Randolph Harris II International Institute

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Their Goal is to Break All Human Trust in America

Millions of people have become sensitive to the destruction of life on so many fronts, to inhumane wars in which there is not even a pretense of self-defense. We see a new morality of love taking shape, too, in opposition to the consumer society. The new morality may have its flaws, but it remains impressive in its protest against empty forms and words. Given the gains that can be obtained through the improper initiation of encounters, and given the penalty attached to engaging in these improprieties, it can be expected that persons will employ ruses to evade the rules and safely accomplish forbidden ends. Perhaps the gentlest of these designs is seen when an individual intentionally places oneself in a position to facilitate overturns being made to him. The classic instance, of course, is that of the lady who drops her handkerchief so that a particular man will have a proper excuse for talking to her. Your problem is to force the man to talk to you first; that is the way he wants it. I can think of no better way than for you to drag off the bus with a heavy package almost as big as you are! It does not matter what—several dozen bricks in a large box, well wrapped, will do. Our hero’s chivalrous instincts will not permit him to resist the picture of a maiden in distress. He will be at your side asking to assist you. If he is not, try dropping the package and/or twisting your ankle. When you get to your house, let him carry the package in, offer him refreshments and thank him. (Only if you trust him.) #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Mental patients provide instances of more resolute manipulation of the rules. One patient I observed over a three-month period did not so much break the rules as flagrantly misemploy available excuses for breaking them. She would ask persons—both ones she knew and ones she did not—for minor favours, such as the time, in such a manner that the person approached would sometimes gradually realize that the favour was merely an excuse, and that in a certain way the asker was merely toying with the conventional conditions of contact. Or she would sometimes pester the kitchen staff for extra food, again with the implication of merely exploiting the bonds among persons that support the exchange of minor favours. Guards and attendants were also favourite targets of her engaging tendencies. One of the most significant infractions of communication rule has to do with street accosting. There are, of course, some legal restrictions placed upon its varieties, upon begging, peddling, and pestering in public streets. However, in the main, the force that keeps people in their communication place in our middle-class society seems to be the fear of being thought forward and pushy, or odd, the fear of forcing a relationship where none is desired—the fear, in the last analysis, of being rather patently rejected and even cut. However, we know that there are many ways in which an individual can accept the fact that one is liable to this kind of disregard and is subject to this kind of risk, and go on from there to capitalize on the liberty one’s fall from grace brings to one. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The liberties taken by the inebriated and the costumed are mild instances of one’s fall from grace. There are other examples we excuse less readily. Perhaps the classic type of improper opening person is one who makes a steady economic and psychic living from this role. There seems to be a growing tendency in Western societies to restrict these kinds of openings, if not in the city at large, then in all but a few streets. Here we find the street stemmer, the stall operator, and the panhandler, who accept the resentment of the community in order to buttonhole it into buying or giving something. The lady of the evening is a special example; the eyes and smiles and sallies with which she approaches a man tells us precisely how all other women must be careful not to conduct themselves, lest it be assumed that liberties can be taken with them. I think there is something to be learned from considering another type of communication exploiter, those who are not part of the mainstream gender role. It is felt that some of these individuals, when “cruising” for pickups, will utilize casual contacts involving innocuous requests or innocuous sociable comments as a cover. The special significance of this kind of exploitation of public solidarity has to do with its power to spoil causal contact between those with a prefers for dominant gender roles. When the person who is part of the dominant gender role and is approached by an unacquainted male on what prove to be sexually improper grounds, he may suffer concern that his appearance has elicited this and that others present, identifying the accoster, will wrongly impute homosexuality to the accosted. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

More importantly, when he is innocently approached by a member of his own gender he may not be sure of the innocence, just as, when he innocently approaches another male, he may be unsure of the other’s view of him. Hence casual solidarity among unacquainted males is threatened. A novelist provides an extreme example, namely, the predicament of a homosexual in a homosexual bar sincerely desiring a match: “It was when I sat down by the entrance and took out my cigarettes that I realized I had no matches on me. There were no less than ten people, maybe fifteen, smoking around me, but in a place like this it was out of the question to ask for a light unless one knew somebody. The legitimate phrase, “Could you please give me a light?” was, in these surroundings, a recognized approach and a too obvious one at that. I walked up to the counter and bought a box of matches. Homosexuality, then, tends to do to the all-male (and to a degree to the all-female) World what has already been done to communication contacts between the two genders, except that, in the latter case, to be thought a desirable object may not in itself constitute much of an affront—indeed, it may constitute an expected compliment. Just as some homosexuals abuse the contact system in the society, so also do “sexual perverts,” who rely on the right of adults to engage unknown youths and children, and exploit the contact thus made in a way which is considered unsportsmanlike. The unsettling of public trust, of mutual claims linking strangers, can also occur in other contexts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

In times of internecine armed conflict, a very high level of distrust and anxiety may sometimes be found in public places. Take, for example, the period of 1953-58 troubles in Cyprus. “But the evil genius of terrorism is suspicion—the man who stops and asks for a light, a cart with a broken axle signaling for help, a forester standing alone among trees, three youths walking back to a village after sundown, a shepherd shouting something indistinctly heard by moonlight, the sudden pealing of a doorbell in the night. The slender chain of trust upon which all human relations are based is broken—and this the terrorists knows and sharpens his claws precisely here.” This is precisely what is happening in America. Terrorists want to break all trust, not only do they want to destroy families, but they want to destroy the concept of authority and hierarchies. This way, no one will trust government, law enforcement, the Church, their peers, teachers, doctors, lawyers or each other. This is a form of psychological warfare. Of special interest here is some of the conduct classified under the psychiatric rubric of “exhibitionism.” Whether the indicatable act consists of the words spoken, gestures conveyed, or acts performed, the communication structure of the event often consists of an individual initiating an engagement with a stranger of the opposite gender by means of the kind of message that would be proper only id they were on close and intimate terms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Apart from psychodynamic issues, exhibitions often spectacularly subvert the protective social control that keeps individuals interpersonally distant even though they are physically close to each other. The assault here is not so much directly on an individual as on the system of rights and symbols the individual employs in expressing relatedness and unrelatedness to those about one. For example, there is the game played by a middle-aged female mental patient on a ward in a research hospital: on visitors’ day she would wear only a bathrobe and slippers, proffer a male visitor appropriate small talk, and then, when very close to him and in a ratified state of talk with him, suddenly expose herself. At that moment the visitor would find himself trapped in an engagement that he could neither immediately escape from nor properly sustain. It is necessary to add a comment concerning the relationship between exposed persons and illegitimately opening ones. Troublemakers who breach the communication line and systematically break the gentleman’s agreement concerning communication often pay a price for their liberties. They come to be seen as profane persons, as persons who have sacrificed for gain the respect that is owed them. Once an individual has made this sacrifice, there is little reason why others cannot approach one, since, except for the fact that he may be contaminating, he has no way to hold people off. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

A person who accosts others will therefore often be a person whom others can accost at will, a reciprocity that holds, it was suggested for those who are dined sacredness through no fault of their own, such as the very young who do not yet have their quota of mana, and the senior citizens who have lost theirs. We have cited both legitimate and illegitimate, initiate an official face engagement, even if only for a moment, and support the connection that the individual is either all in or all out of an encounter. However, of course, once this latter normative arrangement is firmly established, we can expect that certain kinds of advantage can be taken of it. For example, in some Western communities there is the practice whereby a male communicates regard for the attractiveness of a passing female with whom some other expressive sign. What follows is up to her. She can elect to act as if no relevant communication has occurred. Or she can elect to turn and ratify the comment by a friendly or hostile comment, in either case creating a momentary face engagement (Apparently the more impersonally appreciative the whistle, that is, the more it can be construed not as a pickup, the more accepting the young lady will be of it.) Every woman who dressed well likes to be appreciated for her trouble. A wolf whistle is rather a crude form of expression, but I supposed it is the equivalent of being hissed at approvingly or pinched. A stranger cannot walk up and talk to a pretty young lady, so he used the whistle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

“It is nice to know you are whistleable. If I feel I deserve it. I occasionally turn around and ‘thank you.’ A whistle is a compliment. Particularly if you know the man is just commenting on your beauty and not trying to embarrass you. If he is I put on my stony face and walk on.” And another: “A long low whistle is a perk-me-up to a girl. It can add a smile to her face, a lilt to her step and put a twinkle in her eyes. It can do more for her than a new hat. Unpolished it may be, but it is a compliment. Part of the fun is that the whistler is often anonymous. You turn around any try to guess who. However, in addition, a woman may smile visibly (so that the whistler knows his message has been appreciatively received), and at the same time look straight ahead so as not to allow for the collapse of separateness and the formation of an engagement. This latter tack represents, in effect, a collusion of both individuals against the rules of communication—an unratified breach of communication barriers. The breach is a slight one, however, since the person whistled at has been on the move away from the whistler and will soon be out of range of engagement. On the same grounds we can understand why it is safe, and therefore not much of an offense, for an individual in a moving boat, train, or bus to proffer a greeting to a stranger who is stationary or moving in the other direction. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

In our society, when a large number of men or boys or girls are together, one of their number seems likely to extend a greeting to a passing stranger. Presumably the threat of a two-person engagement developing is lessened by the numbers involved, and hence more easily tolerated. When the group is in uniform, and therefore to some extent out of role, even more license is likely to be taken, unless forbidden by the group’s leader. When the members of such a group, in addition, are moving in a vehicle they are in no position to stop, and thereby moving away from the target of their sallies, even greater license seems to be taken and tolerated. When critiquing other people, it is always important to first consider your own mistakes. Admitting one’s own mistakes—even when one has not corrected them—can help convince somebody to change their behaviour. “If you were born a certain type, could you ever change it?” somebody asked. If it is a very bad type and you work very hard, you can change it. First you must know the type—that means knowing essence. If you find something in essence which is incompatible with aim, then if you work very hard you can perhaps change it. Essence is hidden in personality; rays of planetary influence cannot penetrate because personality is accidental. People are affected by planetary influences only in certain parts of themselves, parts which are always there, so that these influences have an effect on people in the mass but, in normal cases, seldom affect individuals. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

“To what extent,” someone asked, “does a man who is under the Law of Accident come under the Law of Fate, apart from his birth and death?” It depends upon the relation between personality and essence. If personality is strong it makes a shall round essence, then there is very little fate. The planetary influences which control fate, type, essence, do not reach us when personality is strong. However, there are some people who, quite without the influence of “schools,” live more in essence. In them personality is very faint and they are more under the Law of Fate than other people. They depend more upon certain influences on which other people depend less; I will not say what these influences are, for that only leads to imagination. You must find out for yourselves. In the lives or ordinary people there is nothing of fate except birth and death. Individual man is very little under planetary influences because his essence is undeveloped and very small, or else too much mixed with his personality. As these influences cannot penetrate personality, such men are under the Law of Accident. If man lived in his essence he would live under planetary influences or, in other words, under the Law of Fate. Whether this would be to his advantage or not is another question. It might be better in one case and worse in another. Generally better. But planetary rays cannot penetrate personality; they are reflected from it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Combinations of influences produce combinations of types. We do not know what they are and we cannot find out by making a horoscope. That would be something like mediaeval psychoanalysis. “But the combinations do come from the planets, do they not?” Yes, originally. All our emotions and all our ideas came originally from the planets, they were not born here. “Should one try to live according to one’s emotions, or should one always try to find a good reason for what one is doing?” It is difficult to say. Emotions may be different and one’s capacity to control one’s life may be different. Very often it is imaginary. Very often all questions such as “Should I do this?” or “Should I do that?” are quite artificial, because one can do only in one way. Very often one thinks one can do something in this way or in that way, but really one can only do it in one way. One has no control. However, it is useful to start from this point of view: to see what kind of emotions you mean, whether they are emotions belonging to essence or emotions belonging to personality. And very often—not always, but very often—you can trust emotions belonging to essence and mistrust emotions belonging to personality. However, this is not a general rule; it only shows lines of study in connection with your question. The question itself shows by which line your thinking must go. You must think about essence and personality. You must think about things you cannot control. It is not a question of investigation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

When it comes to determining the level of selection—two basic processes amplify success: selection of agents and selection of strategies. The natural selection of biological agents works by making an entirely new agent without the need to determine the cause of the success of the parent or parents. The selection of strategies, on the other hand, creates new strategies for an existing agent. It often involves some explicit decision about what strategy or part of the agent was responsible for the success. Biological systems are not the only ones that select entire agents. Elections are another such method. If a congressional representative is defeated in an election, another person gets the job. The voters are not able to pick and choose among the features they like in the incumbent and a challenger. They simply have to pick one candidate or the other. This provides an easy answer to the question of what should be given credit for success (or failure). The answer is the whole candidate. As much as a voter might want to give credit and blame separately for some good and bad policy positions or character traits, the vote requires selection at the level of the whole agent. One agent will occupy the office for the coming term; all others will be cast aside. Elections offer a nice example of several coevolving complex systems. While voters are selecting at the level of agents, active politicians are selecting at the level of strategies. They observe carefully what positions were taken by recent victors around the country. Many will adopt those more successful strategies in future campaigns. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The economy also can select at the level of agents. Companies that go bankrupt and are liquidated are thereafter not present in the population. On the constructive side, imagine a decentralized firm that has a highly successful branch office. The firm might use its earnings to “clone” the successful branch office by setting up another branch that, insofar as possible, duplicates the entire operation of the successful one. If the branches operate fairly autonomously, this would amount to creating a new agent. The central office would have given credit to an entire branch (rather than to any of its particular strategies or characteristics) and tried to amplify success by producing a duplicate agent. Biological evolution works by selecting agents. The success of an organism leads to reproduction. This does not entail any determination of which of the genes “deserve” credit for the reproductive success. Instead, all the genes in the reproducing organism get a roughly equal chance to be passed on to the offspring. This fact is the root of the phenomenon called hitchhiking, in which non-productive, even mildly deleterious, genes are carried into subsequent generations by the success of the overall agent package to which they belong. In all these examples of agent selection, there must be fairly substantial accumulations of resources to create a new agent, whether that agent is an infant organism, a political candidate, or a branch office. The need to accumulate sufficient resources to embody a new agent operates as an important limiting factor in agent-level selection. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

It contrasts with the situation we will see blow for strategy level selection, where what is copied can often be merely the abstract pattern of the strategy. The extreme of this, a process that is profoundly reshaping our era, is the copying of computer algorithms. Here, the marginal costs of assembling a new copy may hover just above zero, allowing low-cost software to run on millions of computers. When using selection of agents to harness complexity, a key question is how strong selection pressure should be. If the best agent in a population gets many copies while the others get few or none, the selection pressure is very high. In effect, strong selection pressure greatly amplifies the success of the best agent in the population but gives very little amplification to slightly less successful. In an era where franchising can provide strong selection pressure, the best ideas for a hardware store or bookstore will be extensively copied, while independent competitors will languish. Conversely, weak selection pressure produces only a slight tendency for the better agents to have more copies and thus provides more uniform amplification to the relatively successful agents. The advantage of strong selection pressure is that it exploits success by quickly spreading copies of the best-performing agents. The disadvantage is that it can quickly destroy the variety in the population that is needed to explore for even better outcomes in the future. Thus the trade-off between strong and weak selection raises the familiar issues of choosing the balance between exploiting the best current outcomes and using variety to explore for possible improvements. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Manager and designers often have opportunities to change selection pressure. Among other things, they can increase rewards and visibility for top performers and set severe punishments for flaws. For example, “zero tolerance” deletion of agents or artifacts with small deficiencies has the effect of reducing variety. It thereby favours exploitation over exploration. In the short run, strong selection pressure converts existing variety to new exploitation, but in the long run exploration may suffer. Harnessing complexity requires taking advantage of variety rather than trying to ignore or eliminate it. An instructive issue in biological reproduction is the founder effect. An example would be an island populated by long-beaked birds descended from a long-beaked pair that were among the first to reach the locale. In its early history, the population is small, and an outstandingly fit individual has offspring that forms a large portion of the next generation. Over subsequent generations, many traits of that “founder” are carried widely through the population. Whether or not they make their own functional contribution, the traits that made the founder effective co-occurred with traits that do not have high value. Both kinds are amplified. A nonbiological example can be seen in the Carnegie libraries that proliferated in the United States of America in the early twentieth century. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Many different communities established libraries staring from the same plans. Overall, the favoured plans were good ones and carried financial subsidies. The practice of using them was beneficial on the whole but did result in libraries with specific services that were arbitrary or even unwanted in some communities in which they were instituted. In the 1986 baseball National League championship series, the New York Mets won a crucial game against the Houston Astros when Len Dykstra hit Dave Smith’s second pitch for a two-run home run in the ninth inning. The two players later walked about what happened. Dykstra said, “He threw mw a fastball on the first pitch and I fouled it off. I had a gut feeling then that he had thrown me a forkball next, and he did. I got a pitch I saw real well, and hit it real well.” According to Smith, “What it boils down to, is that it was bad pitch selection.” By that he meant Dykstra was guessing that, because the first pitch was a fastball, Smith would alter the velocity. “If I had it to do over again? It would be [another] fastball.” Should Smith adopt the strategy of throwing another fastball the next time such a situation arises? Of course not. The batter can see through this level of Smith’s thinking, and expect a fastball. However, then Smith should move gears to the next level of thinking, and throw a forkball, after all. And so on. There is no definite stopping point to this process. The batter can see through and exploit any systematic thinking and action by the pitcher, and vice versa. The only sensible course of action for both is to be unpredictable. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

To be unpredictable, the pitcher should make a random selection from accurate pitches. He should not throw inaccurate pitches. An inaccurate pitcher is unpredictable because he himself does not know where the ball will go. Without accuracy, there is no control over the placement and relative frequencies of the different types of pitches. The best example of an accurate but unpredictable pitch is the knuckleball. Because the ball hardly spins, the seams lead to sudden movements through the air an no one can quite predict its outcome—but few pitchers can throw good knuckleballs. In these situations, a classic mistake in strategic thinking is to believe that you can predict your rival’s moves simply by wearing his shoes. We see this mistake in David Halberstam’s book The Summer of ’49 as he describes the strategic awakening of the strategic awakening of the seventeen-year-old Ted Williams. “Like so many young players, Williams had trouble with breaking pitches. He was never ready for them. Once a pitcher got him out on a curve. Williams, furious with himself, trotted back to his position in the outfield. One of the San Diego pitchers, a former major-leaguer, yelled over to him, ‘Hey kid, what’d he get you out on?’ ‘A goddamn slow curve,” Williams answered. ‘Can you hit his fastball?’ the pitcher continued. ‘You bet,’ Williams answered. ‘What do you think he’ll be looking to put past you next time?’ the pitcher asked. There was a brief pause. Ted Williams had never thought about pitching to Ted Williams—that was something other pitchers did. ‘A curse,’ he answered. ‘Hey kid,’ the pitcher said, ‘why don’t you go up there and wait on it the next time.’ Williams did, and hit the ball out for a home run. Thus began a twenty-five-year study of the mind of the pitcher. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Apparently the pitcher had not learned the need to be unpredictable, but then neither had Williams, for if Williams were thinking about how to pitch to Williams, he would not throw a curve when he recognized that Williams was expecting it! This report shows what to expect when both sides are trying to outsmart the other. Even though you cannot guess right all the time, you can at least recognize the odds. Correctly anticipating and responding to unpredictability is useful well beyond the baseball diamond. Unpredictability is a critical element of strategy whenever one side likes coincidence of actions, while the other wishes to avoid it. The IRS wants to audit those who have evaded taxes, while those who have cheated hope to avoid an audit. Among children, the older sibling usually wants to avoid having the younger one tag along; the younger often looks to follow the older’s footsteps, literally. An invading army wants to achieve tactical surprises in its choice of the place to attack; the defending army wants to concentrate its force on the spot where the attack comes. The setters of fashion in nightclubs, restaurants, clothing, and art want exclusivity; the general public wants to mingle with the trendsetters. Eventually, the “in” places are discovered. However, by then the beautiful people have moved on to somewhere else. This helps explain the short life span of nightclubs. Once a nightclub gets to be successful, too many people want to go there. This drives trendsetters away and they start a new fad somewhere else. As Yogi Berra said, “The place is so crowded, no one goes there anymore.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

While the baseball player’s choice of pitch or the IR’s decision of whom to audit on any one occasion may be unpredictable, there are rules that govern the selection. The right amount of unpredictability should not be left to chance. In fact, the odds of choosing one pitch over another or to whom to audit can be precisely determined from the particulars of the game. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Today we live in the age of instant media, a bombardment of contending images, symbols, and “facts.” Yet the more data, information, and knowledge are used in the governing as we penetrate deeper into the “information society,” the more difficult it may become for anyone—political leaders included—to know what is really going on. Much has been written about how TV and the press distort our image of reality through conscious bias, censorship, and even in inadvertent ways. Intelligent citizens question the political objectivity of both print and electronic media. Yet there is a deeper level of distortion that has been little studied, analyzed, or understood. In the coming political crises that face the high-tech democracies, all sides—politicians and bureaucrats, as well as the military, the corporate lobbies, and the swelling tide of citizen groups—will use “info-tactics.” These are power plays and ploys based on the manipulation of information—for the most part before it ever gets to the media. With knowledge in all its forms becoming more central to power, with data, information, and knowledge piling up and pouring out of our computers, info-tactics will become ever more significant in political life. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Before we can understand the sophisticated techniques that will shape political power in the future, we need to look at the methods used by today’s most successful power players. These “classic” techniques are not taught in any school. Shrewd players of the political power game know them intuitively. The rules have not been formalized or set down systematically. Until this is done, talk about “open government,” an “informed citizenry,” or “the public’s right to know” remains rhetorical. For these info-tactics call into question some of our mist basic democratic assumptions. The World imposes limits on what we can do. Technology in general (and nanotechnology in particular) can provide padding for us as we throw ourselves against these hard, sharp limitations, and can sometimes help us slip past old limits through previously unknown gaps. Eventually, though, we will encounter new limits. In the end, solid constraints will limit human action no matter how much we juggle atoms and molecules, or the bits and bytes of information. Many problems differ fundamentally from the material problems of limited matter and energy: they involve information. Some of the most precious stores of information in the World today are the genetic codes of the biosphere. This information, different for virtually every individual organism, is the product of millions of events that we are incapable of modeling or recreating. When this information is lost, it is lost forever. When the atoms encoding this information are thoroughly scattered, there seems to be no way to retrieve it. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

With any species, most genetic information is shared in common, found in all members of that species. However, the variation in genetic code between individuals are important, both to the individuals themselves and to the health and prospects of the species as a whole. Consider the northern white rhino, whose numbers have dropped to an estimated thirty-two animals, or the California condor, of which only forty remain, all in captivity. Even if biologists succeed in reestablishing these species—eight condors were hatched in 1989—much of the diversity of their genetic information has been lost. Worse yet are extinctions of species for which no tissue samples were saved. The future may see some amazing recoveries: Dry skin and bones may yield a complete set of genes when sifted by molecular machinery, and even current techniques have been used to recover genes from an ancient leaf, almost 20 million years old. Our eyes and instruments cannot yet tell us how much information from the past remains, but we do know that genetic information is being lost every day, and once lost, it is irretrievable. A mutational meltdown describes an eco-evolutionary process in which the accumulation of deleterious mutations causes a fitness decline that eventually leads to the extinction of a population. Possible applications of this concept include medical treatment of RNA virus infections based on mutahenic drugs that increase the mutation rate of the pathogen. Extinction is the result of three consequences: initial accumulation of deleterious mutations due to the increased mutation pressure; consecutive loss of the fittest haplotype due to Muller’s ratchet; rapid population decline towards extinction. We find accurate analytical results for the mean extinction time, which shows that the deleterious mutation rate has the strongest effect on extinction time. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Luncheon #4 with Coffee

We cannot see reality here and remain closed to it there. That dulls our cutting edge and makes our search for the truth ineffectual. And we can see ourselves rightly only if we can see others rightly, only if we can see them in the context of their social circumstances, which is to say, only if we look sharply and critically at all that is going on around us in the World. This is what love demands of us, too. And if we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love to others as individuals. That will inevitably lead to mistakes. We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved in political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities. A contingency that bears on mutual openness is one we must consider. Previously, we argued that the individual in our society has a right to receive civil inattention. It was also suggested that, when persons ratify each other for mutual participation in an encounter, the rule against looking fully at another is set aside. Typically, then, one person may legitimately begin to look further at another a moment before one initiates an encounter, the legitimacy being imputed retroactively, after it is shown what the individual had been intending to do. If, then, persons find that they must stare at each other, they can try to cope with the matter by initiating a state of talk, the overture being excusable (however embarrassing) because of what can be handled by means of it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

There are standard conditions under which the rule about not staring gives rise to these problems. When a few persons find themselves in a small space, as in a European railway compartment, or around the entrance of a store that is not yet quite open, civil inattention is hard to manage tactfully. To not stare requires looking very pointedly in other directions, which may make the whole issue more a matter of consciousness than it was meant to be, and may also express too vividly an incapacity or a distaste for engagement with those present. In this connection, the plight of close-setting diners in low-priced restaurants in the south of France can create tensions by sitting opposite someone with whom one is not in a conversational relation. The institutionalized solution: each diner pours the wine from one’s small table-bottle into the glass of the other, and with the exchange of these clearance signs, the table is open for conversation, the diners now being ratified coparticipants of social encounter. Fortunately such where-to-look situations do not arise with any frequency. One which does, however, is the elevator one…both while in an elevator brings outs a suspicious streak in people. You arrive before the closed landing door and push a button. Another person comes along and after a glance of mutual appraisal, you both look quickly away and continue to wait, thinking the while uncharitable thoughts of one another. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

 The new arrival suspecting you of not having pushed the button and you wondering if the new arrival is going to be a mistrusting old meanie and go give the button a second shove…an unspoken tension which is broken by one or the other of you walking over and doing just that. Then back to positions of waiting and the problem of where to look. To stare the other person in the eye seems forward and usually the eye does not warrant it. Shoes are convenient articles for scrutiny—your own or those of the other person—although it is overdone this may give the impression of incipient shoe fetichism. It [ the where-to-look problem] continues even inside the elevator…especially in the crowded and claustrophobic boxes of the modern high buildings. Any mutual exchange of glances on the part of the occupants would add almost a touch of lewdness to such already over-cozy sardine formation. Some people gaze instead at the back of the operator’s neck, others stare trance-like up at those little lights which flash the floors, as if safety of the trip were dependent upon such deep concentration. A rather similar situation arises in a Pullman diner when one is obliged to sit opposite an unknown at a table for two. How to fill in the awkward wait before writing out “Luncheon #4 with coffee” and the arrival and serving of the same? If one is not the type who, given the slightest provocation, burst into friendly chit-chat with a stranger, the risk of getting conversationally involved with someone who is, brings out the furtive behaviour of an escaped convict. Sometimes it becomes apparent that the other person feels the same way…a discovery which comes as a minor shock but no major solution. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Two strangers sitting directly opposite each other at a distance of a foot and a half, and determined politely but firmly to avoid each other’s eye, go in for a fascinating little game of “I do not spy.” They re-read the menu, they fool with the cutlery, they inspect their own fingernails as if seeing them for the first time. Comes the inevitable moment when glances meet but they meet only to shoot instantly away and out the window for an intent view of the passing scene. It can be awkward, drinking alone at a bar. Is the man behind it wholly a servitor at such times, or must recognition be made of the fact that two human beings are together in an otherwise empty room? It may be added that during such difficult times, if the individual decides against contact, he may well have to find some activity for himself in which he can become visibly immersed, so as to provide the others present with a face-saving excuse for being unattended to. Here again we see the situational functions that newspapers and magazines play in our society, allowing us to carry around a screen that can be raised at any time to give ourselves or others an excuse for not initiating contact. Airplane and long-distance bus travel have here underlined some interesting issues. Seatmates, while likely to be strangers, are not only physically too close to each other to make non-engagement comfortable, but are also fixed for a long period of time, so that conversation, once begun, may be difficult thereafter either to close or to sustain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

In such cases, a strategy is to “thin out” the encounter by keeping it impersonal and by declining to exchange identifying names, thus guaranteeing that some kind of nonrecognition will be possible in the future. As for airplanes today, seatmates may not exchange a word in a trip across the continent. However, plane conversation is in order if mutually desired and kept impersonal. As on trains, names need not be exchanged. And why should they? After all, it is relaxing to talk without identifying oneself. Relationships with service personnel in our society, when talk is required, may be thinned out in the same way—a thinning, incidentally, that serves may attempt to counteract by asking the name of the customer and proffering their own. Public officials are often criticized for not being accessible to the constituents. They are busy people, and the fault sometimes lies in overprotective assistants who do not want to overburden their bosses with too many visitors. The mayors of some cities frequently admonish because of the way the public sees them. They often claim to have an “open-door” policy; yet at city hall meetings, citizens are arrested, told out right to “shut up!” and the mayor is hard to get ahold of. Furthermore, members of the community are blocked by secretaries and administrators when they call. Finally, taxpayers came up with a suggestion. They wanted to remove the door from his office! However, he still never got the message, and nor has his administration. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Simply staying committed to your promises can change the difference between failure and success and will reduce the likelihood of giving offense or arousing resentment. Many people begin their criticism with the sincere praise followed by the word “but” and ending with a critical statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s attitude toward studies, we might say, “We are really proud of you, Leo, for cutting back on your modeling and acting jobs and raising your grades this term. But if you hard worked harder on your algebra, the results would have been better.” In this case, Leo might feel encouraged until he heard the word “but.” He might then question the sincerity of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably would not achieve our objectives of changing Leo’s attitude toward his studies. This could be easily overcome by changing the word “but” to “and.” We are really proud of you, Leo, for raising your grades this term, and by continuing the same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade can be up with all the others.” Now, Leo would accept the praise because there was no follow-up of an inference of failure. We have called his attention to the behaviour we wished to change indirectly, and the changes are he will try to live up to our expectations. Calling attention to one’s mistakes indirectly works wonders with sensitive people who may resent bitterly any direct criticism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

All people should aim to be leaders and they are more effective when they lead by example. One should be an example that they want others to follow. Every person carries on one’s shoulders the reputation of one’s family. We bring credit to the work of our ancestors. The railing out against good people, the viciousness and the lying about our people as whole have almost entirely died out because people have come to know the desires of our heats, that we have no enmity against even those who malign us. One of the first and most important factors in trying to change oneself is the division of oneself. The right division is between what is really “I,” and all the rest which we can call “Mr. Harris,” or whatever your name happens to be. If this division is not made, if one forgets about it and continues to think oneself in the usual way, or if one continues to use “I” and “Mr. Harris,” but in the wrong way work stops. The first line of work can only make progress on the basis of this division. No other lines are open if this division is forgotten, but it must be the right division. It happens often that people make a wrong division. What they like in themselves they call “I” and what they dislike, or what is weak or unimportant, this they call “Mr. Harris” or “Mrs. Hearst,” or “Mr. Winchester” or whatever their names happen to be. If they divide in this way it is quite wrong. It is not enough that you make a right division today and forget it tomorrow. You must make a right division and keep it in your memory. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

[An actual example of wrong division was given. A man called Petroff who had belonged to one of our groups made a division of himself into two parts. One of these he described as “keeping him alive” and called it “I”; the rest he called Petroff.] This wrong division is simply lying, lying to oneself which is worse than anything because the moment one meets with the smallest difficulty it will show itself by inner arguing and wrong understanding. “What is the origin of this difficulty in dividing oneself?” asked Mrs. X. The origin is you and Mrs. X. Mrs. X. thinks she knows better than you do. She thinks she is more important and wishes you to do as she wants. “One of the difficulties,” said Mr. Y. “is that Y. knows better than ‘I’ in certain situations.” Y. knows nothing. “But he thinks he does,” said Mr. Y. Do you have to obey? If you think he knows best, simply study him and this will bring you to the right understanding. The first condition is that you must believe nothing. What is the use of trying to create permanent “I” while you continue to believe in Mr. Y? The real “I” is created by the desire to be and to know and the rest is non-existent. So really there is nothing to divine. We must believe nothing or we cannot come to anything. In this system the word “I” can be spoken of in five ways on five different levels. Man in his ordinary state, is a multiplicity of “I”s; this is the first meaning. The human “I” has a Master, Time-body, and he also knows the past and also the future. The names we are given at birth are our False Personality which each of us has, but this division must not be confused with the division between Essence and Personality. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Essence is what we are born with, our capacities and incapacities. It is connected with “type” and also with the physical body. We cannot work on it directly. From this point of view of work on ourselves, all that we have is personality. When a man begins to work, magnetic center brings observing “I” into being. This “I” is also a personality which has to educate the rest of personality and essence. “Is it right to supposed that a person with a highly developed personality would find this work difficult?” Yes and no. Not so much depends on the weight of personality as on its state, on whether it is educated, badly educated or uneducated. It may be in the power of imaginary “I” and then it is wrong. Being does not enter into the division into personality and essence. Knowledge and being are the two sides of which we speak in relation to the possibility of man’s development. They make one pair of opposites on a different scale. Personality is acquired; essence is our own, what we are born with, what cannot be separated from us. They are mixed and we cannot distinguish the one from the other now, but it is useful to remember this division as a theoretical fact. Essence, or type of man, is the result of planetary influences. Planetary influences determine many big events in the life of humanity such as wars and revolutions. Our emotions come originally from the planets and different essence. According to our type we act in one or another way in certain circumstances. It is said that there are twelve or eighteen chief types and then combinations of these. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

It is very seldom that you meet a pure type, but different features play a different part in different types though each type has everything. That knowledge can bother us. However, the more we know about ourselves and the fewer illusions we have about others, the richer, stronger, more vital our lives will be. Another area of life where we can harness complexity and change success criteria is in the method of establishing a prize competition. Consider for example, the ancient Athenian practice of conducting annual dramatic contests. By explicitly declaring which drama was the best, the award accomplished three things. First, the author was honoured for success, bringing fame and influence to individuals such as Aeschylus and Sophocles. Second, the award encouraged the production of new plays composed to meet the criteria implied by the previous awards. In our terms, the strategies of later playwriting were changed. Third, the award helped educate and shape the tastes of the audience, thereby providing future support for the criteria of excellence the award implied. Today prize competitions are used to reward, encourage, and define excellence in a wide range of activities, from grammar school art contests to the Nobel Prizes in physics, peace, and literature. There are now prizes for beauty, for most valuable players, for best dressed, and for business quality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The effectiveness of prizes is enhanced as society develops more extensive channels to disseminate news of awards. So we should not be surprised that their use is increasing. Every increment in the reach of printing, television, or e-mil newsgroups increases the possibilities for affecting success criteria by announcing winners of awards. Some prizes are for accomplishments that can be assessed more or less objectively, such as the winner of a solar-powered car race. For our purposes, the most interesting prizes are those that are based on subjective criteria. Indeed, for many prizes, the criteria are so indefinite that the burden of defining excellence within some realm falls heavily, if not entirely, on the subjective evaluations of a panel of judges. From the point of view of harnessing complexity, a major advantage of prize competitions is that they can award credit to people or activities based on criteria that are different from current standards. The presumption is that a carefully selected panel of judges can make worthwhile evaluations of quality. The indirect effects are as powerful as the direct effects. Giving a prize not only rewards a winner who might not have excelled in other assessments but also provides a target for others to emulate. Emulation may take the form of superficial imitation, but it may also create innovative exemplars of just what was most valued by experts. In addition, by helping to shape the tastes of the general audience, a prize competition can also shape the criteria used by the broader public. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

For instance, book awards not only provide guidance to writers and publishers about what is being valued but also provide guidance to readers and reviewers about what is worth reading. The promotion of a sophisticated reading public, in turn, helps provide a market for good writing. A prize competition can also promote useful variety. Prizes sometimes serve to identify and promote things that are new and valuable. When a science or literary prize is awarded, it tends to legitimate and promote the entire field or genre of the winner. Of course, there is a tension here. Deciding who or what should receive an award involves the application of standards of excellence. The judges inevitably use standards that are shaped in part by the standards in the broader community of which they are a part. Indeed, judges are usually selected on the basis of their own standing, which in turn is often based on their adherence to current standards. And even if the judges may wish to be leaders in the identification of what is both new and worthy and are willing to take a risk on something that stretches current standards, they also need to be concerned about looking arbitrary or even foolish. The judges are also judged. Therefore, they face the familiar trade-off between exploitation and exploration in making their selections. The trade-off creates a tension between making a safe choice that reflects current standards and making a bold choice that can help transform those very standards. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

To the extent that prize committees are willing to go beyond the orthodoxy of the moment, the represent a valuable potential for increasing useful variety. This potential is not always fully seized. Of the first 85 winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, all but one wrote in a European language. Prizes can stifle variety. It is now very hard for a young pianist to establish a successful recording or concert career without having won one of the major competitions. The reason is that producers rely on the competitions to screen pianists. Young pianists therefore train to win these competitions, go to teachers who have won or whose students have won, choose repertoire suited to winning, and so on. This there is some truth to the criticism that competitions can reduce the variety of piano expression exactly because the competitions can become the dominant focus for young players. It can take a long time for the weak signals of public tastes or music reviews to counter the now strengthened signals of prize jury standards. While each prize sets up a competition among those aspiring to win it, there is also competition among the prizes themselves. The sponsors and judges of each prize seek attention and prestige for their award. Within each domain there is competition for how much credit will be garnered by the winners of a public award. Is a Pulitzer Prize for fiction better than a National Book Award? Prize competitions themselves interact, as when getting one prize makes a winner more likely to het another prize. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Moreover, a lesser-known prize can gain prestige if its winners often go on to receive some better-known prize. Thus there is an intricate set of interactions within and between four populations of agents: prize seekers, members of their audience, judges on awards panels and the various prize competitions themselves. Together they function to alter the criteria that define success in their respective domains. After a battle that lasted longer than twelve years, United States v. IBM stands as a monumental eyesore of antitrust litigation. One of the many issues revolved around IBM’s policy of leasing rather than selling its mainframe computers. The government argued that IBM’s emphasis on short-term leases constituted an entry barrier resulting in monopoly profits. IBM defended the practice as being in consumers’ interest. It argued that a short-term lease insulates customers from the risk of obsolescence, provides flexibility when needs change, commits IBM to maintain its leased equipment (since it is responsible for the operation of the leased computers), and provides financing from the company with the deepest pockets. Many find these arguments a convincing defense. Yet there is a strategic advantage to leasing that seems to have been overlooked by both sides. How would you expect prices to differ if IBM primarily sold its large mainframe machines rather than leased them? Even a company without an outside competitor must worry about competing with its future self. When a new computer is introduced, IBM can sell the first models at very high prices to customers impatiently awaiting the technological advance. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Once the computers are available in large numbers, there is the temptation to lower the price and attract more customers. The main cost of producing the computer has already been incurred in the development stage. Each additional sale is gravy. Herein lies the problem. If customers expect that IBM is about to lower its prices, they will wait to make their purchase. When the majority of customers are waiting, IBM has an incentive to speed up its price reductions and capture the customer sooner. This idea, first expressed by University of Chicago law professor Ronald Coase, is that for durable goods, in effect, a monopolist competes with its future self in a way that makes the market competitive. Leasing serves as a commitment device that enables IBM to keep prices high. The leasing contracts make it much more costly for IBM to lower its price. When its machines are on short-term lease, any price reduction must be passed along to all customers, not just the ones who have not yet bought. The loss in revenue from the existing customer base may outweigh the increase in new leases. In contrast, when the existing customer base owns its computers, this trade-off does not arise; the customer base owns its own computers, this trade-off does not arise; the customers who already bought the computer at a high price are not eligible for refunds. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Thus leasing is an example of moving in small steps. The steps are the length of the lease. The shorter the lease, the smaller the step. Customers do not expect IBM to keep its price high when the steps are too big; they will wait for a price reduction and get the same machine a little later at a lower price. However, if IBM leases its computers only on short, renewable contracts, then it can credibly maintain high prices, customers have no reason to wait, and IBM earns higher profits. As college professors and authors, we encounter the same problem closer to home in the market for academic textbooks. If commitment were possible, publishers could raise profits by brining out new editions of a textbook on a five-year cycle, rather than the more common three-year cycle. Greater longevity would increase the text’s value on the used-book market and consequently the student’s initial willingness to pay when a new addition appears. The problem is that once the used books are out there, the publisher has a strong incentive to undercut this competition b brining out a new edition. Because everyone expects this to happen, students get a lower price for their used books and thus are less willing to pa for the new editions. The solution for the publisher is the same as for IBM: rent books rather than sell them. As we consider the secret teams and plumbers, it is important to understand what they do. of #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Under normal circumstances, much of the work of, let us say, Presidents of the United States of America and Prime Minster has been: to make choices among options (prepared in advance for them by their respective bureaucracies), about issues they understand only superficially, and then only when the different parts of their bureaucracy are unable to reach agreement. There are, of course, decisions that only top leaders can take—crash decisions that cannot wait for the bureaucratic mills to grind, turning-point decisions, war and peace decisions, or decisions that require extraordinary secrecy. These are non-programmable, as it were, decisions that come directly from the leader’s viscera. However, these are comparatively rare when things are running “normally.” When, however, we enter a revolutionary period, and a new wealth system clashes with the power structures built around an old one, “normalcy” is shattered. Each day’s headlines report some new unpredicted crisis or breakthrough. Global and domestic affairs alike are destabilized. Events accelerate beyond any reasonable capacity to stay on top of them. In conditions like these, even the best bureaucracies break down, and serious problems are allowed to fester into crises. The “homeless pandemic” in the United States of America, for example, is not a problem of inadequate housing alone, but of several interlinked problems—low wages, cost of housing, disability, veterans who have medical bills and no support, children who are kicked out of their homes, unemployment, high land prices, drug abuse, intimate partner violence and alcoholism. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Each is the concern of a different bureaucracy, none of which can deal effectively with the problem on its own, and none of which wants to cede its budget, authority, or jurisdiction to another. It is not merely the people who are homeless, but the problem. Drug abuse, too, requires integrated action by many bureaucracies simultaneously: police, health authorities, the schools, the foreign ministry, banking, transportation, and more. However, getting all these to act effectively in concert is almost impossible. Today’s high-speed technological and social changes generate precisely this kind of “cross-cutting” problem. More and more of them wind up in limbo, and more turf wars break out to consume government resources and delay action. In this environment, political leaders have the opportunity to seize power from their own bureaucrats. Conversely, as they see problems escalating into crises, political leaders are often tempted to take extreme measures, setting up all kinds of task forces, “czars,” “plumber’s groups,” and “secret teams” to get things done. Driven by frustration, some political leaders come to despise their bickering civil servants, and rely ever more heavily on intimates, on secrecy, informal orders, and arrangements that end-run and actually subvert the bureaucracy. This is, of course, exactly what the Reagan White House did so disastrously in the Irangate case, when it set up its own secret “enterprise” to sell arms to Iran and pipe the profits to the contra forces in Nicaragua, even at the risk of violating the law. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Less dramatically when George Bush asked the State Department and the Pentagon to prepare proposals for him to present to NATO, in mid-1989, the usual hordes of mid- and senior-level bureaucrats put on their green eyeshades and masticated the ends of the pencils. However, what ultimately came up the line from them were a series of warmed-over, trivial proposals. Bush was under political pressure, at home and abroad, to come up with something more dramatic—something that would steal the thunder from the latest proposals made by Soviet Leader Gorbachev. To get it, he threw away the bureaucratic script, called in Cabinet members and a handful of senior assistants, and drew up a plan to withdraw some U.S.A. troops from Europe. It won instant approval from the allies and the American public. Similarly, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl simply ignored his foreign ministry when he first outlined his list of ten conditions for uniting the two Germanys. Whenever a leader end-runs the bureaucracy in this way, dire warnings that disaster looms rise from its ranks. This is often followed by leaks to the press designed to undermine the new policy. Nevertheless, in times of rapid change, requiring instant or imaginative responses, cutting ministries or departments out of the loop comes to be seen as the only way to get anything done, which accounts for the proliferation of ad hoc and informal units that increasingly honeycomb governments, competing with a sapping the formal bureaucracy. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

All this, when combined with privatization and the looming redistribution of power to local, regional and supra-national levels, points to basic changes in the size and shape of governments tomorrow. It suggests that, as we move deeper into the super-symbolic economy, mount pressures will force governments, like corporations before them, into a process of painful restructure. This organizational agony will come even as politicians attempt to cope with a wildly unstable World system, plus all the dangers outlined in the past reports, from unprecedented environmental crises to explosive ethnic hatreds and multiplying fanaticism. What we can expect to see, therefore, is sharpened struggle between politicians and bureaucrats for control of the system as we make the perilous passage from a mass to a mosaic democracy. Increasing affluence based on molecular manufacturing will not end economic problems any more than past increases in affluence have. Wilderness can still be destroyed; people can be oppressed; financial markers can be unstable; trade wars can be waged; inflation can soar; individuals, companies, and nations can go into debt; bureaucracy can stifle innovation; tax levels can become crippling; wars and terrorism can rage none of these will automatically be stopped by advanced technology. What is more, the potential benefits of new technologies are not automatic. Nanotechnology could be used to restore the environment, to spread wealth, and to cure most illness. However, will it? This depends on human action, working within the limits set by the real World. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Such a Neighbour Does Not Offer His Eyes to Another

Primitive tribes have social systems in which friendliness and cooperation are predominant and aggression at a minimum. In modern cultures, an important basis of mutual accessibility resides in the element of informality and solidarity that seems to obtain between individuals who can recognize each other as being of the same special group, especially, apparently, if this group be one that is disadvantaged or ritually-profane. In American society, people at bus stops often extend greetings to others who are strangers to them, as people who the same religion do to one another, or people with similar features. Sports car drivers on the road may do the same—especially when the car of each is of the same make, and a rare one. And, of course, when fellow-nationals meet in exotic lands they may feel obliged or privileged to initiate a state of talk. Mutual accessibility also occurs when each of the two persons involved finds oneself in a position that is at once exposed and opening. As one student has already suggested, when two persons unintentionally touch each other in passing on the street, both may take on the guilty role, with consequent mutual openness can occur. The offender can treat oneself as an opening person, needful of setting the record right about oneself, while treating the other as one in need of receiving assurances, and hence place oneself in an exposed position. At the same time the initiate demands for apology, or to confirm that no offense has been taken. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Similarly, when two pedestrians must pass each other on a narrow walk, or when a pedestrian and motorist pair are in doubt about a join line of action, a mutually initiated meeting of the eyes can be employed to subtly apportion sides of the walk, or to subtly assure right-of-way to the other, or to ratify and consolidate an allocation that has been communicated. Another important basis for mutual accessibility arises from what might be called “open regions”—physically bounded places where “any” two persons, acquainted or not, have a right to initiate face engagement with each other for the purpose of extending salutations. Open regions differ according to the character of the face engagement that is permitted, according to whether or not introductions form part of the consequence of the encounter, and according to the categories of participants that are excluded. In Anglo-American society there exists a kind of “nod line” that can be drawn at a particular point through a rank order of communities according to size. Any community below the line, and hence below a certain size, will subject its adults, whether acquainted or not, to mutual greetings (where strangers owe each other passing greetings, we must study the resulting engagement in connection with the civil inattention that precedes and follows); any community above the line will free all pairs of unacquainted persons from this obligation. (Where the line is drawn varies, of course, according to region). #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

In the case of communities that fall above the nod line, even persons who cognitively recognize each other to be neighbours, and know that this state of mutual information exists, may sometimes be careful to refrain from engaging each other. (In the apt phrase reported in one housing study, such a neighbour does not “offer his eyes” to the other.) Perhaps this is done on the theory that, once acquaintanceship is established between persons living near one another, it might become difficult to keep sufficient distance in the relationship. Villages, towns, and rural places that fall below the nod line do not, of course, put absolutely everyone on nodding terms. Thus, in many parts of Sacramento, there was a general feeling that happy people who sounded and looked American were to be brought within the circle of humanity, but not those from places of unknown origin. The latter tended to be walked past and looked at as if they were not social objects but, rather, physical ones; they tended to be treated as “nonepersons.” In spite of these limits, however, we can still speak of these rural settlements as “open regions,” where coming into the region makes one accessible to anyone else in the vicinity. While rural and small town communities are perhaps the largest open regions, they are by no means the only ones. One instance, apparently the sports field. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Some American military personnel who have play golf are impressed with the friendliness of other players. “Why, they talked to us!” they say. The explanation that a presence on a sports field is the equivalent of an introduction, and that one can talk to strangers then, is greeted with some disbelief. Other sports produce similarly friendly results—athletics, flying, and other darts. In American society, bars, cocktail lounges, and club cars tend to be defined as open places, at least as between men (and although women are not free to engage men, certainly an overture from a male to a female in these settings is not much of a social delict, this fact constituting one of the important attributes of these settings). Something similar can be said about vacation resorts and about other highly bounded settings: A ship may be compared to a country hotel. It is good manners to greet other passengers in a friendly fashion without, however, making presumptuous overtures. You speak to the people next to you in deck chairs, but you do not force conversation upon them. In general, as in a friend’s house, the roof is the introduction, but this does not mean you are expected to do more than bow in the greeting to fellow passengers as you encounter them during the day. And, as implied, social parties and gatherings in private homes bring into being open regions where participants have a right not only to engage anyone present but also to initiate face engagement with self-introductions, if the gathering is too large for the host or hostess to have already introduced them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

If you meet any one whom you have never heard of before at the table of a gentleman, or in the drawing-room of a lady, you may converse with him with entire propriety. The form of “introduction” is nothing more than a statement by a mutual friend that two gentlemen are by rank and manners fit acquaintances for one another. All this may be presumed from the fact, that both meet at a respectable house. This is the theory of the matter. Custom, however, requires that you should take the earliest opportunity afterwards to be regularly presented to such an one. Nevertheless, it is still true that in a private house, or at any part, a guest may speak to any other guest without an introduction of any kind. Another illustration of the open regions provided by convivial occasions is the carnivals. During these costumed street celebrations, a roof and its rights is by social definition spread above the streets, brining persons into contact—a contact facilitated by their being out of role. The assumption of mutual regard and good will built into open regions guarantees a rationale for discounting the potential nefariousness of contact among the unacquainted, this being one basis for sociable accessibility. There are other bases. During occasions of recognized natural disaster, when individuals suddenly find themselves in a clearly similar predicament and suddenly become mutually dependent for information and help, ordinary communication constraints can break down. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Again, however, what is occurring in the situation guarantees that encounters are not being initiated for what can be improperly gained by them. And to the extent that this is assured, contact prohibitions can be relaxed. (If the disaster is quite calamitous, everyone is likely to be forced out of role and hence into mutual accessibility.) Now, how success is defined affects the chances for effective learning. Consider the example of checkers, the difficulties for learning if victory is the sole criterion of success creates a problem. The central problem is that victory or defeat comes only once per game. However, getting more than one measurement of performance per game could dramatically improve the rate of adaptation. The typical way to do this is to use criteria that can be measures in the course of the game. In checkers or chess, this is possible by evaluating the current board to see who is ahead in pieces and in various aspects of position. Such evaluations allow intelligent choices in the midst of the game based on what promises to lead to a better board position in a few moves. This does not require seeing all the way to victory or defeat t the end of the game. Since you cannot precisely measure the consequences of early moves for victory, you introduce other metrics tht are more easily predicted. In a seeming paradox, you increase the chance of winning by concentrating on a set of criteria that does not include winning. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Even better, with finer-grained measures you can actually learn to improve the criteria by which you evaluate board positions. For example, you might learn from experience that having many pieces in the center often leads to surprisingly good results a few moves later. Indeed, the Samuel checker-playing program, one of the early triumphs of artificial intelligence research, learns on its own to play better checkers by using expected results in just this way. When it arrives at a board position that is surprisingly good or bad, it uses this information to revise its own success criteria. The program determines what changes in its evaluators would have avoided the surprise and makes the corresponding changes. When it next encounters a similar board, the program will have a better set of criteria for attributing value to broad positions. This approach to learning new success criteria is very powerful. Samuel’s program, running on an early computer that could not keep up with today’s digital wristwatches, could learn checkers well enough to defeat a state champion. Moreover, these are techniques of very broad applicability: When success is measurable only rarely, new measure with a faster tempo can speed learning, even if they do not perfectly reflect the longer-term goal. Whenever outcomes are better or worse than expected, the experience can help to revise evaluation criteria so that, in the future, the attribution of credit will produce better outcomes. Using fine-grained and short-term measures of success can help individual learning by providing focused and rapid feedback. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Such narrow and prompt measures of success can also be used by an organization to evaluate who is successful and who is not. For this reason, managers are often judged by how well their unit does each quarter, or even each month, or by very specific indicators such as cost reductions. However, there is a problem. If the challenges the manager is dealing with are long-term or widespread in the organization, then using fine-grained and prompt measures of success can easily miss much of the value to the organization of any improvement the manager discovers. There can be a lot of bang for the exploratory buck when advances in one domain can be applied for a long time and/or in many places. A challenge for an organization is to develop measures of success that support appropriate levels of exploratory behaviour while taking into account that learning is fostered by fine-graine and rapid feedback. Another challenge in defining measures that will support leaning is that a measure may be correlated with what ultimately matters without actually being causally related. A medical example is the reduction of fever as a measure of success in fighting a disease. A fever indicates the presence of a disease, and the fever disappears when the disease does. However, with the development of aspirin, one can reduce the fever without curing the disease. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Therefore, using body temperature as a measure of success can be misleading for some diseases. Because the elevated temperature might even be part of the body’s method of fighting the disease, parents may learn to treat the fever with aspiring in ways that can actually be harmful. The implication is that one needs to be careful about which indirect measures of success are used to guide action and learning. Taken together, these observations about success measures imply not only risks but also rich possibilities for harnessing complexity through shaping the criteria by which the agents or their activities are evaluated. Performance measures are not immutably given, but are subject to change, both from the outside and from within the system where they operate. What measures are used profoundly affects which agents and strategies will be copied and recombined and, therefore, what adaption will occur. This is the logic that gives long-term power to what may seem modest changes in measures, such as introducing on-time performance into airline regulation, body counts into battle assessments, “pawn structure” into chess, and portfolio risk into financial management. It life, it is important to be a leader. You can change people without giving offense or arousing resentment. It is always easier to listen to unpleasant things after we have heard some praise of our good point. However, you never want to praise someone all the time, and the say, “but you could have done this better.” That will make them feel like compliments are always passive aggressive criticisms and it will be an anticipated downer. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

We do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings nor kill their enthusiasm. Sometimes just tell someone, “No one could have done a better job than you did.” We want people to beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. Therefore, always begin your interactions with praise and honest appreciation. Humans are divided into four parts: body, soul, essence, and personality. Personality and essence do not appear to be separate, but we can study what belongs to essence and what belongs to personality. The idea of the soul as a separate organism controlling the physical body cannot be said to be based on anything. The nearest approach to the idea of the soul as it was understood up to the seventeenth century is what is called the essence. The term soul is used in this system, but in the sense of life-principle only. Essence, personality and soul, taken together, correspond to what used to be called soul. However, the soul was supposed to have a separate existence from the body, whereas in this system we do not suppose essence, personality and soul to have a separate existence from the body. We are told that when a man dies or when anything dies (man or fish, it is just the same) its soul (id est, life-principle) goes to the moon. The soul is material; a certain quantity of fine matter, energy if you life, which leaves the body at death. In a normal man the soul has no consciousness, it is just mechanical so that it does not suffer. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

However, humans can create a sort of half-consciousness which can pass to the soul and then the soul going to the moon may be aware of what happens to it. This occurs only in some very rare cases and when essence has died during life. Then the soul can get some material from essence this way. Actually there are many other people who kill essence and are really dead in life, but that does not concern us. So let us speak about what it would mean to create moon in oneself. First, what is the moon? What is the moon’s function in relation to man, individual man? What would happen if this function of the moon were to disappear; would it be beneficial or the opposite? We know, for instance, that the moon controls all our movements, so that if the moon were to disappear we should not be able to make any movements, we should collapse like marionettes whose strings have been cut. We must realize that all this refers to Being. What are the features of our being? The chief feature of our being is that we are many, not one. If we want to work on our being, to make it correspond better to our aim, we must try to become one. However, this is a vary fair aim. What does it mean to become one? The first step, which is still very far, is to create a permanent center of gravity. This is what is meant by creating moon in ourselves. The moon is a permanent center of gravity in our physical life. If we create a center of gravity in ourselves, we do not need the moon. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

However, first we must decide what the absence of permanent “I” means. We shall find in its place many of the features or weakness referred to above, but these must be established definitely, for ourselves, by observation. Then we must begin a struggle against these features which prevent us from becoming one. We must struggle with imagination, negative emotions and self-will. Before this struggle can be successful, we must realize that the worst possible kind of imagination from the point of view of obtaining a center of gravity is a belief that one can do anything by oneself. After that we must strive with the negative emotions which prevent us from doing what we are told in connection with this system. For it is necessary to realize that self-will can only be broken by doing what one is told. It cannot be broken by doing what one decides oneself, for that will still be self-will. Self-will is always struggle against another will. Self-will cannot manifest without opposing itself to another will. It may be useful for you to take a piece of paper and to write on it what constitutes your being. Then you will see that being cannot grow by itself. For instance, one feature of our being is that we are machines; another, that we live in only a small pat of our machine; a third, our plurality of “I”s. We say “I” but this “I” is different at every moment. At one moment I say “I” and it is to one “I”; five minutes later I say “I” and it is another “I.” So we have many “I”s all on the same level and there is no central “I” in control. This is the state of our being; we are never one and we are never the same. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

If your write down all these features you will see what would constitute a change of being and what can be changed. In each particular feature there is something that can change, and a little change in one feature means also a change in another. It is not only in the film The Godfather that one hears an “offer you can’t refuse.” With minor variations, this situation arises surprisingly often. At the end of what appeared to be a successful job interview, our friend Rupert was asked where the firm ranked in his list of potential employers. Before answering, he was told that the firm hired only those applicants who ranked it first. If the firm was in fact his first choice, then they wanted him to accept in advanced a job offer should one be made. (For the starting position, there was a standard starting salary which was pretty much identical across competitors. Hence, he could predict what he would be accepting even before it was offered.) With this prospect of an “offer you can’t refuse” (because otherwise you do not get it), what should Rupert have done? With the X-ray vision of the game theory, we can see through this ploy. The firm claims that it wants to hire only people who rank it first. However, the effect these pressure tactics have is the opposite of what they claim. If the firm truly wanted to have employees who ranked first, then it should not make job offers conditional on the applicant’s ranking of the firm. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

If, after completing the interview process, the firm was in fact Rupert’s first choice, then the firm can expect him to accept its offer. No firm need worry about having its offer turned down by someone who wants to work there. On the other hand, if the firm was in fact Rupert’s second choice, but Rupert’s first-choice firm had yet to make an offer, then he might be willing to accept his second-choice job to avoid the risk of getting none. The firm’s pressure tactic of saying that it will offer jobs only to those who accept first has the effect of hiring candidates who do not in fact rank the firm first. More truthful and what they really mean is, “We want you to work for us. If you rank us first, then we know we will get you. However, if you rank us second, we might lose you. To get you even if we are not your first choice, we want you to agree in advance to accept our offer or you will get none at all.” Seen in this light, this does not seem to be a credible threat. The firm wants Rupert so much that it is willing to take him even if it is not his first choice. At the same time, it claims that if Rupert refuses to accept in advance, but instead comes back later to accept, it will no longer offer him a job. It is possible but unlikely. Our friend Rupert explained that he was only beginning his interviews and thus had too little information to make a ranking. The firm reminded him that unless he accepted in advance, he would not be offered a job. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Rupert left the Wednesday interview without an offer. That Friday, he received an offer on his answering machine. Monday there was another message reiterating the offer. On Wednesday, a telegram arrived offering a sign-on bonus. It is hard to make a credible commitment not to offer a job to someone you hire. What could the firm have done to make its threat credible? Here, teamwork can help, but not in the usual sense. Once there are several people with hiring power, it is possible that should you not accept immediately, the coalition that supported your candidacy may break down in favour of some later applicant. As we have discovered, when it comes to voting, the order in which candidates are considered may determine the ultimate decision. In this way a decision made by a committee is sufficiently dependent on chance that it cannot promise that given the same inputs it will reach the same verdict. A committee’s inability to commit itself to “rational” decision-making makes the take-it-or-leave-it threat credible. An offer valid not but not necessarily later presents people from comparison shopping. Stereo stores and care dealers use this tactic to great effect. However, how to these salesmen make credible their threat to turn down tomorrow an offer that they would accept today? Business may turn up, cash-flow problems may be lessened. As they are fond of saying, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

We saw earlier that many corporations, from auto makers to airlines, are struggling to cut down the degree of “vertical integration”—the reliance on their own people, keeping everything in-house, rather than contracting tasks to outside supplier firms. Many governments, too, are clearly reexamining their “make or buy” decisions and questioning whether they should actually be running laboratories and laundries and performing thousands of other tasks that could be shifting to outside contractors. Governments are moving toward the principle that their task is to assure the delivery of services, not to perform them. Whether the specific function is, or is not, appropriate for private-sector contractors to perform, the drive toward contracting out is the mirror image of industry’s reappraisal of vertical integration. Again, exactly like businesses, governments are also beginning to bypass their hierarches—further subverting bureaucratic power. “There are fewer hierarchies in Washington today than in Roosevelt’s time,” says political scientist Samuel Popkin of the University of California a San Diego. There are ”fewer leaders with whom a President can cut a deal and reasonably expect them to be able to enforce it in their agency of committee.” New communications technologies also undermine hierarchies in government by making it possible to bypass them entirely. When a crisis occurs anywhere in the World, the White House can instantaneously communicate with persons who are on the spot. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

These instantaneous relays to the President from on-the-spot observers and commanders disrupt the traditional channels of information and the chain of command. Specialists who do not yet have access to the last-minute information cannot address the President’s concerns. However, despite such changes, as complexity grows, change accelerates, and bureaucratic responses lag as more and more problems pile up that bureaucracies cannot handle. Another place where instantaneous messages are important is in the medical field. A challenging problem related to medicine (and to biostasis) is that of species restoration. Today, researchers are carefully preserving samples from species now becoming extinct. In some cases, all the have are tissue samples. For other species, they have been able to save germ cells in the hope that they will be able to implant fertilized eggs into related species and thus bring the (nearly?) extinct species back. Each cell typically contains the organism’s complete genetic information, but what can be done with this? Many researchers today collect samples for preservation thinking only of the implantation scenario: one that they know has already been made to work. Other researchers are taking a broader view: the Center for Genetic Resources and Heritage at the University of Queensland is a leader in the effort. Darly Edmondson, coordinator of the gene library, explains that the center is unique because it will “actively collect data. Most other libraries simply collate their own collections.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Director John Mattick describes it as a “genetic Louvre” and points out that is genes from today’s endangered species are not preserved, “subsequent generations will see we had the technology to keep [DNA] software and will ask why we did not do it.” With this information and the sorts of molecular repair and cell-surgery capabilities we have discussed, lost species can someday be returned to active life again as habitats are restored. One such center is not enough: the Queensland center focuses on Australian species (naturally enough) and has limited funds. Besides, anything so precious as the genetic information of an endangered species should be stored in many separate locations for safety. We need to take out an insurance policy on Earth’s genetic diversity with a broader network of genetic libraries, concentrating special attention on gathering biological samples from the fast-disappearing rain forests. Scientific study can wait: the urgency of the situation calls for a vacuum-cleaner approach. The Foresight Institute is promoting this effort through its BioArchive Project. The discussions of potential economic, medical, and environmental benefits may have given the false impression that nanotechnology will create a wondrous utopia in which all human problems are solved and we all live happily ever after. This is even more mistaken than the idea that new technologies always cause more problems than they solve. Many of the main constraints and difficulties faced by people are based not on technology or its lack, but instead by the very nature of the World we live in and the essence of our humanness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Possess them Not with Fear, Psychologically Burn Your Ships Home!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Conscience Helps One Realize What is Good and What is Bad

We have learned something from the vast collections of data on primitive man: that if he was not in bondage to the authority of living persons, he was at the utter mercy of the power of the spirits. One might say, as a general rule, that acquainted person in a social situation require a reason not to enter into a face engagement with each other, while unacquainted persons require a reason to do so. There is here, apparently, a noticeable difference between the Anglo-American tradition and the Latin tradition, the latter being one where entrance into an encounter with strangers is apparently more broadly licensed. In these two riles, the same fundamental principle seems to be operative, namely, that the welfare of the individual ought not to be put in jeopardy through one’s capacity to open oneself up for encounters. In the case of acquainted persons, a willingness to give social recognition saves the other from the affront of being overlooked; in the case of unacquainted persons, a willingness to refrain from soliciting encounters saves the other from being exploited by inopportune overtures and requests. If the assumption is correct that a kind of tacit contract underlies communication conduct, then we must conclude that there are imaginable circumstances when any two unacquainted persons can properly join each other in some kind of face engagement—circumstances in which one person can approach another—since it will always be possible to imagine circumstances that would nullify the implied danger of contract. I should like now to consider some of these circumstances under which some kind of engagement among the unacquainted is permissible, and sometimes even obligatory, in our American middle-class society. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Every social position can be seen as an arrangement which opens up the incumbent to engagement with certain categories of others. In some cases these others will be chiefly limited to persons with whom the individual is already acquainted or to whom he has just been introduced in the current engagement. In other positions, such as that of salesperson or receptionist, the individual will be obliged to hold oneself ready to be approached by unacquainted others, providing this is in line of daily business. (This face makes some persons enjoy performing the entailed role and other consider it as socially inferior.) We have here an important example of engagement among the unacquainted, and one that does not disturb social distances because there is a patent reason why properly mannered customers would desire to initiate such encounters. There are social positions, however, that open up the incumbent to more than mere occupational-others. Thus, in cities, policemen, priests, and often corner newsstand vendors are approached by a wide variety of others seeking a vast array of information and assistance, in part because it is believed to be clear that no one would seek to take advantage of these public figures. Policemen and priests are especially interesting, since they may be engaged by strangers merely initiating a greeting as opposed to a request for information. Furthermore, there are broad statuses in our society, such as that of old persons or the very young, that sometimes seem to be considered so meager in sacred value that it may be thought their members have nothing to lose through face engagement, and hence can be engaged at will. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

None of these persons, it may be noted, has the kind of uniform that can be taken off; none can be off duty during part of the day. Here, then, persons are exposed, not merely incumbents; they are “open persons.” There is still another general circumstance opens up an individual for face engagements; namely, that one can be out of role. Given the assumption that the interests of the individual ought not to be prejudiced by forcing one into contact, and given the fact that these interests of one’s will be expressed through one’s playing one’s serious roles, we can expect that when one is not engaged in one’s own roles there will then be less reason to be careful with one as regards communication; and this, in fact, is the case. Thus, when an individual is visibly intoxicated, or dressed in a costume, or engaged in an unserious sport, one may be accosted almost at will and joked with, presumably on the assumption that the self projected through these activities is one from which the individual can easily dissociate oneself, and hence need not be jealous of or careful with. Similarly, when an individual find oneself in a momentarily peculiar physical position, as when one trips, slips, or in other ways acts in an awkward, unbecoming fashion, one lays oneself open for light comment, for one will need a demonstration from others that they see this activity as one that does not prejudice one’s adult self, and it is in one’s own interest to allow them to initiate a joking contract with one for this purpose. Thus, as might have been predicted, the first persons in American to drive Volkswagens laid themselves open to face engagements from all and sundry, since they did not seem to be seriously presenting themselves in the role of driver, at least s a driver of a serious car. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

I have considered in terms of the language of status ad role some of the grounds on which the individual’s usual right to be unmolested by overtures is set aside. There are still other times of license, but ones when the terminology of social role is not very suitable. Thus, if an individual is in patent need of help, and if this help is of little moment to the putative giver, then satisfying this “free need” provides a nonsuspect basis for initiating communication contact. For example, when an individual unknowingly drops something in the street, one momentarily becomes open for overtures, since anyone has a right to tell one what has happened. As current etiquette suggests: Women must thank all those, including strangers, who do them little services. For example, if a stranger, man or women, opens a door for a woman, or picks up something she has dropped, a woman should not allow timidity or shyness to stop her from saying thank you in a pleasant impersonal way. If the stranger seems to be trying to start an unwelcome conversation, one can, still with politeness but with increasing firmness, refuse to converse. However, it is more attractive to take for granted that the gesture was motivated by politeness only than it is immediately to suspect another motive. It should be added that in the past some writers have felt that the very threat of a lady being accosted in a public place, or even being seen to be alone, is sometimes cause enough for a pure-minded stranger to beat others to the draw: If a lady is going to her carriage, or is alone in any public place where it is usual or would be convenient for ladies to be attended, you should offer her your arm and service, even if you do not know her. To do so in a private room, as in the case mentioned, might be thought a liberty. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

A more contemporary version of this courtesy is found in the tack occasionally taken by a man passing a strange woman at night on a narrow isolated walk: instead of conspicuously according the female civil inattention, the man ma proffer a fleeting word to show that, unlike a would-be assailant, he is willing to be identified. A final basis of exposure may be mentioned. An individual’s actions can create a need in others that exposes them to engagement. For example, if the others have been bumped into or tripped over (or in other ways deprived of their right to unmolested passage) by him, he can claim the right to engage them in order to convey assistance, explanation, apology, and the like, the others’ need for such redress presumably outweighing their reluctance to being engaged by a stranger. The same holds true for potential, as well as actual, offenses. In a train compartment, for example, individuals may be asked by a fellow-passenger if it is all right if he smokes, or if he opens (or closes) a window. As these opening engagements are patently in the interests of those whose comfort might be affected, the offense or injury the individual might create by his inclinations thus exposes fellow-passengers to solicitous inquiries in advance. As one has seen in life, truth, even though it is often stranger than fiction, it is not enough. No one believes the truth because it is too vivid, interesting, dramatic. The only time drama seems to work is when someone is trying to sale something. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Experts in window display know the power of dramatization. For example, the manufacturers of a new rat poison gave dealers a window display that included two live rats. The week the rats were shown, sales zoomed to five times their normal rate. If a worker says he cannot accept any wage increase less than 5 percent, why should the employer believe that he will not subsequently back down and accept 4 percent? Money on the table induces people to ty negotiating one more time. The worker’s situation can be improved if he has someone else to negotiate for him. When the union leader is the negotiator, his position may be less flexible. He may be forced to keep his promise or lose support from his electorate. The union leader may secure a restrictive mandate from one’s members, or put one’s prestige on the line by declaring one’s inflexible position in public. In effect, the labour leader becomes a mandated negotiating agent. His authority to act as negotiating one more time. The worker’s situation can be improved if he has someone else negotiate for him. When the union leader is the negotiator, positions may be less flexible. He may be forced to keep his promise or lose support from his electorate. The union leader may secure a restrictive mandate from his members, or put one’s prestige on the line by declaring one’s inflexible position in public. In effect, the labour leader becomes a mandated negotiating agent. His authority to act as a negotiator is based on his position. In some cases he simply does not have the authority to compromise; the workers, not the leader, must ratify the contract. In other cases, compromise by the leader would result in his removal. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

In practice we are concerned with the means as well as the ends of achieving commitment. If the labour leader voluntarily commits his prestige to a certain position, should you ( do you) treat one’s loss of face as you would if it were externally imposed? Someone who tried to stop a train by tying oneself to the railroad tracks may get less sympathy than someone else who has been tired there against one’s will. A second type of mandated negotiating agent is a machine. Very few people haggle with vending machines over the price; even fewer do so successfully. According to the U.S. Defense Department, over a five-year period seven servicemen or dependents were killed and 39 injured by soft-drink machines that toppled over while being rocked in an attempt to dislodge beverages or change. “Is it possible to have emotional feeling in the idea of recurrence?” Yes, it is possible, particularly if one has even some small recollection. I do not mean everything, but even a slight memory can give interesting emotional understanding. “When one has a strong feeling of an event having happened before, can one use that to develop memory?” Oh, it can happen in many different ways; only after a very long and very serious investigation can one come to the conclusion that there may be facts. “I was wondering whether, if we could do something about this work before we die, it might not help in our next recurrence.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

Yes, what happens before many determine what happens afterwards in many different ways. This is not recurrence. The question is how can one prepare oneself for recurrence. Suppose in a certain life you want to do something and you find you cannot do it. This needs help. If you cannot physically get this help, you begin to think about it and you realize that you have to prepare for this help during the life before. This life is too late; the next life is too late; the life before is the only chance. Think about it. Perhaps you missed some opportunity. If a man finds that he cannot do something he thinks of a precious time when perhaps he could have done it, or perhaps he could not. Think what this implies. “Would he not have had to have some memory to realize mistakes in his past life or his lack of preparation?” There may have been no mistake, simply lack of preparation. Quite right. One need preparation. One says one is not prepared. Perhaps one could have been prepared before. Can you do anything about it? It is difficult, I know. However, one may realize one is not prepared for a certain thing. We spoke of six triads. In one triad you can do one thing, in another another thing. However, this changes all ideas of recurrence. What could be right for one man would not be right for another. For instance, I said that even theoretical knowledge of recurrence changes one’s whole relation to recurrence. It depends, too, how deeply a man knows; there are many degrees. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

“Can the Law of Seven be observed in the way things happen or appear?” The Law of Seven you can speak about when you find two intervals in an octave. “Can one only see it in operation over a period of many years, or at once?” You can use memory. That does not mean that you observe actual facts. And you must see two intervals in an octave. “What can one do to understand the illusion of time?” One can understand that there is no such thing as time. And why? Because there are facts which show the non-existence of time. Eternal recurrence is not compatible without our present time-sense. The whole thing is in that, so you have to get rid of time-sense. Recurrence refers to eternity, not time. “Can we keep the pattern from repeating?” If you have good memory, you can. “You say that if one really accepted the theory of recurrence it would make a difference?” If one studies, if one works, there is material for understanding. We use understanding and lack of understanding. If we think enough, we may understand something and we may actually change recurrence. “Would it be right to say that the only claim for recurrence is that in this life some people remember that they lived before?” No, that is very weak. Very few people remember and you can always say that they are lying. “Would not belief in recurrence result in a great urgency to make effort?” Belief will not help; belief is deadening; it has not sufficient power. However, realization may. We can understand some things by thinking. For example, the questions as to whether all people are affected in the same way by recurrence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

It is impossible to say simply yes or no because what can be applied to one man cannot be applied to another. For one man it will be the same way, the same house, the same cats. However, for other people it may be different. Great poets, great writers, they may not need to walk by the same streets. They may walk by different streets and yet do the same things. This difference may not be due to efforts but capacities, to achievement and to scope of thinking and feeling. A great poet may not need to write the same verses again. Perhaps he got not all, but sufficient, out of his environment, so that he may try something else that he did not try the last time. “After hearing the lectures, people always ask if great poets have the being of man 1, 2, and 3. Now you say that a poet need not do the same thing over and over again.” No. He may be a great poet and yet not belong to objective art. Others less great may produce objective art. Think about some of these ideas, but do not think you know. There are many variations, many possibilities. Think, because there is nothing more important for you. How should natural selection be employed to promote adaptation? Natural selection in evolutionary biology provides a familiar and well-studied example of how selection can work. Although selection in a Complex Adaptive System need not operate in the same way as natural selection, evolutionary biology is a good place to start our analysis. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Evolution by natural selection requires three things. First, it requires a means to retain the essential character of the agent. In biological systems, genetic material preserves the key patterns. Evolution by natural selection also requires a source of variation. In the simplest biological systems, this can be achieved by mutation. In sexual reproduction, novelty is generated through recombination. Finally, evolution requires amplification, changes in the frequencies of types. In biological systems this is the result of some individuals having many offspring while others have few or none. If you want to design a system that is able to explore new possibilities while being able to exploit what has already been achieved, biological evolution provides an important benchmark. It demonstrates that adaption can be achieved even without the agents (or anyone else) having any understanding of how the system works. While natural selection provides an important paradigm for how an adaptive system can work, it also has some serious disadvantages compared with more directed methods of achieving adaptation. Whenever it is feasible to attribute success to something more specific than the entire agent, there is the possibility of selecting strategies rather than whole agents. If you find that quinine-related compounds reduce malaria, you can spread them through the World instead of waiting many generations for natural selection to breed malaria-resistant humans. This is especially valuable since the main antimalarial solution nature has so far evolved makes the carrier susceptible to sickle-cell diseases, itself a debilitating condition. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

When attribution is sufficiently precise—and this can be far from perfectly accurate—it can pay handsomely to make numerous copies of a good strategy on a fast time scale that would be impossible if complete agents had to be reproduced. These two approaches, selecting at the level of entire agents and selecting at the level of strategies, share the need to make copies that retain effective adaptations, to incorporate variation for further adaptation, and to amplify the success (and cull the failure) that does occur. However, they differ in the level at which they operate—and selection at the two levels can work very differently. Selection of one advertising agency from a population of competing firms can have quite different dynamics from selecting among a population of advertising themes proposed by a single agency. Nonetheless, whether it is whole agents or strategies that are evaluated and undergo reproduction, a design for an adaptive system of selection must deal with four issues: Defining criteria of success. Determining whether selection is at the level of agents or strategies. Attributing credit for success and failure. Creating new agents or strategies. While these elements do not separate neatly in the everyday World, distinguishing them will help simplify our discussion without introducing too much distortion. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The revolutionary new economy will transform not only business but government. It will do this by altering the basic relationships between politicians and bureaucrats, and by dramatically restricting the bureaucracy itself. It is already causing power to shift among the various bureaucracies. A prime example is the rise of the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT). From 1949 on this ministry had three basic functions. It handled the mail and, like many European postal services, offered customers insurance and savings accounts. (These were originally set up to serve people living in remote rural regions largely ignored by the banks and insurance companies.) In power-conscious Tokyo, the Teishin-sho, as it was called, was regarded as a minor ministry. Today the renamed MPT is one of the giants, often hailed as the “Ministry of the 21st Century.” It achieved this new status after 1985, when—in what must have been a knockdown nawabari-arasoi, or turf battle—it won responsibility for the development of the entire Japanese telecommunications industry, from radio and television broadcasting to data communication. It thus combines in a single agency financial functions (which are increasingly dependent on advanced telecommunications) and the telecommunications functions themselves. No organizational intersection is likely to be more strategic. Explaining MPT’s rise to power, the Journal of Japanese Trade and Industry writes: “A sophisticated information-oriented society in which information circulates smoothly thanks to telecommunication is not complete in itself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

“When information flows, people, goods and money also flows. When information about a product is disseminated, as in advertising, people go and buy it. The flow of information is accompanied by “physical flow” and “cash flow.” The MPT alone among the ministries has a direct interest in all three of these phenomena.” Other governments, of course, divide the functions of their ministries and departments differently, but it hardly needs a wizard to anticipate that power will flow toward those agencies that regulate information in the super-symbolic economy and win jurisdiction over expanding functions. As education and training become central to economic effectiveness, as scientific research and development become more significant, as environmental issues gain importance, agencies with jurisdiction in those fields will gain clout relative to those that deal with declining functions. However, these inter-bureaucratic power shifts are only a minor part of the unfolding story. After half a century in which governments continually took on more tasks, the decades since the start of the super-symbolic economy have seen a truly remarkable development. In the advanced economies, leaders as different as Republicans Ronald Reagan and Socialist Francois Mitterand began to systematically strip away governmental operations or functions. They have been emulated by Carlos Salians de Gortari in Mexico, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, by dozens of other leaders around the World, and most important by reformers throughout Easter Europe, all of whom sudden began calling for key government enterprises to be denationalized or their tasks contacted out to be performed by others. Privatization became a global buzzword. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

This is widely taken to be a sign of the triumph of capitalism over socialism. However, the push toward privatization cannot be simply written off as a “capitalist” or “reactionary” policy, as it so often is. Opposition to privatization and similar measures is not “progressive.” Whether recognized or not, it is a defense of the unelected Invisible Party, which holds massive power over people’s lives, irrespective of whether their governments are “liberal” or “conservative,” “right-wing” or “left-wing,” “communist” or “capitalist.” Moreover, few observers have noticed the hidden parallels between the privatization push in the public sector and today’s restructuring of business in the private sector. We have already seen big firms splitting themselves into small profit centers, flattening their pyramids, and installing free-form information systems that break up bureaucratic cubbyholes and channels. Few seem to have considered that if we change the structure of business and leave government unchanged, we create a gaping organizational mismatch that could damage both. An advanced economy requires constant interaction between the two. Thus, like a long-married couple, government and business eventually must take on some of each other’s characteristics. If one is restructured, we should expect corresponding changes in the other. When it comes to our inadequate abilities—bacterial diseases are mostly controllable today. Sanitation limits the ways in which plague can spread. These measures are just good enough to lull us into imagining the problem is solved. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

The only really effective treatments for viral diseases are preventative, not curative. They work either by preventing exposure, or by exposing the body beforehand to dead or harmless or fragmentary forms of the virus, to prepare the immune system for future exposure. Scientists are even predicting that no vaccine will be made in the next for decades for deadly sexually transmitted viruses and believe that can mutate and become as infectious as the flu. The deaths from the next great plague could have begun in a village last week, or could begin next year, or a year before we learn to deal with new viral illness promptly and effectively. With luck, the plague will wait until a year after. Immune machines could be set to kill a new virus as soon as it is identified. The instruments nanotechnology brings will make viral identification easy. Someday, the means will be in place to defend human life against viral catastrophe. From eliminating viruses to repairing individual cells, improving our control of the molecular World will improve health care. Immune machines working in the bloodstream seem about as complex as some engineering projects human beings have already completed—projects like large satellites. Other medical nanotechnologies seem to be of a higher order of complexity. Somewhere in the progression from relatively simple immune devices to molecular surgery, we have crossed the fuzzy line between systems that teams of clever biomedical engineers could design in a reasonable length of time and one that might take decades or prove impossibly complex. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Designing a nanomachine capable of entering a cell, reading its DNA, finding and removing a deadly viral DNA sequence, and then restoring the cell to normal would be a monumental job. Such tasks are advanced applications of nanotechnology, far beyond mere computers, manufacturing equipment, and half-witted “smart materials.” To succeed within a reasonable number of years, we may need to automate much of the engineering process, including software engineering. Today’s best expert systems are nowhere near sophisticated enough. The software must be able to apply physical principles, engineering rules, and fast computation to generate and test new designs. Calling automated engineering. Automated engineering will prove useful in advanced nanomedicine because of the sheer number of small problems to be solved. The human body contains hundreds of kinds of cells forming a huge number of tissues and organs. Taken as a whole (and ignoring the immune system), the body contains hundreds of thousands of different kinds of molecules. Performing complex molecular repairs on a damaged cell might require solving millions of separate, repetitive problems. The molecular machinery in cell-surgery devices will need to be controlled by complex software, and it would be best to be able to delegate the task of writing that software to an automated system. Until then, or until a lot more conventional design work gets done, nanomedicine will have to focus on simpler problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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The Defaulting Clients All Had the Reputation of Paying their Bills Promptly

Each person wants one’s life to be a marker for good as one’s group defines it. Men and women work their programs of heroism according to the standard cultural scenarios, from Pontius Pilate through Eichmann and Calley. Once we see the role of acquaintanceship in social life, we are led to ask how this relationship may be developed between two individuals. Presumably, acquaintanceship can develop “informally,” as when persons in the same office or factory come to “know about” each other and gradually acknowledge this to one another, so that knowing about becomes knowing. A special case of this is found among ritually profane persons such as young children. Here it may be enough for each to know that the other goes to the same school for acquaintanceship to be automatically assumed. Acquaintanceship may also come about informally through joint participation in the same encounter, although differences in status of the participants may here act as a restriction. This may be illustrated from a report on an environmental maintenance custodian’s response to the way he was treated by a hospital physician: “Of course they are [the doctors] not all like that. Some of them would not say hello if they tripped over you. Now you take Dr. Winchester. He came down here once and asked Al to fix something that belonged to him, so Al dropped his work and went ahead and fixed this thing. Winchester was nice as could be, stood around very friendly and chatted while Al fixed this thing. Well, Al says he met up in the hall the next day and the doctor walked right by him as if he had never laid eyes on him before. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

“Al says he has met him lots of times since then and the doctor never lets on her recognizes him. Al said to me, ‘What do you think ails him?’ I told him. ‘I don’t know, Al, maybe some of these doctors think they are better than we are. Just don’t pay any attention to him.’” The relationship of acquaintanceship may also develop “formally” in our society, as when two individuals are introduced, typically by a third party but sometimes, when conditions are right, by themselves. An introduction, even more than acquaintanceship that develops informally, ought, it is felt, to have a permanent effect, placing the introduced persons forever after in a special and accessible position in regard to each other. The difference is that, while informal acquaintanceship may spring up without the participants in fact “knowing” each other’s name, formal acquaintanceship presumably involves an exchange of names and an obligation to be able thereafter to refer to the other by one’s name. Thus, with persons who have been formally introduced, or who have used names to each other on the basis of informal acquaintanceship, the offense of forgetting may take two distinct forms: not knowing that one ought to know a particular person (the greater of the sins); and knowing that one knows the person, but not being able to remember one’s name. If acquaintanceship places individuals in a preferential communication relationship, or, rather is a preferential communication relationship, then we can understand why some persons will avoid those places and occasions where troublesome introductions are likely to occur. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

More important, it can easily be appreciated that an introducer may feel an obligation to make sure that no harm resulting from the new relationship will come to those whose communication relation to each other he has altered. Since harm of this kind seems to flow from the poor to the affluent, the male to female, the weak to the powerful, the introducer may feel obliged to check with the one who has the more to lose before effecting the introduction, and assume that the one who has something to gain will have no objection to the relationship. Friends or acquaintances may not be introduced to one another unless it is known that the introduction will be agreeable to both parties. Suppose two persons, however, are of the same rank and social position, it is proper to accede to the request of one of them to be introduced, without previously asking the permission of the other. It is not in good form to introduce a person of lower rank to one of higher rank without receiving the express permission of the latter, but a request from one of higher rank to be presented to one of lower rank must be complied with instantly. Where the context is a close or continuing one, making it difficult for the persons introduced to employ the courtesy of foregoing their rights, the introducer will presumably have to take special care. You must never introduce people to each other in public places unless you are very certain that the introduction will be agreeable to both. You cannot commit a greater social blunder than to introduce to a notable person someone she does not care to know, especially on shipboard, in hotels, or in other very small, rather public communities where people are so closely thrown together that it is correspondingly difficult to avoid presuming acquaintances who have been given the wedge of an introduction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

One of the complications in understanding the institution of introduction in our society is our interpersonal deference system, because introduction is one of its ritual coins. The forms of introduction themselves are of course tied to the deference system, and differences in the relative rank of the persons introduced will be felt. Thus, “in polite society,” the custom is to introduce the subordinate to the superordinate. Also, the naming employed may be asymmetrical, with one person being introduced, say, by first name, and the second by formal title. And whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, the naming couplet employed may be selected from varying places in the hierarchy of formality, from nicknames to civil titles. Finally, the right to initiate or modify a particular naming usage between two persons may be differentially allocated. When “with” one person, a chance meeting with a second person requires the individual to introduce the two, except when contact with the newcomer clearly must be brief. Failure to introduce, in middle-class society, may be considered an open affront to one or both of those not introduced. Underlying this convention is the rule that, under proper circumstances, an individual has the right to introduce to each other any two persons with whom one is acquainted (a rule that can lead an individual to be put under pressure or under obligation to “arrange an introduction”). The issues raised by obligatory introductions are met in various ways, in addition to the basic one of the limiting one’s acquaintances to social equals, who will not be embarrassed by being introduced to one another, and to trustworthy persons who will not abuse introduction provided them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

When two people—either friends or acquaintances—are walking together and they meet a third who stops to speak to one of them, the other walks slowly on and does not stand awkwardly by and wait for an introduction. If the third is asked by the one she knows, to join them, the sauntering friend is overtaken and the introduction made. The third, however, must not join them unless invited to do so. Further, introductions made at such times, and even fleetingly at large social occasions, are sometimes treated by both introduced parties as “courtesy” introductions only, and are not drawn on when the individuals next find themselves in a similar situation unless, through preliminary signs, each signifies inclination to do so. Finally, where there is marked difference in the status of the unacquainted persons, a strategy may be employed to form a relationship of acquaintanceship without introduction: On occasions I happens that in talking to one person you want to introduce another in your conversation without making an introduction. For instance: suppose you are talking to a seedsman and a friend joins you in your garden. You greet your friend, and then include her by saying, “Mr. Smith is suggesting that I dig up these cannas and put in delphiniums.” Whether your friend gives an opinion as to change in colour of your flower bed or not, she has been made part of your conversation. This same maneuver of evading an introduction is also resorted to when you are not sure that an acquaintance will be agreeable to one or both of those whom an accidental circumstance has brought together. The same “half-way” introduction has been employed in introducing servants to house guests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Jesse James used to rob trains and held up banks and then gave money to the neighbouring farmers to pay off their mortgages. I am sure he thought that the was doing a good thing, but there are no victimless crimes. The fact is that all people you meet have a high regard for themselves and like to be find and unselfish in their own estimation. However, a person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one. The person will think of the real reason. You do not need to emphasize that. Yet, all of us, being idealists at heart, like to think of motives that sound good. So, in order to change people, appeal to the nobler motives. For instance, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr., wished to stop newspaper photographers from snapping pictures of his children, he too appealed to the nobler motives. He did not say: “I do not want their pictures published.” No, he appealed to the desire, deep in all of us, to refrain from harming children. He said: “You know how it is, boys. You have got children yourselves, some of you. And you know it is not good for youngster to get too much publicity.” When Cyrus H.K Curtis , the poor boy from Maine was starting on his meteoric career, which was destined to take him millions as owner of The Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies’ Home Journal, he could not afford to pay his contributors the prices that other magazines paid. He could not afford to hire first-class authors to write for money alone. So he appealed to their nobler motives. For example, he persuaded even Louisa May Alcott, the immortal author of Little Women, to write for him when she was at the flood tide of her fame; and he did it by offering to send a check for a hundred dollars, not to her, but to her favourite charity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Although nothing may work in all cases, and nothing may work with all people, it is worthy trying. Six customers of a certain automobile company refused to pay their bills for servicing. None of the customers protested the entire bill, but each claimed that someone charge was wrong. In each case, the customer had signed for the work done, so the company knew it was right—and said so. That was the first mistake. Here are the steps the men in the credit department took to collect these overdue bills. Do you supposed they succeeded? They called on each customer and told him that they had come to collect a bill that was long past due. They made it very plain that the company was absolutely and unconditionally right; therefore he, the customer, was absolutely and unconditionally wrong. They intimated that they, the company, knew more about automobiles than he could ever hope to know. So what was the argument about? Result: They argued. Did any of these methods reconcile the customer and settle the account? You can answer that one yourself. At this stage of affairs, the credit manager was about to open fire with a battery of legal talent, when fortunately the matter came to the attention of the general manager. The manager investigated these defaulting clients and discovered that they all had the reputation of paying their bills promptly. Something was wrong here—something was drastically wrong about the method of collection. So he called in James L. Thomas and told him to collect these “uncollectible” accounts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

Here, in his words, are the steps Mr. Thomas took: He listened to the customers and learned why they disputed the bill. After Mr. Thomas apologized for the matter being badly mishandled and reduced the bill, five of the customers agreed to pay. The sixth refused. However, because Mr. Thomas was so nice and professional, in the next two years, all six of these customers bought new cars from that company. “Experience has taught me,” says Mr. Thomas, “that when no information can be secured about the customer, the only sound basis on which to proceed is to assume that one is sincere, honest, truthful and anxious to pay the charges, once convinced they are correct. To put it differently and perhaps more clearly, people are honest and want to discharge their obligations. The exceptions to that rule are comparatively few, and I am convinced that the individuals who are inclined to chisel will in most cases react favourably if you make them feel that you consider them honest, upright and fair.” Appeal to the nobler motives. “When I look back at the opportunities missed in this life, I have the feeling that only by being a different kind of person could I have acted differently. From this it seems to me that the only way to affect recurrence is to change one’s essence.” Again, very useful. However, how can you do this? “Would memory of a previous recurrence make it possible to change one’s actions?” That I do not know. That you will see when you have it. “A recurring life is not lived exactly as before, is it?” The beginning is always the same. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

“In recurrence through one life to another do we retain the same level of being?” There are different theories about it. One theory is that if one acquires something in one life it is bound to grow. However, there are many other theories. “Is memory in essence?” It is better to say that it is connected with “I”s which are in personality. There are many different kinds of memory of this system, memory of smell, memory of roads. However, we speak of the memory that we know. It is very easy to spoil this memory. “There are people with photographic memory. Are they more conscious?” There are many different kinds of memory. You have a certain kind of memory. Another man has another kind. However, you can use your own kind of memory better or worse by being more conscious or less conscious. Memory is in all centers. It may be a little better in one center than in another but there is only one method of making memory strong—by becoming more conscious. Not only does each center have its own memory but some kinds of memory belong to essence and some to personality. “Id memory a function of the body? Can it be compared to movement?” You can call it a function of the body if you like. However, why compare it with movement? One thing is not like another. Memory is something in us, maybe in essence, maybe in personality. We recollect in personality, but memory of taste or smell is in essence. However, actually one remembers in personality. “What must we do to avoid spoiling our memory?” Work on imagination first; lying second. These two things destroy our memory. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

When we first spoke of lying people took it s funny; they did not realize that one can destroy one’s memory completely. Struggle with imagination also, not just for sport or exercise. “What can help us to recognize lying in ourselves?” There are many different things; first, analysis of fact, words and theories. Recognition of other people’s lying is very useful and then one bright morning one can come to oneself. “Does false personality destroy memory?” Yes, one can say that false personality either destroys or distorts memory. “Is false personality a form of lying?” Leave false personality. It is not a form of lying; it is a defence. Avoiding unpleasant results by false personality, one can feel oneself in a certain way. “Does this spoiling of memory result in physiological change?” Oh, yes! It may bring complete lunacy. Old psychologists knew about that. They spoke about hysterics and so on. However, they did not realize that just by our ordinary psychological play we can spoil memory. Lying about ideas, imagining about ideas and so on. “What effect would hard work on stopping thoughts have on recurrence?” Right or wrong, there is promise behind it. “What is the way towards developing memory in recurrence?” This is very interesting and very important. It is necessary to develop memory, as it is also possible to destroy memory. According to the studies to the theory or recurrence, self-remembering is the only way of developing memory. If one remembers oneself in this life, one will remember next time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Our final mechanism of internal change and interaction patterns deals with space. In this mechanism the actions occurring within the system alter the very structure of the space in which actors are located. The agents are not directly intent on changing the collective interaction patterns, but barriers are being created (or reduced) from the inside, as a by-product of agent actions. The classic example from biology is speciation. Over time a population can diverge, its members evolving into subgroups that eventually can no longer interbreed. The subpopulations have grown far apart, as though they were continents, now separated by a kind of ocean in the space of possible animals. The animals may have had no intention to form separate species, but their breeding decisions eventually had that result. Biological examples of mergers are less common, but they do exist. One widely supported theory suggests that mitochondria, the tiny “fuel factories” of animal cells, are the result of a capturing process. Bacterial structures were incorporated by host animal cells, and some of the genetic encoding for mitochondrial reproduction was moved to the animal cell genome. What had been a separate population was merged into another one. In the social World, we frequently see merging and division of groups and even nations. At the level of national politics, such processes always have an explicit component. New nations declare their independence. Foreign governments recognize their existence. However, frequently this is a late stage of what began as a more implicit and internally driven separation process. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

A group of people that have been considered part of some larger nation find themselves interacting more strongly with each other and less with members of the “other” group. They begin to talk of their separate identity. That talk, and the reaction of others to it, may then propel the dynamic into a new phase, one better understood with tools from the early part of our report, on external intervention and introduction of explicit barriers. These remarks on the mixture of internal and external processes in nation building serve as a reminder that actual situations typically involve many mechanisms at once. Variety may be created by imitating foreign visitors even as it is destroyed by censoring media. Interaction may be decreased by a policy decision to reduce foreign language instruction, at the same time as interaction is increased by the need to trade with each other. An idea can be widely adopted in spite of being publicly condemned—indeed, because of being condemned, so that publishers will be eager to print a book “banned in Boston.” Interaction among agents shapes the creation and destruction of variety and produces the events that drive the attribution of credit. Shortly after Ronald Reagan was elected to the American presidency, Lee Atwater, one of his chief assistants (later successively George Bush’s campaign manager and chairman of the Republican National Committee), met with friends for lunch at the White House. His candour at the table was remarkable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

“You will hear a lot in the coming months about the Reagan Revolution,” he said. “The headlines will be full of tremendous changes Reagan plans to introduce. Don’t believe them. Reagan does want to make a lot of changes. But the reality is, in one direction. If we here work very hard and are extremely lucky, Reagan may be able to push it five degrees in the opposite direction. That’s what the Reagan Revolution is really about.” Despite a media focus on individual politicians, Atwater’s remark underlines the degree to which even the most popular and highly placed leader is a captive of the “system.” This system, of course, is not capitalism or socialism, but bureaucratism. For bureaucracy is the most prevalent form of power in all smokestack states. Bureaucrats, not democratically elected officials, essentially run all governments on an everyday basis, and make the overwhelming majority of decisions publicly credited to Presidents and Prime Ministers. “All Japanese politicians…” writes Yoship Tsurumi, head of the Pacific Basin Center Foundation, “have become totally dependent on the central bureaucrats for drafting and passing bills. They stage Kabuki plays of ‘debates’ on bills according to scenarios created by the elite bureaucrats of each ministry.” Similar descriptions apply with varying degrees of force to the civil services of France, Britain, West Germany, and the other countries routinely described as democratic. Political leaders regularly bemoan the difficulty they face in getting their bureaucracies to carry out their wished. The fact is that, no matter how many parties run against one another in elections, and no matter who gets the most votes, a single party always wind. It is the Invisible Part of bureaucracy.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Often others can help us achieve credible commitment. Although people may be weak on their own, they can build resolve by forming a group. The successful use of peer pressure to achieve commitment has been made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA,) and diet centers too. The AA approach changes the payoffs from breaking your word. It sets up a social institution in which pride and self-respect are lost when commitments are broken. Sometimes teamwork foes far beyond social pressure and employs strong-arm tactics to force us to keep true to our promises. Consider the problem for the front line of an advancing army. If everyone else charges forward, one soldier who hangs back ever so slightly will increase one’s chance of survival without significantly lowering the probability that the attack will be successful. If every soldier thought the same way, however, the attack would become a retreat. Of course it does not happen that way. A solider is conditioned through honour to one’s country, loyalty to fellow soldiers, and belief in the million-dollar wound—an injury that is serious enough to send one home, out of action, but not so serious that one will not fully recover. Those soldiers who lack the will and the courage to follow order can be motivated by penalties for desertion. If the punishment for desertion is certain and ignominious death, the alternative of advancing forward becomes much more attractive. However, soldiers are not interested in killing their fellow countrymen, even deserters. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

How can soldiers who have difficulty committing to attack the enemy make a credible commitment to killing their countrymen for desertion? The ancient Roman army made falling behind in an attack a capital offense. As the army advanced in a line, any soldier who saw the one next to one falling being was ordered to kill the deserter immediately. To make this order credible, failing to kill a deserter was also a capital offense. Thus even though a soldier would rather get on with the battle than go back after a deserter, failing to do so could cost one one’s own life. The motive for punishing deserters is made even stronger if the deserter is given clemency for killing those in line next to him who fail to punish him. Thus is a soldier fails to kill a deserter, there are now two people who can punish: his neighbour and the deserter, who could save one’s own life by punishing those who failed to punish him. However, if you are not careful, this can lead to a massacre of one’s own people. A munity. The tactics of the Roman army lie on today in the honour code required of students at West Point. Exams are not monitored, and cheating is an offense that leads to expulsion. However, because students are not inclined to “rat” on their classmates, failure to report observed cheating is also a violation of the honour code. This violation also leads to expulsion. When the honour code is violated, students report crimes because they do not want to become guilty accomplices by their silence. Similarly, criminal law provides penalties for those who fail to report crime as an accessory after the fact. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Plague insurance—medical nanotechnologies promise to extend healthy life, but if history is any guide, they may also avert sudden massive death. The word plague is rarely heard today, except in relation to COVID; it calls up visions of the Black Death of the Middle Ages, when one third of Europe died in 1346-50. A virulent influenza struck in 1918, half lost in the news of the First World War: how many of us realize that it killed at least 20 million? People often act as though plagues were gone for good, as if sanitation and antibiotics had vanquished them. However, as the doctors are forever telling their patients, antibiotics kill bacteria, but are useless for viruses. The flu, the common cold, and other sexually transmitted viruses (which can be deadly)—none has a really effective treatment, because all are caused by viruses. In some American counties, as much as percent of the population is estimated to be infected with a deadly sexually transmitted virus, and even youth and virgins may carry this virus. There is no “safe” population. Without a cure soon, the steep rise in deaths from deadly sexually transmitted viruses still lies in the future. Deadly sexually transmitted viruses and cancer are grim reminders that the great history of plagues are not behind us. New diseases continue to appear today as they have throughout history. Today’s population, far larger than that of any previous century, provides a huge fertile territory for their spread. Today’s transportation system can spread viruses from continent to continent in a single day. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

When ships sailed or churned their way across the seas, an infected passenger was likely to show full-blown disease before arrival, permitting quarantine. However, few diseases can be guaranteed to show themselves in hours of a single aircraft flight. So far as is known, every species of organism, from bacterium to whale, is afflicted with viruses. Animal viruses sometimes “jump the species gap” to infect other animals, or people. You have seen the film “Kaw.” Most scientists believe that the ancestors of a particularly deadly sexually transmitted virus could only infect monkeys. Then these viruses made the interspecies a jump. A similar jump occurred in the 1960 when scientists in West Germany, working with cells from monkeys in Uganda, suddenly fell ill. Dozens were infected, and several died of a disease that caused both blood clots and bleeding, caused by what is now named the Marburg virus. What is the Marburg virus had spread with a sneeze, like influenza or the common cold? We think of human plagues as a health problem, but when they hit our fellow species, we tend to see them from an environmental perspective. In the late 1980s, over half the harbour-seal population in large parts of the North Sea suddenly died, leading many at fist to blame pollution. The cause, though, appears to be a distemper virus that made the jump from dogs. Biologists worry that the virus could infect seal species around the World, since distemper virus can spread by aerosols—that is, by coughing—and seals live in close physical contact. So far its mortality rate has been 60 to 70 percent. There is no reason a great plague could not happen again. We live in evolutionary competition with microbes—bacteria and viruses. There is no guarantee that will be the survivors. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17


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I Never Knew You

Once men consented to live by the redistribution of life’s goods through a god figure who represented life, they had sealed their fate. Because of this choice, acquaintanceship became important. In general acquaintanceship is an aspect of all social relationships that differ greatly in degree and kind will equally share it. Nonetheless, we can expect acquaintanceship to be a minor aspect of relationships. There are exceptions, however. Common sense designates by the phrase “mere acquaintance” a relationship in which the rights of social recognition form the principal substance of the relationship. Further, after persons have been “close” it is possible for their relationship to decay, stopping only at a point where they are “still on talking terms,” or, after that (and with a discontinuous leap), at a point when they are “not talking,” in either case conferring on mere engagement practices the power of characterizing the relationship. The special force of the obligation to give social recognition to persons with whom one is acquainted—the obligation, that is, to be readily accessible to them—can be discovered in different ways. Most obviously, we find in middle-class society a great taboo against the “cut”—the practice of pointedly denying an encounter overture. Etiquette books contain many warnings against this common practice: As a general rule never cut anyone in the street. Even political and steamboat acquaintances should be noticed by the slightest movement in the World. If they presume to converse with you, or stop you to introduce their companion, it is then time to use your eyeglass, and say, “I never know you.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Mrs. Post provides a slightly more contemporary version: “It may be annoying to be passed by an ‘unseeing’ acquaintance, but one should be careful not to confuse absent-minded unseeingness with alert and intentional slight.” The “Cut Direct.” For one person to look directly at another and not acknowledge the other’s bow is such a breach of civility that only an unforgivable misdemeanor can warrant the rebuke. Nor without the gravest cause may a lady “cut” a gentleman. However, there are no circumstances under which a gentleman may “cut” any woman who, even by courtesy, can be called a lady. A “cut” is very different [from poor sight or a forgetful memory]. It is a direct state of blank refusal, and is not only insulting to its victim but embarrassing to every witness. Happily it is practically unknown in polite society. From this rule it follows that when one person does not want to enter into a greeting engagement with another, one will usually act so that the other can believe (or at least take the line) that the slight was due to an unintended not-seeing of the overture; in turn, the person making the overture, if doubtful about one’s reception, will not press one’s greeting so obviously as to leave oneself no social fiction should one’s overture be declined. And when it is known that one individual may feel obligated to cut a second, others and the pair themselves will usually be at pains to keep them from coming together, an avoidance relationship being thus established. Nor is this taboo against but a matter of official etiquette only. Even when two persons have great moral cause for mutual animosity, they are likely to be willing to exchange a few civil words if brought together unavoidably. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

And even when they are not on talking terms, they may still feel an uncontrollable urge to exchange recognitional nods when brought together. This minimal courtesy has a special significance for us, for a failure to exchange this kind of greeting exposes such persons to the situation at large as two persons who are filled with hostility to each other, and not with the mood of the social occasion. To cut someone is thus to express lack of respect for the gathering at large, to display flagrant insensitivity to the minimal solidarity the gathering demands from all its participants. Acquaintanceship, then, obliges individuals to proffer each other engagement, if only in the form of passing smiles. This custom shows once again how the communication rules of the community tend to cut through particular interests of the moment. However, we should expect that there will be some accommodations, each, in its own way, throwing further light on communication regulations. There are circumstance, for example, in which consideration for the other requires that one give to one the right to decide whether or not social recognition and a greeting will occur. Thus, where the context is one that reflects negatively upon a person in it (especially where this person is a female and is noticed to be present by a male acquaintance), the person with most to lose by being made to face up to being present may be given the right to determine whether or not an engagement will occur. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

 Some writers on etiquette have felt that, since a gentleman can never know when a lady is in a context where she will be undesirous of having herself identified, the initiation should at all times come from the female: It is a mark of high breeding not to speak to a lady in the street, until you perceive that she has noticed you by an inclination of the head. However, other writers modify this stricture: Under formal circumstances a lady is supposed to bow to a gentleman first: but people who know each other well bow spontaneously without observing this etiquette. In some societies, it may be added, social recognition between the genders apparently may jeopardize the reputation of the female and, for this reason, be uniformly restricted. Hindu society provides an example: Outside of the household, relationships between the genders are very limited indeed. Women wear long veils, and are expected to look demurely at the ground on the approach of a man. A corollary of the fierce restraint on meetings between young men and girls is that every slightest encounter is interpreted as leading inevitably to pleasures of the flesh. Rural Paraguay provides another example: A woman must be exceptionally circumspect at all times. She should always avoid the appearance of having a private conversation with a man on the street in broad daylight. Tact with respect to social recognition and face engagements is of course not restricted to relations between the genders, but is found wherever one party to a recognitional engagement is considered to have extra rights or to be worth treating carefully. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

For instance, when  junior staff person and a senior staff person who were acquainted came into the staff common room at a time when few other persons were there, then the junior sometimes felt that sitting far away from the senior was an act of unfriendliness, and sitting within easy chatting distance a presumption, and so the junior would sometime take up a chair on the boundary between these two distances, placing the senior in the position of being able to determine how much spoken interaction, if any, was to occur. The assumption that an individual may purposely recognize an acquaintance, or cut one, or avoid recognition in various way, may give an oversimplified view of matters. As already suggested, the process cannot that easily be deliberately controlled, and lack of control must betaken into consideration in deciding on strategies of action. A sense of proper recognition conduct seems to take deep hold of a person once one has learned it, so that a current view one might have as to an expedient line of activity may not be one that one’s spontaneous tendencies in the situation will allow one to follow. In deciding rationally on a current course of action, one may well have to try to suppress more automatic tendencies—or rather, what have become automatic tendencies for one. (This is a factor apparent throughout communication behaviour.) If an individual avoids looking at another to whom one’s spontaneous attention is nevertheless drawn, one’s avoidance will have a special and self-conscious cast. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

In not looking at someone to whom one’s attention is spontaneously drawn, one usually displays a movement to one that is self-consciously blocked; this becomes especially apparent when one anticipates entering a face engagement with one, but is not in a position, socially, to initiate the encounter oneself. The physical character of many scenes of social interaction has a bearing on the discrepancy between what one intends to do and what one unconsciously begins to do. Often there will be present in the situation many barriers to visual and aural communication—these often being the bodies of activities of other people—which can provide excuses, however thin, for the not-seer, and which can in turn be seized upon by the not-seen as excuses the other had. While making communication rules more elastic, such barriers multiply the occasions when one person is oriented to engagement with another but hesitates because one is not sure the other is available. An example may be sited: As he [Rigault] entered the Rue Gustave-le-Bon he saw Maitre Marguet at the far end, walking on the opposite pavement. He never encountered him without a twinge of anxiety. The fact was that sometimes the lawyer recognized him, and returned his greeting or even anticipated it, and sometimes he passed by without noticing him. The things might be accidental, or it might be capricious (he himself never failed to recognize the town’s leading figures, some instinct warning him, even when his thoughts were elsewhere, to raise a hand to his hat. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Rigault kept his head carefully rigid, glancing furtively sideways to see what the other did. The lawyer was walking with his eyes lowered, seeming very preoccupied. Deciding that the raising of his hat would probably go unnoticed, Rigault resolved to begin this gesture only at the last moment, which left him the possibility of completing or abolishing it by pretending to scratch his ear. However, then a reasonless, almost religious apprehension caused him to hurry his movements. They were still four paces removed from the orthodox, level position when his hand went to his head. Maitre Marguet, on the opposite pavement, looked up and replied with an ample gesture; and Rigault, instantly relaxed, felt a wave of well-being pass through him. It was more than gratified vanity: it was the sweetness of a response, the fulfilment of a social instinct. Because we cannot always tell what frame of mind a person is in, would it not be nice to have a magic phrase that would stop arguments, eliminate ill feelings, create good will, and make the other person listen attentively? Face, to live in this World, we have to be able to communicate. Everyone deserves credit for being what they are—and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are. Feel sorry for others who are not social geniuses. Did you know 75 percent of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy? That is why it is a good idea for them to go to therapy so they can learn to work their problems out. However, it is not an option for everyone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Also, keep in mind that some people may just be trying to start an argument with you because they want to upset you. In many cases they know they are wrong. When people are upset, it may help to apologize and sympathize with their view point, as this may calm them down and let them express that they are also in the wrong, or totally wrong. Additionally, it will ease their temper and prevent the situation from escalading. Therefore, to win people over, be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. It is also important to take care of your own needs and remember who you are to be able to deal with others in a proper fashion. When it comes to self-remembering, many would like to know would it be possible to hear something you do not ordinarily hear? Quite possible, but it depends what. You cannot expect to hear angels singing. The only way to increase one’s memory is by being more conscious. In no other system is there a method for improving memory. In this system it is definite: Remember yourself. Perhaps in the morning you say you will remember yourself at twelve o’clock. Then you forget all about it but perhaps you remember at one o’clock. That is how things happen. However, if you continue this may produce very unexpected results. The whole thing is to create continuity. Glimpses may happen but continuity needs effort. At the same time, you must not be easily dejected, because the result of work grows slowly. Sometimes, as an exercise in this system, people decide to remember themselves tomorrow at a certain time in certain circumstances. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Before the war when people went to Paris, I told them to remember themselves at the Gare du Nord. Nobody could. Once a friend was to meet me at the Gare du Nord and I asked him to remember himself when he got there. However, he only came with a very worried face saying, “I have forgotten something you asked me to do, was it something I had to buy?” It is necessary to distinguish what is self-remembering from what is not. For instance, it is quite different to remember that you said you were going to remember yourself at twelve o’clock, from actually remembering yourself. It is necessary to learn to think. We have much material for right thinking but it is necessary not to forget about it. In order to become strong in this system you must accumulate knowledge and being. As being is connected with memory of what we promised ourselves, we can strengthen our being in this way. Memory of our failures can also be very useful but sometimes it is quite useless. If you remember your failures and sit crying or accurse somebody else it will not help. “Receiving impressions is a mechanical process, is it not?” hey are used in different ways. Take knowledge—one may learn Mandarin Chinese with enough Chinese words. If one collects enough coronets and learns enough musical impressions, one learns music. Moving energy collects memories of a road or place. “Did you say that magnetic center is a group of permanent interests? Would you explain?” Yes. If we could remember what we liked last week, last month, last year—if we could remember—that would make a permanent center of gravity. Generally, we forget.  #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

However, if we can remember and continue to like the same things, that will make a center of gravity. It is better to remember even what you dislike than not to remember. “How can memory survive death?” Death is nothing, you may not notice it. If you do not notice that you die, you may not notice that you are born. “Is immortality impossible for man no.1, 2, and 3?” Yes, he has to become no. 5. That is one answer. However, there may be other answers. For instance, from the point of view of recurrence men 1, 2, and 3 may live again, may turn again, but they do not remember. In order to remember they must become man no. 5. “What is it that becomes immortal, essence or physical body and soul?” Only memory. Body is born again; essence is born again; personality is created again. So it is not a question of immortality but of memory. We may live ten thousand times without any advantage if we do not remember. If mechanical immortality is possible it would be of no advantage. We must remember ourselves and remember events; the more the better. Again I remind you: What is useful and necessary to remember is what we do not remember; never remember and that we do not know that we do not remember. “Did I understand you to say that if anything of us survived it was memory?” Probably not quite; because memory usually disappears first, if anything survives. Memory is very unstable. “It seems to me that in order to realize where we have missed an opportunity in a past life, we should first have to each a moment of awakening in this life.” Very good. Only, do that first. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Throughout the centuries, medicine has been constrained to maintain functioning tissues, since once tissues stop functioning, they cannot heal themselves. With molecular surgery to carry out the healing directly, medical priorities change drastically—function is no longer absolutely necessary. In fact, a physician able to use molecular surgery would prefer to operate on nonfunctioning, structurally stable tissue than on tissue that has been allowed to continue malfunctioning until its structure was lost. Brain tumors are an example: They destroy the brain’s structure, and with it the patient’s skills, memories, and personality. Physicians in the future should be able to immediately interrupt this process, to stop the functioning of the brain to stabilize the patient for treatment. Techniques available today can stop tissue function while preserving tissue structure. Greg Fahy, in his work on organ preservation at the American Red Cross, is developing a technique for vitrifying animal kidneys—making them into a low-temperature, crystal-free glass—with the goal of maintaining their structure such that, when brought back to room temperature, they can be transplanted. Some kidneys have been cooled to -30*C, warmed back up, and then functioned after transplant. A variety of other procedures can also stabilize tissues on a long-term basis. These procedures enable many cells—but not whole tissues—to survive and recover without help; advanced molecular repair and cell surgery will presumably tip the balance, enabling cells, tissues, and organs to recover and heal. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

When applied to stabilizing a whole patient, such condition can be called biostasis. A patient in boistasis can be kept there indefinitely until the required medical help arrives. So in the future, the question “Can this patient be restored to health?” will be answered “Yes, if the patient’s brain is intact, and with it the patient’s mind. According to NASA, on average with the current technologies, it would take about 7 months to get to Mars, which is placed a distance of 480 million km from Earth along its orbit. A spacecraft would need around 6 years to get to Jupiter and 9.5 years to get to Pluto. If you have ever been bored on a long-haul flight, imagine spending years waiting inside a spacecraft. How long would it take to travel between galaxies instead? For example, if we wanted to go to the Andromeda Galaxy, the closet large spiral galaxy, how much time would that take? The distance to cover is 2.537 million light-years which is about 22.833.000.000 million km. If we compare this number with the seven months needed to land on Mars, we can see that it would take about 28 million years to reach the Andromeda Galaxy. This figure is not exact but it can give us an idea of how much time one would need for intergalactic travels. Since no human can live that long and our consciousness is still perishable, how can we solve this problem?” Sandra Lee Adamson of the National Space Society has her eyes on distant goals. Some have proposed that travel to the stars would take generations, preventing anyone on Earth from ever making the trip. However, she notes that biostasis will “give hope to some fearless adventurers who will risk suspension and subsequent reanimation so they can see the stars for themselves.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Scientist exploring turbulence, instability, and chaos in nature and society know that the same system—whether it is a chemical system or a country—behaves differently depending on whether it is in an equilibrial or non-equilibrial condition. Push any system—a digestive system, a computer system, an urban traffic system, or a political system—too far, and it violates its traditional rules and acts bizarrely. When the environment becomes too turbulent, systems become non-linear, and this creates vast opportunities for tiny groups. We are, in fact, rapidly moving into a new stage of politics that might be called “opportunity time” for the pivotal minorities. As politics becomes increasingly de-massified, leaders who once dealt with a few big, more or less predictable political constituencies are seeing these splinter into countless small, temporary, single-issue grouplets, continually forming, breaking, and re-forming alliances—all at high speeds. Any one of these, finding itself at a strategic political intersection at just the right moment, can leverage its clout. In 1919 a railroad machinist names Anton Drexler headed a tiny political group in Munich—a group so small it was no more than a fringe of the fringe. At first public meeting it managed to attract only 111 listeners. The speaker at that meeting held the floor for thirty minutes. His name was Adolph Hitler. There are many explanations for Hitler’s rise, but one can be found in the new science of non-equilibrial systems. This new science teaches us that in moments of extreme instability of the kind found in Germany at the time, three things happen. Sheer chance plays an enlarged role. Pressures from the outside World carry more weight. And positive feedback creates gigantic snowball effects. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

An example of the snowball effect as it operates in today’s World is provided by the media. By focusing a hand-held camera, a reporter can instantly project even the tiniest group of political cranks or terrorists onto the World’s consciousness, and give it far more importance than it could garner on its own. Once this happens, the group becomes “news,” and other media cover its activities, which, in turn, makes it still bigger news. A “positive feedback loop” is set up. Snowballing can also come about in other ways. In a globally linked economy, a foreign political or commercial interest can pump money and resources into a tiny group, which suddenly explodes in size and, in turn, attracts more resources. Chance, outside help, and the snowballing process help explain why—throughout the history of mass democracy—extremist cults, revolutionary cabals, juntas, and conspiracies have flourished in times of seething turmoil, and why a once-insignificant group can suddenly become “pivotal.” The difference for mosaic democracies is that, in the past, a majority could sometimes restrain or overwhelm dangerous extremists. However, what if there is no coherent majority? Some pivotal minorities may, of course, be good. However, many are toxic to democracy. They vary. The P-2 Masonic lodge in Italy sought to take power in the country. The Jewish Defense League, with support from U.S.A. citizens, seeks power in Israel. Nazi-esque groups, some of them heavily armed, spew anti-Semitic and racist hate, and dream of taking over Washington. Some of their members have engaged in gun battles with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

An African-America organization in the United States of America, headed by an admirer of Hitler, saw its ranks swell with the assistance of $5 million interest-free loan from Libya’s Qaddafi. Add to “intelligence operations,” its branches and front groups reaching from the United States of America to West Germany and Mexico. In the United States of America, hate groups will proliferate as social unrest grows in the decades ahead, according to Dr. William Tafoya, the FBI’s outstanding expert on the future. These groups will attempt to infiltrate U.S.A. police agencies to facilitate acts of domestic terrorism. “If I were a racist, what better place to initiate my hidden agenda than behind the shield of a badge?” Tafoya asks. (And the beast will walk upon the Earth and all races of men will come together in this destruction and darkness.) Citing unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and illiteracy as breeding groups of social unrest, Tafoya has catalouged the rising frequency of race-related crimes, riots, and beatings and warns that the framework for social justice has become “loose dry straw” waiting for a spark to ignite it. Nor are domestic social conditions the only ones that matter. Émigré groups, like the Kurds in Sweden or the Sikhs in Canada, carry their political passions and sense of injustice from the “old country” into the new. In the past, emigrants were largely cut off from their original homelands. Today, with instant communication and jet travel, the old culture retains its grip and its political movements live on abroad. Such groups want to seize power, too, not in the host country but in the homeland, creating complex, strained international relations. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Insignificant in normal times, such groups reach a “takeoff” stage when the cultural and social soil is right and when the mainstream political parties are paralyzed or so evenly matched that a tiny coalition partner tip the power balance. Healthy democracies should tolerate the widest possible diversity, and there is nothing unusual or particularly frightening about the existence of such grouplets—so long as the political system remains equilibrial. But will it? We already live in a World of barely contained fanaticisms. Groups seek to impose totalitarian dogma not merely on one nation, but the entire World. Democrats incite murder, calling for the assassination of anyone who opposes their party. Separatist movements leave a trail of car bombs, riots, broken glass, dead people, and blood in defense of their national identity. And religio-political terrorists think nothing of hurling a grenade into a café or downing a 747, as if the death of a vacationing bank manager, or auto science engineer with his case full of prototypes would somehow win points from God. Because of an out-of-date conception of progress, many in the West assume that fanatic, irrational, hate-mongering ideologies will vanish from the Earth as societies become more “civilized.” However, nothing is more misleading and smug. Confessional conflicts, “holy wars,” committed crusaders and martyrdom-seeking warriors are not merely relics of the past. They are portents of the future. These high-intensity aggressive ideologies pose an international threat. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

However, for democracies, the threat is domestic as well, for culture and economics are fused I the new economy, and new emotionally charged issues arise, the dangers of pivotal minorities and global fanaticism escalate in tandem. A proletarian dictatorship, which America is becoming, that betrays a readiness to make concessions to the lower middle-class is threated with destruction of the government. The rise of a new kind of economy, never before known, threatening to many, demanding rapid changes in work, life style, and habits, hurls large populations—terrified of the future—into spasms of diehard reaction. It opens cleavages that fanatics rush to fill. It arms all those dangerous minorities who live for crisis in the hope of catapulting themselves onto the national or global stage and transporting us all into a new Dark Age. Instead of the much-touted “end of ideology,” we may in both global and domestic affairs, see a multiplicity of new ideologies spring up, each inflaming adherents with its single vision of reality. We may well face a thousand fires of fury. While we are body celebrating the supposed end of ideology, history, and the Cold War, we may find ourselves facing the end of democracy as we have known it—mass democracy. The advanced economy, based on computers, information, knowledge, and deep communications, calls into question all the traditional defenses of democracy, challenging us to redefine them in the 21 st-century terms. To do that, we need a clearer picture of how the system works and how it is already changing. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

The distribution of stress is not the only way that interactions within the system stimulate further activation of agents. Another important mechanism of this kind is the formation of work routines in organizations. Work routines also are recurring patterns of interaction among agents and artifacts. Because routines combine the distinctive skills of multiple human agents, the interactions in a single routine may be quite diverse. A chain of individual assembling a car can do many more things than falling grains of sand can do. However, the basic mechanism of stimulating further activation works in a similar fashion. Routines arise because interactions among agents increase the likelihood of later repetitions of those same interactions. Usually this happens through learning by the participants. They may become aware of valued result from an overall routine in which their actions played a part. (An emergency room worker hears that the patient who was referred to cardiology three days ago has been able to go home. A referral in future cases that are similar becomes more likely.) Or an agent is aware that some appropriate action has followed from a step previously taken. (The next worker on the line more easily processes the part a colleague carefully positioned. In the future, that same pre-positioning will be used.) We normally do not give too much thought to how routines arise. They are important sources of organizational productivity, but part of their value rests in accomplishing work while taking relatively little attention. So routines are noticed mainly when they do not work, when they resist needed change, or when they “fire off” inappropriately. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The way routines form is important for organizations. The easier it is to create good ones and modify bad ones, the more productive organizations can be. Various process improvements methodologies, such as Total Quality Management and Business Process Reengineering, have flourished in recent years in recognition of this fact. The quality movement, in particular, has offered many procedures that make the linkage between events clearer to participants in order to make the linkage between events clearer to participants in order to make routines easier to learn and to improve. One of the most famous devices of the early days of quality improvement was the system of cords that allowed Toyota workers to stop a whole production when a defect was noticed. Tracing the effect to its upstream cause, rather than patching it locally, allowed al the participants to understand the interdependencies of the production routine. It is an expensive remedy, especially at first, when it is used often. However, it is hard to imagine that Japanese auto manufacturing could have attained its reputation for quality without something like it. And the postwar World would be very different if that had not happened. Looking at routines in this way, one sees that there are many devices for making the next step or the final result more visible to participants. These include feedback on total daily production, notices of receipt, in-boxes and out-boxed, periodic account summaries that report recent changes, even procedures to highlight the absence of feedback or complaint. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

It is important to note that all of these examples of propagating stress and of self-sustaining activity are about formation: of avalanche potentials, of boundaries, of recurring actions cycles. They are not about the observed structures but about how those structures arise. When we look for insights into harnessing complexity, we should ask how we can change the pattern of avalanche (or traffic jam) sizes, the shape and size of patches that form, or the number and complexity of routines that can be created. The theories often do not give us control over specific events. Rather they help us find interventions that may affect the averages of what happens, that may allow adaptation or learning, even without knowing in advance just what will change, or just what will be learned. Although two parties may not trust each other when the stakes are large, if the problem of commitment can be reduced to a small-enough scale, then the issue of credibility will resolve itself. The threat or promise is broken up into many pieces, and each one is solved separately. Honour among thieves is restored if they have to trust each other only a little bit at a time. Consider the difference between making a single $1 million payment to another person for a kilogram of cocaine and engaging in 1,000 sequential transactions with this other party, with each transaction limited to $1,000 worth of cocaine. While it might be worthwhile to double-cross your “partner” for $1 million, the gain of $1,000 is too small, since it brings a premature end to a profitable ongoing relationship. Whenever a large degree of commitment is infeasible, one should make do with a small amount and reuse it frequently. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Homeowners and contractors are mutually suspicious. The homeowner is afraid of paying up front and finding incomplete or shoddy work. The contractors are afraid that after they have completed the job, the homeowner may refuse to pay. So at the end of each day (or each week), contractors are pai on the basis of their progress. At most each side risks losing one day’s (or one week’s) work. As with brinkmanship, moving in small steps reduces the size of the threat or promise and correspondingly the scale of commitment. There is just one feature to watch out for. Those who understand strategic thinking will reason forward and look backward, and they will worry about the last step. If you expect to be cheated on the last round, you should break off the relationship one round earlier. However, then the penultimate round will become the final round, and so you will not have escaped the problem. To avoid the unraveling of trust, there should be no clear final step. As long as there remains a chance of continued business, it will never be worthwhile to cheat. So when a shady character tells you this will be his least deal before retiring, be especially cautious. Nearly all “confidence men” or scam artists are charming. Take Victor Lustig, for example. This conman managed to “sell” the Eiffel Tower and allegedly even swindled notorious mobster Al Capone. Indeed, conning is not a thing of the past. Today, the term “Ponzi scheme” is used to describe an illegitimate operation. However, the term actually came from the real-life Charles Ponzi, whose $15 million investment scheme claimed to turn the average American working man into a multimillionaire overnight. However, really, the scheme only worked to turn Ponzi himself into a multimillionaire overnight. Therefore, if anyone calls you and asks for any personal information over the phone, just hang up. And if you get a suspicious email or letter from a company you deal with, it may be best to talk to them in person so they can address your concerns. Also, be careful of who you let into your home, for renters this is not always easy, con artists will case your house and even steal mail. Make sure all contractors or anyone else has a verified work identification with them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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This is Our Very Soul We are Involved with

Men lean on increase and creation ritual especially when times are bad; it is then that their spiritual technology has to work. Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night in Gibeah, when the hospital door exposed a matron to avoid worse rape. These were the prime in order and in might; the rest were long to tell, though far renowned, the Ionian gods, of Javan’s issue held Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth their boasted parents; Titan Heaven’s first-born with his enormous brood, and brithright seized by younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove his own and Rhea’s son like measure found; so Jove usurping reigned: these first in Crete and Ida known, thence on the snowy top of cold Olympus ruled the middle air their highest Heaven; or on the Delphian cliff, or in Dodona, and through all the bounds of Doric land; or who with Saturn old feld over Adria to the Hesperian fields, and over the Celtic roamed the utmost isles. All these and more came flocking; but with looks of downcast and damp, yet such wherein appeared obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found themselves not lost in loss itself; which on his countenance cast like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride soon recollecting, with high words, that bore semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears. Then straight commands that at the warlike sound of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared his mighty standards; that proud honour claimed Azazel as his right,  Cherub tall: who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled the imperial ensign, which will full high advanced shone like a meteor streaming to the wind with gems and golden luster rich emblazed, seraphic arms and trophies: al the while sonorous metal blowing sounds: at which the universal host upsent a shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

All in a moment through the gloom were seen ten thousand banners rise into the air with orient colours waving: with them rose a forest huge of spears: and thronging helms appeared, and serried shields in thick array of depth immeasurable: anon they move in perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised to highth of noblest temper heroes old arming to battle, and instead of rage deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved with dread of death to flight or foul retreat, nor wanting power to mitigate and swage with solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain from mortal or immortal minds. Thus they breathing united force with fixed thought moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed their painful steps over the burnt soil; and now advanced in view they stand, a horrid front of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise awaiting what command their mighty chief had to impose: he through the armed files darts his experienced eye, and son traverse the whole battalion views, their order due, their visages and statures as of gods, their number last he sums. And now his heart distends with pride, and hardening in his strength glories: for never since created man, met such embodied force, as named with these could merit more than that small infantry warred on by cranes: though all the giant brood of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined that fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds in fable or romance of Uther’s son Begirt with British and Armoric knights; and all who since, baptized or infidel jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, Trebisoned, or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore when Charlemain with all his peerage fell by Fontarabbia. Men fashion unfreedom as a bribe for self-perpetuation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

In every situation, those present will be obliged to retain some readiness for potential face engagements. (This readiness has already been suggested as one way in which situational presence is expressed.) There are many important reasons why the individual is usually obliged to respond to requests for face engagements. In the first place, one owes this to oneself because often it will be through such communication that one’s own interests can be served, as when a stranger accosts one to tell one that one has dropped something, or that the bridge is out. For similar reasons one owes this accessibility to others present, and to persons not present for whom those present may serve as a relay. (The need for this collective solidarity is heightened in urban living, which brings individuals of great social distance withing range of one another.) Further, as previously suggested, participation in a face engagement can be a sign of social closeness and relatedness; when this opportunity to participate is proffered by another, it ought not to be refused, for to decline such a request is to reject someone who has committed oneself to a sign of desiring contact. More than this, refusal of an offer implies that the refuser rejects the other’s claim to membership in the gathering and the social occasion in which the gathering occurs. It is therefore uncommon for persons to deny these obligations to respond. Although there are good reasons why an individual should keep oneself available for face engagements, there are also good reasons for one to be cautions of this. In allowing another to approach one for talk, the individual may find that one has been inveigled into a position to be attacked and assaulted physically. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

In societies where public safety is not firmly established, especially in places such as the desert, where the traveler is for long periods of time remote from any source of help, the danger that a face engagement may be a prelude to assault becomes appreciable, and extensive avoidance practices or greetings at a distance tend to be employed. Here, of course, the “physical safety” component of civic order and the communication component overlap. However, apart from this extreme, we should see that when an individual opens oneself up to talk with another, one opens oneself up to the pleadings, commands, threats, insult, and false information. The mutual considerateness characteristic of face engagements reinforces these dangers, subjecting the individual to the possibility of having one’s sympathy and tactfulness exploited, and causing one to act against one’s own interests. Further, words can act s a “relationship wedge”; that is, once an individual has extended to another enough consideration to hear one out for a moment, some kind of bone of mutual obligation is established, which the initiator can use in turn as a basis for still further claims; once this new extended bond is granted, grudgingly or willingly, still further claims for social or material indulgence can be made. Hence, in one important example, a man and a woman can start out as strangers and, if conditions are right, progress from an incidental encounter to matrimony. We need only trace back the history of many close relationships between adults to find that something was made of face engagements when it need not have been. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

Of course, persons usually form “suitable” relationships, not allowing casual encounters to be a wedge to something else. However, there is sufficient slippage in systems of conviviality segregation to give mothers concern about their daughters and to provide one of the basic romantic themes of light fiction. There are two opposing tendencies that occur when individuals keep themselves available for face engagements, and there are some dangers when persons open themselves up in so doing. There opposing tendencies are reconciled in society, apparently, by a kind of implicit contraction or gentleman’s agreement that persons sustain given the fact that the other will be under some obligation, often unpleasant, to respond to overtures, potential initiators are under obligation to stay their own desires. A person can thus make oneself available to others in the expectation that they will restrain their calls on one’s available and not make one pay too great a price for one’s being accessible. Their right to initiate contact is checked by their duty to take one’s point of view and initiate contact with one only under circumstances that one will easily see to be justified; in short, they must not “abuse” their privileges. This implicit communication contract (and the consequence of breaking it) receive wide mythological representation, as in our own “cry wolf” tale. Understandably, infractions of the rule against undesired overture do cause some anxiety, for the recipient must either accede to the request or demonstrate to oneself and the others present that one’s availability for face engagements was not part of one’s character but a false pose, to be maintained only when no price was involved in maintaining it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

In noting the implicit contract that makes persons present delicately accessible and inaccessible to each other, we can go on to note a basic margin of appetite and distaste to be found in social situations. The reasons why individuals are obliged to restrain themselves from making encounter overtures provide many of the reasons why they might want to do so. And the obligation to be properly accessible often covers a desire to be selectively quite unavailable. Hence, many public and semipublic places, such as cocktail lounges and club cars, acquire a special tone and temper, a special piquancy, that blurs the communication lines, giving each participant some desire to encroach where perhaps one does not have a right to go, and to keep from being engaged with others who perhaps have a right to engage one. Each individual, then, is not only involved in maintaining the basic communication contract, but is also likely to be involved in hopes, fears, and actions that bend the rules if they do not actually break them. It has been suggested, then, that as a general rule the individual is obliged to make oneself available for encounters even though one may have something to lose by entering them, and that one may well be ambivalent about this arrangement. Here mental patients provide a lesson in reverse, for they can show us the price that is paid for declining to make oneself available and force us to see that there are reasons why someone able to be accessible should be willing to pay the price of remaining inaccessible. A patient who declines to respond to overtures is said to be “out of contact,” and this state is often felt to be full evidence that one is very sick indeed, that one is, in fact, cut off from all contact with the World around one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

In the case of some “organic” patients, this generalization from inaccessibility appears quite valid, as it does with certain “functionals.” There are patients, for example, who, before admission, had progressively withdrawn from responding to such things as the telephone and doorbell, and, once in the hospital, decline all staff overtures for engagement, this being but one instance of a general withdrawal of concern for the life about them. In the case of other patients, however, refusal to enter proffered engagements cannot be taken as a sign of unconcern for the gathering, but rather as a sign of alienation based on active feelings such as fear, hate, and contempt, each of which can be understandable in the circumstances, and each of which can allow the patient to show a nice regard for other situational proprieties. Thus, there are patients who coldly star through direct efforts to bring them into a state of talk, declining all staff overtures, however seductive, teasing, or intensive, who will nonetheless allow themselves face engagements carefully initiated and terminated by themselves without the usual courtesies. Still other patients who are out of contact to most persons on the ward will engage in self-initiated encounters with a small select number of others, by means of coded messages, foreign language, whispering, or the exchange of written statements. Some patients, unwilling to engage in spoken encounters with anyone, will be ready to engage in other types of encounters, such as dancing or card playing. Similarly, I knew a patient who often blankly declined greetings extended one by fellow patients on the grounds, but who could be completely relied upon not to miss a cue when performing the lead in a patient dramatic production. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

As might then be expected, a patient declining to conduct oneself properly in regard to face engagements might be well conducted in regard to unfocused interaction. Many people whose “acting” manners are good have poor “talking” manners. They may be gossipy or they may tell stories that are in poor taste; or say things that hurt people’s feelings, or they may even chatter on so continuously that no one else can get a word in “edgewise.” One illustration was provided by a patient I observed, a young woman of thirty-two, who at one point in her “illness” was ready to handle her dress and deportment with all the structured modesty that is required of her gender, while at the same time her language was foul. During another phase of her illness, this patient, in the company of a friendly nurse, enjoyed shopping trips to the neighbouring town, during which she and her keeper got wry pleasure from the fact that the patient was “passing” as a “normal” person. Had anyone made an opening statement to the patient, however, the masquerade would have been destroyed, for this was a time when the patient was mute in all verbal interaction or, at best, spoke with very great pressure. A touching illustration of the same difference in capacity for focused and unfocused interaction was provided at Central Hospital by patients who were fearful and anxious of their whole setting, but who nonetheless made elaborate efforts to show that they were still what they had been before coming to the hospital and that they were in poised, business-like control of the situation. One middle-aged man walked busily on the grounds with the morning newspaper folded under one arm and a rolled umbrella hooked over the other, wearing an expression of being late for an appointment. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

A young man, having carefully preserved his worn grey flannel suit, bustled similarly from one place he was not going to another. Yet both men stepped out of the path of any approaching staff person, and painfully turned their heads away whenever someone proffered an exchange or greeting of some kind, for both employed the tack of being mute with many of the persons whom they met. The management of a front of middle-class orientation in the situation, in these circumstances, was so precarious and difficult that (for these men) it apparently represented the day’s major undertaking. Just as it is evident that the individual may comply with rules regarding unfocused interaction while failing to comply with regulations regarding focused interaction, so cases can be found of mental patients who dress in a spectacularly improper manner but who are nonetheless ready to be socially tractable as conversationalists. Here are two pieces of evidence in favour of distinguishing conceptually between focused and unfocused interaction. In other cases, of course, it is not fear that seems to account for the inaccessibility of otherwise properly mannered persons, but rather hostility: to acknowledge a staff overture is partly to acknowledge the legitimacy of the staff person making the overture, and if one is a serious worthy person then so much be one’s implied contention that the individual with whom one is initiating contact, namely, oneself, is a mental patent properly confined to a mental ward. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

To strengthen one’s feeling that one is really sane, it may thus seem reasonable to disdain encounters in which the opposite will be assumed—even though this results in exactly the kind of conduct, namely, inaccessibility, that confirms the hospital’s view tht one is mentally ill. As previously suggested, conversational engagements are often carried out as involvements subordinated to some other business at hand, just as side involvements, such as smoking, are often carried out as activities subordinated to a conversational main involvement. The question arises as to the limits placed upon this coexistence in middle-class society. There are, for example, records of middle-class Navy personnel postponing a visit to the “head” until others have left so as not to have to defecate while being accessible to others for talk. I have also been told by a middle-class informant that she was always uneasy about painting her toenails while in the presence of her husband, since the painting involved too much attention to leave her sufficiently respectful of the talk. Do you have much more faith in ideas that you discover for yourself than in ideas that are handed to you on a silver platter? If so, is it not bad judgment to try to ram your opinions down the throats of other people? Is it not wiser to make suggestions—and let the other person thin out the conclusions? People expect others they interact with to be: loyal, honest, initiative, optimistic, display teamwork, and to be enthusiastic most of the day. As long as a person can meet these standards, the people in their circle will be willing to do the same. When an individual consults others about their wishes and desires, that is, in many cases, just the confidence builder they need. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

No one like to feel that one is being sold something or told to do a thing. We much prefer to feel that we re buying of our own accord or acting on our own ideas. We like to be consulted about our wishes, our wants, our thoughts. If instance, if you make paintings that you like and try to sell them to a person, they may not buy them. However, if you find out what kind of paintings a person likes and show the individual those, they may want to buy them. Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in life as well. Our mind is a very limited machine. We must think in the easiest way and make allowance for it. It is easier to think of repetition than of the eternal existence of the moment. You must understand that our mind cannot formulate rightly things as they are. We can only make approximate formulations which are nearer to trith than our ordinary thinking. That is all that is possibe. Our mind and our language are very rough instruments and we have to deal with very fine matters and fine problems. All acquired tendencies repeat themselves. One person acquires a tendency to run away from cetain things. One wil run away again. These tendencies may grow stronger or they may grow in a different direction. There is no guarantee until one reaches some kind of conscious action when one has a certain possibility of trusting oneself. There are many things that look impossible but that is because our thinking apparatus is not good enough to think about such things. It simplifies things too much. These problems need mathematical thinking. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

For instance, we cannot think about time as a curve but only as a straight line. If we could think of time as a curve, and understand all that that implied, questions about co-existent lives would not exist. The aim of all our work is to reach the third and fourth states of consciousness, which means to think through high centers. If we could do this, then problems of the future life, absurdities like questions about time, and so on, would not arise. As things are, we can only make theories. We know more or less how to approach these problems, but we can know nothing definite. Often times, we have no experience about the past, but you will notice how literature, history and philosophy people return again and again to the idea of recurrence. They never fully forget it, but it is very difficult to fit into a three-dimensional World. It needs a five-dimensional World, and the question of remembering really refers already to six dimensions. In the fifth-dimension man returns and returns without knowing. Remembering means a certain growth in the six-dimension. Dimensions can be understood simply in this way. The fourth-dimension is the realization of one possibility of each moment; what we call time. The fifth-dimension is repetition of this. The six-dimension is the realization of different possibilities. However, it is difficult to think about this so long as we think about time as a straight line. The problem is not a real thing; it is just our weakness, nothing more. Life is the fourth-dimension, a circle, the realization of one possibility. When this comes to an end it meets its own beginning. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

The moment of death corresponds to the moment of birth, and then life begins again, maybe with slight deviations, but they do not mean anything. It always returns to the same line. Breaking a chief tendency, starting this life in a quite different way will be the sixth-dimension. We cannot think of simultaneous moments, we have to think of one moment following another, though actually they are simultaneous on another scale. For instance, our own experience in relation to small particles such as electrons is that their eternity is our time. So why can our repetition not be in Earth’s time? Once we understand this, we can see further why the moiety organization is such a stroke of primitive genius: it sets up society as a continuing contest for the forcing of self-feeling, provides ready-made props for self-aggrandizement, a daily script that includes straight men for “joking relationships” and talented rivals with whom to content for social honour in games, feats of strength, hunting and warfare. To understand a system that relies on highly interactive elements, whether agents or artifacts, one needs to take into account the possibility of major stresses that could lead to large-scale failures. The possibility of large-scale failures is in especially important problem for the information domain for three reasons. First, information systems have typically undergone very rapid evolution. They often involve both new and technology and new institutional arrangements. Therefore, they have not existed long enough for the development of a good empirical foundation for risk assessment and management. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Second, information systems continually undergo major changes, so that a good empirical foundation for risk assessment and management may never become available. The final reason that the possibility of large-scale failures is important in information systems is that vital economic and military functions are highly on these systems. As we shall see, some types of failure are well understood and relatively easy to design against. Other types of failure are less well understood and more difficult to design against. The simplest type of challenge occurs when failures are strictly independent. For example, if a basement room is lit by four lightbulbs, and one burns out, the others will continue to supply light. The loss of one bulb does not make the others fail any sooner than they otherwise would have. The primary method of risk management for independent failures is to build redundancy into the system. In the case of lightbulbs, enough bulbs are used so that if one (or even two or three) burn out, there will be enough light for activities to continue until the blubs can be replaced. In a more sophisticated manner, redundancy makes possible reliable traffic flows through information networks by channeling traffic around node that fail. In addition to redundancy, a useful design feature to deal with local failures is to avoid having any one element of the system be essential to its overall performance. This is typically achieved by making the system highly decentralized, like the Internet. Indeed, one of the primary advantages of Complex Adaptive Systems over more rigidly centralized organizations is their resilience in the face of local failures. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Design problems become much more difficult when local failures are not independent of each other. The first problem to consider is correlated shocks. These are failures that occur when the elements of the system tend to fail at the same time for the same reason. For example, suppose there are ten radio transmitters, each of which works 99 percent of the time. If the failures were not correlated, at any given time at least one of the transmitters would almost certainly be working. However, if sunspots are the reason the radio transmission fail 1 percent of time, then all ten radio links may well fail at the same time. Typically, the design against correlated failures involves identifying the source of shock that are external to the elements and that might therefore cause failures in several elements at the same time. Sunspots are such a source of shock for the radio transmissions. Once these correlated sources or error are identified, redundancy can often be attained by building new elements of the system that are not susceptible to these particular shocks. For example, landlines are not affected by sunspots. Even when the source of external shocks cannot all be identified, a general principle is that the more diverse the elements, the less the chance that they will all be vulnerable to the same kinds of external shock. Diversity in Complex Adaptive Systems not only allows exploration of new options but also provides resiliency against common shocks. The risk monoculture, which we mentioned in discussing variation, provides a good example of the need to avoid common shocks. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

If vast tracts of agricultural land are planted with the same strain of a crop, then an unusual environmental condition, such as a new pest, can cause devastation. While monoculture may be efficient in the short run because it exploits the very best strain of crop, it tends to be fragile. Likewise, information systems that rely on widespread use of common hardware or software components also risk fragility. They provide vast, fertile targets for viruses and other virtual pests. When it comes to healing body and limb, the ability to herd cells and to perform molecular repairs and cell surgery will open new vistas for medicine. These abilities apply on a small scale, but their effects can be large scale. In many diseases, the body as a whole suffers from misregulation of the signaling molecules that travel through its fluids. Many are rare: Cushing’s disease, Grave’s disease, Paget’s disease, Addison’s disease, Conn’s syndrome, Prader-Labhart-Willi syndrome. Others are common: Millions of older women suffer from osteoporosis, the weakening of bones that can accompany lowered estrogen levels. Diabetes kills frequently enough to rank in the top ten causes of death in the United States of America; the number of individuals known to have it doubles every fifteen years. It is the leading cause of blindness in the United States of America, with other complications including kidney damage, cataracts, and cardiovascular damage. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Today’s molecular medicine tries to solve these troubles by supplying missing molecules: diabetics inject additional insulin. While helpful, this does not cure the disease or eliminate all symptoms. In an era of molecular surgery, physicians could choose instead to repair the defective organ, so it can regulate its own chemicals again, and to readjust the metabolic properties of other cells in the body to match. This would be a true healing, far better than today’s partial fix. Only now are researchers making progress on another frequent problem of metabolic regulation: obesity. Once this was thought to have one simple cause (consuming excess calories) and one main result (greater roundness than favoured by today’s aesthetics), but both assumptions proved wrong. Obesity is a serious medical problem, increasing the risk of diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, degenerative diseases of the heart, arteries, and kidneys, and shortening life expectancy. And the supposed cause, simple overeating, has been shown to be incorrect—something dieters had always suspected, as they watched their thinner colleagues gorge and yet gain no weight. The ability to lay in store of fat was a great benefit to people once upon a time, when food supplies were irregular, nomadism and marauding bands made food storage difficult and risky, and starvation was a common cause of death. Our bodies are still adapted to that World, and regulate fat reserves accordingly. This is why dieting often has perverse effects. The body, when starved, responds by attempting to build up greater reserves of fat at its next opportunity. The main effect of exercise in weight reduction is not to burn up calories, but to signal the body to adapt itself for efficient mobility. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Obesity therefore seems to be a matter of chemical signals within the body, signals to store fat for famine or to become lean for motion. Nanomedicine will be able to regulate these signals in the bloodstream, and to adjust how individual cells respond to them in the body. The latter would even make possible the elusive “spot reduction program” to reshape the distribution of body fat. Here, as with many potential applications of nanotechnology, the problem may be solved by other means first. Some problems, though, will almost surely require nanomedicine. When it comes to reestablishing credibility, burning bridges behind you may be a good strategy. Armies often achieve commitment by denying themselves an opportunity to retreat. This strategy goes back at least to 1066, when William the Conqueror’s invading army burned its own ships, thus making an unconditional commitment to fight rather than retreat. Cortes followed the same strategy in his conquest of Mexico. Upon his arrival in Cempoalla, Mexico, he gave orders that led to all but one of his ships being burnt or disabled. Although his soldiers were vastly outnumbered, they had no other choice but to fight and win. Had Cortes failed, it might well seem an act of madness. Yet it was the fruit of deliberate calculation. There was no alternative in his mind but to succeed or perish. Destroying the ships gave Cortes two advantages. First, his own soldiers were united, each knowing that they would all fight until the end since desertion (or even retreat) was an impossibility. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

 Second, and more important, is the effect this commitment had on the opposition. They knew that Cortes must either succeed or perish, while they had the option to retreat into the hinterland. They chose to retreat rather than fight such a determined opponent. For this type of commitment to have the proposed effects, it must be understood by the soldiers (yours and the enemy’s), not just by the armchair strategists. Thus it is especially interesting that “the destruction of the fleet [was] accomplished not only with the knowledge, but the approbation of the army, though at the suggestion of Cortes. This ide of burning one’s own ships demonstrates the evolution of strategic thinking over time. The Trojans seemed to get it all backward when the Greeks sailed to Troy to rescue Helen.  (Although the Trojans may have gotten it backward, the Greeks were ahead of the game. Schelling cites the Greek general Xenophon as an early example of this type of strategic thinking. Although Xenophon did not literally burn his bridges behind him, he did write about the advantages of fighting with one’s back against a gully.) The Greeks tried to conquer the city, while the Trojans had succeeded in burning the Greek fleet, they would simply have made the Greeks all the more determined opponents. In fact, the Trojans failed to burn the Greek fleet and saw the Greeks sail home in retreat. Of course the Greek left behind a gift horse, which in retrospect the Trojans were a bit too quick to accept. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

In modern times, this strategy applies to attacks on land as well as by sea. For many years, Edwin Land’s Polaroid corporation purposefully refused to diversity out of the instant photography business. With all its chips in instant photography, it was committed to fight against any intruder in the market. On April 20, 1976, after twenty-eight years of Polaroid monopoly on the instant photography market, Eastman Kodak entered the fray: it announced a new instant film and camera. Polaroid responded aggressively, suing Kodak for patent infringement. Edwin Land, founder and chairman, was prepared to defend his turf: “This is our very soul we are involved with. This is our whole life. For them it is just another field. We will stay in our lot and protect that lot.” Mark Twain explained this philosophy in Pudd’nhead Wilson: “Behold, the fool saith, ‘Put not all thine eggs in one basket’ but the rise man saith, ‘Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET.’” The battle ended October 12, 1990. The courts awarded Polaroid a $909.4 million judgment against Kodak. (Polaroid’s stock actually fell in response to this award, as the market was expecting a judgement closer to $1.5 billion.) Kodak was forced to withdraw its instant film and camera from the market. Although Polaroid restored its dominance over the instant photography market, it lost ground to competition to competition from portable videocassette recorders and minilabs that developed and printed conventional film in one hour. Lacking bridges, Polaroid began to feel trapped on a sinking island. With change in philosophy, the company has begun to branch out into video film and even conventional film. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

One need not literally burn bridges, nor ships that bridge oceans. One can burn bridges figuratively by taking political position that will antagonize certain voters. When Walter Mondale said in accepting the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination that he would rise taxes if elected, he was making such a commitment. Voters who believed in supply-side economics were irretrievably lost, and this made Mondale’s position more credible to those who favoured a tax increase in order to reduce the deficit. Unfortunately (for Mondale) the group of voters antagonized by this move turned out to be far too large. Finally, building rather than burning bridges can also serve as a credible source of commitment. In December 1989 reforms in Eastern Europe, building bridges meant knowing down walls. Responding to massive protests and emigration, East Germany’s Prime Minister Egon Krenz wanted to promise reform would be genuine and far-reaching? Even if Krenz was truly in favour of reform, he might fall out of power. Dismantling parts of the Berlin Wall helped the East German government make a credible commitment to reform without having detail all the specifics. By (re)opening a bridge to the West, the government forced itself to reform or risk an exodus. Since it would be possible to leave in the future, the promise of reform was both credible and worthy waiting for. Reunification was to be less than a year away. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

As the super-symbolic economy develops, it is accompanied by population shifts and migrations. Immigration politics—fiercely controversial at any time—will be fought against background marked by atavistic nationalism and ethnicism, not merely in remote places like Armenia and Azerbaijan, or in Albania and Serbia, but in New York and Nagoya, Liverpool and Lyon. In industrial mass societies, racism typically took the form of a majority persecuting a minority. This form of social pathology is still a threat to democracy. White street toughs, skinheads, admirers of the Nazis and even Black, Asian, and Hispanic gangs are on their way to becoming domestic terrorists. However, the new system for creating wealth brings with it economic de-massification and much higher levels of social diversity. Thus, in addition, to traditional conflict between majority and minorities, democratic governments must now cope with open warfare between rival minority groups, as happened in Miami, for example, between Cuban and Haitian immigrants, and elsewhere in the United States of America between African-Americans and Hispanics. In Los Angeles, Mexican-Americans fight for jobs held by Cuban-Americans. In affluent Great Neck, on Long Island, near New York City, tensions rise between American-born Jewish people and Iranian Jewish immigrants who refuse to surrender their old life-ways. African-American rap groups sell anti-Semitic records. Koran shopkeepers and African-Americans collide in their inner cities. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Under the impact of the new production system, resistance to the “melting pot” is rising everywhere. Instead, racial, ethnic, and religious groups demand the right to be—and to remain—proudly different. Assimilation was the ideal of industrial society, corresponding to its need for a homogenous workforce. Diversity is the new ideal, corresponding to the heterogeneity of the new system of wealth creation. Governments may, in an atmosphere of hostility, have to accommodate certain groups who insist on preserving their cultural identity—everyone from Turks in Germany, or Koreans, Filipinos, and South Sea Islanders in Japan, to North Africans in France. At the same time, governments will also have to mediate among them. This will become progressively harder to do, because the ideal of homogeneity (in Japan, for example), or of the “melting pot” (in the United States of America) is being replaced by that of the “salad bowl”—a dish in which diverse ingredients keep their identity. Los Angeles with its Koreatown, its Vietnamese suburbs, its heavy Chicano population, its roughly seventy-five ethically oriented publications, not to mention its Jewish population, African-Americans, Japanese, Chinese, and its large Iranian population, provides an example of the new diversity. However, the salad-bowl ideal means that governments will need new legal and social tools they now lack, if they are to referee increasingly complex, potentially violent disputes. The potential for antidemocratic extremism and violence rises even as regions, nations, and supra-national forces battle for power. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23


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Our First Loves Leave their Mark Upon Us

The result of one of the greatest tragedies of human existence, what we might call the need to “fetishize evil,” to locate the threat to life in some special places where it can be placated and control exists precisely because men make fantasies about evil, see it in the wrong places, and destroy themselves and others by uselessly thrashing about. To idols foul. Tammuz came next behind, whose annual wound in Lebanon allured the Syrian damsels to lament his fate in amorous ditties all a summer’s day, while smooth Adonis from his native work ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood of Thammuz yearly wounded: like love-tale infected Sion’s daughters with like heat, whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezekiel saw, when by the vision led his eye surveyed the dark idolatries of alienated Judah. Next came one who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped off in his own temple, on the grunsel edge, where he fell flat, and shamed his worshipers: Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man and downward fish: yet had his temple high eared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon and Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds. Him followed Rimmon, whose delight seat was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. He also against the house of God was bold: a leper once he lost and gained a king, Ahaz his sottish to disparage and displace for one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn his odious offerings, and adore the gods whom he had vanquished. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

 After these appeared a crew who under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train with monstrous shapes and sorceries abused fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms rather than human. Nor did Israel scape the infection when their borrowed gold composed the calf in Oreb: and the rebel king doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, likening his Maker to the grazed ox, God, who in one night when he passed from Egypt marching, equaled with one stroke both her first-born and all her bleating gods. (When the Giants invaded Olympus some of the gods fled in terror to Egypt, wandering there disguised as various animals. Osiris, in the image of a bull, his wife, Isis, represented as a cow, were (among other things) fertility gods. Orus was their son. By killing in one night the firstborn of all the Egyptian people and all of their cattle (bleating gods), God forced the Pharaoh to free the captive Israelites; but first he told the Israelites to “borrow” gold and silver jewelry from their “well-disposed” Egyptian neighbours.) Belial came last, than who a Spirit more lewd fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love vice for itself: to him no temple stood or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he in temples and at altars, when the priest turns atheist, as did Eli’s sons, who filled with lust and violence the house of God. In courts and palaces he also regains and in luxurious cities, where the noise of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, and injury and outrage when night darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. A consequence of man’s animal vulnerability to death and his symbolic consciousness of it is the struggle to get power to fortify himself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Our first loves leave their mark upon us. When the communion of a face engagement has been established between two or more individuals, the resulting state of ratified mutual participation can last for varying periods. When a clearly defined task is involved, the engagement may last of hours. When no apparent work or recreational task is involved, and what is perceived as sociability alone holds the participants, certain durations seem to be favoured. The contact may be very brief, as brief, in fact, as the opening meeting of eyes itself. In our own middle-class society there are “chats,” where two individuals pause in their separate lines of action for what both recognize to be a necessarily brief period of time; there are greetings, whereby communion is established and maintained long enough for the participants to exchange brief interpersonal rituals; and, briefest of all, there are recognitional or “friendly” glances. (Of course, a recognitional glance may be merely the first interchange in an extended greeting, and a greeting merely the opening phase of a chat, but these extensions of coparticipation are not always found.) Except for the ritual of civil inattention, the mere exchange of friendly glances is perhaps the most frequent of our interpersonal rituals. Encounters of an obligatory kind are linked to the World of domestic convivial occasions. In some social circles, a guest entering a party has a right to be greeted by the host or hostess and convoyed into the proceedings in visible contact with the authorizing person, this encounter thereby legitimating and celebrating the newcomer’s participation in the occasion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

One’s departure may be marked with the same kind of ceremony, officially bring one’s participation to an end. Here there is an interesting difference between Anglo-American and French custom; in France, the entering or departing person ratifies one’s entrance or departure not only through contact with the person managing the occasion but often also by a hand-shaking engagement with some or all of the other guests present. The occasion then closed in and over the place one has left, and if one should have to return for something one has forgotten, embarrassment is likely to be felt, especially if the ethos of the occasion has changed, and especially if marked ceremonial attention had been given one’s leave-taking. The same sort of embarrassment occurs when a member of an organization, who has been given a farewell party and gift to mark a termination of one’s membership and to set the stage for the group’s developing a new relation to a substitute, then finds that one must remain with or return to the organization. One finds that the group has “worked through” one’s membership, leaving one present but socially not there. Encounters, of course, tend to be taken as an expression of the state of a social relationship. And, as will be considered later, to the degree that contact is practical, it may have to be made so as not to deny the relationship. Face engagements, of course, are not the only kinds of contact carrying ceremonial functions. Gifts, greeting cards, and salutatory telegrams and telephone calls or email serve in this way. Each social circle seems to develop norms as to how frequently and extensively these ought to be employed to affirm relationships among geographically separated people, depending on the costs faced by each group in using these several devices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Just as friends at the same social party are obliged to spend t least a few moments chatting together, so a husband out of town on business may be considered “in range” and be obliged to telephone home in the evening. Further, each engagement tends to be initiated with an amount to fuss appropriate to the period of lapsed contact, and terminated with the amount appropriate to the assumed period of separation. There results a kind of tiding over, and a compensation for the diminishing effects of separation. At a party, then, a version of Mrs. Hilton’s ruling is likely to prevail: “In a meeting the same person many times within an hour or so, one does not continue to bow after the second, or at most third meeting. After that one either looks away or merely smiles.” The same smile between the same two persons newly coming within range of each other in a foreign country may constitute a grievous affront to their relationship. A face engagement is a sufficiently clearcut unit that an individual typically must either be entirely within it or entirely outside it. This is nicely borne out by the trouble caused when a person attempts to be half-in and half-out. Nonetheless, there are communication arrangements that seem to lie halfway between mere copresence and full scale coparticipation. When two persons walk silently together down the street or doze next to each other at the beach, they may be treated by others as “being together,” and are likely to have the right to break rather abruptly into spoken or gestured communication, although they can hardly be said to sustain continuously a mutual activity. This sense of being together constitutes a kind of lapsed verbal encounter, functioning more as a means of excluding nonmembers than as a support for sustained focused interaction among the participants. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Being “with” someone at a given moment is to be distinguished from the party relationship of having “come with” someone to the occasion, the latter representing a preferential claim as to whom one will leave with, be loyal to, and the like. Persons who can sustain lapsed encounters with one another are in a position to avoid the problem of “safe supplies” during spoken encounters—the need to find a sufficient supply of inoffensive things to talk about during the period when an official state of talk prevails. Thus, in Rancho Cordova, when three or four women were knitting together, one kinnter would say a word, it would be allowed to rest for a minute or two, and then another knitter would provide an additional comment. In the same manner a family sitting around its kitchen fire would look into the flames and intersperse replies to statements with periods of observation of the fire. Rancho Cordova men used for the same purpose the lengthy pauses required for the proper management of their pipes. It has been suggested that an individual divulges things about oneself by one’s mere presence in a situation. In the same way, one gives off information about oneself by virtue of the encounters in which others do not or do not see one. Involvement in focused interaction conveying something to all who are present in the situation at large. In public places in our society, what is conveyed by being in or out of encounters differs appreciably according to gender and the periods of the week. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Morning and lunchtime are times when anyone can appear alone almost anywhere without this giving evidence of how the person is faring in the social World; dinner and other evening activities, however, provide unfavourable information about unaccompanied participants, especially damaging in the case of female participation. Weekend nights, and ceremonial occasions such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and especially New Year’s Eve, are given special weight in this connection, being times when an unengaged individual in a semipublic place may feel very much out of place. In so far as others judge the individual socially by the company one is seen in, for one to be brought into an engagement with another is to be placed in the position of being socially identified as the other is identified. Unlike some other people, I did not volunteer to become football manager in high school so I could make-out with the players and cheerleaders behind the equipment shed after practices. I volunteered to carry water bottles and towels during the hot, exciting practices because my guidance counselor said I needed an extracurricular activity if I wanted to be accepted into a good college. Football practice was the only activity I could drive the BMW to in the afternoons. One day, I was gathering water bottles by the side of the field during practice when Mickey Lim, one of the senior varsity players, trotted past me with a friend. “Is he a rapper?” he asked. I knew without looking up he was talking about me. “Dude, no.” his friend said. “I think his dad is president of a bank.” “Same thing,” Mickey said. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

However the history of the individual and that of the human race may diverge in other respects, they agree in this at least: both signify a progressive increase of the It-World. “Do you know why a child should remember its grown-up mind and not its previous child’s mind?” We have so little material by which to judge. I speak only of the way in which it can be studied. Suppose we were to try to remember what our minds were like at a very early age, trying not to let imagination come it. Supposed we were to find they were of one sort of another. Anything we found would be material. In literature you find very little because people do not understand how to study recurrence, but, within my own experience, I have met with very interesting things. Some people I knew had recollections of the first years of their lives, and they all had the same impression which was that their mentality was not a child’s mentality. How they took people, how they recognized people; it was not a child’s psychology. They had fully formed minds with quite grown-up reactions such as you cannot imagine could have been formed in six months of unconscious life. Such minds must have existed before if their recollections were really correct. However, as I say, it is very difficult to find material, and most people do not remember at all. “Why should that early memory disappear when the child learns to talk?” The child begins to imitate other children and do exactly what grown-up people expect from him. They expect him to impressionable and unaware and he becomes impressionable and unaware. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

“How is it possible to know what a baby remembers? I thought that one was born with one’s centers completely blank, and that one remembered with centers.” This is a strange thing. Yet the people I spoke of—who do not differ much from other people—have quite definite recollections of their first months even, and they think that they saw people as grown-up people do—not as children would. They do not try to reconstruct elaborate pictures from scattered and fragmentary recollections; they have quite definite impressions of houses, people, and so on. They seem to have had a quite grown-up mentality. “I can remember things when I was two years old which did not happen at all. How can one verify what a baby remembered before it could speak?” How do you know that they did not happen? It could have been a dream. I had an experience of that kind. I remember that when I was quite a child I was in some place near Moscow and the picture of the place remained in my memory. Actually, I was not there until about for years after that. Then, when I went there, I saw that the place was not the same as it had been in my memory, and I realized that my memory had been a dream. About the question of former lives: I think some people can remember something, although only in very rare cases, since to remember implies already a certain definite degree of development. Ordinary man—no.1, no. 2, and no. 3—has no apparatus for such memory. Essence is mechanical. It does not life by itself; it has no special thinking apparatus, but has to think through personality, and personality has no experience. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

“When you said, “Observe children,” what did you mean? That is what is so difficult. If you observe tendencies on a big scale you can find quite unexpected tendencies. You cannot say that they are the result of a certain reason or of surroundings, because quite unexpected tendences can appear and disappear. They will continue throughout life after rewards. In such a case, according to the theory of recurrence, the tendency may have been acquired in a very previous life in much later years, and then it appears very early in this life. “From that point of view of recurrence then, may it not be that some important actions that we make between now and the time that we die are really responsible for our tendencies now?” You mean in previous lives. Quite possibly. Only, remembering one thing, this work did not exist before. It may be that other work did, (there are many kinds,) but not this. It did not exist before, I am perfectly sure of that. “What I mean is that it seems such a huge idea to think that between now and the time when we die, we may make fatal actions which will give us tendencies for the next time.” Certainly, in every moment of our lives we may create tendencies that we may not be able to get rid of for ten lives. That is why this point is always emphasized in Indian literature. It may be in fairy-tale form but the principle is the same. Relation is reciprocity. My You acts on as I act on it. Our students teach us, our works form us. The “wicked” become a revelation when they are touched by the sacred basic word. How are we educated by children, by animals! Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Most people trying to win others to their way of thinking do too much talking to themselves. Let the other people talk themselves out. They know more about their business and problems than you do. So ask them questions. Let them tell you a few things. If you disagree with them, you may be tempted to interrupt. However, do not. It is dangerous. They will not pay attention to you while they still have a lot of ideas of their own crying for expression. So listen patiently and with an open mind. Be sincere about it. Encourage them to express their ideas fully. Does this policy pay in business? One of the largest furniture manufacturers in the United States of America was negotiating to supply furniture for model homes. One of the representatives was not feeling well. When it came his turn to explain why they have the best deals on high quality furniture, he could not speak. When he met with the purchasing agent, the direct of sales, and the president of the company, he still could not speak. He then told everyone that he had lost his voice and could not speak. So the president of our company did the talking for him as to why he wanted this brand of furniture in the model homes. He exhibited the representative’s samples, and praised their good points. A lively discussion arose about the merits of his goods. And the president, since he was talking for the representative of the furniture company thoroughly explain what he liked about the product. The representative of the furniture company smiled and nodded. As a result of this unique conference, he was awarded the contract with an aggregate value of $2,000,000—the biggest order the sales representative has ever received. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Therefore, you can see how important it is to be kind, and honest, and sometimes to let other people speak for you, even when they have hired you to provide them with goods and/or services. The president later said that he decided to go with this manufacture because they were an American company that started about twenty-eight years ago, with nothing but a desk in a small office and a secretary, and that he was honoured to work with such a great company. Although everyone is not looking to hear a story of pity, nor do they want to, people often to research. So sometimes showing up, and trying to do your part can really help you achieve success. However, almost every successful person likes to reminisce about one’s early struggles. This may not come up during a sales pitch, but during a casual lunch or a phone call. The sales representative at this company has started with $1,000 in cash and an original idea. He fought against discouragement and battled against ridicule, working seven days a week, holidays, twelve to sixteen hours a day; and he had finally won against all odds. Even executives on Wall Street were coming to him for furniture for their offices. He was proud of such a record. He had a right to be, and he spent time telling the builder and architect about it. And the president of the company said, “I think this is the person we are looking for.” The president of the company that was developing homes takes time to find out about his employees and manufacturers. He shows an interest in people and their problems, and expresses how important it is to be honest with him as he understand life happens. So sometimes when people want you for a job, they will do the talking for you. It is just as important to listen as it is to speak. When trying to make friends, sometimes it helps to listen to their accomplishment and let them excel you. Let them share their joys with you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

We turn now to a mechanism that depends on interactions within the system to stimulate further activation of agents. For instance, people crowding their cars onto highways (traffic jams), or ecologies of species (mass extinction events). What is happening in all these instances is that a small event may or may not trigger other events. An additional grain of sand added at the top of a pile my dislodge another, which may dislodge others. The added particle may dislodge another, which may dis lodge others. The added particle may dislodge few others or none. When sand is piled at its “angle of repose,” it is ripe for avalanches. There is a striking pattern, known as a power law distribution, in which the numbers of events in different sizes categories are related by a constant proportion. This principle can be illustrated by the distribution of the sizes of wars as well as the sizes of avalanches. For example, there are many small wars, a moderate number of medium-sized wars, and a few very large wars. This patten of sizes of wars can be seen as the result of propagation of stress resulting in a power law distribution. Consider these pioneering statistics on the distribution of wars from 1820 to 1945 that caused 300 or more battle deaths: About 1,000 deaths, number of deaths 188; about 10,000 deaths, number of wars 63, about 100,000 deaths, number of wars 24; about 1,000,000 deaths, number of wars 5; about 10,000,000 deaths, number of wars 2. Not that for each tenfold increase in the magnitude of the war, there is roughly threefold decrease in the number of wars. However, the increase by a factor of ten in the magnitude means that the wars in the category kill a total of about three times as many people. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

There are other important results about these systems. One is that after they build up to their critical state, such as the sand pile’s angle of repose, a long time without a big event does not necessarily mean that something big is due soon. There is such a complicated interdependence among all the sand grains, snowflakes, or species that you cannot know whether small events are relieving or increasing the stress. In the critical state, the sand pie is the functional unit, not the grain of and. If sand particles, or species, or highway drivers keep arriving in the system, they will soon build it back up to its critical state, even if there have been big releases. Now when it comes to establishing credibility cutting off communication succeeds as a credible commitment device because it can make an action truly irreversible. An extreme form of this tactic arises in the terms of a last will and testament. Once the party had died, renegotiation is virtually impossible. (To further highlight this illustration, it took an act of the British parliament to change Cecil Rhodes’s will in order to allow female Rhodes Scholars.) In general, where there is a will, there is a way to make your strategy credible. For example, most universities set a price for endowing a chair. The going rate is about $1.5 million. There prices are not carved in stone (nor covered with ivy). Universities have been known to bend their rules in order to accept the terms and the money of deceased doners who fail to meet the current prices. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

One need not die trying to make commitments credible. Irreversibility stands watch at every mailbox. Who has not mailed a letter and then wished to retrieve it? And it works the other way. Who has not received a letter he or she wishes one had not? However, you cannot send it back and pretend you have never read it once you have opened the letter. Before the practice became widespread, a successful commitment device was to mail one’s bill payments in unstamped letters with no return address. Mailing a letter with no return address is an irreversible commitment. The post office used to deliver such letters, and the receiver could accept delivery by paying the postage due. A utility or phone company knew that such a letter was likely to contain a check. It would rather pay the postage due than wait another billing cycle before receiving payment (or another unstamped letter with no return address). The solution to the companies’ problem came when the post office changed its policy. Letters without postage are no longer delivered to the addressee; they are returned to the sender if there is a return address and not delivered if there is no return address. Now the company can commit itself not to receive a letter with postage due. However, what if you put the company’s address as both the mailing address and the return address? Now the post office has someone to return the letter to. Remember, you did not hear this idea here first. And if it begins to spread, rest assured that the post office rules will be changed so that letters without a stamp are not even retuned to the sender. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

There is a serious difficulty with the use of cutting off communication as device to maintain commitment. If you are incommunicado, it may be difficult if not impossible to make sure that the rival has accorded with your wishes. You must first hire others to ensure that the contract is being honoured. For example, wills are carried out by trustees, not the deceased. A parental rule against smoking may be exempt from debate while parents are away, but unenforceable too. Now when considering molecular repairs, cells are made of billions of molecules, each built by molecular machines. These molecules self-assemble to form larger structures, many in dynamic patterns, perpetually disintegrating and reforming. Cell-surgery devices will be able to make molecules of sorts that may be lacking, while destroying molecules that are damaged or present in excess. They will be able not only to remove viral genes, but to repair chemical and radiation-caused damage to the cell’s own genes. Advanced cell-surgery devices would be able to repair cells almost regardless of their initial state of damage. By activating and inactivating a cell’s genes, they will be able to stimulate cell division and guide what types of cells are formed. This will be a great assistance to cell herding and to healing tissues. As surgeons today rely on the spontaneous, self-organizing ability of cells and tissues to join and heal the parts they manipulate, so cell-surgery devices will rely on the spontaneous self-organizing capabilities of molecules to join and “heal” the parts they put together. Healing of surgical wound involves sweeping up dead cells, growing new cells, and a slow and genuinely painful process of tissues reorganization. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

In contrast, the joining of molecules is almost instantaneous and occurs on a scale far below that of the most sensitive pain receptor. “Healing” will not begin after the repair devices have done their work, as it does in conventional surgery: rather, when they complete their work, the tissue will have been healed. When dealing with Earth politics, during the period of mass democracy, people, parties, and policies were typically categorized as either left-wing or right-wing. Issues were usually “domestic” or “foreign.” They fit into a neat framework. The new system of wealth creation makes these political tags, and the coalitions that went with them, obsolete. Ecological catastrophes are neither right-wing nor left-wing, and some are both domestic and international. Man of our most serious environmental problems—from air pollution to toxic waste—are by-products of the old, industrial methods of creating wealth. By contrast, the new system, with its substitution of knowledge for material resources, its dispersal, rather than concentration of production, its increasing energy efficiency, and its potential for dramatic advances in recycling technologies, holds out the hope of combining ecological sanity with economic advance. It is unlikely, however, that the next decade or two will pass without new Chernobyls, Fukushima Daiichis, Bhopals, and Alaska oil spills, legacies of the smokestack era. These, in turn, will lead to bitter conflicts over new technologies and their possible consequences. Social groups inside each country (and, indeed, whole countries) will demand “ecological indemnification” from one another and fight over the allocation of clean-up costs. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Others will demand “ecological blackmail” or “ransom” to abstain from actions that could send fallout, acid rain, weather changes, toxic wastes, or other dangerous products across their neighbours’ borders. Also, with new green energy, if the power grid is overwhelmed or shutdown, people will not be able to charge and drive their electric cars. Will the advance economies wind up making “ecological welfare payments” to the Brazils and Indias of the World to deter them from destroying rain forests, jungles, or other environmental resources? What about natural disasters in a newly networked World economy? An earthquake in Tokyo can now send Wall Street reeling into chaos. Should Wall Street contribute to Tokyo’s earthquake-preparedness programs? As such issues left-wing or right-wing? Domestic or foreign? The attempt to deal politically with such problems will not only fragment old alliances, but breed more zealots—World savers from whom environmental requirements (as they define them) supersede the niceties of democracy. One of the biggest mistakes the government made was breaking up the vertical integration of Standard Oil by calling it a monopoly. This is what lead to people seek immigrants for more affordable wages, and what caused companies to send their firms overseas. If companies were allowed to control their supply chain, they could still affordably manufacture products in America. EXTENDED, the lines of relationships intersect in the eternal You. Every single You is a glimpse of that. Through every single You the basic word addresses the eternal You. If we want America to be one dynasty that defines history, we have to keep America first. It is sad when you earn $5,000 a month gross, but bring home $2,900 in net pay. While you can barely afford to get by, you hard earned dollars are being sent overseas. How are Americans not upset about their tax money being through away and their children’s future being sold? #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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One Who Treads Softly Goes Far

For man the emanations of light and heat from the sun were the archetypes of all miraculous power. And then various idols came into the heathen World. Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who las, roused from the slumber on that fiery cough, at their great emperor’s call, as next in worth came singly where he stood on the bare strand, while the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof. The chief were those who from the pit of hell  roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix their seats long after next the seat of God, their altars by his altar, gods adored among the nations round, and durst abide God thundering out of Zion, throned between the Cherubim; yea, often placed within his sanctuary itself their shrines, abomination; and with cursed things his holy rites, and solemn feasts profaned, and with their darkness durst affront his light. First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears, though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud through for the noise of drums and timbrels loud their children’s cries unheard, that passed through fire to his grim idol. Him the Ammonite worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, in Argob and in Basan, to the stream of Utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heat of Solomon he led by fraud to build his temple right against the temple of God on that opprobrious hill, and made his grove the pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence and black Gehenna called, the type of hell. Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab’s sons, from Aroer to Nebo, and the wild of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon and Horoanim, Soen’s realm, beyond the flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, and Eleale to the Asphaltic Pool. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim on their march from Nile to do him wnton rites, which cost them woe. Yet thence his lustful pleasures of the flesh he enlarged even to that hill of scandal, by the grove of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate; till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. With these came they, who from the bordering flood of old Euphrates to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names of Baalim and Ashtaroth, those male, these feminine. For Spirits when they please can either gender assume, or both; so soft and uncompounded is their essence pure, not tied or manacled with joint or limb, nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, can execute their airy purposes, and works of love or enmity fulfill. For those the race of Israel oft forsook their Living Strength, and unfrequented left his righteous altar, bowing lowly down to bestial gods; for which their heads as low bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear of despicable foes. With these in troop came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; to whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs, in Sion also not unsung, where stood her temple on the offensive mountain, built by that uxorious king, whose heart though large, beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell to idols foul. Once you admit that a man can become one with the sun, it follows that the actions of the one are the actions of the other, that the king himself in his person, will vivify the Earth. Life, prosperity, health—these are the timeless and universal hunger of men. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

When it comes to focused interaction, once a set of participants have avowedly opened themselves up to one another for an engagement, an eye-to-eye ecological huddle tends to be carefully maintained, maximizing the opportunity for participants to monitor one another’s mutual perceivings. The participants turn their minds to the same subject matter and (in the case of talk) their eyes to the same speaker, although of course this single focus of attention can shift within limits from one topic to another from one speaker or target to another. The conversation generally proceeded so that one person talked at a time, and all members in the particular group were attending the same conversation. In this sense, these groups might be said to have a “single focus,” that is, they did not involve a number of conversations proceeding at the same time, as one finds at a cocktail party or in a hotel lobby. The single focus is probably a limiting condition of fundamental importance in the generalizations reported here. To this the caution should be added that the multiple focuses found in places like hotel lobbies would occur simultaneously with unfocused interaction. A shared definition of the situation comes to prevail. This includes agreement concerning perceptual relevancies and irrelevancies, and a “working consensus,” involving a degree of mutual considerateness, sympathy, and a muting of opinion differences. When closeness and sympathy are to be held to a minimum, as when a butler talks to a house guest, or an enlisted man is disciplined by an officer, eye-to-eye communion may be avoided by the subordinate holding his eyes stiffly to the front. An echo of the same factor is to be found even in mediated conversation, where servants are obliged to answer the telephone by saying, “Mrs. Hilton’s residence” instead of “Hello.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Often a group atmosphere develops—what is called ethos. In spite of the auspicious rumours about the Cossacks, perhaps slightly exaggerated, the crowd’s attitude toward the mounted men remains cautious. A horseman sits high above the crowd; his soul is separated from the soul of the demonstrator by the four legs of his beast. A figure at which one must gaze from below always seems more significant, more threatening. The infantry are beside one on the pavement—closer, more accessible. The masses try to get near them, look into their eyes, surround them with their hot breath. A great role is played by women workers in the relations between workers and soldiers. They go up to the cordons more boldly than men, take hold of the rifles, beseech, almost command: “Put down your bayonets—join us.” The soldiers are excited, ashamed, exchange anxious glances, waver; someone makes up one’s mind first, and the bayonets rise guiltily above the shoulders of the advancing crowd. The barrier is opened, a joyous and grateful “Hurrah!” shakes the air. When a group of young intellectual English men or women are talking and joking together wittily and with a touch of light cynicism, there is established among them for the time being a definite tone of appropriate behaviour. Such specific tones of behaviour are in all cases indicative of an ethos. They are expressions of a standardized system of emotional attitudes. In this case the men have temporarily adopted a definite set of sentiments towards the rest of the World, a definite attitude towards reality, and they will joke about subjects which at another time they would treat with seriousness. If one of the men suddenly intrudes a sincere or realist remark it will be received with no enthusiasm—perhaps with a moment’s silence and a slight feeling that the sincere person has committed a solecism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

On another occasion the same group of persons may adopt a different ethos; they may talk realistically and sincerely. Then if the blunderer makes a flippant joke, it will fall flat and feel like a solecism. A “we-rationale” develops, being a sense of the single thing that we the participants are avowedly doing together at the time. Further, minor ceremonies are likely to be employed to mark the termination of the engagement and the entrance and departure of the engagement and the entrance and departure of particular participants (should the encounter have more than two members). These ceremonies, along with the social control exerted during the encounters to keep the participants “in line,” give a kind of ritual closure to the mutual activity sustained in the encounter. An individual will therefore tend to be brough all the way into an ongoing encounter or kept altogether out of it. One well-established way of confirming and consolidating a leave-taking is for the leave-taker to move away physically from the other or others. In places like Midtown Sacramento this can cause a problem when two persons pause for a moment’s sociability and then find that their directions of movement do not diverge sharply. If the two persons walk at a normal pace, they find themselves attempting to close out the encounter while still having easy physical access to each other. Sometimes one individual offers and excuse to break into a run; sometimes, even if it takes one out of one’s way, one may take a path diverging sharply from that taken by one’s erstwhile coparticipant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Engagements of the conversational kind appear to have, at least in our society, some spatial conventions. A set of individuals caused to sit more than a few feet apart because of the furniture arrangements will find difficulty in maintaining formal talk; those brought within less than a foot and a half of each other will find difficulty in speaking directly to each other, and may talk at an off angle to compensate for the closeness. It appears that American, when standing face to face, stand about arm’s length from each other. When they stand side by side, the distance demanded is much less. When “middle majority Americans” stand closer than this in a face-to-face position they will either gradually separate or come toward each other and begin to emit signs of irritation. However, if they are put in a situation in which they are not required to interact—say on a street car—they can stand quite close, even to the point of making complete contact. The amount of this territory sees to vary culturally. So, there can be a situation where two or three ethnic groups occupy different territories, that is, varying amounts of personal space. For example, put together a Germany (who occupies about half the area of personal space) and a middle class American keeps drifting around to the side, in order not to be insulting, and the German man tries to move around to get face-to-face relationships. You get an actual dance, which very often turns into what is practically a fight. From all of this it follows that among persons arranged in a discussion circle, persons adjacent to each other may tend not to address remarks to each other, except to pass side comments, since a voice full enough to embrace the circle would be too full or the distance between them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

In brief, then, encounters are organized by means of a special set of acts and gestures comprising communication about communicating. There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works (“Hello, do you hear me?”), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm one’s attention (“Are you listening?” or in Shakespearean diction, “Lend me your ears!”—and on the other end of the wire “Um-hum!). Everyday terms refer to different aspects of encounters. “Cluster,” “knot,” “conversational circle”—all highlight the physical aspects, namely, a set of persons physically close together and facially oriented to one another, their backs toward those who are not participants. “Personal encounter” refers to the unit in terms of the opportunity it provides or enforces for some kind of social intimacy. In the literature, the term “the interaction” is sometimes used to designate either the activity occurring within the cluster at any one moment or the total activity occurring from the moment the cluster forms to the moment at which it officially disbands. And, of course, where spoken messages are exchanged, especially under informal circumstances, the terms “chat,” “a conversation,” or “a talk” are employed. It may be noted that while all participants share equally in the rights and obligations described, there are some rights that may be differentially distributed within an encounter. Thus, in spoken encounters, the right to listen is one shared by all, but the right to be a speaker may be narrowly restricted, as, for example, in stage performances and large public meetings. Similarly, children at the dinner table are sometimes allowed to listen but forbidden to talk; if not forbidden to talk, they may be “helped out” and in this way denied the communication courtesy of being allowed to finish a message for themselves. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

It often seems as if people get a sense of their own importance by antagonizing others at the outset. Therefore, in some engagements, one category of participant may be allowed to say only “Yes, sir,” or “No, sir,” or restricted to the limited signalling that a modulation of applause allows.  In talking with people, please do not begin by discussing the things on which you differ. Begin by emphasizing—and keep emphasizing, if possible, tht you are both striving for the same end and that your only difference is one of method and not of purpose. It took me years and cost me countless thousands of dollars in lost business before I finally learned that it does not pay to argue, that it is much more profitable and much more interesting to look at things from the other person’s viewpoint and try to get that person saying ‘yes.’” Do not tell people they are wrong. Try talking to them and see if you can get them into agreement, but do so gently. One who treads softly goes far. Memory is a strange thing. Everyone has one’s own combination of capacities for memory. One person remembers some things more; another remembers other things better. You cannot say that one is better than the other. Memory may disappear; there are many different degrees of it. Something may be forgotten and then brought up again by special methods, or it may disappear altogether. “Why do some people have a greater facility for playing ball games than others?” There are many different kinds of moving center with different kinds of memory. There is not a single human similar to another human. One can do one thing better; another, another thing. There are thousands of impressions so that the combinations are always different. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

I have spoken several times about the different kinds of humans—no. 1, no. 2, no. 3, and so on. One remembers one kind of impression better; another, another kind. “Does a life consist of memories from one moment to another?” No that is too complicated. You know that there are many different sorts of memory. And memory is passive; you do not use it. Life can be said to be a process. “What can one do to increase one’s memory?” If you remember yourself more, your memory will be better. “Until I came into the system I had a very clear memory of something which happened some time ago. Now, if I recall it, it is just a memory of a memory. Is this due to being a little more awake?” It probably connected with strong identification. When you look at it without identification it becomes fainter and may disappear. “Is complete non-identification self-consciousness?” Identification and self-consciousness are two different sides of the same thing. “Is it of practical use to think of the events of one’s past life when trying to self-remember? I mean, with a view to fixing them for any future recurrence.” No, this is not practical. First it is necessary for you to be sure that future recurrence exists. Secondly, it is necessary for you to be sure of remembering yourself. If you put it to yourself as you did in your question, it will turn into imagination, nothing else. However, if you try first of all to remember yourself without adding anything to it, and then—when you can—also to remember about your past life, and try to find cross-roads; then, in combination, they will be very useful. Only do not think that you can do it; you cannot do it yet. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

“What are cross-roads?” Cross-roads are moments when one can “do.” A moment comes when one can help in this work or not. If an opportunity comes and one misses it, another may not come for a year or even longer. There are periods in ordinary conditions when nothing happens, and then there come cross-roads. All life consists of streets and cross-roads. Recurrence can be useful if one begins to remember and if one begins to change and not go by the same circle each time, but do what one wants and what one thinks better. However, if one does not know about recurrence, or even if one knows and does not do anything, then there is no advantage in it at all. Then, it is generally the same things repeated and repeated. “Am I right in supposing that it is man’s essence which recurs?” Quite right. We know very little about recurrence. Some day we may try to collect what can be taken as reliable in all that is said about recurrence, and see how we can think about it. However, it is only theory. Recurrence is in eternity; it is not the same life. This life ends and time ends. There is a theory, and this system admits the theory, that time can be prolonged. I have no evidence. Think how many attempts to find out about time have been made by spiritualists and others. However, there is no evidence. The easiest way of studying recurrence is by studying children. If we had enough material we could answer may questions. Why, for instance, do strange tendencies appear in children, quite opposed to their surrounding circumstances and quite new to the people who surround them? That happens sometimes, in many different ways. And they may be very strong tendencies that change life and go in quite unexpected directions, when there is nothing in heredity to account for them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

As I have often said, the idea of heredity in man does not work. It is a fantastic idea. It works in dogs and horses but not in man. “Does the question of types come into that?” Yes, but we know nothing about types. At least not enough to speak about them. This is why in most cases it happens that parents do not understand their children and the children do not understand their parents. They never could really understand one another sufficiently or rightly, because they are quite different people, strangers to one another, who have just happened to meet accidentally at a certain station and then go in different directions again. The study of recurrence must begin with the study of children’s minds; particularly before they begin to speak. If children could remember this time, they would remember very interesting things. However, unfortunately, when they begin to speak, they become real children and they forget after six months or a year. It is very seldom that people remember what they thought before that, at a very early age. If they could do so, they would remember themselves such as they were when grown up. They were not children at all; then, later they became children. If they could remember their early mentality, it would be the same mentality as grown-up people have That is what is interesting. Our examples have centered largely on movement (and barriers) in spaces, physical and conceptual—with the exception of our short discussion of reading and writing as technologies of interaction across time. A quite different mechanism also exists. We have examined the tendences of many biological and social systems to assume hierarchical (or “pyramidal” or “inverted tree”) shape. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

We have noticed that the upper layers of such systems typically involve processes that span longer time intervals, while the lower levels are more often involved with processes that run relatively quickly. CEOs and board members concern themselves with the question of what markets should be entered in the coming years, while factory floor supervisors concern themselves with the production schedule for the coming week. A brain may take one or two seconds to compose a sentence, but the nerve cells within one of its many cooperating parts, say the left cerebral cortex, discharge in times measured in milliseconds. The debate remains that this hierarchical arrangement of times scales supports effective governance in a system, which is why it is often seen in armies and bureaucracies. The reason that the slower activity at the upper levels establishes a stable context for faster processes running at lower levels. It helps in providing a social service if the definition of who the client is does not change while you are providing it. Likewise, it helps in taking a defended hilltop if the definition of the enemy does not change while you are attacking it. Hierarchies have the property that every element of the system (but the bottom ones) have several subordinates. So whenever a “superordinate” element acts, it establishes a context that allows its subordinates to act in concert. This is tremendously useful in achieving the benefits of coordination. Napoleon had the same idea when he said, “One bad general is better than two good generals.” In this view, this separation of time scales is so advantageous that we should expect evolution to produce it frequently. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Actions with long time frames should tend to become assigned to positions that govern levels in which actions have shorter time frames. Systems that organize this way will have a competitive advantage, and there should be more of them over time. We stand far back to discern this tendency across a wide range of what we call Complex Adaptive Systems. However, standing close-up to organizational cases shows that the assignment of actions to levels is generally done by the agents within them. If those agents understand the principle, it offers them another opportunity to influence events. One might argue that “in our consumer products business, products now should come and go very rapidly. The CEO should no longer make those decisions for our company. At that level, the concern should be for our long-run reputation with consumers and for the research and development that generates new products. Our reputation should shape our products more than the other way around.” As usual, we do not claim that an argument like this is always right. We do not think that it comes from—and lead to—the right kinds of questions. If you fail to follow through, a straightforward way to make your commitment credible is to agree to a punishment. If your kitchen remodeler gets a large payment upfront, one is tempted to slow down the work. However, a contract that specifies payment linked to the progress of the work and penalty clauses for delay can make it in one’s interest to stick to the schedule. The contract is the commitment device. Actually, it is not quite that simple. Imagine that a dieting man offers to pay $500 to anyone who catches him eating unhealthy food. Every time the man thinks of a dessert, he knows it is just not worth $500. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Do not dismiss this example as incredible; just such a contract was offered by a Mr. Nick Russo—except the amount was $25,000. So, fed up with various weight-loss programs, Mr. Russo decided to take his problem to the public. In addition to going on a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet, he is offering a bounty–$25,000 to the charity of one’s choosing—to anyone who spots him eating in a restaurant. He has peppered local eateries…with “wanted” pictures of himself. However, this contract has a fatal flaw: there is no mechanism to prevent renegotiation. With visions of eclairs dancing in his head, Mr. Russo should argue that under the present contractual agreement, no one will ever get the $25,000 penalty since he never violated the contract. Hence, the contract is worthless. Renegotiation would be in their mutual interest. For example, Mr. Russo might offer to buy a round of drinks in exchange for being released from the contract. The restaurant diners prefer a drink to nothing and let him out of the contract. For the contract approaching to be successful, the party that enforces the action or collects the penalty must have some independent incentive to do so. In the dieting problem, Mr. Russo’s family might also want him to be skinner and thus not be tempted by a mere free drink. The contracting approach is better suited to business dealings. A broken contract typically produces damages, so that the injured party is not willing to give up on the contract for naught. For example, a producer might demand a penalty from a supplier who fails to deliver. The producer is not indifferent about whether the supplier delivers or not. He would rather get his supply than receive the penalty sum. Renegotiating the contract is no longer a mutually attractive option. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

What happens if the supplier tries the dieter’s argument? Suppose he attempts to renegotiate on the grounds that the penalty is so large that the contract will always be honoured and the producer will never receive the penalty. This is just what the producer wants, and hence he is not interested in renegotiation. The contract works because the producers is not solely interested in the penalty; he cares about the actions promised in the contract. It is possible to write contracts with neutral parties as enforcers. A neutral party is someone who does not have any personal interest in whether the contract is upheld. To make personal interest credible, the neutral party must be made to care about whether or not the commitment is kept by creating a reputation effect. In some instances, the contract holder might lose his job if he allows the contract to be rewritten. Another example, in Denver, one rehabilitation center treats wealthy cocaine addicts by having them write a self-incriminating letter which will be made public if they fail random urine analysis. After placing themselves voluntarily in this position, many people will try to buy their way back out of the contract. However, the person who holds the contract will lose his if the contract is rewritten; the center will lose its reputation if it fails to fire employees who allow contract to be rewritten. The moral is that contracts alone cannot overcome the credibility problem. Success requires some additional credibility tool, such as employing parties with independent interests in enforcement or a reputation at stake. In fact, if the reputation effect is strong enough, it may be unnecessary to formalize a contract. This is the sense of a person’s word being his bond. On the other hand, among college professors, there is a saying, “A handshake is good enough between businessmen. However, when your university’s dean promises you something, get it in writing.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The age of mass democracy was also the age of immense concentrations of power at the level of nation. This concentration reflected the rise of mass-production technology and national markets. Today’s short-run technologies change things. Take a loaf of bread. Baked goods originally came from local bakeries. However, with industrialization, mom-and-pop bakeries were overwhelmed by supermarkets that bought baked goods from giant national companies like Nabisco in the United States of America. Today, surprisingly, many U.S.A. supermarkets, in addition to selling the national brands, have begun to bake on their own premises. We are coming full circle—but on the basis of more sophisticated technology. Photos, once sent to Rochester, New York, to be centrally processed by Kodak, can now be developed and printed on every street corner. Commercial printing, which once required heavy investment and complex machinery, can now be done using small, advanced coping equipment in shops in every neighbourhood. New technologies are thus making local production competitive again. Simultaneously, however, the advanced economy transfers other forms of production to the global level. Cars, computers, and many other products are now no longer made in a single country, but require components and assembly in many nations. These twin changes, one driving production down and the other up, have direct political parallels. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Together they explain why we see pressures for political decentralization in all the high-tech nations, from Japan and the United States of America, across Europe—along with simultaneous attempts to shift power upward to supra-national agencies. The most significant of the latter is the European Community’s drive to re-centralize power at a higher level by creating a single integrated market, along with a single currency and a single central bank. However, even as the EC steamroller attempts to flatten difference and concentrate political and economic decision-making, various regions are taking advantage of its attack on national power from above to launch a parallel attack from below. The single European market offers us a great opportunity to break the centralization of Paris. In fact, the entire Rhone-Alpes region is hooking up with regions outside France—Catalonia, Lombrdy, and Baden Wurttemberg—in pursuit of mutual interests. As the super-symbolic economy spreads, it will create constituencies for radical shifts of power among local, regional, national, and global levels. The “politics of levels” can be expected to split voters into four distinct groupings: “globalists,” “nationalists,” “regionalists,” and “localists.” Each will defend its perceived identity (and its economic interests) with ferocity. Each will seek allies. Each group will attract different financial and industrial supporters, depending on self-interest, but each will also attract talented artists, writers, and intellectuals who will manufacture appropriate ideological rationales for them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

What is more—contrary to conventional opinion—regions and localities, instead of becoming more uniform, are destined to grow more diverse. If you look at the U.S.A as an entity, you make a serious error. Different parts of the United States of America are as different as night and day. One might not go as far to suggest that the United States of America is on its way to becoming a nation of city-states. However, a close look at statistics for the 1980s already shows widening differences between the two coasts, the Midwest, and the oil patch, and between the big urban centers and the suburbs. Whether measures in housing starts, rates of growth, employment levels, investment, or social conditions, these differences are likely to widen further, rather than narrow, under the impact of a new economy that runs counter to the homogenization of the smokestack era. As regions and localities take on their own cultural, technological, and political character, it will be harder for governments to manage economies with the traditional tools of central bank regulations, taxation, and financial controls. Rising or lowering interest rates or setting a new tax rate will produce radically different consequences in different parts of the same country. And as these disparities widen, they may well trigger an explosion of extremist movements demanding regional or local autonomy or actual secession. The bombs are present, waiting to be detonated in al the advanced economies. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

In every nation some regions already regard themselves as economically cheated by the central authorities. Promises to reduce regional differences have delivered little, as any resident of Glasgow will tell you. (The renewal of secessionists sentiment in America has worried the president enough for him to express private fears about the breakup of the United States of America due to the Southern boarder crises, income and inequality, and weak law enforcement.) Canada hangs together by a thread. Apart from economic inequalities, moreover, there are also long-festering linguistic and ethic cells of secession in places like South Tyrol, Brittany, Alsace, Flanders, Catalonia. A untied Western Europe will have to grant increasing regional and local autonomy—or smash all these movements with a steel fist. In Central Europe, so long as the Hapsburgs ruled, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, hostilities among their German, Italian, Polish, Magyar, Slovak, and Austrian subjects were suppressed (barely) by the central power. Once Hapsburg power disintegrated after World War I, these groups hurled themselves at one another’s throats with a vengeance. The collapse of Soviet power in Central Europe has raised age-old ghosts. Already we see a sharp intensification of the conflict over the Hungarian minority in Romania and the Turks in Bulgaria. Father south, Yugoslavia could break apart as its Serbs, Albanians, Croats, and other nationalities war with one another. And all this ignore the gigantic centrifugal forces that had been threatening to splinter Russia. The smokestack era was the great age of nation-building, which led to central control over small communities, city-states, regions, and provinces. It was this consolidation that made national capitals the centers of enormous state power. The decline of the smokestack era will set loose bone-deep resentments, vast and violent emotional tides, as the locus of power is transferred. In many parts of the World it will multiply extremist groups for whom democracy is a bothersome obstacle, to be destroyed if it stand in the way of their fanatic passions. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

When it comes to working on cells, moving through tissues without leaving a trial of disruption will require devices able to manipulate and direct the motions of cells, and to repair them. Much remains to be learned—and will be easy to learn with nanoscale tools—but today’s knowledge of cells is enough for a start on the problem of how to do surgery on cells. Cell biology is a booming field, even today. Cells can be made to live and grow in laboratory cultures if they are placed in a liquid with suitable nutrients, oxygen, and the rest. Even with today’s crude techniques, much has been learned about how cells respond to different chemicals, to different neighbours, and even to being poked and cut with needles. Conducting a rough sort of surgery on individual cells has been routine for many years in scientific laboratories. Today, researchers can inject new DNA into cells using a tiny needle; small punctures in a cell membrane automatically reseal. However, both these techniques use tools that on a cellular scale are large and clumsy—like doing surgery with an ax or a wrecking ball, instead of a scalpel. Nano-scale tools will enable medical procedures involving delicate surgery on individual cells. Some viral diseases will respond to treatments that destroy viruses in the nose and throat, or in the bloodstream. The flu and common cold are example. Many others would be greatly improved by this, but not eliminated. Al viruses work by injecting their genes into a cell and taking over its molecular machinery, using it to produce more viruses. This is part of what makes viral illnesses so hard to treat—most of the action is performed by the body’s own molecular machines, which cannot be interfered with on a whole basis. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

When the immune system deals with a viral illness, it both attack free virus particles before they enter cells, and attacks infected cells before they can churn out too many more virus particles. Some viruses, though, insert their genes among the genes of the cell, and lay low.  The cell can seem entirely normal to the immune system, for months, or years, until the viral genes are triggered into action and begin the infective process anew. This pattern is responsible for the persistence of viral skin rashes, and for other slow and fast, deadly viruses. These viruses can be eliminated by molecular-level cellular surgery. The required devices could be small enough to fit entirely within the cell, if need be. Calculation imply that molecular sensors, molecular computers, and molecular effectors can be combined into a device small enough to fit easily inside a single cell and powerful enough to repair molecular and structural defects (or to degrade foreign structures such as viruses and bacteria) as rapidly as they accumulate….There is no reason such systems cannot be built and function as designed. Equally well, a cell-surgery device located outside a cell could reach through the membrane with long probes. At the ends of the probes would be tools and sensors along with, perhaps, a small auxiliary computer. These would be able to reach through multiple membranes, unpackage and uncoil DNA, read it, repackage it, and recoil it, “proofreading” the DNA by comparing the sequences in one cell to the sequence of others cells. On reading the genetic sequence spelling out the message of the COVID-19 virus,  molecular-surgery machine could be programmed to respond like an immune machine, destroying the cell. However, it would seem to make more sense simply to cut out the COVID virus genes themselves, and reconnect the ends as they were before infection. By doing this, and killing any viruses found in the cell, the procedure would restore the cell to health. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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