, being an alcoholic…I think too that this is what he saw at home, his father is a very violent man, and alcoholic too, so it’s really not his fault, because this is all he had ever known. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

(3) The denial of injury: For some women, the experience of being battered by a spouse is so discordant with their expectations that they simply refuse to acknowledge it. When hospitalization is not required—and it seldom is for most cases of battering—routines quickly return to normal. Meals are served, jobs and schools are attended, and daily chores completed. Even with lingering pain, bruises, and cuts, the normality of everyday life overrides the strange, confusing memory of the attack. When husbands refuse to discuss or acknowledge the event, in some cases even accusing their wives of insanity, women sometimes come to believe the violence never occurred. The denial of injury does not mean that women feel no pain. They know they are hurt, but define the hurt as tolerable or normal. Just as individuals tolerate a wide range of physical discomfort before seeking medical help, battered women tolerate a wide range of physical abuse before defining it as an injurious assault. One woman explained her disbelief at her first battering: “I laid in bed and cried all night. I could not believe it had happened, and I didn’t want to believe it. We had only been married a year, and I was pregnant and excited about starting a family. Then all of the sudden, this! The next morning he told me he was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again, and I gladly kissed and made up. I wanted to forget the whole thing, and wouldn’t let myself worry bout what it meant for us. (4) The denial of victimization: Victims often blame themselves for the violence, thereby neutralizing the responsibility of the spouse. Ninety Nine percent of battered women felt they did not deserve to be beaten, and 51 percent said they had done nothing to provoke an attack. The battered women in our sample did not believe violence against them was justified, but some felt they could have avoided it if they had been more passive and conciliatory. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

However, these samples may have been biased in this area, because they were made up almost entirely of women who had already left their abusers, and thus would have been unlikely to feel major responsibility for the abuse they received. Retrospective accounts of victimization in our sample, however. Did reveal evidence that some women believed their right to leave violent men was restricted by their participation in the conflicts. One subject said: “Well, I couldn’t really do anything about it, because I did ask for it. I knew how to get at him, and I’d keep after it and keep after it until he got fed up and knocked me right out. I can’t say I like it, but I shouldn’t have nagged him like I did.” There is a difference between provocation and justification. A battered woman’s belief that her actions angered her spouse to the point of violence is not synonymous with the belief that violence was therefore justified. However, believe in provocation may diminish a woman’s capacity for retaliation or self-defense, because it blurs her concept of responsibility. A woman’s acceptance of responsibility for the violent incident is encouraged by an abuser who continually denigrates her and makes unrealistic demands. Depending on the social supports available, and the personality of the battered women, the man’s accusation of inadequacy may assume the status of truth. Such beliefs of inferiority inhibit the development of a notion of victimization. (5) The denial of options: This technique is composed of two elements: practical options and emotional options. Practical options, including alternative housing, source of income, and protection from an abuser, are clearly limited by the patriarchal structure of Western society. However, there are differences in the ways battered women respond to these obstacles, ranging from determined struggles to acquiescence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

For a variety of reasons, some battered women do not take full advantage of the practical opportunities which are available to escape, and some return to abusers voluntarily even after establishing an independent lifestyle. Others ignore the most severe constraints in their efforts to escape their relationships. For example, one resident of the shelter we observed walked 30 miles in her bedroom slippers to get to the shelter, and required medical attention for blisters and cuts to her feet. On the other hand, a woman who had a full-time job, had rented an apartment, and had been given by the shelter all the clothes, furniture, and basic necessary to set up housekeeping, returned to her husband two weeks after leaving the shelter. Other women refused to go to job interviews, keep appointments with social workers, or move out of the state for their own protection. Such actions are frightening for women who have led relatively isolated or protected lives, but failure to take action leave few alternatives to a violent marriage. The belief of battered women that they will not be able to make it on their own—a belief often fueled by years of abuse and oppression—is a major impediment to acknowledge that one is a victim and taking action. The denial of emotional options imposes still further restrictions. Battered women may feel that no one else can provide intimacy and companionship. While physical beating is painful and dangerous, the prospect of a lonely, celibate existence if often too frightening to risk. It is not uncommon for battered women to express the belief that their abuser is the only man they could love, thus severely limiting their opportunities to discover new, more supportive relationships. One woman said: “He’s all I’ve got. My dad’s gone, and my mother disowned me and threw me out in the streets when I was fifteen. And he’s really special. He understands me, and I understand him. Nobody could take his place.” (6) The appeal to higher loyalties: This appeal involves enduring battering for the sake of some higher commitment, either religious or traditional. The Christian belief that women should serve their husbands as men serve God is invoked as a rationalization to endure a husband’s violence for later rewards in the afterlife. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Clergy may support this view by advising women to pray, and try harder to please their husbands. Other women have a strong commitment to the nuclear family, and find divorce repugnant. They may believe that for their children’s sake, any marriage is better than no marriage. One woman we interviewed divorced her husband of 35 years after her last child left home. The children got by pretending the busted lips, black eyes, and bruises were makeup. More commonly women who have survived violent relationships for that long do not have the desire or strength to divorce and begin a new life. When the appeal to higher loyalties is employed as a strategy to cope with battering, commitment to and involvement with an ideal overshadow the mundane reality of violence. Yes, the arch-deceiver is not only the deceiver of the whole unregenerate World but of the children of God also, with this basic difference: that in the deception he seeks to practice upon the saints he changes his tactics. He works with acutest strategy, in wiles of error and deception concerning the things of God (Matt 24.24; 2 Cor. 11.3, 13-15). The chief weapon which the deceiver-prince of darkness relies upon to keep the World in his power is deception, but it appears in varying guises. Being no fool, Satan contrives to beguile each person in a way appropriate to the particular stage of one’s spiritual life. There is: (1) deception for the unregenerate, who are already held by sin; (2) deception suited to the carnal Christian; (3) and deception fitted to the spiritual believer. When one passes out of a preceding stage, one must expect more subtle temptations than before. One may be fully able to recognize the earlier forms of deception for what they are, and thereby overcome them, but one should be aware that the closer one is to God, the more sly and cunning Satan’s seductions are likely to be. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Let the deception be removed which held the man and woman in the days of his or her unregenerate condition, and in the days of one’s carnal Christian life; when one emerges into the Heavenly places, described by Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians, one will find oneself showered upon and buffeted by some of the keenest workings of the deceiver, for the deceiving spirits are actively at work attacking those who are united to the risen Lord. The work of the deceiver among the saints of God is especially depicted in the Ephesians letter of the Apostle Paul, where, in chapter 6.10-18, we have the veil drawn aside from the satanic powers, showing their war upon the Church of God, and the individual believer’s highest experience of union with the Lord, and in the “high places” of the spiritual maturity of the Church, will the keenest and closet battle be fought with the deceiver and his hosts. A glimpse into this onslaught of deceiving spirits upon the people of God at the close of the age is given in the Gospel of Matthew, where the Lord uses the word deceive in describing some of the special marks of the latter days. He said: “Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ’; and shall lead many astray” (Matt. 24.4-5); “And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many” (Matt. 24.11); “There shall arise false Christians, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray [or “deceive,], if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24.24). There are many and very definite methods to deal with when one is struggling with emotions. There are different methods for the various emotions, but first you must struggle with identification and imagination. People ascribe to the word imagination a quite artificial and quite undeserved meaning in the sense of creative or selective faculty. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Imagination is a destructive faculty which cannot be controlled. We start to imagine something in other to please ourselves and very soon we begin to believe it or at least some of it. Imagination generally consists in ascribing to oneself some knowledge, some power, some quality which one does not possess. This is dangerous imagination, whereas just letting things come into the mind or day-dreaming may be harmless and even pleasant as long as it is free from identification. This struggle with identification and imagination is sufficient to destroy many of the usual negative emotions—in any case, to make them much lighter. You must start with this because it is only possible to begin using stronger methods against negative emotions when you can struggle with identification to a certain extent, and when you have already stopped negative imagination. That must be stopped completely. It is useless to study further methods until that is done. If you try to eliminate imagination, there is no danger of eliminating real feeling; if it is real it cannot be eliminated. Negative imagination you can stop; and even the study of identification will already diminish it, but the real struggle with negative emotions themselves begins later. It is based on right understanding, first of all, of how they are created, what is behind them, how useless they are and how much you lose because of the pleasure you take in having negative emotions. When you realize how much you lose, perhaps you will have enough energy to do something about it. It makes no difference that there is pain and suffering and ugliness, as long as both in nature and in any human relation a little warmth, a definite caring exists and grows; as long as a person can say to oneself and feel in relation to another, that caring and loving are always present, even in the most unbearable situations; and as long as bitterness, self-pity and hurt do not ride fully the reins of a human heart. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

What make some so depressed, or suffer and ache, they do not know—sometimes they feel on the verge of suicide, and each time that many of them reach the actual crisis and are ready to carry through, morning comes or a face smiles or  color or shape or scene warms their heart, such as a letter that may fill one with a glow of warmth and happiness; and within one says do not kill yourself, wait, live, and they do not feel so depressed and do not kill themselves, and by a hair, as if by the grace of God, one can live another day, and with all one’s heart one is grateful to be spared such a tragic ending—what hurts is that one can only keep going and have lost almost all one’s power to give and share and create and one is only able to hang on a little more—maybe this is why at times a rainbow may not exist, yet we all know it does if one looks around one where one is rather than where one thinks one should be. Some people hold on to vivid memories of when their family left them and how terribly they miss them. They may try to go to church and take place in New Year’s service. However, it may lead some to having a little wine and feeling sick all over. During service one may sit, waiting for his or her turn to read the Scriptures. Only to get up to take one’s place at the lectern—and find it takes all of his or her effort, all the energy and courage one can muster. While turning to the pages, taking a glance around the congregation could cause an individual to all at once break down and leave the church—falling apart like a house built of toothpicks outside the house of God. While waiting for the bus, some may feel their heart pounding. As if he or she had been dropped from twenty-story building and tears start to roll and everything becomes dark—having felt that way ever since—becoming more depressed—physically more sick—pulling through double pneumonia but not having been one’s best—only for every, very short periods—sometimes it may seem if for only a few breaths and then weeks and weeks of gloom. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

One may wonder what is the most valuable thing in an individual’s life. In thinking this through, there is only one answer many will come up with other than God—a friendship that began with Loneliness. Just as with nudity and dress, so involvement analysis can make some kind of sense out of our varied responses to noise and noise-making. The ruling against undue noise is sometimes seen as a rational response to the obligation to “show consideration” for those in the vicinity, in this case those who might be disturbed by the sheer physical effect of the sound. Yet in actuality, large amounts of noise (from a purely physical point of view) are often tolerated. What is an affront to the gathering, however, is overinvolvement in some situated task. Noise, in short, becomes an offense only when it exhibits overinvolvement—not, in the last analysis, because it is noisy. For example, in a large commercial office filled with typists, any worker whose machine makes a little more noise than the machines of others may be felt to be acting improperly, not because this little increment of sound makes things much worse, but because it be tokens an inordinate concentration or an inordinate carelessness about soundproofing. Here we can understand, too, that when a youth finds oneself in the mental hospital because one played a phonograph too loudly in the YMCA, it may not have been merely that one’s inconsiderateness offended the officials, but rather than they did not know what World the boy inhabited if he could fill it so full with so much music. If asked, the individual might say that he limits the noise that he makes out of considerateness for others present. However, in showing this considerateness he is showing cognizance of persons by virtue of their presence in the situation, and in showing this one demonstrates that he is open to the gathering and respectful of it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

It is a demonstration of his committed “presence” in the situation that the others may want of the individual, even more than the substantive value of the considerateness itself. Hence it is understandable that persons present may tolerate a great deal of noise from an individual, providing he makes a general apology in advance for the necessity of making it. The apology shows that he is alive to those in the situation and hence to the gathering itself, and provides an effective substitute for the evidence of considerateness that quietness usually provides. It should also be understandable that silence, coming from a person in a situation where participants are obliged to be busily engaged in tasks or talk, can itself be a noisy thing, loudly expressing that the individual is not properly involved and not attuned to the gathering; this silent kind of noise can distract attention, just as the loud kind can. The same argument can be repeated in regard to exposed mutual-involvements. Again the noise emerging from them is noisy to the extent that it expresses unoccasioned involvements. Thus, two persons in a movie theater, quietly talking together about something entirely unconnected with the evening’s entertainment, may thereby exhibit an unoccasioned mutual-involvement, and by doing so cause more resentment than those who make much more physical sound but do so in expressing their approbation or disapprobation of what s being seen. In general, then, when we find that places such as parks can become the scene of robbery, refuse dumping, and solicitations for pleasures of the flesh, loitering (on the part of drunks, those without homes, and ambulatory psychotics), we must understand this collapse of public order not merely in terms of the fact that it may be possible to avoid the police in these places; we must understand that the involvement structure institutionalized in very loosely defined behavioral settings reduces appreciably the degree to which these nefarious acts are improper. A park may be the place that maximizes the acceptability of these acts and hence minimized the price of being caught performing them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

There are many instances in which the games people play have more losers than winners. Uncoordinated choices interact to produce a poor outcome for society. When we looked at games in which a person has an either-or choice, one problem is the familiar multi-person prisoners’ dilemma: everyone made the same choice, and it was the wrong one. Next we saw examples n which some people made one choice while their colleagues made another, but the proportions were not optimal from the standpoint of the group as a whole. This happened because one of the choices involved greater spillovers, id est, effects on others, that choosers failed to take into account. Then we had situations in which either extreme—everyone choosing one thing or everyone choosing the other—was an equilibrium. To choose one, or make sure the right one was chosen, required social conventions, penalties, or restraints on people’s behavior. Even then, powerful historical forces might keep the group locked into the wrong equilibrium. Turning to situations with several alternatives, we saw how the group could voluntarily slide down  slipper path to an outcome it would collectively regret. In other examples, we found a tendency toward excessive homogeneity. Sometimes there might be an equilibrium held together by people’s mutually reinforcing expectations about what other think. In still other cases, equilibrium might fail to exist altogether, and another way to reach a stable outcome would have to be found. As one can see, the free market does not always get it right. There are two fundamental problems. One is that history matters. Our greater experience with gasoline engines, QWERTY keyboards, and light-water nuclear reactors may lock un in to continued use of these inferior technologies. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Accidents of history cannot necessarily be corrected by today’s market. When one looks forward to recognize that lock-in will be a potential problem, this provides a reason for government policy to encourage more diversity before the standard is set. Or if we seem stuck with an inferior standard, public policy can guide a coordinated change from one standard to another. Moving from measurement in inches and feet to the metric system is one example; coordinating the use of daylight saving time is another. Inferior standards may be behavioral rather than technological. Examples include an equilibrium in which everyone cheats on one’s taxes, or drives above the speed limit, or even just arrives at parties an hour after the stated time. The move from one equilibrium to a better one can be most effectively accomplished via a short and intense campaign. The trick is to get a critical mass of people to switch, and then the bandwagon effect makes the new equilibrium self-sustaining. In contrast, a little bit of pressure over a long period of time would not have the same effect. The other general problem with laissez faire is that so much of what matters in life takes place outside the economic marketplace. Goods ranging from common courtesy to clean air are frequently unpriced, so there is no invisible hand to guide selfish behavior. Sometimes creating a price can solve the problem, as with the congestion problem for the Oakland Bay Bridge. Other times, pricing the good changes its nature. For example, donated blood is typically superior to blood that is purchased, because the types of individuals who sell blood for money are likely to be in a much poorer state of health. The coordination failures we have illustrated are meant to show the role for public policy. Today’s knowledge about molecules and matter is enough to give a partial picture of what molecular machines and molecular manufacturing will make possible. Even this partial picture shows possibilities that make old views of the twenty-first century thoroughly obsolete. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Science and technology are advancing toward molecular manufacturing along many fronts, in chemistry, physics, biology, and computer science. Motives for continuing range from the medical to the military to the scientific. Research in these directions is already Worldwide, and just beginning to focus on the objective of nanotechnology. Already, it is easy to describe how known device and principles can be combined to build a primitive device able to guide molecular assembly. Actually doing it will not be so easy—laboratory research never is—but it will be done, and in not too many years. The first, slow assemblers will lead to products that include better assemblers. Machines able to put molecules together to make molecular machines will lead to a spiral of falling costs and improving quality, ultimately yielding many results that people fervently want: a cleaner environment; an escape from poverty; health care that heals. These benefits will bring disturbing chances and unsettling choices, as new abilities always do. The pace of change may well accelerate, straining the institutions we have evolved to cope with turbulent times. Molecular-manufacturing capabilities will lend themselves to abuse, and in particular, to the construction of weapons by those seeking power. To minimize the risk of such abuse, we need to develop broad-based international cooperation and regulation. Domestically, this focus seems the best way to avoid polarization between those concerned with solving old problems and those concerned with avoiding new ones. Internationally, it seems the best way to avoid a sickening slide into a new arms race. As shown by the four scenarios we sketched about the possible future of technology, over the past two weeks, public opinion will shape public policy, helping to determine whether these technologies are used for good or for ill. The Afterword will look at today’s state of opinion and at what can be done to push in a positive direction. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

We cannot predict the future, and we cannot predict the consequences of our actions. Nonetheless, what we do will make difference, and we can begin by trying to avoid every major blunder we can identify. Beyond this, we can try to understand our situation, weigh our basic values, and choose our actions with whatever wisdom we can muster. The choices we make in the coming years will shape a future that stretches beyond our imagining, a future full of danger, yet full of promise. It has always been so. Among the most common sights in Thailand, especially in the tourist quarters, are street stalls From thee one may buy videotapes, musical tapes, and other products at knockdown drag out prices One reason is that these, like all sorts of other products circulating in the World today, are pirated—meaning that the original artists, publishers, and record companies are cheated of the payments due to them. Beyonce is missing out on some of her money. 70,000 jobs a year are lost in the United States of America due to music piracy. In Egypt, so-called underground publishers churn out Western books in Arabic illegally and without payment to the authors or publishers. “Book piracy in the Middle East has recached portions second only to that in the Far East and Pakistan,” according to the Middle East monthly published in London. In Hong Kong, police arrested 61 people after raiding 27 bookstores where they found 647 books ready to be reproduced illegally. However, in many countries piracy is not merely legal but encouraged for its export potentials. New technologies make piracy inexpensive and easier. As of 2023 piracy costs the American movie industry at least an estimated $40 billion and as much as $97.1 billion annually. However, in the mid-1980s, Hollywood tried to counter this attack. When Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom first hit the theaters, every print of the film had subliminal coding in it that gave it a unique identifier so that, if illegal copies were made, investigators would be able to trace their origin. From then on, similar coding began to be used by many of the major studios. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Nonetheless, as late as 1989, Taiwan, for example, was home to 1,200 so-called “Movie-TV lounges—small private rooms in which groups of teenagers could gather to watch pirated videotapes of the latest American movies, a kind of micro-version of the drive-in movie. Teenagers formed block-long lines to patronize them. The illegal showings were so popular, they cut into ticket sales at conventional theaters. Ultimately, Hollywood pressures led to a government crackdown. In parallel with actual piracy came the patent-wars—the refusal of various countries to pay fees or royalties, say, on a new pharmaceutical developed and tested by research scientists at enormous cost. In addition to outright piracy, counterfeiting has become a major global industry, with more affordable copies of designer fashions, cars, computer programs, electronics, and other products pouring into World markets. Ultimately even more important is the theft or illegal copying of computer software, not by individuals for their own use, but on a large scale by pirate distributors throughout the World. All these problems are heightened by the latest technologies that make copying and theft easier. By 1989, the question of how to protect “intellectual property”—the basis of much of the new system of wealth creation—was causing political friction among nations. Intellectual property—the term itself is fraught with controversy—implies ownership of intangibles resulting from creative efforts in science, technology, the arts, literature, design, and the manipulation of knowledge in general. With the spread of the super-symbolic economy, these become more economically valuable and, hence, more political. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

In Washington, political battles broke out between various trade lobbies, backed by the U.S.A. Trade Representative, who demanded firm U.S.A. action against Thailand for failing to suppress piracy and counterfeiting of U.S.A. creative products. They demanded that, if Thailand refused to crack down, the United States of America should retaliate. Specifically, this meant lifting import duty exemptions on such Thai exports as artificial flowers, tiles, dried mung beans, and telecommunications equipment. Opposing this demand were other agencies of the U.S.A. government—the State Department and the National Security Council—both of which argued for leniency, placing the interests of diplomacy and military security over those of the copyright and patent owners. On his last day as President of the United States of America, Ronald Regan rejected even more stringent proposals for a crackdown, and removed the Thai exemption from import duties on the listed products. However, Thai is hardly the worst offender against copyright and patent laws as they are understood in the advanced economies, and the minor struggle in Washington only illustrates what is happening on a hundred fronts as products of creative activity become more and more central to all the high-tech economies. In 1989, America copyright holders, including the music industry, the computer industry, and book publishers, demanded that the U.S.A. government take action against twelve nations that, they claimed, were costing the American economy $1.3 billion a year in sales. The twelve included China, Saudia Arabia, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The protection of intellectual property, though most aggressively pushed by the Americans, is also of strong concern to the European Community and Japan. The EC has called for customs authorities around the World to seize counterfeit goods and to impose criminal penalties on pirates who operate on a commercial scale. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

The political battle over intellectual property is waged, among other places, in the council of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, where the advanced economies face determined opposition from the nations with less developed economies, whose negotiators sometimes reflect the attitude voiced by Arab students who buy pirated books and insist that “the West’s idea of copyright is elitist and designed to line the pockets of publishers.” The rich, like the poor, have always been with us to some degree, but the new culture has not. The old culture is based on the scarcity assumption. What is significant in the new culture is the belief that life’s satisfactions exist in abundance and there is sufficiency for all. Some call this a sense of entitlement. The new culture is concerned with rejecting scarcities upon which material abundance is based. Many capitalists argue that there is no free lunch and people should work hard and pay the same prices they did. Not only is this attitude that the new culture displays threatening to the high-tech nations, but it also threatens private ownership by gnawing at the philosophical question of whether intellectual property can be owned in the same sense that tangible assets are—or whether the entire concept of property needs to be reconceptualized. Communism is full of ways to “reconceptualize” capitalism and redefine crimes as a legitimate access to resources that one either lacks or cannot afford. Futurist and former diplomat Harlan Cleveland has written of the “folly of refusing to share something that can’t be owned.” Mr. Cleveland points out: “What builds a great company or a great nation is not the protection of what it already knows, but the acquisition and adaption of new knowledge from other companies or nations. How can ‘intellectual property’ be ‘protected’? The question contains the seeds of its own confusion: it’s the wrong verb about the wrong noun.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

However, people also have to be able to profit off of their idea, or else it will stifle product development and cause people to keep their new knowledge and technology secret. Much like the United States of America’s government does with technology they do not want to get out for security reasons. This line of argument is often used to support the vision of a World in which all information is free and unfettered. It is a dream that dovetails neatly with the plea of the Earth’s less affluent nations for the science and technology needed to break free of economic underdevelopment. What is not yet answered, however, is the counterquestion raised by the high-tech nations: What happens to either the poor or the rich if the World’s stream of technological innovation runs dry? If, because of piracy, a pharmaceutical firm cannot recoup the vast sums spent in developing new drugs, it is hardly likely to invest further funds in the search. Mr. Cleveland is right that all nations will need knowledge, culture, art, and science from abroad. However, if so, there must be come civilized ground rules for the exchange, and these must promote, rather than restrict further innovation. Arriving at these new rules, and an underlying informational ethic, in a World trisected into agrarian, smokestack, and post-ethic, in a World trisected into agrarian, smokestack, and post-smokestack economies, is already proving extremely difficult. What is obvious is that these issues can do nothing but grow in importance. The control of intangibles—ideas, culture, images, theories, scientific formulae, computer software—will consume greater and greater political attention in all countries as piracy, counterfeiting theft, and technological espionage threaten increasingly vital private and national interests. The nature of power is undergoing a truly radical transformation. It is increasingly defined in terms of the maldistribution of information. In equality, long associated primarily with income, is coming to be associated with technological factors and the political and economic control over knowledge. In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, nations went to war to seize control of the raw materials they needed to deed their smokestack economies. In the 21^st century, the most basic of all the raw materials will be knowledge. Is that what the wars and social revolutions of the future might be about? If so, what role will the media of the future play? #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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