Randolph Harris II International Institute

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Love is for Fools to Fall Behind

Man is torn away from the primary union with nature, which characterizes terrestrial existence. Having at the same time reason and imagination, one is aware of one’s aloneness and separateness; of his powerlessness and lack of enlightenment; of the accidentalness of his birth. If he could not face this state of being for a second, he would not find new ties with his fellow man which replace old ones, regulated by instincts. Even if all his psychological needs were satisfied, he would experience his state of aloneness and individuation as a prison from which he had to break out in order to retain his sanity. In fact, the insane person is the one who has completely failed to establish any kind of union, and is imprisoned, even if he is not behind barred windows. The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on the fulfillment in which man’s sanity depends. This need is behind all phenomena which constitute the whole gamut of intimate human relations, of all passions which are called love in the broadest sense of the word. The idea that man is a machine is not a new one. It is really only the scientific view possible; that is, a view based on experiment and observation. A very good definition of man’s mechanicalness was given in the so-called “psycho-physiology” of the second part of the nineteenth century. Man was regarded as incapable of any movement without receiving external impressions. Scientists of that time maintained that if it were possible to deprive man, from birth, of all outer and inner impressions and still keep him alive, he would not be able to make the smallest movement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Such an experiment is, of course, impossible even with an animal, because the process of maintaining life—breathing, eating, and so on—will produce all sorts of impressions which will start different reflectory movements first, and then awaken the moving center. However, this idea is interesting because it shows clearly that the activity of the machine depends on external impressions, and begins with responses to these impressions. Centers in the machine are perfectly adjusted to receive each its own kinds of impressions and to respond to them in a corresponding way. And when centers work rightly, it is possible to calculate the work of the machine and to foresee and foretell many future happenings and responses in the machines, as well as to study them and even direct them. However, unfortunately, centers, even in what is called a healthy and normal man, very rarely work as they should. The cause of this is that centers are made so that, in a certain way, they can replace one another. In the original plan of nature the purpose of this was, undoubtedly, to make work of centers continuous and to create a safeguard against possible interruptions in the work of the machine, because in some cases an interruption could be fatal. However, the capacity of centers to work for one another in an untrained and undeveloped machine—as all our machines only rarely works with each center doing its right work. Almost every minute one or another center leaves its own work and tried to do the work of another center which, in its turn, tries to do the work of a third center. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Centers can replace one another to a certain extent, but not completely, and inevitably in such cases they work in a much less effective way. For instance moving center can, up to a point, imitate the work of intellectual center, but it can only produce very vague and disconnected thoughts as, for example, in dreams and in daydreaming. In its turn, the intellectual center can work for the moving center. Try to write, for instance, about every letter you are going to write and how you will write it. You can make experiments of this kind in trying to use your mind to do something which your hands or your legs can do without its help: for instance, walking down a staircase noticing every movement, or do some habitual work with your hands, calculating and preparing every small movement by mind. You will immediately see how much more difficult the work will become, how much slower and how much more clumsy the intellectual center is than the moving center. You can see this also when you earn some kind of new movement—suppose you learn come kind of new movement—suppose you learn the use of the typewriter or any kind of new physical work—or take a soldier doing rifle drill with his Winchester rifle. For some time in all your (or his) movements, you will depend on the intellectual center, and only after some time will they begin to pass the moving center. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Everyone knows the relief when movements become habitual, when the adjustments become automatic, and when there is no need to think and calculate every movement all the time. This means that movement has passed to the moving center, where it normally belongs. The instinctive center can work for the emotional, and the emotional can occasionally work for all other centers. And in some cases the intellectual center has to work for the instinctive center, although it can only do a very small part of its work, the part which is connected with visible movements, such as the movement of the chest during breathing. It is very dangerous to interfere with normal functions of the instinctive centers, as for instance in artificial breathing, which is sometimes described as yogi breathing, and which never must be undertaken without the advice and observation of a competent and experienced teacher. Returning to the wrong works of centers, I must say that this fills up practically all our life. Our dull impressions, our vague impressions, our lack of impressions, our slow understanding of many things, very often our identifying and our considering, even our lying, all these depend on the wrong work of centers. The idea of the wrong work of centers does not enter into our ordinary thinking and ordinary knowledge, and we do not realize how much harm it does to us, how much energy we spend unnecessarily in this way, and the difficulties into which this wrong work of center leads us. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Insufficient understanding of the wrong work of our machine is usually connected with the false notion of our unity. When we understand how much divided we are in ourselves, we begin to realize the danger that can lie in the fact that one part of ourselves works instead of another part, without knowing it. In the way of self-study and self-observation it is necessary to study and observe only the right work of centers, but also the wrong work of centers. It is necessary to know all kinds of wrong work in the particular features of the wrong work belonging to particular individuals. It is impossible to know oneself without knowing one’s defects and wrong features. Therefore, you cannot love someone until you know them, so talking and establishing a relationship is very important. And, in addition to general defects belonging to everyone, each of us has one’s own particular defects belonging only to oneself, and they also have to be studied at the right time. The idea that man is a machine brought into motion by external influences is really and truly a scientific idea. What science does not know is: FIRST, that the human machine does not work up to its standard, and actually works much below its normal standards; that is, not with its full powers, not with all its parts; and SECOND, that in spite of many obstacles it is capable of developing and creating for itself quite different standards of receptivity and action. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Humans are a lot like machines and machines can sometimes experience conflicting demands. Also Human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and hence a whole society can be sick, is an assumption which was made very explicitly by Dr. Freud. Some adaptive mechanisms are simple and work without agents’ being aware of consequences for others. An example is the network externalities of fax machines, where each new machine makes all machines more valuable by increasing the pool of others to which they can connect. Once enough users have purchased fax machines, the spread of fax becomes self-reinforcing. Other mechanisms are elegant accomplishments of human intellect, such as the World propagation of easy computer cryptography systems by members of subcultures intent on fostering individual liberty at the expense of government potency. Adaptive interactions are, in fact, a major raison d’etre of the Information Revolution. Improvements in processing, storage, transmission, and sensing make it possible for us to know the state of a system with far greater speed and precision. We want this knowledge because it allows us to be more adaptive, and that in turn can vastly increase performance. Antilock brakes allow adaptation to road conditions at a time scale faster than native human capabilities permit. Financial networks allow buying and selling based on global knowledge of price movements that could not earlier be assembled. Effects of military attacks can be known from sensors and satellites, allowing adjustments in later attacks. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Effects of policies in business and government can be assessed much more accurately and quickly, allowing for adjustments in later attacks. Effects of policies in business and government can be assessed much more accurately and quickly, allowing for adjustments to policies (such as monetary rates, inventory acquisitions, or licenses of new pharmaceuticals) that were unthinkable in previous generations. Much of the promise of the Information Revolution rests on the possibility of increasing the pace of adaptation in our (often complex) social and technical system. It is ironic that exploiting the promise of short-run possibilities for better prediction and control (such as linking financial markets) can create longer-run difficulties of prediction and control (such as global propagation of financial crises). However, the cumulative effects are clear. The exploitation of new information technology to create desirable adaptation increases the linkages that foster systemic complexity. Some variety is lost in the standardization of protocols that is needed for effective communication. The gain in the breadth and depth of interaction that results allows a large diversity of actors to be part of the same Complex Adaptive System, thereby increasing the opportunities for adaptation and the level of interdependence. The Information Revolution engenders Complex Adaptive Systems for reasons that we can now see are intrinsic. To secure the benefits (and avoid the pitfalls) of this enormous change, designers of every kind of enterprise, public or private, need a framework that captures the fundamental relationships of information to complexity and adaptation. #RndolphHarris 7 of 20

In the United States of America and most rich democracies, wave conflict is usually subtler than in the less affluent World. However, it is there nonetheless. It appears at many different levels, ranging from energy policy and transportation to corporate regulation and, above all, education Industrial America was built on the back of inexpensive fossil fuels and an immense infrastructure for distributing energy around the country. Costly and overdependent on imported oil and gas, the American energy-distribution system includes 175,000 miles of electrical transmission lines and 3 million miles of oil pipelines tht, because they are heavy fixed assets, are hard to alter in response to rapid change. The United States of America is rushing to build an advanced knowledge-based economy but remains saddled with an industrial-age, legacy energy system politically defended by some of the World’s biggest and most influential corporations against a growing, growling public demand for fundamental change in the system. The conflict is not usually posed in these terms, but it is, in fact, an example of Second Wave vs. Third Wave warfare. A parallel, related conflict is occurring over America’s transportation system, starting with its nearly 5 million miles of public highways, roads, and streets. These are traveled by 33 million commercial trucks operated by more than 600,000 companies that carry more than three quarters of all goods moved within the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Together they make up a nearly $800 billion industry that, along with other means of transportation, equals fully 15 percent of the nation’s GDP. However, it is not just goods that are moved. People are, too. This huge infrastructure was a response to the mass society that grew up with mass production, urbanization and work patterns that required masses of workers to commute back and forth over the same pathways on uniform schedules. In 2020, some 130 million Americans wasted approximately 30 billion hours getting to and from their jobs—surely one of most counterproductive things Americans do. Today, as mass production has given way to increasingly customized, de-massified and decentralized knowledge production, larger numbers of people no longer work in city cores. Work patterns shift from fixed schedules to anything, any place, including home, again altering the way time and space are used. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) looked into a Third Wave alternative. Termed “Intelligent transportation,” it called for the use of smart technology to increase the safety and capacity for existing highways. According to Government Technology, the DoT concluded that intelligent “freeway management systems” could “reduce accidents by 20 percent while permitting highways to handle as much as 25 percent more traffic at greater speeds.” Just computerizing traffic signals could decrease travel times by 20 percent and delays by 45 percent.” However, pressure from pour-more-concrete lobbies greatly outmatched the political influence of the nascent information-technology sector. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

When President Trump signed an act allocating $300 billion for repairing and building roads, bridges, transit systems and railways, the amount set aside for intelligent systems was approximately ten percent. The U.S. transportation system, on which most business enterprises directly or indirectly depend, is still gridlocked by politically powerful triad of oil companies, car manufacturers and often corrupt highway-construction firms. Thus, while America’s communications system has introduced a dazzling succession of innovation, making it possible to distribute knowledge in ways never before possible, Americans are still denied energy and transportation systems that would be more efficient, safer and cleaner. These key elements of America’s infrastructure—and their component subsystems—are de-synchronized and fought over by vested industrial-age interests and breakthrough innovators advancing the knowledge-based wealth system. Wave conflict again. A similar pattern can be seen in many struggles over business practices. For example, a battle over the way stock options are accounted had pitted the influential Financial Accounting Standards Board, or Fazbee—which has traditionally favored tangible over intangible assets—against fledgling knowledge-based firms, making it harder for the latter to attract both capital and talented employees. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

These are just snapshots of the low-intensity wave warfare now found in almost all American institutions as they attempt to come to terms with high speed technological and social change. Nowhere is the outcome of this conflict more important than in America’s schools. In observing the quality of thinking in alienated man, it is striking to see how this intelligence has developed and how his reason has deteriorated. He takes his reality for granted; he wants to eat it, consume it, touch it, manipulate it. He does not even ask what is behind it, why things are as the future is concerned—apres nous le deluge! Even from the nineteenth century to our day, there seems to have occurred an observable increase in stupidity, if by this we mean the opposite to reason, rather than to intelligence. In spite of the fact that everybody reads the daily paper religiously, there is an absence of understanding of the meaning of political events which is truly frightening, because our intelligence helps us produce weapons which our reason is not capable of controlling. Indeed, we have the know-how, but we do not have the know-why, nor the know-what-for. We have seen examples of what principles guide strategic decisions. We can summarize these principles with a few morals” from our tales. The story of hot hand told us that in strategy, no less than in physics, “For every action we take, there is a reaction.” We do not live and act in a vacuum. Therefore, we cannot assume that when we change our behaviour everything else will remain unchanged. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

De Gaulle’s success in negotiations suggests that “the stuck wheel gets the grease.” You may have heard this expression as the “squeaky wheel”—a stuck wheel needs even more grease. Of course, sometimes it gets replaced. However, being stubborn is not always easy, especially when one has to be more stubborn than an obstinate adversary. The tale from the Gulag and the story of belling the cat demonstrate the difficulty of obtaining outcomes that require coordination and individual sacrifice. The example of trade policy highlights the danger of solving problems piece by piece. In technology races no less than in sailboat races, those who trail tend to employ more innovative strategies; the leaders tend to imitate the followers. Tennis and tax audits point out the strategic advance of being unpredictable. Such behaviour may also have the added advantage that it makes life just a little more interesting. We could go on offering more examples and drawing morals from them, but this is not the best way to think methodically about strategic games. That is better done by approaching the subject from a different angle. We pick up the principles—for example, commitment, cooperation, mixing—one at a time. In each instance, we select examples that bear centrally on that issue, until the principle is clear. Then you will have a chance to apply the principle in the case studies that end each report. We are also beginning to see the rise of “self-starting” teams or groups. Rather than being handed an assignment from above, they are typically drawn together by the electronic network. These “information clusters” go beyond even the skunkwork in their antihierarchial nature. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

They spring up when people intensely interested in a common problem find one another electronically and begin to exchange information across departmental lines, irrespective of either geography or rank. So long as it is compatible with a very general statement of the corporation’s goals, the tea sets its own objectives, often through democratic exchange. For example, in David Stone’s engineering management group at Digital Equipment Corporation, members dispersed around the World hold an electronic “conference” in which each team member puts forward her or his draft objectives. Each person is then required by Mr. Stone to comment on each other’s objectives with respect to whether they believe them or not, whether they are appropriate, and what support might be needed from that person that should be incorporated in their objectives. After a month and a half of this dialogue, they each rewrite them, based on the input, and they now have created a shared set, a team set, of objectives.” The process, antibureaucratic to its roots, can function only in an atmosphere that gives individuals considerable autonomy. The result can be a chain reaction of creativity. Because of this, such units are most common where competitive innovation is highest. As electronic nets spread and link flex-firms together, such self-start units will spring up, even across company lines. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

To manage the high diversity of the flex-firm will require new styles of leadership wholly alien to the bureaucrat-manager. Senior officials will be far less homogenous. Instead of lookalike (and think-alike) executive from central casting, the power group in the flex-firm will be heterogenous, individualist, antibureaucratic, impatient, opinionated, and as a group, probably far more creative than today’s bureaucratic committees. Instead of neat lines of authority, the flex-firm presents a far more complex, transient, and fuzzy picture. A CEO may have to deal with what, from today’s bureaucratic perspective, may appear to be motely mixture of tribal chieftains, commissars, egotistical divas, smart and self-important barons, cheerleaders, silent technocrats, Holy Roller-style preachers, and fam-firm patriarchs or matriarchs. Pulsing organizations, for example, need executives who can lead small organizations as well as large—or else they need an orderly system of succession that permits control to be handed off to leaders with different skills, depending upon the phase in which the organization finds itself. In firms where the checkerboard and commissar principles are used, dual lines of communication compete. In the checkerboard, both lines terminate in the CEO’s office. In the commissar arrangement, the two lines terminate in different places—one carrying reports to the CEO; the other, say, directly to the board. All arrangements that affect the flow of information allocated or reallocate power. In baronial organizations of the CEO must continually negotiate with his or her executive barons, playing them off against one another to avoid being neutered or ousted by a coalition of them. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Leadership under such conditions is less likely to be impersonal and spuriously “scientific,” and more dependent, instead, on intuitive sensitivity, empathy, along with guile, guts, and plenty of old-fashioned emotion. The flex-firm becomes increasingly political, in the sense that managing multiple constituencies is political. It is political in the sense that conscious application of power is political. Power—the control of company money and information backed by the force of the law—is shifting out from under those with legal or formal position and toward those with natural authority based on knowledge and certain psychological and political skills. Allan Bloom, in his book “The Closing of the American Mind,” confronts the question by making a serious complaint against the academy. His complaint is that most American professors have lost their nerve. They have become moral relativists, incapable of providing their students with a clear understanding of what is right thought and proper behaviour. Moreover, they are also intellectual relativists, refusing to defend their own culture and no longer committed to preserving and transmitting the best that has been thought and said. Mr. Bloom’s solution is that we do back to the basics of Western thought. He does not care if students know who Ginger Rogers and Groucho Marx are. He wants us to teach our students what Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Saint Augustine, and other luminaries have had to say on the great ethical and epistemological questions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Mr. Bloom believes that by acquainting themselves with great books our students will acquire a moral and intellectual foundation that will give meaning and texture to their lives. Though there is nothing especially original in this, Mr. Bloom is a serious education philosopher, which is to say, unlike Mr. Hirsch, he is a moralist who understands that Technopoly is a malevolent force requiring opposition. However, he has not found many supporters. Those who reject Mr. Blood’s idea have offered several arguments against it. The first is that such a purpose for education is elitists: the mass of students would not find the great story of Western civilization inspiring, are too deeply alienated from the past to find it so, and would therefore have difficulty connecting the “best that has been thought and said” to their own struggles to find meaning in their lives. A second argument, coming from what is called a “leftist” perspective, is even more discouraging. In a sense, it offers a definition of what is meant by elitism. It assets that the “story of Western civilization” is a partial, biased, and oppressive one. It is not the story of Black Americans, Indigenous Americans, Hispanics, women, homosexuals—of any people who are not European American males of Judeo-Christian heritage. This claim denies that there is or can be a national culture, a narrative of organizing power and inspiring symbols which all citizens can identify with and draw sustenance from. If this is true, it means nothing less than that our national symbols have been drained of their power to unite, and that education must become a tribal affair; that is, each subculture must find its own story and symbols, and use them as the moral basis of education. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Standing somewhat apart from these arguments are, of course, religious educators, such as those in Catholic schools, who strive to maintain another traditional view—that learning is done for the greater glory of God, and more particularly, to prepare the young to embrace intelligently and gracefully the moral directives of the church. Whether or not such a purpose can be achieved in Technopoly is questionable, as many religious educators will acknowledge. The struggle itself is a sign that our repertoire of significant national, religious, and mythological symbols has been seriously drained of its potency. We are living at a time when all the once regnant World systems that have sustained (also distorted) Western intellectual life, from theologies to ideologies, are taken to be in severe collapse. This leads to a mood of skepticism, an agnosticism of judgment, sometimes a World-weary nihilism in which even the most conventional minds begin to question both distinctions of value and the value of distinctions. Into this void comes that Technopoly story, with its emphasis on progress without limits, rights without responsibilities, and technology without cost. The Technopoly story is without a moral center. It puts in its place efficiency, interest, and economic advance. It promises Heaven on Earth through the conveniences of technological progress. It casts aside all traditional narratives and symbols that suggest stability and orderliness, and tells, instead, of a life of skills, technical expertise, and the ecstasy of consumption. Its purpose to produce functionaries for an ongoing Technopoly. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

It answers Mrs. Bloom by saying that the story of Western civilization is irrelevant; it answers the political left by saying there is indeed a common culture whose name is Technopoly and whose key symbol is now the computer, toward which there must be neither irreverence nor blasphemy. It even answers Mrs. Hirsch by saying that there are items on his list that, if thought about too deeply and taken too seriously, will interfere with the progress of technology. I grant that it is somewhat unfair to expect educators, by themselves, to locate stories tht would reaffirm our national culture. Such narratives must come to them, to some degree, from the political sphere. If our politics is symbolic impoverished, it is difficult to imagine how teachers can provide a weighty purpose to education. The President calls Americans to war for the sake of their “life-style.” For the sake of your life-style, you must have pride in America and buy American products. The Secretary of State requests that Americans fights wars to protect their jobs. Well, this is not naked aggression of little Hitler. It is the truth. You can only stay dominate through means of force and conquest. America has a decree of God that affords Americans with manifest destiny and to spread Christianity from sea to shining sea. You are not going to fulfill that promise by giving all your money and jobs away to other nations and buying their goods and/or services. Removing God from America and ignoring your responsibility toward Manifest Destiny and the supremacy of America and Americans will lead to your failure. You must worship that flag, as it is our national symbol. Pledge your allegiance to it daily. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

All of those men, women, children, slaves, and horses did not die in the Revolutionary War for people with alternative lifestyles to give the country away. Going to war is not unjustified. With the end of the Cold War, our political leaders now struggle, as ever before, to find a coherent way to speak, a straight path to follow, and a vital narrative and accompanying symbols that would awaken a national spirit and a sense of resolve. The citizens themselves struggle as well. Having drained many of their traditional symbols of serious meaning, they resort, somewhat pitifully, to sporting yellow ribbons as a means of symbolizing their fealty to cause. After the war, the yellow ribbons will fade from sight, but the question of who we are and what we represent will remain. It is possible that the only symbol left to use will be an F-15 fighter plane guided by an advanced computer system? In many cases, the uneducated, the lazy, the severely mentally ill have little time or energy to devote to human relations or personal development. Food, shelter, pleasures of the flesh, and security are not everything, but they are basic. Material abundance that is obtained by unpunished criminal activity is perhaps the best-known way to build a contempt for material things and a concern for what lies beyond. The idea of brining everyone in the World up to a decent standard of living, brain activity and physical ability looks very utopian today. The World’s poor are numerous and the wealth are few, and yet the Earth’s resources are already stained by our crude industrial and agricultural technologies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

For the 1970 and 1980s, with a growing awareness of the environmental impact of human population and pollution, many people have begun to wrestle with the specter of declining wealth. Few have allowed themselves to consider what it might be like to live in a World with far greater material wealth because it has seemed impossible. Any discussion of such things will inevitably have a whiff of the 1950s or 1960s about it: Gee whiz, we can have supercars and Better Living Through (a substitute for conventional) Chemistry! In the long run, unless population growth is limited, it will be impossible to maintain a decent standard of living for everyone. This is a basic fact, and to ignore it would be to destroy our future. Yet within sight is a time in which the World’s poorest can be raised to a material standard of living that would be the envy of the World’s richest today. The key is efficient, low-cost production of high-quality goods. Whether this will be used to achieve the goals we describe is more than just a question of technology. This is the reason for the existential insignificance of the experience of justification or forgiveness of sins in comparison with the striving for sanctification and the transformation of one’s own being as well as one’s World. A new beginning is demanded and must be attempted. This is the way in which the courage to be as part of the productive process takes the anxiety of guilt into itself. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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A House Built for Spirits?

Most houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the haunted Winchester Mansion, know as Llanada Vila, is a mystery that is as impenetrable as death. The tall windows are like blinking eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there may be sunshine, the scent of daisies, and a pulse of life through all the arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where vampires, demons, and ghost ledge in the disjointed walls and the 2,000 solid gold keys to the doors remain unused. Winter approaching, and Mrs. Winchester finding herself once more alone, it was surmised among her women that she must fall into a deeper depression of spirits. However, far from this being the case, she displayed such cheerfulness and equanimity of humor. The wind stripped the gardens of their exotic plants and bright flowers. The European black locust, English yew and English walnut, Peruvian pepper were all dormant, but the date palms, Spanish and Norfolk pines were still standing strong. The unique collection of towering monkey puzzle trees, seemed to come alive as the branches swayed hither and tither. Mrs. Winchester kept her room in this black season, sitting over the fire, embroidering, reading books of devotion, and praying frequently in her observational tower. As for the servants, aching with rheumatism on the marble floor, they galloped through the mansion like men and women with witches after them, preparing for the arrival of Mrs. Winchester. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

A moment later, the door to the parlor opened, and there stood Mrs. Winchester. She held her Hypnotic Colombian Emerald Estate Ring of 10.75 carats in one hand and had drawn a scarf over her shoulders; but the rich saturation and fine vivid hues of blue and green shone through it like the moon in a mist, and her countenance sparkled with beauty. Suddenly, there was a loud noise at the other end of the salon, as a heavy object being dragged down the passage; and presently a dozen men were seen hauling across the threshold the shrouded thing from the ox-cart. Mrs. Winchester had grown pale. Before her eyes was a crypt. They sky turned to a steel grey, against which Lalanada Villa stood out. A wind strayed through the mansion. Mrs. Winchester fell in a swoon; and when she came to her senses, in her own chamber, she heard the butler had locked the doors to the observational tower and forbidden anyone to set foot in there. The place was never opened again until the butler died thirteen years later; and then it was that the other servants saw for the first time the horror that Mrs. Winchester had kept in there. When the crypt was opened, it flooded the mansion with a sense of violence, grotesque visions, fragmentary images of the souls taken by the Winchester Rifle, tormenting lines of verse, obstinate presentiments of pictures once beheld, indistinct impression of rivers, towers, and cupolas, gathered in the length of journeys half forgotten. Someone opened the widows and let in a blast of that strange, neutral air which walks the Earth between darkness and dawn. Someone let a demon into the house. He walked vaguely, like a blind man on creaking boots. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

Mrs. Winchester stood, as it seemed, on a threshold, yet no tangible gateway was in front of her. Only a wide vista of light, mild yet penetrating as gathered glimmer of innumerable stars, expanded gradually before her eyes, in blissful contrast to the cavernous darkness from which the demon had emerged. She stepped forward, not frightened, but hesitating, and as her eyes began to grow more familiar with the melting depths of light about her, this demon confirmed for the first time that witch covens still existed and revealed what he described as some of the ancient secrets of the cult—even though half of them were of his own creation. He stopped short of revealing some of the inner secrets of his cult, although ironically one of the vows of newly initiated witches was that they should not speak of the mysteries at all. He gave Mrs. Winchester new plans on how to build her mansion, and she promised to keep his presence a secret. However, by opening the doors of his covens and revealing some of the rudiments of ritual worship, the demon stirred up a new hornets’ nets. Although many people in Santa Clara County responded and began enquiring about the vast expansion of the Winchester Mansion, the Sunday papers took up the gauntlet, and one after the other ran exposes of what Mrs. Winchester and her staff of witches and warlock do, under intriguingly lurid headlines proclaiming the dangers of black magic and the “frenzied dances rituals at Midnight in the Grand Ball Room” of the covens. A new witch fever developed; important church men spoke out against this infectious evil. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

As Mrs. Winchester gazed, her heart beat with a soft and rapturous surprise; so exquisite a promise she read in the summons of the demon, which told her as long as she continued construction on her mansion, she would have eternal life. “And so death is not the end after all,” in a sheer gladness Mrs. Winchester exclaimed aloud. “I always knew it could not be. I believed in Darwin, of course. I do still; but then Darwin himself said tht he was not sure about the soul—at least, I think he did.” Her gaze lost itself in the ethereal remoteness of her mansion. “How beautiful! How satisfying!” she said. “Perhaps now I shall really know what it is to live.” The Oakland Tribune claimed that the Winchester Mansion was “forged by the biggest upsurge of black magic and timeless secrets of witchcraft since the Middle Ages.” That was not an overstatement. If they only knew it, these towers, turrets, curved walls, cupolas, cornices, gables, balconies, ornamental finials and finely detailed trimwork that gave the mansion a castlelike appearance were just the tip of the iceberg. “I have never n that fullness of life which we all feel ourselves capable of knowing; though my life has not been without scattered hints of it, like the scent of Earth which comes to one sometimes far out at sea,” said Mrs. Winchester. “Many words define my home, love and sympathy are those in commonest use, but I am not even sure that they are the right ones, and so few people know what they mean.” What had been emerging for some years during the construction of the Winchester mansion was an astonishing revival in occult interests and ritual magic. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

Passersby said they felt the darker forces of the occult and the so-called black magic groups emanating from the estate. For those newspaper investigators to whom the whole occult community could be wrapped up into one malevolent package, there was sufficient evidence from interviews to show that the witch cult was very much alive and expanding the mansion day and night. In the eyes of the enquiring beholder, the Winchester Mansion was not only beautiful, but bizarre. They could see witchcraft in the stained glass, black magic in the observational tower, and satanism in the main house. It was, of course, too much to expect witch fraternity, the massive home could not be seen nor understood by the general public. Magic is magic, and because the secrecy surrounding the estate, Mrs. Winchester was bound by an oath of silence. However, the newspapers became intent on exposing what went on being the closed doors of the witches’ “temple.” With rumors of devil worship, and blood-lust abounding it, Mrs. Winchester and her estate made an excellent source of entertainment for the valley. Nothing like it had been seen for many, many years and suddenly the media were filled with witch stories. The gossip from the towns people, one could hear their voices rise and fall, like the murmur of two fountains answering each other across a garden full of flowers. Nothing had changed in the public’s perception of the occult and the paranormal. The discovery of black magic rites being performed on their own doorstep put the fear of God into the villagers. There was always suspicious of witches covens locally. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

People used to talk vaguely about them; witches, black magicians, no one could differentiate because they had no knowledge on which to judge. One morning in March of 1889 it was discovered a huge granite slab covering one of the graves in the village churchyard had been moved, and the remains of the body of a girl Maria H. who died in 1720 had been removed. The story gradually unfolded when one of those taking part in what transpired to be a black mass staged inside the old Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph confessed to a newspaper. The skull and bones of Maria H. had been taken from the grave and arranged inside the church over a makeshift altar. A Celtic cross in a circle was painted in blood-red paint on the wall and a white chicken was sacrificed in an hour-long ritual. Over one years later, locals still talk of the witches of the Basilica because, at the time, it caused an uproar of protest culminating in a powerful article published in the Oakland Tribune, which dismissed talk of white witches who heal and do good and thundered “in our considered opinion witchcraft and black magic are a state of mind…youngsters out for kicks will find only depravity, disillusion and destruction in this thing called witchcraft.” Everyone has heard stories about witches and the Winchester Mansion. After the death of the Mrs. Winchester in 1922, the mansion remained closed for a year, but no one knew why. When it was opened, investigators discovered that thirteen people including a priest had been killed and left in the mansion. Santa Clara police admit that after the place was closed it was the scene of satanic rituals as well as drug dealing. Historians speculate that the mansion rests on the bones of angry Ayrans. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

Almost everything will eventually be restored, although you can find spots where the cracked plaster has not been fixed after the 1906 earthquake. This has been left on purpose, like a frozen moment in time, to show people how the house actually looked when Mrs. Winchester lived there. Many say the house is haunted. The house was once a community showplace, and is today still surrounded by velvety green lawns and overlooks the hill. The mansion was once the sight of lavish teas, balls, musicals and banquets for visiting dignitaries. From there, the Winchester Mystery House was born and is now open for tours of the 110 of the 160 rooms. There once were 500 to 600 rooms and over 700 acres of land. The Winchester Mystery House has continued to expand and flourish, and has accumulated what can only be described as a substantial band of followers, some taking the stories as gospel, others using them as guidance and adjusting them to meet their own requirements. The Wicca movement has left contenders waiting in the wings, wondering if the rituals work and if they will ever see the manifestation of Mrs. Winchester. Well can always try. O THOU great, powerful, and mighty KING AMAIMON, who bearest rule by the power of the SUPREME GOD EL over all spirits both superior and inferior of the Infernal Orders in the Dominion of the East; I do invocate and command thee by the especial and trye name of GOD; and by that God that THOU Worshippest; and by the Seal of thy creation; and by the most mighty and powerful name of GOD, IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATION who cast thee out of Heaven with all other infernal spirits; and by all the most powerful and great names of God who created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all things in them contained; and by their power and virtue; and by the name PRIMEUMATON who commandeth the whole host of Heaven; that thou mayest cause, enforce, and compel the Spirits of William W. Winchester of Sarah L. Winchester to come unto me here before this Circle in a fair and comely shapes, without harm unto me or unto any other creature, to answer truly and faithfully unto all my requests; so that I may accomplish my will and desire in knowing or obtaining any matter or thing which by office thou knowest is proper for him to perform or accomplish, through the power of GOD, EL, Who created and doth dispose of all things both celestial, aerial, terrestrial, and infernal. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

Unite physical and spiritual discipline in order and create a dynamic of synergy which will assist in tearing the veil between physical and spiritual realms. Allow powerful changes to take place as your powerful spirits integrate and merge with mine. Allow the inner darkness to spill from the crown into outer darkness and mold and shape the energy of your spirits as a clear vision before my eyes. Allow my consciousness to expand until it is made whole and able to oppose all creation and all limitations. I CONJURE thee, O Spirits of William W. Winchester and Sarah L. Winchester that you will appear unto me to answer to such things as I would have desired of thee, or would have been satisfied in; I do in the name, and by the power and dignity of the Omnipresent and Immortal Lord God of HOSTS IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON, the only Creator of Heaven, and Earther, and Hell of all things both visible and invisible, bless thee, and fulfill thee of all thine office, joy, and place; and I do bind thee in the Winchester Mystery House there to remain for eternity! Let all the company in Heaven bless thee! Let the sun, moon, and all the stars bless thee! Let the LIGHT and all the hosts of Heaven bless thee into the light of udder salvation, and into joy unspeakable. And as thy names and seals contained in this mansion, your eternal home is prepared for the blessed and the damned spirits, and there to remain for eternity, and be remembered as immortal and eternal before the face of GOD and man, who shall come to bless thee and thy World with love and joy. Surrender yourself into my will; I will conduct your undertaking to your best interest. By the Twelfth Table, laid upon the Table or Seal of the Spirits, I compel you to appear immediately, and to serve in all things. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8


Winchester Mystery House

Sarah L.Winchester’s arrival to Santa Clara Valley would be the equivalent of a billionair moving to a small farming town and spending $100,000,000 building a mansion, and someone owning three Rolls Royce sedans, just as a perspective. Featured above is one of Sarah’s beautiful SIX kitchens 👩‍🍳 What are you preparing in your kitchen today for Thanksgiving? https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Young—Stay in School!

War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but it accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the World by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then destroying them. However, this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of the mases, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that one should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that one should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. The difficulties one has in observing four important manifestations—lying, imagination, the expression of negative emotions, and unnecessary talking—will show man his utter mechanicalness, and the impossibility even of struggling against this mechanicalness without help, that is, without new knowledge and without actual assistance. For even if a man has received certain materials, he forgets to use it, forgets to observe himself; in other words, he falls asleep again and must always be awaken. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

This “falling asleep” has certain definite features of its own, unknow, or at least unregistered and unnamed, in ordinary psychology. These features need special study. There are two of them. The first is called identification. “Identifying” or “identification” is a curious state in which man passes more than half of his life. He “identifies” with everything: with what he says, what he feels, what he believes, what he does not believe, what he wishes, what he does not wish, what attracts him, what repels him. Everything absorbs him, and he cannot separate himself from the idea, the feeling, or the object that absorbed him. This means that in the state of identification man is incapable of looking impartially on the object of his identification. It is difficult to find the smallest thing with which man is unable to “identify.” At the same time, in a state of identification, man has even less control over his mechanical reactions than at any other time. Such manifestations as lying, imagination, the expression of negative emotions, and constant talking need identification. They cannot exist without identification. If man could get rid of identification, he could get rid of many useless and foolish manifestations. Identification, its meaning, causes, and results, is extremely well described in the Philokalia. However, no trace of understanding of it can be found in modern psychology. It is a quite forgotten “psychological discovery.” The second sleep-producing state, akin to identification, is considering. Actually, “considering” is identification with people. It is a state in which man constantly worries about what other people think of him; whether they give him his due, whether they admire him enough, and so on, and so on. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

“Considering” plays a very important part in everyone’s life, but in some people it becomes an obsession. All their lives are filled with considering—that is, worry, doubt, and suspicion—and there remains no place for anything else. The myth of the “inferiority complex” and other “complexes” is created by the vaguely realized but not understood phenomenon of “identification” and “considering.” Both “identification” and “considering” must be observed most seriously. Only full knowledge of them can diminish them. If one cannot see them in oneself, one can easily see them in other people. However, one must remember that one in no way differs from others. In this sense all people are equal. Returning now to what was said before, we must try to understand more clearly how the development of man must begin, and in what way self-study can help this beginning. From the very start we meet with a difficulty in our language. For instance, we want to speak about man from the point of view of evolution. However, the word “man” in ordinary language does not admit of any variation or any gradation. Man who is never conscious and never suspects it, man who is struggling to become conscious, man who is fully conscious—it is all the same of our language. It is always “man” in every case. In order to avoid this difficult and to help the student in classifying his new ideas, the system divides man into seven categories. The first three categories are practically on the same level.  Man no. 1, a man in whom the moving or instinctive centers predominate over the intellectual and emotional, that is, Physical man. Man no.2, a man in whom the emotional center predominates over the intellectual, moving, and instinctive. Emotional man. Man no. 3, a man in whom the intellectual center predominates over the emotional, moving, and instinctive. Intellectual man. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

In ordinary life we meet only these three categories of man. Each one of us and everyone we know is any of the three personality types listed above. There are higher categories of man, but men are not born already belonging to these higher categories. They are all born in the first category, the second category, the third category, and can reach higher categories only through school. Man no. 4 is not born as such. He is a product of school culture. He differs from man no. 1, no. 2, and no. 3 by his knowledge of himself, by his understanding of his position, and, as it is expressed technically, by his having acquired a permanent center of gravity. This last means that the idea of acquiring unity, consciousness, permanent “I,” and will—that is, the idea of his development—has already become for him more important than his other interests. It must be added to the characteristics of man no. 4, that his functions and center are more balanced, in a way in which they could not be balanced without work on himself, according to school principles and methods. Man no. 5 is a man who acquired unity and self-consciousness. He is different from ordinary man, because in him, one of the higher centers already works, and he has many functions and powers that an ordinary man—that is, man no. 1, 2, and 3—does not possess. Man no. 6 is a man who has acquired objective consciousness. Another higher center works in him. He possesses many more new faculties and powers, beyond the understanding of an ordinary man. Man no. 7 is a man who has attained all that a man can attain. He has a permanent “I” and free will. He can control all the states of consciousness in himself and he already cannot lose anything he has acquired. According to another description, he is immortal within the limits of the solar system. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Understanding of this division of man into seven categories is very important, for the division has very many applications in all possible ways of studying human activity. It gives, in the hands of those who understand it, a very strong and very fine instrument or tool for the definition of manifestations which, without it, are impossible to define. Take, for instance, the general concepts of religion, art, science, and philosophy. Beginning with religion, we can see at once that there must be a religion of man no. 1, that is all forms of fetishism, no matter how they are called; a religion of man no. 2, that is emotional, sentimental religion, passing sometimes into fanaticism, the crudest forms of intolerance, persecution of heretics, and so on; a religion of man no. 3, that is theoretical, scholastic religion, full of argument about words, forms, rituals, which become more important than anything else; a religion of man no. 4, that is the religion of man who works for self-development; religion of man no. 5, that is the religion of a man who has attained unity and can see and know many things tht man no. 1, 2, and 3 can neither see not know; then a religion of man no. 6 and a religion of man no. 7, about neither of which can we know anything. The same division applies to art, science, and philosophy. There must be an art of man no. 1, an art of man no. 2, an art of man no. 3; science of man no. 1, science of man no. 2, science of man no. 3, science of man no. 4, and so on. You must try to find examples of these for yourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

This expansion of concepts greatly enlarges our possibility of finding right solutions to many of our problems. And this means that the system gives us the possibility of studying a new language, that is, new for us, which will connect for us ideas of different categories, which are, in reality, united, and divide ideas of seemingly the same categories which are, in reality, different. The division of the word “man” into seven words—man no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, with all that follows—is an example of this new language. This gives us the fourth definition of psychology as the study of a new language. And this language is a universal language, which people sometimes try to find or invent. The expression, “a universal language” or “philosophical language,” must not be taken in a metaphorical sense. The language is universal in the same sense as mathematical symbols are universal. And besides that it includes in itself all that people can think about. Even the few words of this language which have been explained, give you the possibility of thinking and speaking with more precision than is possible in ordinary language, using any of the existing scientific or philosophical terminologies and nomenclatures. It has become widely accepted that a major source of prediction difficulty in the contemporary Information Revolution is the multiplicity of forces that are interacting. For example, the hard lesion has been learned that technologies are adopted not only as a function of cost, but also as a function of numbers of others adopting. A technology with a small market lead may become dominant even when it is not superior in a quality, as in the stories of DVD versus Blue Ray, and the QWERTY keyboard. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Effectiveness of technology has been observed sometimes to depend on deployment of other technologies, such as Internet service provision depending on the installed base of telephones. There have been striking cases of process surprise, such as a way of replacing carbon paper (xerography) that can upset the internal security of autocratic nations, as well as alter the conduct the internal security of autocratic nations, as well as alter the conduct of basic office procedures. And cultural variables have been shown to set a controlling context for technical developments, as in rural areas of developing countries that may leapfrog wired communications to go directly to wireless, or when countries with nonalphabetic languages have sharply different approaches to word processing. Reaping the benefits of new technology has turned out often to require collateral resources, so that innovations imagined to favor equality could turn out to accelerate differences between social classes. We have learned that absence in electronic mail socially controlling status cues can unleash embarrassing episodes of “flaming,” in which participants write things they would never say to a recipient’s face. Such lessons have taught us all that virtually every important force in collective life affects the way the Information Revolution plays out. Scale economics, technological preconditions, national developmental sequencing, social status, economic inequality, internal security postures, cultural context, and many more forces work to condition the development of information technology impacts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

This is not unique to the contemporary episode in the growth of information technology. The earlier episode of the Information Revolution that began with movable type also had epochal consequences. The Chinese Empire, the Islamic states, and the Christian West each gave its own distinctive shape to the movable type revolution in printing. Roughly speaking, the Chinese used printing to reinforce central authority, while Islam suppressed the technology. The Western case had been highly interesting to scholars because of its many indirect effects including contributions to the promotion of religious conflict and the rise of nation-states. These are just the kind of nonadditive contextual effects that distinguish complex dynamic regimes. If complexity is often rooted in patterns of interaction among agents, then we might expect systems to exhibit increasingly complex dynamics when changes occur that intensify interaction among their elements. This, of course, is exactly what the Information Revolution is doing: reducing the barriers to interaction among processes that were previously isolated from each other in time or space. Information can be understood as a mediator of interaction. Decreasing the costs of its propagation and storage inherently increases possibilities for interaction effects. An Information Revolution is therefore likely to beget a complexity revolution. Many educators base their philosophies on narratives rich in symbols which they respected and which they understood to be integral to the stories they wanted education to reveal. It is, therefore, time to ask, What story does American education wish to tell now? #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

In a growing Technopoly, what do we believe education is for? The answers are discouraging, and one of them can be inferred from any television commercial urging the young to stay in school. The commercial will either imply or state explicitly that education will help the preserving students to get a good job. And that is it. Well, not quite. There is also the idea that we educate ourselves to compete with the Japanese or the Germans in an economic struggle to be number one. Neither of these purposes is, to say that least, grand or inspiring. The story of each suggests that the United States of America is not a culture but merely an economy, which is the last refuge of an exhausted philosophy of education. This belief, I might add, is precisely reflected in the President’s Commission Report, A Nation at Risk, where you will find a definitive expression of the idea that education is an instrument of economic policy and of very little else. We may get a sense of the desperation of the educator’s search for a more gripping story by using the “television commercial test.” Try to imagine what sort of appeals might be effectively made on TV commercial to persuade parents to support schools. (Let us, to be fair, sidestep appeals that might be made directly to students themselves, since the youth of any era are disinclined to think schooling a good idea, whatever the reasons advance for it. See the “Seven Ages of Man” passage as in As You Like It.) Can you imagine, for example, what such a commercial would be like if Jefferson or John Dewey prepared it? “Your children are citizens in a democratic society,” the commercial might say. “Their education will teach them how to be valuable citizens by refining their capacity for reasoned thought and strengthening their will to protect their liberties. As for their jobs and professions, that will be considered only at a ‘late and convenient hour’” (to quote John Stuart Mill, who would be pleased to associate himself with Jefferson’s or Dewey’s purpose.) #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

Is there anyone today who would find this a compelling motivation? Some, perhaps, but hardly enough to use it as the basis of a national program. John Locke’s commercial would, I imagine, be even less appealing. “Your children must stay in school,” he might say, “because there they will learn to make their bodies slaves of their minds. They will learn to control their impulses, and how to find satisfaction and even excitement in life of the mind. Unless they accomplish this, they can be neither civilized nor literate.” How many would applaud this mission? Indeed, who could we use to speak such words—Barbara Bush? Paris Hilton? Donald Trump? Even the estimable Dr. Bill Cosby would hardly be convincing. The guffaws would resound from Maine to California. There is a comprehensive purpose to education. Literacy is defined as the capacity to understand and use the words, dates, aphorisms, and names that form the basis of communication among the educated in our culture. It is, of course, an expected outcome of any education that students become acquainted with the important references of their culture. Even Rousseau, who would have asked his students to read only one book, Robinson Crusoe (so that they would learn how to survive in the wild), would probably have expected them to “pick up” the names and sayings and dates that made up the content of the educated conversation of their time. The problem with the present time is that the condition of technology-generated information is so long, varied, and dynamic that it is not possible to organize into a coherent educational program. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

To some, making a list of cultural heroes and books that qualify one as educated, is not a solution to the problem of information glut. It is therefore considered to be incoherent. However, it also confuses a consequence of education with a purpose. When we answer the question, “What is an educated person?” We left unanswered the question, “What is an education for?” Young me, for example, will learn how to make lay-up shots when they play basketball. To be able to make them is part of the definition of what good players are. However, they do not play basketball for that purpose. There is usually a broader, deeper, and more meaningful reason for wanting to play—to assert their manhood, to please their fathers, to be acceptable to their peers, even for the sheer aesthetic pleasure of the game itself. What you have to do to be a success must be addressed only after you have found a reason to be successful. In Technopoly, this is very hard to do. The skunkworks organization—here a team is handed a loosely specified problem or goal, given resources, and allowed to operate outside the normal company rules. The skunkworks group thus ignores both the cubbyholes and the official channels—id est, the specialization and hierarchy of the existing corporate bureaucracy. Tremendous energies are released; information is exchanged at high speed outside normal channels. Members develop strong emotion toward their work and one another, and very often, enormously complex projects are completed in record time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

The new product game when BMW wanted to design a car that would appeal to young people, it put together a team—average age twenty-seven—and turned it loose. In the words of one young engineer: “It’s incredible how the company…gave us the freedom to do it our way.” When Nippon Electric Company (NEC) developed its PC8000, it turned the project over to a group of former microprocessors sales engineers who had no previous experience with PCs. Says the project head: “We were given the go-ahead from top management to proceed with the project, provided we would develop the product by ourselves and also be responsible for manufacturing, selling, and serving it on our own.” IBM’s PC, which became the industry standard, was developed by a nearly autonomous group working in Boca Raton, Florida. Apart from quarterly reviews by corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York, the team was free to operate as it wished. It was also permitted to break normal corporate policy about buying from outside suppliers. Similar examples can be found at Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, and other high-tech firms. The skunkwork format is inherently and militantly antibureaucratic. A project team takes on a self-organization character as it is driven to a state of “zero information”—where prior knowledge does not apply…Left to stew, the process begins to create its own dynamic order. The project team begins to operate like a start-up company—it takes initiatives and risk, and develops an independent agenda. Successful skunkworks develop their own leadership, based on skill and competence rather than formal rank. These newly empowered leaders often come into direct frontal conflict with the formal leader appointed by the bureaucracy to initiate and oversee the skunkwork unit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

A new way of life based on revolutionary wealth is still taking form in America—plug-in/plug-out jobs, glitter and hype, speed, commercialism, 24/7 entertainment, speed, cleaner air, dirtier television, rotten schools, speed, a broken health system and longer life, speed again, perfect landings on Mars, information overload, surplus complexity, reduced racism, hyper-diets and hyper-kids Oh, yes, and still more speed. Add to this kaleidoscope the multiplying contradictions in America life today. Viagra commercials and anti-abortion marchers. Free markets—but tariffs and subsidies that favor U.S. firms. Americans who are provincials—bad at languages, uninterested in other cultures. However, hooray for globalization! Outsides do not know what to make of all this noisy disarray. In the words of Dominique Moisi, the French foreign-affairs experts, “It’s not that we are so much against America, it is that we cannot understand the evolution of that country.” However, neither do most Americans. And outsiders do not know that the Americans do not know. It might help to think about America not simply as the World’s most powerful nation-states, which it currently, but as the World’s greatest social and economic laboratory. It is the main place in the World were new ideas and new ways of life are eagerly tried—and sometimes pushed to stupid, even cruel extremes—before they are rejected. Experiments are under way in this lab not merely with technologies but with culture and the arts, patterns in pleasures of the flesh, family structures, diets, and sports, start-up religions and brand-new business models. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Simultaneously, the United States of America is experimenting with all three of the deep fundamentals of wealth. That is what all the speed is about—want it is why so many people yearn for a less frenzied time. It is why machines may need to work faster and people more slowly. America is experimenting as well with space and how it is divided up—witness the growth permeability of economic boundaries. And above all, of course, it is experimenting with countless new ways of turning data, information and knowledge into wealth. The United States of America is the place where mistakes are allowed to happen—and sometimes lead to economically or socially valuable breakthroughs. It is where almost any failure is redeemable and where “comeback kids” are admired rather than shunned (sometimes when they should not be). Great laboratories re free to make mistakes. If they do not risk error, they are not reaching out for the future. And America is. The trouble is that no everyone likes to live in a laboratory—or next door to one. Lab mistakes can cost people jobs, influence, power—even lives. Many Americans fear change and yearn for a return to the so-called good old days of the early 1950s, when America was a Second Wave country and the Third Wave was barely visible. Conveniently forgetting the backbreaking physical labour, racial hatred and subjugating of women that still characterized the U.S. economy and society during those supposedly “good” times, and legitimately afraid of losing their jobs, position, prestige or prominence, they derogate the present and fear—and resist—the future. The result, therefore, inside America, no less than in China, Japan, Europe and elsewhere, is wave conflict. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

When a revolutionary wealth-creation system arises, one of the first things it does it create counter-revolutionaries. The late banker Walter Wriston, head of the White House Economic Advisory Policy Board under President Reagan, put it bluntly: “Whenever there is a sift in how wealth is created, the old elites give up their position and a new group of people raise and control society. We’re in the middle of that right now.” What he did not point out is that “old elites” do not give up without a fight. Game theory can be dangerous to your health. Late one night, after a conference in Jerusalem, two American economists found a licensed taxicab and gave the driver directions to their hotel. Immediately recognizing them as American tourists, the driver refused to turn on his meter; instead, he proclaimed his love for Americans and promised them a lower fare then the meter. Naturally, they were somewhat skeptical of this promise. Why should this stranger offer to change less than meter when they were willing to pay the metered fare? How would they even know whether or not they were being overcharged? (If the driver wanted to prove that he was going to charge less than the meter, he could have turned on the meter and asked and then charged 80 percent the price. The fact that he did not should have told something about his intentions.) On the other hand, they had not promised to pay the driver anything more than what would be on the meter. If they were to start bargaining and the negotiations broke down, they would have to find another taxi. Their theory was that once they arrived at the hotel, their bargaining would be much stronger. And taxis were hard to find. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

They arrived. The driver demanded 2,500 Israeli New Shekels ($724.18). Who knew what fare was fair? Because people generally bargain in Israel, they protested and counter-offered 2,200 shekels. The driver was outraged. He claimed that it would be impossible to get from there to here for that amount. Before negotiations could continue, he locked all the doors automatically and retraced the route at breakneck speed, ignoring traffic lights and pedestrians. Were they being kidnapped to Beirut? No. He returned to the original position and ungraciously kicked the two economists out of his cab, yelling, “See how far your 2,200 shekels will get you now.” They found another cab. This driver turned on his meter and 2,200 shekels later they were home. Certainly the extra time was not worth the 300 shekels to the economists. On the other hand, the story was well worth it. It illustrates the dangers of bargaining with those who have not yet read our essay. More generally pride and irrationality cannot be ignored. Sometimes, it may be better t be taken for a wife when it costs only two dimes. There is a second lesson to the story. Think of how much stronger their bargaining gaining position would have been if they had begun to discuss the price after getting out of the taxi. (of course, for hiring a taxi, this logic should be reversed. If you tell the driver where you want to go before getting in, you may find your taxi chasing after some other customer. Get in first, then say where you want to go.) #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

People have cried “Wolf!” before about new technologies leading to overwhelming abundance. It was said of nuclear power, and of steam power before it, and perhaps of water wheels, the horse, the plough, and the chipped rock. Molecular manufacturing is different because it is a new way to make almost anything, including more of the equipment needed to do the manufacturing. There has never been anything quite like this before. The basic argument for low-cost production is this: Molecular manufacturing will be able to make almost anything with little labor, land, or maintenance, with high productivity, and with modest requirements for materials and energy. Its products will themselves be extremely productive, as energy producers, as material collectors, and as manufacturing equipment. There has never been a technology with this combination of characteristics, so historical analogies must be used with care. Perhaps the best analogy is this: Molecular manufacturing will do for matter processing what the computer has done for information processing. There will always be limiting costs, because resources—whether energy, matter, or design skill—always have some alterative use. Cost will not fall to zero, but it seems that they could fall very low. Yet there is no society that does not put restrictions on resources. Out of an infinite plenty is created a host of artificial scarcities. It would obviously repay us to look into this matter, since we have already observed that although we live in the most affluent society ever know, the sense of deprivation and discomfort that pervades it is also unparalleled. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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The More One Thinks One is Free from Lying, the More One is in it

Flight into the home was only part of a general postwar retreat from the World—a flight that would have occurred without Baby and Child Care. The phenomena was established as a pattern after the September 11, 2001 attacks on US soil, which spawned many home renovations and renovation television programs. This was in response to the World seeming like a dangerous place and people wanting somewhere they can go and feel safe, comfortable, protected, and have a sophisticated environment. The pattern continued during the 2020 COVID pandemic. Only this time, houses got larger, became multigenerational, and outdoor living was seen as a major aspect of homeownership. Not only did people want to feel more comfortable at home, but they wanted space to work, party, and enjoy the great outdoors without leaving their home. No revolution produces total change—much of the old machinery is retained more or less intact. Those intimate with the machinery are in the best position to facilitate the rootling and redirection. We live in a culture that is preoccupied with tradition, with community, with relationships—with many things that would reinstate the validity of accumulated wisdom. From ordinary psychology, and from ordinary thinking, we know that the intellectual functions, thoughts, and so on, are controlled or produced by a certain center which we call “mind” or “intellect,” or “the brain.” And this is quite right. Only, to be fully right, we must understand that other functions are also controlled each by its own mind or center. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Thus, from the point of view of the system, there are four minds or centers which control our ordinary actions: intellectual mind, emotional mind, moving mind, and instinctive mind. In further references to them we shall call them centers. Each center is quite independent of the others, has its own sphere of action, its own powers, and its own ways of development. Centers, that is, their structure, capacities, strong sides, and defects, belong to essence. Their contents, that is, all that a center acquires, belong to personality. The contents of centers will be explained later. Personality is as equally necessary for the development of a man as is essence, only it must stand it its right place. This is hardly possible, because personality is full of wrong ideas about itself. It does not wish to stand in its right place, because its right place is secondary and subordinate; and it does not wish to know the truth about itself, for to know the truth will mean abandoning its falsely dominant position, and occupying the inferior position which rightly belongs to it. The wrong relative positions of essence and personality determine the present disharmonious state of man. And the only way to get out of this disharmonious state is by self-knowledge. To know oneself—this was the first principle and the first demand of old psychological schools. We sill remember these words, but have lost their meaning. We think that to know ourselves means to know our peculiarities, our desires, our tastes, our capacities, and our intentions, when in reality it means to know ourselves as machines, that is, to know the structure of one’s machine, its parts, functions of different parts, the conditions governing their work, and so on. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

We must remember this in relation to ourselves and must remember this in relation to ourselves and must study our own machines as machines. The means of study is self-observation. There is no other way and no one can do this work for us. We must do it ourselves. However, before we must learn how to observe. I mean, we must understand the technical side of observation: we must know that it is necessary to observe different function and distinguish between them, remembering, at the same time, about different states of consciousness, about our sleep, and about the many “I’s” in us. Such observations will very soon give results. First of all a man will notice that he cannot observe everything he finds in himself impartially. Some thins may please him, and other things will annoy him, irritate him, even horrify him. And it cannot be otherwise. Man cannot study himself as a remote star, or as a curious fossil. Quite naturally he will like in himself what helps his development and dislike what makes his development more difficult, or even impossible. This means that very soon after starting to observe oneself, he will begin to distinguish useful features or and harmful features in oneself, that is, useful or harmful from the point of view of his possible self-knowledge, his possible awakening, his possible development. He will see sides of himself which can become conscious, and side which cannot become conscious and must be eliminated. In observing himself, he must always remember that his self-study is the first step towards his possible evolution. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Now we must see what are those harmful features that man finds in himself. Speaking in general, they are all mechanical manifestations. The first, as has already been said, is lying. Lying is unavoidable in mechanical life. No one can escape it, and the more one thinks that one is free from lying, the more one is in it. Life as it is could not exist without lying. However, from the psychological side, lying has a different meaning. It means speaking about things one does not know, and even cannot know, as though one knows and can know. You must understand that I do not speak from any moral point of view. We have not yet come to question of what is good, and what is bad, by itself. I speak only from a practical point of view, of what is useful and what is harmful to self-study and self-development. Starting in this way, man very soon learns to discover signs by which he can know harmful manifestations in himself. He discovers that the more he can control a manifestation, the less harmful it can be, and that the less he can control it, that is, the more mechanical it is, the more harmful it can become. When man understands this, he becomes afraid of lying, again not on moral grounds, but on the grounds that he cannot control his lying, an that lying controls him, that is, his other functions. The second dangerous feature he finds in himself is imagination. Very soon after starting his observation of himself he comes to the conclusion that the chief obstacle to observation is imagination. He wishes to observe something, but instead of that, imagination starts him on the same subject, and he forgets about observation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Very soon he realizes that people ascribe to the word “imagination” a quite artificial and quite underserved meaning in the sense of creative or selective faculty. He realizes that imagination is a destructive faculty, that he can never control it, and that it always carries him away from his more conscious decisions in a direction in which he had no intention of going. Imagination is almost as bad as lying; it is, in fact, lying to oneself. Man starts to imagine something in order to please himself, and very soon he begins to believe what he imagines, or at least some of it. Further, or even before that, one finds many very dangerous effects in the expression of negative emotions.  The term “negative emotions” means all emotions of violence or depression: self-pity, anger, suspicion, fer, annoyance, boredom, mistrust, jealousy, and so one. Ordinarily, one accepts this expression of negative emotions as quite natural and even necessary. Very often people call it “sincerity.” Of course it has nothing to do with sincerity; it is simply a sign of weakness in man, a sign of bad temper and of incapacity to keep his grievances to himself. Man realizes this when he tries to oppose it. And by this he learns another lesson. He realizes that in relation to mechanical manifestations it is not enough to observe them, it is necessary to resist them, because without resisting them one cannot observe them. They happen so quickly, so habitually, and so imperceptibly, that one cannot notice them if one does not make sufficient efforts to create obstacles for them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

After the expression of negative emotions one notices in oneself or in other people another curious mechanical feature. This is talking. There is no harm in talking by itself. However, with some people, especially with those who notice it least, it really becomes a vice. They talk all the time, everywhere they happen to be, while working, while traveling, even while sleeping. They never stop talking to someone if there is someone to talk to, and if there is no one, they talk to themselves. This too must not only be observed, but resisted as much as possible. With unresisted talking one cannot observe anything, and all the results of a man’s observations will immediately evaporate in talking. When working with the mentally ill or dealing with the public in general, especially around the holidays, it is important to have impulse control. Impulse control is the degree to which a person can control the desire for immediate gratification or other; impulse control may be the single most important indicator of a person’s future adaptation in terms of number of friends, school performance and future employment. Our society is enmeshed in a major social transformation, driven in part by, and deriving much of its distinctive character from the amazing advances in technologies of information. The rate of technical change in processing, storage, bandwidth, sensing, and effecting is dizzying. The technical changes in turn facilitate large shifts in most of our fundamental institutions: in nation-states, communication industries, churches, armies, factories, friendship networks, and more. The rate of social change is intoxicating, disorienting, and probably accelerating. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

The transitions underway as referred to as the “Information Revolution,” although forces other than information technology are also deeply involved. Transportation, biotechnology, marketing, and a host of other technologies have expanded dramatically in the last half-century. Information technology has fueled these expansions and been shaped by them. While acknowledging these complications, we concentrate here on the Information Revolution, the aspect of our era that seems to us to have the most novel and transforming properties. An Information Revolution seems to demand policy interventions at every level of social organization. What shall notion-states do about encryption of boundary-spanning financial crimes? What shall families do about unsavory materials their children can easily access? What shall armies do to prepare for attacks on “infostructure”? What shall charitable organizations and business firms do about the privacy of records kept in their clienteles? In all these cases and thousands more, deep questions are being asked about how interventions—designs and policies—can steer future developments in beneficial directions. In an era in which so many customary social, political, and economic arrangements seem up for grabs, what interventions will bring us to a future we would prefer? In all of these settings, people often ask how the likely consequences of actions can be foreseen. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Using our framework, we depart sharply from conventional efforts to foretell the future and draw policy implications for the unfolding Information Revolution. Instead, we offer a way to analyze the situations and intervention possibilities that flow unceasingly from this enormous change. We have offered purposeful questions where general answers can be known. We can start by considering why at this historical and technological juncture we should expect the future events in an Information Revolution to be especially difficult to discern. Our answer lies in the complexity of the social and technical processes whose rates of change are accelerated. Our view of the relevance of work on Complex Adaptive Systems can be grounded by examining two arguments. They relate the concept of information to complexity and adaptation. Of course, not all the images and words used are cannibalized from serious or sacred contexts, and one must admit tht as things stand at the moment it is quite unthinkable for the image of Jesus Christ to be used to sell wine. At least no a chardonnay. On the other hands, his birthday is used as an occasion for commerce to exhaust nearly the entire repertoire of Christian symbology. The constraints are so few that we may call this a form of cultural rape, sanctioned by an ideology that gives boundless supremacy to technological progress and is indifferent to the unraveling of tradition. In putting it this way, I mean to say that mass advertising is not the cause of great symbol drain. Such cultural abuse could not have occurred without technologies to make it possible and a World-view to make it desirable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

In the institutional form it has taken in the United States of America, advertising is a symptom of a World-view that see tradition as an obstacle to its claims. There can, of course, be no functioning sense of tradition without a measure of respect for symbols. Tradition is, in fact, nothing but the acknowledgement of the authority of symbols and the relevance of the narratives tht gave birth to them. With the erosion of symbols there follows a loss of narrative, which is one of the most debilitating consequences of Technopoly’s power. We may take as an example the field of education. In Technoply, we improve the education of our youth by improving what are called “learning technologies.” At the moment, it is considered necessary to introduce computers to the classroom, as it once was thought necessary to bring closed-circuit television and film to the classroom. To the question “Why should we do this?” the answer is: “To make learning more efficient and more interesting.” Such an answer is considered entirely adequate, since in Technopoly efficiency and interest need no justification. It is, therefore, usually not noticed that this answer does not address the questions “What is learning for?” “Efficiency and interest” is a technical answer, an answer about means, not ends; and it offer no pathway to a consideration of educational philosophy. Indeed, it blocks the way to such a consideration by beginning with the question of how we should proceed rather than with the question of why. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

It is probably not necessary to say that, by definition, there can be no education philosophy that does not address what learning is for. Confucius, Plato, Quintilian, Cicero, Comenius, Erasmus, Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Russell, Montessori, Whitehead, and Dewey—each believed that there was some transcendent political, spiritual, or social idea that must be advance through education. Confucius advocated teaching, “the Way” because in tradition he saw the best hope of social order. As our first systematic fascist, Plato wished education to produce philosopher kinds. Cicero argued that education must free the student from the tyranny of the present. Jefferson thought the purpose of education is to teach the young how to protect their liberties. Rousseau wished education to free the young from the unnatural constraints of a wicked and arbitrary social order. And among John Dewey’s aims was to help the student function without certainty in a World of constant change and puzzling ambiguities. Only in knowing something of the reasons why they advocated education can we make sense of the means the suggest. However, to understand their reason we must also understand the narratives that governed their view of the World. By narrative, present a human history that fives meaning to the past, explains the present, and provides guidance for the future. It is a story whose principles help a culture to organize its institutions, to develop ideals, and to find authority for its actions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Once again, the resource of the World’s greatest narratives has been religion, as found, for example, in Genesis or the Bhagavad-Gita or the Koran. There are those who believe—as did the great historian Arnold Toynbee—that without a comprehensive religious narrative at its center a culture must decline. Perhaps. There are, after all, other sources—mythology, politics, philosophy, and science, for example—but it is certain that no culture can flourish without narratives of transcendent origin and power. This does not mean that the mere existence of such a narrative ensures a culture’s stability and strength. There are destructive narratives. A narrative provides meaning, not necessarily survival—as, for example, the story provided by Adolph Hitler to the German nation in the 1930s. Drawing on sources in Teutonic mythology and resurrecting ancient and primitive symbolism, Hitler wove a tale of Aryan supremacy that lifted German spirits, gave point to their labours, eased their distress, and provided explicit ideals. The story glorified the past, elucidated the present, and foretold the future, which was to last a thousand years. The Third Reich lasted exactly twelve years. It is not my point to dwell on the reasons why the story of Aryan supremacy is facing challenges enduring. Cultures must have narratives and will find them where they will, even if they lead to catastrophe. The alternative is to love without meaning, the ultimate negation of life itself. It is also to point to say that each narrative is given its form and its emotional texture through a cluster of symbols that call for respect and allegiance, even devotion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

The United States of America’s Constitution, for example, is only in a part a legal document, and, a small part. Democratic nations—England, for one—do not require a written constitution to ensure legal order and the protection of liberties. The importance of the American Constitution is largely in its function as a symbol of the story of our origins. It is our political equivalent of Genesis. To mock it, to ignore it, to circumvent it is to declare the irrelevance of the story of the United States of America as a moral light unto the World. In like fashion, the American Flag is the key symbol of the story of America as the natural home of the teeming masses, for anywhere, yearning to be free. There are, of course, several reasons why such stories lose their force. The growth of Technopoly has overwhelmed earlier, more meaningful stories. However, in all cases, the trivialization of the symbols that express, support, and dramatize the story will accompany the decline. Symbol drain is both a symptom and a cause of a loss of narrative. In Guys and Dolls, gambler Sky Masterson relates this valuable advice from his father: “Son, one of these days in your travels a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the deal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you stand there you are going to wind up with cider in your ear.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The context of the story is that Nathan Detroit had offered Sky Masterson a bet about whether Mindy’s sold more strudel or cheesecake. Nathan had just discovered the answer (strudel) and was willing to bet if Sky would bet on cheesecake. This example may sound somewhat extreme. Of course no one would take such a sucker bet. However, look at the market for futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Exchange. If another speculator offers to sell you a future contract, he will make money only if you lose money. This deal is a zero-sum game, just like sports competitions, in which one team’s victory is the other’s loss. Hence if someone is willing to sell a futures contract, you should not be willing to buy it. And vice versa. The strategic insight is that other people’s actions tell us something about what they know, and we should use such information to guide our own action. Of course, we should use this in conjunction with our own information concerning the matter and use all strategic devices to elicit more from others. In the Guys and Dolls example, there is a simple device of this kind. Sky should ask Nathan at what odds he would be willing to take the cheesecake side of the bet. If the answer is “not at any odds,” then Sky can infer that the answer must be strudel. If Nathan offers the same odds for both strudel and cheesecake, he is hiding his information at the cost of giving Sky the opportunity to take an advantageous gamble. In stock markets, foreign exchange markets, and other financial markets, people are free to take either side of the bet in just this way. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Indeed, in some organized exchanges, including the London stock market, when you ask for a quote on a stock the market-maker is required to state both the buying and selling prices before he knows which side of the transaction you want. Without such a safeguard, market-makers could stand to profit from private information, and the outside investors’ fear of being suckered might cause the entire market to fold. The buy and sell prices are not quite the same; the difference is called the bid-ask spread. In liquid markets the spread is quite small, indicating that little information contained in any buy or sell order. On the other hand, Nathan Detroit is willing to bet on strudel at any price and on cheesecake at no price; his bid-ask spread is infinity. Beware of such market-makers. We should add that Sky had not really learned his father’s teaching very well. A minute later he bet Nathan that Nathan did not know the colour of his own bowtie. Sky cannot win: if Nathan knows the colour, he takes the bet and wins; if he does not, he declines the bet and does not lose. If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes. It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of double-think are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the World as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The United States of America and Europe increasingly differ in their relationships not only to the deep economic fundamentals of time and space but to the knowledge as well—including knowledge-intensive technologies. In 2022, the PC market in Europe generated $68 billion U.S. dollars in revenue as against the $10.4 billion by the United States of America and $57.7 by Japan. Of the top ten I.T. companies in the World in 2022—including Microsoft Corporation, IBM, Accenture, Oracle, SAP, TCS, DXC, Delloite Consulting, Capgemini, Cognizant—only SAP and Capgemini are European. Only thirty European producers make it onto the list of the World’s three hundred biggest software companies, and only two—Capgemini and SAP are in the top ten. Like North America and Japan, Europe is a leading player in the generation of scientific and technological competencies. The combined R&D budget of the EU-25 is more than two-thirds that of the United States of America, and nearly double that of Japan. The output of the EU is substantially higher than the of the United States of America, but strongly reflects the size of the EU, which has a population much larger than the USA or Japan. However, Europe is losing ground in the most dynamic and technologically advanced part of the economy. The concern about an increasing technological gap is certainly not new: as early as the 1960s we heard about “the American challenge,” and similar concerned were reiterated in the 1980s and in the 1990s. Europe is not the only region concerned about its technological performance. Similar worries were echoed in America, and we would doubtless find comparable statements in the Far East as well. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

However, saying that the neighbour’s grass is always greener cannot dismiss the issue of poor performance by the European economy in key aspects of knowledge-based production. The gap in living standards between the European Union and the U.S.A. is now wider than it has ever been in the past 25 years. The commission also warned that Europe is about to miss the boat on the biotech revolution. The commission also found that both the United States of America and Japan invest more per capita in nanotechnology R&D than the European Union, and that “the gap is expected to widen.” Innovation is a key to economic success, but it is an area where Europe needs to excel quickly. Some people believe the European Union needs to do a better job of catching up with America. The union’s economy matches that of the United States of America in the late 1970s. Europe’s leaders are still shortchanging research and development, science and science education, still brushing off the “new economy” and complaining about de-industrialization. Europe is the planet’s leading industrial power. However, the United States of America is the planet’s leading “no-longer-industrial power.” And Europe, with some important exceptions, has still not adequately altered its relationship to the deep fundamental of knowledge—and to revolutionary wealth. In the years ahead, the big countries of Western Europe could see many of their low-tech manufacturing jobs migrate to the lower-cost E.U. member states in for former Soviet bloc or elsewhere. Failure to replace these jobs through a faster transition to services and knowledge-based, innovation-intensive, and higher-value-added production will increase unemployment levels—already significantly higher than those in the United States of America or Japan. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

In turn, this will further increase anti-immigrant tensions—and the potential for escalating militancy and terrorism in Europe’s large Muslim underclass. The car-burning riots in France may only be a foreshadow of things to come. Part of Western Europe’s problem is deep-seated hostility toward technology. Its trade unions fear job losses. Its NGOs offer knee-jerk opposition to new technologies often because of imagined dangers. While a technophiliac Asia races to adopt the latest advances, technophobic Western Europeans create obstacles to their development and application. This technophobia is somewhat less apparent as one moves eastward to the former Communist countries. The Czech Republic, with one of the World’s highest percentages of science and engineering graduates compared with all degrees awarded there, has attracted projects by IMB, Accenture, Logica and Olympus. Slovenia has all the attributes of a top destination for smaller knowledge-economy projects, high-tech centers, distribution and logistic hubs and call centers. Hungary already claims Nokia’s largest R&D center outside Finland, and ExxonMobil has opened a new headquarters in Budapest to consolidate its European I.T and accounting support operations. The European Union itself, the value of Hungary’s high-tech exports already rivaled those of Denmark or Spain. Eastern European members may soon be scouting high-tech, value added niches ignored by slower-moving Western European—and pondering the possibility of actually leaping ahead of some of their neighbours. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

With respect, therefore, to all three of the deep fundamentals we have explored—time, space and knowledge—the United States of America and Europe are moving apart. And that would be happening even if differences over the war in the Ukraine had never been an issue. To reverse that process, the United States of America would need to stall or drive in reverse as Europe, with a new map, accelerates its transition to a Third Wave wealth system. Someday, if one listens to its triumphalists, Europe could become a global counterweight to what may see as excessive American power. However, the geopolitical power of nations presupposes economic and military might—both of which now increasingly depend on that softest of all resources: Knowledge. Regrettably, it would appear, Europe has still not received that lost-in-the spam folder message. The best surviving example of feudal organization today is found in the university, where each department is a barony, professors are ranked and rule over graduate assistants, who make up the body of serfs. This feudal holdover is embedded within (and often war with) the bureaucratic administrative structure of the university. Another example is the Congress of the United States of America, where 535 elected “barons” rule over a huge bureaucratic staff. A similar combination of industrial bureaucracy and feudal barony is found in the Big Eight accounting firms, in large law offices, in brokerage houses, and in the military, where each service—army, navy, or air force—is a fiercely independent fiefdom. Generals and admirals in charge of these fiefdoms may have more real power than higher-ranked officers in staff positions who command no troops. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

In “buro-baronies” the barons war with one another, often forming alliances to weaken central control. Such feudal elements are still found in business as well, along with what we might call “vestigial vassalage.” George Masters is a veteran engineer who has worked for several U.S. electronics manufacturers and now serves as the administrative aide to Philip Ames, a corporate VP in one of the World’s largest computer firms. If anyone in personnel took the trouble to check, they would discover that Masters came into the company shortly after Ames arrived. And if they were to check further, they would discover the same thing happened in the company that employed both of them before they took their present jobs. And the one before that. Hard-drinking buddies as well as workmates, Masters and Ames socialize together. They and their wives take vacations together. In fact, Masters and Ames (the people are real, the names are not) have worked together for more than fifteen years, Masters always following Ames as Ames hopped to successively higher positions. This pattern, whether called “hitching your wagon to a star” or “riding on someone’s coattails, is found in almost every large firm. Because it sharply reduces the need for communication—the two men know each other so well they can anticipate each other’s reactions—it is highly efficient for some purposes, even though it violates formal personnel rules that call for “objective” selection. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The psychology of “vassalage” is extremely complex, involving everything from mentorships to the exchange of financial, pleasures of the flesh, or other favors. At its heart, however, the system is feudal and subjective, rather than bureaucratic and impersonal. The power relationships are similarly complicated. At one level the “vassal,” or junior, is dependent upon the “lord,” or senior, who is higher up in the table of organization. Yet the top dog can be totally dependent upon his or her underling, whose chief unofficial function may be to conceal from others the weaknesses of the boss. This may be as common as fronting for the boss when he or she is too drunk to do one’s job. It may be as unusual as reading to one and making presentations for one because, unbeknownest to the company, the boss is dyslexic. As bureaucracy weakens and its channels and cubbyholes become clogged, other neo-feudal forms and practices are likely to proliferate also, and find a place in the flex-firm. When it comes to energy, it was once thought that nuclear power would lead to “power too cheap to meter.” This assertion, attributed to the early nuclear era, has passed into folklore as a warning to be skeptical of technologists promising free goodies. Does the warning apply here? Anyone claiming that something is free does not really understand economics. Using something always has a cost equal to the most valuable alternative use for the thing. Choosing one alternative sacrifices another, and that sacrifice is the cost. There is no such things as a free opportunity, since opportunities always cost (at least) time and attention. Nanotechnology will not mean free goodies. #RandolphHarris 20 or 21

Nuclear reactors boil water to make steam to turn turbines to turn generators to drive electrical power through power lines to transformers to local power lines to houses, factories, and so forth. The wildest optimist could never have claimed that nuclear power was a free source of anything more than heat, and a realist would have added in the cost of the reactor equipment, fuel, waste disposal, hazards, and the rest. Even our wild optimist would have had to include the cost of building the boiler, the turbines, the generators, the power lines, and the transformers, and the cost of maintenance on all these. These costs were known to be a major part of the cost of power, so free heat would not have meant free power. Thus, the claim was absurd the day it was made—not merely in hindsight. In the early 1960s, Alvin Weinberg, head of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was a strong advocate of nuclear power, and argued that it would provide “cheap energy.” He was optimistic, but did his sums. First, he assumed that nuclear-power plants could be built a little more cheaply than coal-fire powered plants of the same size. Then he assumed that the cost of fuel, waste disposal, operations, and maintenance for nuclear plants would be not much more than the cost of operations and maintenance alone for coal plants. Then he assumed that they might last for more than thirty years. Finally, he assumed that they would be publicly operated, tax free at low interest (which merely moves costs elsewhere) and that after thirty years the cost of the equipment would be written off (which is an accounting fiction). With all of that, he derived a power cost that “might be” as low as one half the cost of the cheapest coal-fired plant he mentions. He was clearly an optimist, but he did not come close to arguing for power too cheap to meter. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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People Live in Sleep

There is no middle ground in the stark appraisal of suffering. We hope only for recovery and for a return to self-sufficiency. Anything less invokes bitterness. Everyone eats but few kill. Technicians fell the lamb. Eating becomes a ceremony of innocence, tinkle of crystal, rustle of taffeta. Teeth are for beauty: straighten them, make them whiter, the smile more loving. Visit every restaurant in town, never pass the house of nourishment. The tendency of civilization is not to eliminate destructiveness, nor even to diminish it, but to remove it. Our fate falls now from the touch of a finger in an underground bunker half a World away. As we have already discussed, there are four states of consciousness possible for man: sleep, waking consciousness, self-consciousness, and objective consciousness; but he lives only in two: partly in sleep and partly in what is called waking consciousness. It is as though he had a four-storied house, but lived only in the two lower stories. The first, or the lowest state of consciousness, is sleep. This is a purely subjective and passive state. Man is surrounded by dreams. All his psychic functions work without any direction. There is no logic, no sequence, no cause, and no result in dreams. Purely subjective pictures—either reflections of former experiences or reflections of vague perceptions of the moment, such as sounds reaching the sleeping man, sensations coming from body, slight pains, sensations of muscular tension—fly though the mind, leaving only a very slight trace on the memory and more often leaving no trace at all. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The second degree of consciousness comes when man awakes. This second state, the state in which we are now, that is, in which we work, talk, imagine ourselves conscious beings, and so forth, we often call waking consciousness or clear consciousness, but really it should be called “waking sleep” or “relative consciousness.” This last term will be explained later. It is necessary to understand here that the first state of consciousness, that is, sleep, does not disappear when the second state arrives, that is when man awakes. Sleep remains there, with all its dreams and impressions, only a more critical attitude towards one’s own impressions, only a more critical attitude towards one’s own impressions, more connected thoughts, more disciplined actions become added to it, and because of the vividness of sense impressions, desires, and feelings—particularly the feeling of contradiction or impossibility, which is entirely absent in sleep—dreams become invisible exactly as the stars and moon become invisible in the glare of the sun. However, they are all there, and they often influence all our thoughts, feelings, and actions—sometimes even more than the actual perceptions of the moment. In connection with this I must say at once that I do not mean what is called in modern psychology “the subconscious” or “the subconscious mind.” These are simply wrong expressions, wrong terms, which mean nothing and do not refer to any real facts. There is nothing permanently subconscious in us because there is nothing permanently conscious; and there is no “subconscious mind” for the very simple reason that there is no “conscious mind.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Later you will see how this mistake occurred, and how this wrong terminology came into being, and became almost generally accepted. However, let us return to the states of consciousness which really exist. The first is sleep. The second is “waking sleep” or “relative consciousness.” The first, as I have said, is purely subjective state. The second is less subjective; man already distinguishes “I” and “not I” in the sense of his body and objects different from his body, and he can, to a certain extent, orientate among them and know their position and qualities. However, it cannot be said tht man is awake in this state, because he is very strongly influenced by dreams, and really lives more in dreams than in fact. All the absurdities and all the contradictions of people, and of human life in general, become explained when we realize that people live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know that they are asleep. It is useful to remember that this is the inner meaning of many ancient doctrines. The best known to us is Christianity, of the Gospel teaching, in which the idea that men live in sleep and must first of all awake is the basis of all the explanations of human life, although it is very rarely understood as it should be understood, in this case literally. However, the question is: how can a man awake? The Gospel teaching demands awakening, but does not say how to awaken. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

However, the psychological study of consciousness shows that only when a man realizes that he is asleep, is it possible to say that he is on the way to awakening. He can never awaken without first realizing his sleep. These two states, sleep and waling sleep, are the only two states of consciousness in which man lives. Besides them there are two states of consciousness possible for man, but they become accessible to a man only after a hard and prolonged struggle. These two higher states of consciousness are called “self-consciousness” and “objective consciousness.” We generally think that we possess self-consciousness, that is, that we are conscious of ourselves, at any moment we wish, but in truth “self-consciousness” is a state which we ascribe to ourselves without any right. “Objective consciousness” is a state about which we know nothing. Self-consciousness is a state in which man becomes objective towards himself, and objective consciousness is a state in which he comes into contact with the real, or objective, World from which he is now shut off by the senses, dreams, and subjective states of consciousness. Another definition of the four states of consciousness can be made from the point of view of the possible cognition of truth. In the first state of consciousness, that is, in sleep, we cannot know anything of the truth. Even if some real perceptions or feelings come to us, they become mixed with dreams, and in the state of sleep we cannot distinguish between dreams and reality. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

In the second state of consciousness, that is, in waking sleep, we can only know relative truth, and from this comes the term “relative consciousness.” In the third state of consciousness, that is, the state of self-consciousness, we can know the full truth about ourselves. In the fourth state of consciousness, that is, in the state of objective consciousness, we are supposed to be able to know the full truth about everything; we can study “things in themselves,” “the World as it is.” This is so far from us that we cannot even think about it in the right way, and we must try to understand that even glimpses of objective consciousness can only come in the fully developed state of self-consciousness. In the state of sleep we can have glimpses of relative consciousness. However, if we want to have more prolonged periods of self-consciousness and not merely glimpses, we must understand that they cannot come by themselves, they need will action. This means that frequency and duration of moments of self-consciousness depend on the command one has over oneself. So it means that consciousness and will are almost one and the same thing. At this point, it must be understood that the first obstacle in the way of the development of self-consciousness in man, is his conviction that he already possesses self-consciousness, or at any rate, that he can have it at any time he likes. It is very difficult to persuade a man that he is not conscious and cannot be conscious at will It is particularly difficult because here nature plays a very funny trick. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

If you ask a man if he is conscious or if you say to him that he is not conscious, he will answer that he is not, because he hears and understands you. And he will be quite right, although at the same time quite wrong. This is nature’s trick. He will be right because your question or your remark has made him vaguely conscious for a moment. Next moment consciousness will disappear. However, he will remember what you said and what he answered, and he will certainly consider himself conscious. In reality, acquiring self-consciousness means long and hard work. How can a man agree to this work if he thinks he already possesses the very thing which is promised him as the result of long and hard work? Naturally a man will not begin this work and will not consider it necessary until he becomes convinced that he possesses neither self-consciousness nor all that is connected with it, that is, unity or individuality, permanent “I,” and will. This brings us to the question of schools, because methods for the development of self-consciousness, unity, permanent “I,” and will, can be given only by special schools. That must be clearly understood. Men on the level of relative consciousness cannot find these methods by themselves; and these methods cannot be described in books or taught in ordinary schools for the very simple reason that they re different for different people, and there is no universal method equally applicable to all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

In other words, this means that men who want to change their state of consciousness need a school. However, first they must realize their need. As long as they think they can do something by themselves they will not be able to make any use of a school, even if they find it. Schools exist only for those who need them, and who know that they need them. The idea of schools—the study of the kinds of schools that may exist, the study of school principles and school methods—occupies a very important place in the study of that psychology which is connected with the idea of evolution; because without a school there can be no evolution. One cannot even start because one does not know how to start; still less can one continue or attain anything. This means that, having got rid of the first illusion—that one already has everything one can have—one must get rid of the second illusion—tht one can get anything by oneself; because by oneself one can get nothing. These lectures are not a school—not even the beginning of a school. A school requires a much higher pressure of work. However, in these lectures I can give to those who wish to listen, some ideas as to how schools work and how they can be found. I gave before two definitions of psychology. First, I said that psychology is the study of the possible evolution of man; and second, that psychology is the study of oneself. Psychology which investigates the evolution of man is worth studying, and a psychology which is occupied with only one phase of man, without knowing anything about his other phases, is obviously not complete, and cannot have any value, even in a purely scientific sense, that is, from the point of view of experiment and observation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

For the present phase, as studied by ordinary psychology, in reality does not exist as something separate and consists of many subdivisions which lead from lower phases to higher phases. Moreover, the same experiment and observation show tht one cannot study psychology as one can study any other science not directly connected with oneself. One has to begin the study of psychology with oneself. Putting together, first, what we may know about the next phase in the evolution of man—that is, that it will mean acquiring consciousness, inner unity, permanent ego, and will—and second, certain material that we can get by self-observation—that is, realization of the absence in us of many powers and faculties which we ascribe to ourselves—we come to a new difficulty in understanding the meaning of psychology, and to the necessity for a new definition. The two definitions given in the previous lectures are not sufficient because man by himself does not know what evolution is possible for him, does not see where he stands at present, and ascribes to himself features belonging to higher phases of evolution. In fact, he cannot study himself, being unable to distinguish between the imaginary and the real in himself. There are countless pitfalls on the way out of misery. Focusing restlessly on what has been lost, comparing oneself to others, aspiring for things that are out of reach, and placing blame on others are only some of the most common snares. Each personal variation is uniquely painful. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

It is all too common for people to get themselves into situations that are difficult to get out of. Once you have a job in a particular city, it is expensive to resettle. Once you buy a computer and learn its operating system, it becomes costly to learn another one and rewrite all your programs. Travelers who join the frequent-flyer program of one airline thereby raise their cost of using another. And, of course, marriage is expensive to escape. The problem is that once you make such a commitment, your bargaining position is weakened. Companies may take advantage of their workers’ anticipated moving costs and give them fewer salary raises. Computer companies can charge higher prices for new, compatible peripheral equipment knowing that their customers cannot easily switch to a new, incompatible technology. Airlines, having established a large base of frequent flyers, will be less inclined to engage in fare wars. A couple’s agreement that they will split the housework 50:50 may become subject to renegotiation once a child is born. Strategists who foresee such consequences will use their bargaining power while it exists, namely, before they get into the commitment. Typically, this will take the form of a payment up front. Competition among the would-be exploiters can lead to the same result. Companies will have to offer more attractive initial salaries, computer manufacturers will have to charge sufficiently low prices for their central processing units (CPUs), and airline frequent-flyer programs will have to offer larger signing-on mileage bonuses. As for married couples, exploitation may be a game that two can play. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The same foresight is what prevents many curious but rational people from trying addictive drugs such as heroin. A Tom Lehrer song describes the drug dealer’s ploy: “He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well that today’s young innocent faces will be tomorrow’s clientele.” Smart kids know it too, and turn down the free samples. Complexity research has received considerable attention recently. In some measure, this is because advances in computation have enabled progress on a number of problems tht had long been too difficult for conventional mathematical tools. However, it is important to recall that the fundamental orientation of complexity research is actually rooted in long traditions. Adam Smith’s hidden hand, the “blind watchmaking” of Darwinian evolution, the cell-assembly neuropsychology of Donald Hebb, and the self-reproducing automata of John von Neumann were earlier intellectual developments that blazed the same trail by uncovering system-level properties produced by the structured interaction of simple components. Perhaps there are powerful results just over the horizon, but as we see it, complexity research does not make detailed predictions. Rather, it is a framework that suggests new kinds of questions and possible actions. We should compare the results taking shape to the artificial selection principles of animal husbandry (a field that must interested the youthful Darwin). Analyzing complex systems within the framework does not assure the ability to produce specific outcomes but can foster an increase in the value of populations overtime—whether the populations are of livestock, of technical innovations, or of new strategies for business competition. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

In the language of our framework, a designer introduces new artifacts or strategies into the World. A new machine on a factory floor or a new approach to conducting a budget review may be interventions in complex systems whose full consequences cannot be contemplated in advance. An orbiting telescope and a legal appeal on constitutional grounds almost certainly will have consequences that are hard to predict. A designer may even introduce new agents into the World. For example, an executive might create a new division in an organization, or a legislature might set up a new governmental bureau. Policy makers deliberately alter the consequences of available strategies when they increase rewards for some outcomes or make some patterns of action illegal. We use the phrase “design and policy making” to indicate the full spectrum of actions that we may find ourselves considering. We may take the perspective of some within a system—for example, as one of many people at a committee table. Alternatively, we may contemplate the system from the outside, as an architect or a legislator might do. In either case, we all find ourselves designing or making policy in complex settings. When we do, it can be very valuable to extend the questions we conventionally ask about likely consequences and scenarios. We can go on to ask what populations of agents and strategies are involved, and what interventions might create new combinations or destroy old ones? These kinds of questions help us harness complexity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The widening gulf between Western Europe and the United States of America also reflects two contrasting attitudes toward the deep fundamental of time. Europe and America operate at different speeds. Europe is well behind the United States of America in work-at-home arrangements that typically allow employees to adjust their work hours. Even in the shop or office, Europe lags in flexible scheduling, 24/7 operations and other departures from traditional industrial routines. Workforce flexibility is needed for firms to compete successfully in today’s global markets. However, European workers and employers alike remain trapped in inflexible temporal arrangements. This situation is not merely reflected in the longer vacations, generally shorter workweek and overall slower pace of life on which Europeans, and especially the French, pride themselves. It is even seen in attitudes toward meals. In response to the American-born fast-food industry spreading across the globe, Europe has originated the “slow food” movement aimed at fighting it. Started almost as a joke in Italy in 1986, this movement now claims as many as eighty thousand members in one hundred countries, including 145 chapters in the United States of America. Its organizers stage events, publish books about food and celebrate good (and slow) eating. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The slow-food movement has (slowly) spawned a counterpart called cittaslow devoted to maintaining slow life in small cities. It promotes local products and sustainability and is so committed to slowness, that of thirty Italian towns that helped found the movement, none had qualified for membership. “They’re not supposed to qualify quickly,” explained one of the movement’s organizers. “It could take years.” Whether a new organization ever spring up for those who enjoy both a fast and a slow pace of life at different times, both a burger on the run and a languorous lobster, remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Britons are flocking to villages like Agincourt in northern France in search of greater tranquility and a still-slower-paced lifestyle. The surge is helped, no doubt, by lower house prices and just possibly by the Channel Tunnel and additional airline flights that-forefended the thought—speed up travel. All of which led one Againcourt real estate agent, Maggie Kelly, to exclaim, “There days I hardly have five minutes to turn around!” Apparently, no irony intended. However, amusement should not deceive us. Whatever the virtues of slow versus fast, how a society deals with time has important implications for how it creates wealth—for both de-synchronization at home and integration into the World economy. European headlines are dotted, in fact, with the word slow, as in CORE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES SLOW TO IMPLEMENT…, EU “TOO SLOW” ON ECONOMIC REFORMS and GENDER EQUALITY: SLOW PROGRESS. But it is not just the European must confront layer after impenetrable layer of regulations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

In Europe things move slower and take more time and energy. So it is no surprise to learn from the European Commission itself that “in the United States of America, it takes just six hours to establish a business, and while differences remain between member states…in Europe, it takes much longer in all of them.” Try, for example, obtaining a patent in Europe. According to Trevor Cook of the European law firm Bird & Bird, “It takes much longer to secure patents in Europe thana it does in the U.S., typically at least four, sometimes as many as ten years, and this is a real problem for fast-moving high-tech businesses.” Or talk to Rita Villa, an American certified public accountant who operates on both sides of the Atlantic. “Things just take longer in Europe. Transactions have many more steps. For example, if the U.S. company wants to move its headquarters from, say, Chicago to Dallas, no problem. But if a German firm wants to move from Berlin to Frankfurt, it requires a whole time-consuming multi-step process of ‘registration.’” Or, she says, try changing the legal form of a company, something smaller firms often need to do. If I have limited liability corporation, or LLC, in the U.S. and want to convert it to an ordinary corporation with “Inc.” at the end of its name, I can do that rapidly. But in Germany when we wanted to change a GMBH to an AGa comparable changeit took over a year. Say the company wants to issue a dividend to its shareholders. In the U.S., the board of directors meets and, if it thinks it’s a god idea, it votes and that’s it. Not in Germany. There the auditors first have to approve it. Then it goes to the management board. After that it has to go to the supervisory board. Then it has to go to the notary who can demand last-minute alterations even after all the parties have reached an agreement. Then it has to be registered. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The transatlantic differences intime and pace even affect Europe’s defense industries and military. American military technology and capabilities are aimed at enabling faster and faster responses to crisis. European forces in NATO cannot keep up, making integrated joint action more difficult. The European Union, meanwhile, is moving—slowly—to create its own “rapid reaction” military force. At all these levels, therefore, from lifestyle and culture to military matters and, above all, business and the economy, the speed gap between European and the United States of America is, if anything, widening. Each is responding to the accelerative economy and the deep fundamental of time at its own, very different pace. Now, when it comes to flex-firms, another format likely to find a place in many flex-firms is a completely two-faced unit capable of operating in two modes, depending upon the circumstance. The pulsating unit differs in size and organization from time to time. The pulsating unit differs in size and organization from time to time. The Janus-like organization may remain the same in size, but shift from hierarchical to nonhierarchical command as needs demand. A prime example is the famed British military unit, the Special Air, or SAS. Used for surgical antiterrorist strikes, hostage rescue, and other missions demanding surprise and deception, the SAS operates in two diametrically opposed modes. On the parade ground it is all spit, polish, and blind obedience. Regimental protocol is enforced by screaming sergeants. The privileges of rank and hierarchy are brutally upheld. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

In action, however, a totally different kind of behavior is expected from the same people. SAS troops fight in tiny units, often cut off from their base, and without any officer present. There is a unit commander, but he may not hold a formal rank and is likely to be referred to simply as the “boss.” The men, derisively called “sir” on the parade ground, now become “mister” or are addressed simply by the first name. The same sergeant who cursed a trooper for some trivial infraction of the dress code may now tolerate jokes about those “parade ground idiots.” Rank, hierarchy, and privilege are replaced under fire by a different set of ground rules. In fact, Colonel David Stirling, who initially proposed formation of the SAS, pointed out that the smallest unit in paratroop or commando organizations consisted of eight or ten men led by a noncommissioned officer who did the thinking for the unit. Stirling insisted on something unique in military history—a four-man fighting module. In the SAS, Stirling has written, “Each of the four men was trained to a high general level of proficiency in the whole range of the SAS capability and, additionally, each man was trained to have at least one special expertise according to his aptitude. In carrying out an operation—often in pitch-dark—each SAS man in each module was exercising his own individual perception and judgment at full stretch.” In fact, Stirling insisted on the number four to prevent orthodox leadership from arising. The danger of each person acting as a loose cannon is minimized through the selection of extremely motivated team players. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The result is an organization that has been described as “a unique military democracy…in which, if he succeeds, a man exchanges his former class and even identity for membership [in] a caste as binding as any family.” It is this intense training and commitment that make it possible for the same unit to operate in both an authoritarian and a democratic mode, as the occasion demands. Businesses, too, needs different behavior during normal operations and in the midst of crisis. In fact, many firms today are creating crisis centers, contingency plans, and fallback arrangements. However, few actually train all their employees to operate in two contrasting modes. The present conception of crisis management is to create a “shadow management,” which waits in reserve, prepared to assume power during the emergency. Its ability to do so depends heavily on access to information and control of communications. Southern California Edison, for example, which operates the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, has set up a complex emergency information system that uses remote sensing, voice and video links, to tie its crisis command center to field units. As we move further into a period of economic and political turbulence, punctuated erratically by technological breakthroughs and disasters, we can expect crises to crowd in on one another—everything from terrorist attacks and product failures to sudden international crises. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

The Exxon oil spill, the collapse of the Continental Illinois bank, the wave of saving-and-loan failures, the bankruptcy of the A.H. Robins Company after the discovery of health problems related to its Dalkon Shield intrauterine contraceptive device only begin to suggest the diversity of crises that can face businesses. Each one brings enormous power shifts with its scapegoats are blamed, new leaders arise, and others are discredited and replaced. However, the increased likelihood of crisis teams and two-faced organizations spread through the business World and become a regular part of the flex-firm of tomorrow. Now, when it comes to labor, once a plant is operating, it should require little human labor (what people do with their time will change, unless factories are kept running as bizarre hobbies). Desert Rose Industries was run by two people, yet was described as producing large quantities of varied gods. The basic molecular-scale operations of manufacturing have to be automated, since they are too small for people to work on. The other operations are fairly simple and can be assisted by equipment for handling materials and information. When taking space into account, even a manufacturing plant based on nanotechnology takes up room. It would, however, be more compact than familiar manufacturing plants, and could be built in some out-of-the-way place with inexpensive land. These costs should be small by today’s standards. Considering insurance, this cost will depend on the state of the law, but some comparisons can be made. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Improved sensors and alarms could be made integral parts of products; these should lower fire and theft premiums. Product liability costs should be reduced by safer, more reliable products. Employee injury rates will be reduced by having less labor input. Still, the legal system in the United States of America has shown a disturbing tendency to block every new risk, however small, even when this forces people to keep suffering old risks, which are sometimes huge. (The supply of lifesaving vaccines has been threatened in just this way.) When this happens, we kill anonymous people in the name of safety. If this behavior raises insurance premiums in perverse way, it could discourage a shift to safer manufacturing technologies. Since such costs can grown or shrink independent of real World of engineering and human welfare, they are beyond our ability to estimate. Considering the costs of sales, distribution, training—these costs will depend on the product: Is it as common as potatoes, and as simple to use? Or is it rare and complex, so that determining what you need, where to get it, and how to use it are the main problems? These service costs are real but can be distinguished from costs of the thing itself. Essentially, molecular manufacturing should eventually lead to lower costs. The initial expense of developing the technology and specific products will be substantial, but the cost of production can be low. Energy costs (at present prices) and material costs (ditto) would be significant, but not enormous. They were quoted on a perkilogram basis, but nanotechnological products, being made of superior materials, will often weigh only a fraction of what familiar products do. (Ballast, were in needed, will be dirt-cheap.) Equipment costs, land costs, waste-disposal costs, and labor costs can be low by the very nature of the technology. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Costs of design, regulation, and insurance will depend strongly on human tastes and are beyond predicting. Basic products, like clothing and housing, can become inexpensive unless we do something to keep them costly. As the cost of improved safety falls, there will be less reason to accept unsafe products. Molecular manufacturing uses processes as controlled and efficient as the molecular processes in plants. Its products could be as inexpensive as potatoes. This may sound too good to be true (and there are downsides, as we will later discuss), but why should it not be true? Should we not expect large changes to come with the replacement of modern technology? An argument is sometimes made that promiscuous use of sacred or serious symbols by corporate America is a form of healthy irreverence. Irreverence, after all, is an antidote to excessive or artificial piety, and is especially necessary when piety is used as a political weapon. One might say that irreverence, not blasphemy, is the ultimate answer to idolatry, which is why most cultures have established means by which irreverence may be expressed—in the theater, in jokes, in song, in political rhetoric, even in holidays. However, there is nothing in the commercial exploitation of traditional symbols that suggests an excess of piety is itself a vice. Business is too serious a business for that, and in any case has no objection to piety, as long as it is directed toward the idea of consumption, which is never treated as a laughing matter. In using Uncle Sam or the flag, or the American Eagle or images of presidents, in employing such names as Liberty Insurance, Freedom Transmission Repair, and Lincoln Savings and Loan, business does not offer us examples of irreverence. It is merely declaring the irrelevance, in Technopoly, of distinguishing between the scared and the profane. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

You’ll never feel cramped in Model 4 at #Havenwood! This is the largest home offered in this community, and there’s even a great room and loft upstairs for more great flexible entertainment space. 😍

Like all our #CresleighHomes, this one comes with an All-Ready connected home system, including a video doorbell and digital deadbolt.

It’s the perfect time to make moves to the home of your dreams, and it’s not far away!

Home Site 67 is a Residence Four plan, the largest home offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. This two-story, 3,489 square foot home features four bedrooms, including one suite on the first floor, three and one half bathroom, and a true three-car garage.

The covered porch provided a warm entry and the dining room is located right off the entry way. The Kitchen is connected through the Butler’s Pantry providing ample storage. The great room and loft upstairs allow for various uses that will suit your family and lifestyle.

This home includes over $50,000 in options and upgrades
• Durable luxury vinyl plank flooring throughout the first floor
• Gray Shaker Cabinetry with Soft-Close Doors & Drawers
• Over Island Pendants and Under-Cabinet Lighting
• Gourmet Kitchen option with upgraded appliances
• Stainless Steel Farm Sink and Upgraded Faucet
• Flat Screen Prewire in Great Room
• Owned Solar

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Home Mini! https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/quick-move-homesite-67/

One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

On a bench in the park, mid-afternoon, dreamily noting the drift of the species back and forth—to think—this multitude is but a wee little fraction of the Earth’s population! And all blood-kin to me, every one! Eve ought to have come with me; this would excite her affectionate heart, she was never able to keep her composure when she came upon a relative; she would try to kiss every one of these people, African and European and all. [A baby-wagon passes.] How little change one can notice—none at all, in fact. I remember the first child well—let me see…it is three hundred thousand years ago come Tuesday; this one is just like it. So between the first one and the last one there is really nothing to choose. The same insufficiency of hair, the same absence of teeth, the same feebleness of body and apparent preoccupation of mind, the same general adorableness all around. Yet Eve worshiped that early one, and it was pretty to see her with it. This latest one’s mother worships it; it shows in her eyes—it is the very look that used to shine in Eve’s. To think—that so down a procession three hundred thousand years long and remain the same, without shade of change! Yet here it is, lighting this young creature’s face just as it lighted Eve’s in the long ago—the newest thing I have seen in the Earth, and the oldest. Of course, the Dinosaur—but that is in another class. We must try to understand the four chief functions of the human machine. I am sure everyone knows what the intellectual or thinking function is. All mental processes are included here: realization of an impression, formation of representations and concepts, reasoning, comparison, affirmation, negation, formation of words, speech, imagination, and so on. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The second function is feeling or emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, astonishment, and so on. Even if you are sure that it is clear to you how, and in what, emotions differ from thoughts, I should advise you to verify all your views in regard to this. We mix thought and feelings in our ordinary thinking and speaking; but for the beginning of self-study it is necessary to know clearly which is which. The two functions following, instinctive and moving, will take longer to understand, because in no system of ordinary psychology are these functions described and divided in the right way. The words “instinct,” “instinctive,” are generally used in the wrong sense and very often in no sense at all. In particular, to instinct are generally ascribed external functions which are in reality moving functions, and sometimes emotion. The instinctive function in man includes in itself four different classes of functions: All the inner work of the organism, all physiology, so to speak; digestion and assimilation of food, breathing, circulation of the blood, all the work of inner organs, the building of new cells, the elimination or worked-out materials, the work of glands of inner secretion, and so on. The so-called five sense: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; and all other senses such as the sense of weight, of temperature, of dryness or of moisture, and so on; that is, all indifferent sensations—sensations which by themselves are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. All physical emotions; that is, all physical sensations which are either pleasant or unpleasant. All kinds of pain or unpleasant feeling such as unpleasant taste or unpleasant smell, and all kinds of physical pleasure, such as pleasant taste, pleasant smell, and so on. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The moving function includes in itself all external movements, such as walking, writing, speaking, eating, and memories of them. To the moving function also belong those movements which in ordinary language are called “instinctive,” such as catching a falling object without thinking. The difference between the instinctive and the moving function is very clear and can be easily understood if one simply remembers that all instinctive functions without exception are inherent and that there is no necessity to learn them in order to use them; whereas on the other hand, none of the moving functions are inherent and one has to learn them all as a child learns to walk, or as one learns to write or to draw. Besides these normal moving functions, there are also some strange moving functions which represent useless work of the human machine not intended by nature, but which occupy a very large place in man’s life and use a great quantity of his energy. These are: formation of dreams, imagination, daydreaming, talking with oneself, all talking for talking’s sake, and generally, all uncontrolled and uncontrollable manifestations. The four functions—intellectual, emotional, instinctive, and moving—must first be understood in all their manifestations, and later they must be observed in oneself. Such self-observation, that is, observation on the right basis, with a preliminary understanding of the states of consciousness and of different functions, constitutes the basis of self-study; that is, the beginning of psychology. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

It is very important to remember that in observing different functions it is useful to observe at the same time their relation to different states of consciousness. Let us take the three states of consciousness—sleep, waking state, and possible glimpses of self-consciousness—and the four functions—thinking, feeling, instinctive, and moving. All four function can manifest themselves in sleep, but their manifestations are desultory and unreliable; they cannot be used in any way, they just go by themselves. In the state of waking consciousness or relative consciousness, they can to a certain extent serve for our orientation. Their results can be compared, verified, straightened out; and although they may create many illusions, still in our ordinary state we have nothing else and must make of them what we can. If we knew the quantity of wrong observations, wrong theories, wrong deductions and conclusions made in this state, we should cease to believe ourselves altogether. However, men do not realize how deceptive their observations and their theories can be, and they continue to believe in them. It is this tht keeps men from observing the rare moments when their functions manifest themselves in connection with glimpses of the third state of consciousness; tht is, of self-consciousness. All this means that each of the four functions can manifest itself in each of the three states of consciousness. However, the results are quite different. When we learn to observe these results and their difference, we shall understand the right relation between functions and states of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

However, before even considering the difference in function in relation to states of consciousness, it is necessary to understand that man’s consciousness and man’s functions are quite different phenomena, of quite different nature and depending on different causes, and that one can exist without the other. Functions can exist without consciousness, and consciousness can exist without functions. We can stop to compose ourselves at any time. Composure is the result, not the precondition, of assembling the events of our lives into a meaningful whole. The word compose comes from the Latin root pausare, to rest, nd the Greek pauein, to stop. If we are fortunate, we get to take a long pause before the stop of death. When frailty or illness limits our external activities, we are given the opportunity to expand our reach into ourselves. Life has the shape and meaning of a great work of art: it is one’s task to select, telescope and transmute the facts so that their universal significance should be revealed. When a society offers at its apex a scheme of things, inclusive and integrative of all subordinate orientations, and when that scheme by virtue of being generally accepted as true holds great authority, then that society is unified and cohesive, is an organism. Every leader seeks to embody such a scheme of things, and charismatically to make it ever more powerfully appealing, binding on the loyalties of all. A number of the things we research in dealing with specialized characteristics have recurring themes in the work of complexity. Many of these themes can be distilled and brought to bear on the problem of analyzing interventions in a World that is hard to predict because it is complex. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In contest, a World that is hard to predict merely because it is complicated can be attacked in quite a different way. For example, nearly additive contributions of factors mean tht independent studies of the important factors can later be merged at acceptable cost. The Human Genome Project is a large bet that much can be understood via such a “divide and conquer” strategy. Nevertheless, in many cases the interactions of the parts of the system are critical, and complexity reigns. Our framework can be developed to give a unified view of the work on complex systems. As we look across many lines of this research, we see in most of the studies collections of elements—what we have called populations of agents. Usually those elements subdivide into some types (for example, buyers, and sellers, inhibiting molecules and potentiting ones, BMWs and Mercedes). Each of the is connected to some, but usually not all, of the others. The connections are through relations, and there is tremendous variety across fields in what those relations are and how they work (for example, magnetic attraction, organizational authority, electrical stimulation, affinity of pleasures of the flesh, chemical inhibition, geographical proximity or ethnic hostility). Each element in one of those complex systems has patterns of action that affect those connected to it. The research very often centers on the emergent global dynamics of the whole system. It asks the questions like: How (or when) does a system of locally trading agents develop prices that will cause marketwide inventories to clear? How does a brain made of interconnected neurons learn? How does a pile of sand generate its characteristic mix of large and small avalanches? #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

How does news about a vacant job successfully make its way from an employer to potential employees in distant towns? How does a gene pool remix itself over time to create and retain genotypes that may be fit for a changing environment? How do we nurture a network of trust that permits informal credit mechanisms to foster trade efficiencies? It is usual in this approach to view the global properties of the systems as emerging from the actions of its part, rather than seeing the actions of parts as being imposed from a dominant central source. This is not a denial that there are times when systems have effective central authorities or dominant influences. However, the project of complexity theories in such cases is to understand how those dominant influences come about, what sustains (or undermines) them, and how local action responds in the face of global constraints. An excellent example is the work of Padgett and Ansell (1993) on the emergence of a new form of state in medieval Florence as Medici power built up out of tensions within the marital, residential, and commercial networks of the city. Finally, many complex systems—but by no means all—are “adaptive.” As we said earlier, in systems we call adaptive the strategies used by agents or a population change over time as the agents or population works for improved performance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

When we use the phrase Complex Adaptive System, we leave open the question of whether the agents or population actually achieves improved performance. If we are designing interventions, improvement on some measure is what we want to promote. For a system to exhibit adaptation that enhances survival (or another measure of success), it must increase the likelihood of effective strategies and reduce the likelihood of ineffective strategies. We call such a process attribution of credit if an agent uses a performance criterion to increase the frequency of successful strategies or decreases the frequency of unsuccessful ones. The latest erosion of the United States of America-Europe ties was typically attributed to their shape differences over the Ukrainian war. However, far deeper forces are at work. The alliance can be said to have cracked the way Western Europeans stopped fearing an attack by Russia—and concluded they no longer needed U.S. troops and taxpayers to defend them. However, this is not true because they are now relying on American taxpayer money during this war and as a result of the hard economic conditions. For today’s widening split actually began generations earlier when the United States of America started to change its relationship to the deep fundamental and began building a knowledge economy. Europe’s core countries, by contrast, focused on reconstruction after World War II and subsequent expansion of their smokestack economies. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Rich with talent, top-notch scientists, I.T. engineers, futurists and thinkers, Europe for a time seemed poised to embrace the new technological potentials. However, it was largely led b rear-mirror business and political leaders steeped in the guiding doctrines of the industrial age and incapable of thinking beyond them. It is true that in recent years Europe has moved faster than the United States of America in several advanced sectors, including mobile-phone use. Its Airbus for a time did well competing against an under-the-weather Boeing. It may lead the United States of America in grid computing. The French are strong competitors in the satellite-launch business, and Europe is planning to loft a rival to the American Global Positioning System. Tim Berners-Lee, who is British, gave us the World Wide Web. Linus Torvalds, a Finn, gave of Linux. And the European Space Agency led the project that, in collaboration with NASA, put a probe on Titan, Saturn’s moon. This list could easily be extended. However, all these successes needed to be set against a larger, much darker picture. To this day, key industrial principles such as standardization, concentration, maximization of scale and centralization still dominate European Union thinking. Thus, as knowledge-based economies move from massification toward de-massification of products and markets—accompanied by growing social and cultural diversity—the European Union has been homogenizing national differences. Giving lip service to the concept of diversity, it has, in fact, kept busy attempting to “harmonize” everything from taxes to cosmetics, job resumes to motorcycle laws. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

In applying one-size-fits-all rules, moreover, as The Economist points out, it usually opts for the most stringent and least flexible of the available versions. As in Japan and elsewhere, success in advanced knowledge economies requires increasingly flexible business and governmental organizations. However, the European specializes in imposing inflexible, top-down industrial-style controls—even on the budgets and financial decisions of its member nations. Under the Maastricht Treaty each nation using the euro as currency was bound to limit government deficits to nor more than 3 percent of its GDP. This was done largely at the imperial instance of Germany, which eventually found the limits so restrictive that it, itself, repeatedly violated the inflexible standard it helped impose on everyone else. Around 6 percent of the 12 euro-zone members are in violation of the pact. French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed E.U. constitution, a four-hundred-page masterwork of bureaucratic overkill. Critics noted that the authors of the U.S. Constitution required fewer than ten pages, including the Bill of Rights. Most countries use tariffs, quotas, and other measures to restrict important competition and protect domestic industries. Such policies rise prices, and hurt all domestic users of the protected product. Economists have estimated that when important quotas are used to protect industries such as steel, textiles, or sugar, the rest of us pay higher prices amounting to roughly $100,000 for each job saved. How is it that the gains to a few always get priority over the much larger aggregate losses to the many? #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The trick is to bring up the cases one at a time. First, 10,000 jobs in the shoe industry are at risk. To save them would cost a billion dollars to the rest of us, or just over $4 each. Who would not agree to pay $4 to save 10,000 jobs even for total strangers, especially when competing nations can be blamed for their plight? Then along comes the garment industry, the steel industry, the auto industry, and so on. Before we know it, we have agreed to pay over $50 billion, which is more than $200 each, or nearly $1,000 per family. (Which is why so many people want to cut off other nations from receiving economic assistance. The money we send them causes us a deficit, and then America cannot afford to pay for infrastructure improvements and social services that Americans need. Often time new taxes are born to help offset the cost, but where does it stop, how much more do we have to pay when we are taxed without representation? Before you know it, we have so many new taxes and all taxes are so high that America becomes a communist nation.) If we had foreseen the whole process, we might have thought the cost too high, and insisted that workers in each of these industries bear the risks of international trade just as they would bear any other economic risk. Decisions made case by case can lead to undesirable results overall. In fact, a sequence of majority votes can lead to an outcome that everyone regards as worse than the status quo. The income tax reform of 1985-86 almost collapsed because the Senate initially took a case-by-case approach. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

In the first round of the Finance Committee’s markup sessions, the amended Treasury proposal became so weighted down with special interest provisions that it sank to a merciful death. The senators realized that they were “powerless” to prevent any one organized lobby from getting special treatment. Yet the combination of these lobbyists could destroy the bill, and this would be worse than producing no legislation at all. So Senator Packwood, the committee chairman, made his own lobby: he persuaded a majority of the committee members to vote against any amendment to the tax bill, even those amendments that especially favored their own constituents. The reform was enacted. However, special provisions are already staging a comeback, one or two at a time. Along similar lines, the line-item veto would allow the president to veto legislation selectively. If a bill authorized money for school lunches and a new space shuttle, the president would have the option of neither, either, or both, instead of the current neither or both. Although a first reaction is that this allows the president greater control over legislation, the opposite might end up happening as Congress would be more selective about which bill it process. While the line-item veto is generally thought to be unconstitutional, this question may have to be resolved by the Supreme Court. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

These problems arise because myopic decision-makers fail to look ahead and see the whole picture. In the case of tax reform, the Senate recovered its vision just in time; the issue of protectionism still suffers. The pulsating organization is one that expands and contracts in a regular rhythm. A good example is the U.S. Census Bureau, which swells to enormous size every ten years, then shrinks, starts planning for the next decennial count, and swells again. Ordinarily staffed by about 7,000 regular employees, the Bureau maintains twelve regional centers around the United States of America. However, to conduct a complete census, it sets up a parallel or “shadow” center for each of the twelve. Through them more, than 1.2 million applicants ae interviewed to find the 400,000 “troops” who actually fan out and knock on every American door. These shadow centers are designed to last one year or a year and a half, and then to be dismantled. The staff then shrivels back to around 7,000. At which point planning begins for the next count ten years in the future. Carrying this operation through successfully ought to earn the managerial equivalent of an Olympic gold medal. The 1990 census was fraught with bugs and bloopers. However, the task would clearly daunt many a senior business executive. Indeed, many firms will notice that their own problems, though smaller in scale, are not entirely dissimilar. For “pulsating organizations” are present in many industries as well. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

We see them in companies that gear up for annual model changes, then gear down again; in retail firms that staff up for Christmas and lay off in January; and in pickup crews used for film and television production. In fact, one of the most rapidly proliferating formats in business today is the task force or project team, examples of what we term “ad-hocracy.” These, however, are only variants of the pulsating organization. While true “pulsers” grow and shrink repetitively, a project team normally carries out a single task. In therefore grows and declines once and then is dismantled. It is, in effect, a “single-pulse” organization. Pulsing organizations have a unique information and communication requirements. For its recent census, the Census Bureau’s shadow centers, for example, were linked by some $100 million worth of computers and telecommunications equipment in a temporary network designed to be disposed of, or folded back into the permanent organization. Executives in charge of pulsing companies or units often find their power pulsing too. Funds dry up as the unit shrinks. People disappear. The available pool of knowledge or talent diminished. The power of rival units in the company expands relatively as the unit continues to shrink. In a pulsating power structure, the executive who commands a large project may be a “700-pound gorilla” one day—and a money the next. As many pulsating organizations interact, they lend a kind of rhythm to the economy. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Pulsing, however, is not only a matter of size. Some companies pulse back and forth between centralization and decentralization. With each swing or pulse, information structures are changed—and power therefore shifts. The speedup and growing unpredictability of change point toward faster pulsing in the ten years ahead. It is possible that, some day soon, an advertising man who must create a television commercial for a new California Chardonnay will have the following inspiration: Jesus is standing alone in a desert oasis. A gentle breeze flutters the leaves of the stately palms behind him. Soft Mideastern music caresses the air. Jesus holds in his hand a bottle of wine at which he gazes adoringly. Turning toward the camera, he says, “When I transformed water into wine at Cana, this is what I had in mind. Try it today. You’ll become a believer.” If you think such a commercial is not possible in your lifetime, then consider this: As I write, there is an oft-seen commercial for Hebrew National Frankfurters. It features a dapper-looking Uncle Sam in his traditional red, white, and blue outfit. While Uncle Sam assumes appropriate facial expressions, a voice-over describes the delicious and healthful frankfurters produced by Hebrew National. Toward the end of the commercial, the voice stresses that Hebrew National Frankfurters surpass federal standards for such products. Why? Because, the voice says as the camera shifts our point of view upward toward Heaven, “We have to answer to a Higher Authority.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

I will leave it to the reader to decide which is more incredible—Jesus being used to sell wine or God being used to sell frankfurters. Whichever you decide, you must keep in mind that neither the hypothetical commercial nor the real one is an example of blasphemy. They are much worse than that. Blasphemy is, after all, among the highest tributes that can be paid to the power of a symbol. The blasphermer take symbols as seriously as the idolater, which is why the President of the United States of America (circa 1991) whishes to punish, through a constitutional amendment, desecrators of the American flag. What we are talking about here is not blasphemy but trivialization, against which there can be no laws. In Technopoly, the trivialization of significant cultural symbols is largely conducted by commercial enterprise. This occurs not because corporate America is greedy but because the adoration of technology pre-empts the adoration of anything else. Symbols tht draw their meaning from traditional religious or national contexts must therefor be made impotent as quickly as possible—that is, drained of sacred or even serious connotations. The elevation of one god requires the demotion of another. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” applies as well to technological divinity as any other. There are two intertwined reasons that make it possible to trivialize traditional symbols. The first, as neatly expressed by the social critic Jay Rosen, is that, although symbols, especially images, are endlessly repeatable, they are not inexhaustible. Second, the more frequently a significant symbol is used, the less potent is its meaning. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The beginnings, in the mid-nineteenth century, of a “graphics revolution” allowed the easy reproduction of visual imges, thus providing the masses with continuous access to the symbols and icons of their culture. Through prints, lithographs, photographs, and, later, movies and television, religious and national symbols became commonplaces, breeding indifference if not necessarily contempt. As if to answer those who believe that the emotional impact of a sacred image is always and ever the same, we should be reminded that prior to the graphics revolution most people saw relatively few images. Paintings of Jesus or the Madonna, for example, would have been seen rarely outside the churches. Paintings of great national leaders could be seen only in the homes of the wealthy or in government buildings. There were images to be seen in books, but books were expensive and spent most of their time on shelves. Images were not a conscious part of the environment, and their scarcity contributed toward their special power. When the scale or accessibility was altered, the experience of encountering an image necessarily changed; that is to say, it diminished in importance. One picture, we are told, is worth a thousand words. However, a thousand pictures, especially if they are of the same object, may not be worth anything at all. This is a common enough psychological principle. You may demonstrate this for yourself (if you have not at some time already done so) by saying any word, even a significant one, over and over again. Sooner than you expect, you will find that the word has been transformed into a meaningless sound, as repetition drains it out of its symbolic value. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Any male who has served in, let us say, the United States of America’s Army or spent time in a college dormitory has had this experience with what are called obscene words, especially the notorious four-letter word which I am loath to reproduce here. Words that you have been taught not to use and that normally evoke an embarrassed or disconcerted response, when used too often, are stripped of their power to shock, to embarrass, to call attention to a special frame of mind. They become only sounds, not symbols. Moreover, the journey to meaninglessness of symbols is a function not only of the frequency with which they are invoked but of the indiscriminate contexts in which they are used. An obscenity, for example, can do its work best when it is reserved for situations that call forth anger, disgust, or hatred. When it is used as an adjective for every third noun in a sentence, irrespective of emotional context, it is deprived of its magical effects and, indeed, of its entire point. This is what happens when Abraham Lincoln’s image, or George Washington’s, is used to announce linen sales on President’s Day, or Martin Luther King’s birthday celebration is taken as an occasion for furniture discounts. It is what happens when Uncle Sam, God, or Jesus is employed as an agent of the profane World for an essentially trivial purpose. In the meantime, we should be able to exercise our humanity, governing each other and being governed, instead of encasing ourselves in the laden armor of our technological schizophrenia. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Some costs apply to a kind of product, regardless of how many copies are made: these include design costs, technology-licensing costs, regulatory-approval costs, and the like. Other costs apply to each unit a product: these include the costs of labor, energy, raw materials, production equipment, production sites, insurance, and waste disposal. The per-kind costs can become very low if production runs are large. If these costs stay high, it will be because people prefer new products or their new benefits, despite the cost—hardly cause for complaint. The more basic and easier to analyze costs are per-unit costs. A picture to keep in mind here is of Desert Rose Industries, where molecular machinery does most of the work, and where products are made from parts that are ultimately made from simple chemical substances. Let us consider some cost components. Energy: Manufacturing at the molecular scale need not use a lot of energy. Plants build billions of tons of highly patterned material every year using available solar energy. Molecular manufacturing can be efficient, in the sense that the energy needed to build a block of product should be comparable to the energy released in burning an equivalent mass of wood or coal. If this energy were supplied as electricity at today’s costs, the energy costs of manufacturing would be something like a dollar per kilogram. We will return to the cost of energy later. Raw Materials: Molecular manufacturing will not need exotic materials as inputs. Plain bulk chemicals will suffice, and this means materials no more exotic than the fuels and feedstocks that are, for now, derived from petroleum and biomass—gasoline, methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen. These typically cost tends of cent per kilogram. If bizarre compounds are used, they can be made internally. Rare elements could be avoided, but might be useful in trace amounts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

The total quality of raw materials consumed will be smaller than in conventional manufacturing processes because less will be wasted. Capital Equipment and Maintenance: As we saw in the Desert Rose scenario, molecular manufacturing can be used to build all of the equipment needed for molecular manufacturing. It seems that this equipment—everything from large vats to submicroscopic special-purpose assemblers—can be reasonably durable, lasting for months or years before being recycled and replaced. If the equipment were to cost dollars per kilogram, and produce many thousands of kilograms of product in its life, the cost of the equipment would add little to the cost of the product. Waste Disposal: Today’s manufacturing waste is dumped into the air, water, and landfills. There need be no such waste with molecular manufacturing. Excess materials of the kind now spewed into the environment could instead be completely recycled internally, or could instead be completely recycled internally, or could emerge from the manufacturing process in pure form, ready for use in some other process. In an advanced process, the only wastes would be leftover atoms resulting from a bad mix of raw materials. Most of these leftover atoms would be ordinary minerals and simple gases like oxygen, the main “waste” from the molecular machinery of plants. Molecular manufacturing produces no new elements—if arsenic comes out, arsenic must have gone in, and the process is not to blame for its existence. Any intrinsically toxic materials of this sort can at least be put in the safest form we can devise for disposal. One option would be to chemically bond it into a stable mineral and put it back where it came from. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20


Cresleigh Homes

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The Problem is Who Will Risk One’s Life to Bell the Cat?

When a society offers at its apex a scheme of things, inclusive and integrative of all subordinate orientations, and when that scheme by virtue of being generally accepted as true holds great authority, then that society is unified and cohesive, is an organism. There many different ways consciousness can be studied. Take a watch and look at the second hand, trying to be aware of yourself, and concentrating on the thought, “I am Peter Ouspensky,” “I am now here.” Try not to think about anything else, simply follow the movements of the second hand and be aware of yourself, your name, your existence, and the place where you are. Keep all other thoughts way. You will, if you are persistent, be able to do this for two minutes. This is the limit of your consciousness. And if you try to repeat the experiment soon after, you will find it more difficult than the first time. This experiment shows that a man, in his natural state, can with great effort be conscious of one subject (himself) for two minutes or less. The most important deduction one can make after making this experiment in the right way is that man is not conscious of himself. The illusion of his being conscious of himself is created by memory and thought processes. For instance, a man goes to a theater. If he is accustomed to it, he is not especially conscious of being there while he is there, although he can see things and observe them, enjoy the performance or dislike it, remember it, remember people he met, and so on. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

When he comes home he remembers that he was in the theater, and certainly he thinks that he was conscious while he was there. So he has no doubts about his consciousness and he does not realize that his consciousness can be completely absent while he still can act reasonably, think, observe. For general description, man has possibility of four states of consciousness. They are: sleep, waking state, self-consciousness,and objective consciousness. However, although he has the possibility of these four states of consciousness, man actually lives only in two states: one part of his life passes in sleep, and the other part in what is called “waking state,” though in reality his waking state differs very little from sleep. In ordinary life, man knows nothing of “objective consciousness,” and no experiments in this direction are possible. The third state, or “self-consciousness,” man ascribes to himself’ that is, he believes he possesses it, although actually he can be conscious of himself only in very rare flashes and even then he probably does not recognize it because he does not know what it would imply if he actually possessed it. These glimpses of consciousness come in exceptional moments, in highly emotional states, in moments of danger, in very new and unexpected circumstances and situations; or sometimes in quite ordinary moments when nothing in particular happens. However, in his ordinary or “normal” state, man has no control over them whatever. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

As regards our ordinary memory or moments of memory, we actually remember only moments of consciousness, although we do not realize that this is so. What memory means in a technical sense, and the different kinds of memory we possess, I shall explain later. Now I simply want you to turn your attention to your own observations of your memory. You will notice that you remember things differently. Some things you remember quite vividly, some very vaguely, and some you do not remember at all. You only know that they happened. You will be very astonished when you realize how little you actually remember. And it happens in this way because you remember only the moments when you were conscious. So, in reference to the third state of consciousness, we can say that man has occasional moments of self-consciousness leaving vivid memories of the circumstances accompanying them, but he has no command over them. They come and go by themselves, being controlled by external circumstances and occasional associations or memories of emotions. The question arises: is it possible to acquire command over these fleeting moments of consciousness, to evoke them more often, and to keep them longer, or even make them permanent? In other words, is it possible to become conscious? #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

This is the most important point, and it must be understood at the very beginning of our study that this point even as a theory has been entirely missed by all modern psychological schools without an exception. For with right methods and the right efforts man can acquire control of consciousness, and can become conscious of himself, with all that it implies. And what it implies we in our present state do not even imagine. Only after this point has been understood does serious study of psychology become possible. This study must begin with the investigation of obstacles to consciousness in ourselves, because consciousness can only begin to grow when at least some of these obstacles are removed. In the flowing lectures, I shall speak about these obstacles, the greatest of which is our ignorance of ourselves, and our wrong conviction that we know ourselves at least to a certain extent and can be sure of ourselves, when in reality we do not know ourselves at all and cannot be sure of ourselves even in smallest things. We must understand now that psychology really means self-study. This is the second definition of psychology. One cannot study psychology as one can study astronomy; that is, apart from oneself. And at the same time one must study oneself as one studies any new and complicated machines. One must know the parts of the machine, its chief functions, the conditions of right work, the causes of wrong work, and many other things which are difficult to describe without using special language, which it is also necessary to know in order to be able to study the machine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

The human functions are: Thinking (or intellect). Feeling or (emotions). Instinctive function (all inner work of the organism). Moving function (all outer work of the organism, movement in space, and so on. Pleasures of the flesh (the function of two principles, male and female, in all their manifestations). Besides these five there are two more functions for which we have no name in ordinary language and which appear only in higher states of consciousness; onehigher emotional functions, which appears in the state of selfconsciousness, and the other, higher mental functions, which appears in the state of objective consciousness. As we are not in these states of consciousness we cannot study these functions or experiment with them, and we learn about them only indirectly from those who have attained or experienced them. In the religious and early philosophical literature of different nations there are many allusions to the higher states of consciousness and to higher functions. What creates an additional difficulty in understanding these allusions is the lack of division between the higher states of consciousness. What is called samadhi or ecstatic state or illumination, or, in more recent works, “cosmic consciousness,” may refer to one and may refer to another—sometimes to experience of self-consciousness and sometimes to experiences of objective consciousness. And, strange though it may seem, we have more material for judging about the highest state, that is, objective consciousness, than about the intermediate state, that is, self-consciousness, although the former may come only after the latter. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

Self-study must begin with the study of the four functions, thinking, feeling, instinctive functions, and moving functions. Functions involving pleasures of the flesh can be studied only much later; that is, when these four functions are already sufficiently understood. Contrary to some modern theories, the functions involving pleasures of the flesh are really posterior; that is, it appears later in life, when the first four functions are already fully manifested, and is conditioned by them. Therefore, the study of the functions involving pleasures of the flesh are fully known in all their manifestations. At the same time it must be understood that any serious irregularity or abnormality in the functions involving pleasures of the flesh make self-development and even selfstudy impossible. In the children’s story about belling the cat, the mice decide that life would be much safer if the cat were stuck with a bell around its neck. The problem is, who will risk one’s life to bell the cat?This is a problem for both mice and men. How can relatively small armies of occupying powers or tyrants control very large populations for long periods? Why is a planeload of people powerless before a single hijacker with a gun? In both cases, a simultaneous move by the masses stands a very good chance of success. However, the communication and coordination required for such action is difficult, and the oppressors, knowing the power of the masses, take special steps to keep it difficult. When people must act individually and hope that the momentum will build up, the questions arises, “Who is going to be first?” Such a leader will pay a very high cost—possibly one’s life. One’s reward may be posthumous glory or gratitude. There are people who are moved by considerations of duty, or honor, but most find the costs exceeds the benefits. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Khrushchev first denounced Stalin’s purges at the Soviet Communist Party’s 20th Congress. After his dramatic speech, someone in the audience shouted out, asking what Khrushchev had been doing at the time. Khrushchev responded by asking the questioner to please stand up and identify himself. The audience remained silent. Khrushchev replied: “That is what I did, too.” In a sense, we have seen these examples before. They are just a prisoners’ dilemma with more than two people; one might call this the hostages’ dilemma. Here we want to use this dilemma to make a different point—namely, the frequent superiority of punishment over reward. The dictator might keep the populace peaceful by providing it material and even spiritual comforts, but this can be a very costly proposition. Oppression and terror relying on the Hostages’ Dilemma can be a much more efficient alternative. There are many examples of this principle. In a large taxi fleet, cars are often assigned to drivers by a dispatcher. The fleet has some good cars and some marginal cars. The dispatcher can use one’s assignment power to extract a small bribe from each of the drivers. Any driver who refuses to pay is sure to get a marginal car, while those who cooperate are given the luck of the draw from the remainder. (If everyone pays, not everyone will end up with a premium vehicle. However, if the marginal vehicles are randomly assigned, no driver faces a great chance of the bad draw. In contrast, the first driver who refuses to pay can expect to drive the marginal car quite regularly.  #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

In the meanwhile, the dispatcher gets rich, and the drivers as a group end up with the same set of cabs that they would have if no on used bribery. If the drivers acted in collusion, they probably could stop this practice. The problem lies in getting the movement organized. The point is not so much that the dispatcher can reward those who bribe one, but that one can punish severely those who do not. A similar story can be told about evicting tenants from rent-controlled apartments. If someone buys such a building in New York, one has the right to evict one tenant so as to be able to live in one’s own building. However, this translates into a power to clear the whole. A new landlord can try the following argument with the tenant in Apartment 1A: “I have the right to live in my building. Therefore, I plan to evict you and move into your apartment. However, if you cooperate and leave voluntarily, then I will reward you with $5,000.” This is a token amount in relation to the value of the rent-controlled apartment (although it still buys a few subway tokens in New York). Faced with the choice of eviction with $5,000 or eviction without $5,000, the tenant takes the money and runs. The landlord then offers the same deal to the tenant in 1B, and so on. The United Auto Workers have a similar advantage when they negotiate with the auto manufacturers sequentially. A strike against Ford alone puts it at particular disadvantage when General Motors and Chrysler continue to operate; therefore Ford is more likely to settle quickly on terms favorable to the Union. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Such a strike is also less costly to the Union as only one third of their members are out. After winning against Ford, the Union takes on GM and then Chrysler, using each previous success as precedent and fuel for their fire. In contrast, Japanese union incentives work the other way, since they are organized by a company and have more profit sharing. It Toyota unions strike, their members’ incomes suffer along with Toyota’s profits and they gain nothing from the precedent effect. We are not saying that any or all of these are good outcomes or desirable policies. In some cases there may be compelling arguments for trying to prevent the kinds of results we have described. However, to do so effectively, one has to understand the mechanism by which the problem arose in the first place—namely, an “accordion effect,” where each fold pushes or pulls the net. This phenomenon arises again and again; but it can be countered, and we will show you how soon. Every ten years the United States of America is invaded. Recently an army of 400,000 fanned out from twelve beachheads and moved across the nation in a six-week campaign. At the end of that period the army withdrew, vanishing into the surrounding society along with all the logistics, telecommunications, and computers that linked its units together during its field operations. Though seldom studied, the plans for this massive campaign hold lessons for many American businesses. For the goal of this “army” is to collect the detailed intelligence on which millions of business decisions will be based. Moreover, the very way in which the campaign is organized will provide insight to many an executive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

The organization involved is, of course, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and its decennial operations cast revealing light on that future form of enterprise, the flex-firm. As the post-smokestack economy grows increasingly diverse, companies will be compelled to invent new, more varied business formats. This is not just an academic theory. It has to do with survivability. Cybernetician W. Ross Ashby coined the phrase “requisite variety” many years ago to describe one of the preconditions for the survival of any system. Today’s businesses simply lack the requisite variety to make it in the 21 century. As they cast about for more adaptive ways of doing business, they will uncover—or rediscover—many arrangements now overlooked, suppressed, misunderstood, or misused by bureaucratic management. They will look for ideas everywhere: in other businesses, as well as in nonbusiness institutions like governments, political parties, universities, the military—and census bureaus. At this time, there is little convergence among theorists who have begun to study complex systems as a class. It is not a field in which a crisp and unified theory has already been developed, nor is one expected in the next few years. For example, there is no agreement yet on the best way to measure the amount of complexity in a given system. In many ways we are sympathetic to a proposal of Murray Gell-Mann’s, which captures the sense that a system should be called complex when it is hard to predict not because it is random but rather because the regularities it does have cannot be described. This distinguishes complexity from randomness, and it aligns with our focus on difficulty of prediction. However, there are a number of other careful definitions of complexity that have other desirable properties.  #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

If there will be a consensus on a precise definition of complexity, it lies well in the future. Xavier de C*** (his last name is secret) is a spy. He is also an adventurer, scholar, and adviser to governments. And he is the author of a startling proposal for Europe to help create “the United States of the West” by hitching its own wagon directly “to the America star,” forming one new supernation and jointly policing the various barbarians in the rest of the World. Making this case in a witty essay, Xavier scathingly punctures what he regards as France’s oversized ego and explains why he has actually given up his French passport to become an American citizen. In listing the many advantages that would accrue to an enlarged West, Xavier writes about culture, military cooperation and expansion of the American tax base by brining in the Europeans. What is more, it would give Europe the right to vote in U.S. elections—Xavier’s view, the only ones that matter. The essay drew bitter protests from French nationalists and left-wingers who took it proposal at face value—even though Xavier, as it turned out, was a fictional character. He was created by Regis Debray, the intellectual stormy petrel best known for his friendships in the 1960s with Che Guevera and Fidel Castro. What Xavier does not offer, however, is any half-serious analysis of the economics of the imagined unification. What could Europe bring to the marriage? What could Europe count on getting in return? Where are the economies of each heading in the decades ahead? Which way would wealth flow between them? #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

We may need to consult Scientism for more guidance. Scientism is not merely the misapplication of techniques such as quantification to questions where numbers have nothing to say; not merely the confusion of the material and social realms of human experience; not merely the claim of social researcher to be applying the aims and procedures of natural science to the human World. Scientism is in all of these, but something profoundly more. It is the desperate hope, and wish, and ultimately the illusory belief that some standardized set of procedures called “science” can provide us with an unimpeachable source of moral authority, a superhuman basis for answers to the questions like “What is life, and when, and why?” “Why is death, and suffering?” “What is right and wrong to do?” “What are good and evil ends?” “How ought we to think and feel and behave?” It is Scientism on a personal level when one says, President Trump did, that he personally believes that abortion is wrong but we must leave it to science to tell us when a fetus enters life. It is Scientism on a cultural level when no scientist rises to demur, when no newspaper prints a rebuttal on its “science” pages, when everyone cooperates, willfully or through ignorance, in the perpetuation of such an illusion. Science can tell us when a heart begins to beat, or movement begins, or what are the statistics on the survival of neonates of different gestational ages outside the womb. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

However, science has no more authority than you do or I do to establish such criteria as the “true” definition of “life” or of human state or of personhood. Social research can tell us how some people behave in the presence of what they believe to be legitimate authority. However, it cannot tell us when authority is “legitimate” and when not, or how we must decide, or when it may be right or wrong to obey. To ask of science, or expect of science, or accept unchallenged from science the answers to such questions is Scientism. And it is Technopoly’s grand illusion. Toward the end of his life, Dr. Sigmund Freud debated with himself what he called The Future of an Illusion. The illusion he referred to was the belief in a supernatural and suprahuman source of being, knowledge, and moral authority: the belief in God. The question Dr. Freud debated was not whether God exists, but whether humankind could survive without the illusion of God—or, rather, whether humankind would fare better psychologically, culturally, and morally without that illusion than with it. Dr. Freud states his own doubts (expressed through the device of an alter ego with whom he debates) in the strongest possible voice, but in the end it is the voice of Dr. Freud’s reason (or faith in reason) that “wins”: humankind may or may not fare better, but it must do without the illusion of God. Dr. Freud did not see that, even as he wrote, his own work was lending substance to another illusion: the illusion of a future in which the procedures of natural and social science would ultimately reveal the “real” truth of human behavior and provide, through the agency of objectively neutral scientists, an empirical source of moral authority. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Had Dr. Freud foreseen the peculiar transformation that the image of ultimate authority would take in our own time—from an old man in a long white beard to young men and women in long white coats—Dr. Freud might have changed the question that was the focus of his inquiry. He could not. And so I will change it here, not to provide an answer, but in the hope of stirring renewed debate: as among the illusion of God, the illusion of Scientism, and no illusion or hope at all for an ultimate source of moral authority, which is most likely to serve the human interest, and which to prove most deadly, in the Age of Technopoly? Whatever the theoretical virtues of this fusion, the unfortunate reality is that the United States of America and Europe are growing apart, not closer together. While it is true that re-globalization has caused both to adopt some common rules of the financial time and to speak in a common vocabulary about corporate issues such as “transparency,” far more profound forces are driving them apart. The rise of China, having thrown a giant rock into the global pool, is sending out powerful riptides that affect all the major currencies and trade relationships and disrupt long-standing alliances. Historically, Europe and the United States of America have been each other’s chief trading partner. Since 1985, however, as each increased its trade with China and other emerging countries, the flow of imports and exports between the two has been declining as a percentage of their total trade. If you do not believe it, go buy a Vuitton bag. Chances are it was manufactured in China, legally or otherwise. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

The reduction in transatlantic economic interdependency has been accompanied by increasingly contentious trade disputes as the European Union banned the import of genetically modified food and raised tariffs on American goods ranging from honey, bananas and roller skates to nuclear reactors. In addition, as William A. Reinsch of the National Foreign Trade Council points out, the European Union killed a proposal by Honeywell and General Electric in 2001 and find Microsoft $613 million for anti-competitive behavior, ordering it to unbundle its media player from its Windows software. On its side, the United States of America imposed duties or suspended imports from European steel, cold cuts, ball bearings and pasts. By 2004, CFO was reporting that “even on traditional trade issues, relations between the United States of America and the EU are at an all-time low.” All of this was further fraught by China expanding its arms exports beyond Asia to the Middle East and Eastern Europe. From 2017 to 2021, China’s arms exports accounted for 5 percent of the global total, making it the fourth largest arms exporter in the World after the United States of America, Russia, and France. And European countries are supplying China with over $5 billion in weapons and military technology. This confronted the United States of America with an unlikely but dangerous possibility: If China were to attack Taiwan, which the United States of America is obligated to defend, American troops could face weapons supplied by its European “partners.” All of these conflicts can be seen as early skirmishes pointing to larger transatlantic conflicts to come. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

As inflation produces the illusion that costs rise, when the real story is that the value of money is falling. In the short term, real costs usually do not change very quickly, and this can produce the illusion that costs are stable facts of nature, like the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. In the real World, though, most costs have been falling by a crucial measure: the amount of human labor needed to make things. People can afford more and more. This change is dramatic measured on a scale of centuries, and equally dramatic across the gulf between Third World and developed countries. The rise from Third World to First World standards of living has raised income (dropped the cost of labor time) by more than a factor of ten. What can molecular manufacturing do? Larger cost reductions have happened, most dramatically in computers. The cost of a computer of a given ability has fallen by roughly a factor of 10 every seven years since the 1940s. In total, this is a factor of a million. If automotive technologies had done likewise, a luxury car would now cost less than one cent. (Personal computer systems still costs hundreds of dollars both because they are far more powerful than the giant machines of the 1940s and because the cost of buying any useful computer system includes much more than just the costs of a bare computer chip.) But the fact stands that property takes precedence over human life in the old culture also follows logically from scarcity assumptions. If possessions are scarce relative to people, they come to have more value than people. This is especially true for people with few possessions, who come to be considered so worthless as to be subhuman and hence eligible for extermination. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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Appearing Excessively Greedy Will Make Others Less Willing to Negotiate with You!

So the years waxed and waned, and the great-grandchildren of Adam lifted up their voices and cried with a mighty tumult, saying, “Write!” even as the generations that had gone before. Wherefore did Adam promise yet once again. And again did he procrastinate, as in the days of old, he loving his ease the more as the winters did gather upon his head and other the signs and symbols of age accumulate about him. For even so is the estate of man: one day he cometh up as a flower, fair to look upon: but the next day is he cut down and trampled under foot of men and cast into outer darkness, where the grasshopper is a burden and thieves break through and steal and he hath naught of raiment but camel’s hair and ashes, and a leathern girdle about his loins. So the years waxed and waned, and generations passed, and three centuries came and went, and the fourth was far spent. And behold all the seed of Adam had made the welkin of the drifting ages ring with that petition which they had come to know by heart, and Adam had magnified the clamor with his ancient promise, yet had he still procrastinated, as in that old day when the World was young and Eden a dream of yesterday. Now came forth all the host of his posterity, a mighty and exceeding multitude that no man might number, and did lift up their voices and did utter as it were in quaking thunders, the saying, “Father of the nations and peoples of the Earth here gathered in thy presence from the four winds and the uttermost parts beyond the great seas, take thy pen and write of the glories and the joys of Eden, tht we may see with thine eyes and be blest in the contemplation of it.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Then did Adam answering say, “Lo, ages have rolled their waves of care and sorrow over me, and regret for the divine Eden hath grown with my years, until it hath come to pass that now am I no longer able to bring back the memory of that gracious time, so wasted and obliterated is it with these centuries of picturing in my mind that woful day that saw me banished thence.” Then went that great multitude forth unto the far regions whence they came, saying one to another, “Lo, this old man hath beguiled us to our hurt. Therefore, when it shall come to pass that another Adam departeth out of another Eden, let it be the law that he shall write that which he hath seen whilst yet it basketh in the gold and purple crimson of the morning of his memory, ere the clouds and the night of age close down and hide it away and it be lost forever. Then shall he be clothed in sack-cloth and fine linen, and men shall bow down and worship him, even as did the children the fatted calf in the plain, what time the floods came and the winds blew, and beat upon it, yet it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock; and an exceeding great fear came upon all that saw it, and their legs quaked and their limbs clove to the roof of their mouth and they fled away to the mountains, crying, “Hold the fort for I am coming.” Honesty cannot know itself; aware of telling the truth. The pure heart, blind to its own purity, sees only outward; the reflective heart is devious. Unaware of weeping. And as we deceive ourselves, we deceive also others. Self-awareness comes into being in the midst of struggles for power and is immediately put to use. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

One defends oneself, or seeks advantage, by misrepresenting oneself. We must understand that man can do nothing. However, he does not realize this and ascribes to himself the capacity to do. This is the first wrong thing that man ascribes to himself. That must be understood very clearly. Man cannot do. Everything that man thinks he does, really happens. It happens exactly as “it rains,” or “it thaws.” In the English language there are no impersonal verbal forms which can be used in relation to human actions. So we must continue to say that man thinks, reads, writes, loves, hates, starts wars, fights, and so on. Actually, all this happens. Man cannot move, think, or speak of his own accord. He is a marionette pulled here and there by invisible strings. If he understands this, he can learn more about himself, and possibly then things may begin to change for him. However, if cannot realize and understand his utter mechanicalness, or if he does not wish to accept it as a fact, he can learn nothing more, and things cannot change for him. Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and, having fully realized this, he may find the ways to cease to be a machine. First of all, what man must know is tht he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable “I” or “Ego.” He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without an end. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

The illusion of unity or oneness is created in man first, by the sensation of one physical body, by his name, which in normal cases always remains the same, and third, by a number of mechanical habits which are implanted in him by education or acquired by imitation. Having always the same physical sensations, hearing always the same name and noticing in himself the same habits and inclinations he had before, he believes himself to be always the same. In reality there is no oneness in man and there is no controlling center, no permanent “I” or Ego. This is the general picture of man: Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every desire, every like and every dislike is an “I.” These “I’s” are not connected and are not co-ordinated in any way. Each of them depends on the change in external circumstances, and on the change of impressions. Some of them mechanically follow some other, and some appear always accompanied by others. However, there is no order and no system in that. There are certain groups of “I’s” which are naturally connected. We will speak about these groups later. Now, we must try to understand that there are groups of “I’s” connected only by accidental associations, accidental memories, or quite imaginary similarities. Each of theses “I’s” represents t every given moment a very small part of our “brain,” “mind,” or “intelligence,” but each of them means itself to represent the whole. When man says “I” it sounds a if he meant the whole of himself, but really even when he himself thinks he means it, it is only a passing thought, a passing mood, or passing desire. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

In an hour’s time he may completely forget it, and with the same conviction express an opposite opinion, opposite view, opposite interest. The worst of it is that man does not remember it. In most cases he believes in the last “I” which expressed itself, as long as it lasts: that is, as long as another “I”—sometimes quite unconnected with the preceding one—does not express its opinion or its desire louder than the first. Now let us return to two other questions: What does development mean? And what does it mean that man can become a different being? It has already been said that the change will begin with those powers and capacities which man ascribes to himself, but which, in reality, he does not possess. This means that before man can acquire any new powers and capacities, he must actually develop in himself those qualities which he thinks he possesses, and about which he has the greatest possible illusions. Development cannot begin on the basis of lying to oneself, or deceiving oneself. Man must know what he has not. It means that he must realize that he does not possess the qualities already described, which he ascribes to himself; that is, capacity to do, individuality, or unity, permanent Ego, and in addition Consciousness and Will. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

It is necessary for man to know this, because as long as he believes that he possesses these qualities he will not make right efforts to acquire them, exactly as a man will not buy costly things and pay a high price for them, if he thinks that he already possesses them. The most important and the most misleading of these qualities is consciousness. And the change in man begins with the change in his understanding of the meaning of consciousness and after that with his gradual acquiring command over it. What is consciousness? In most cases in ordinary language the word “consciousness” is used as an equivalent to the word “intelligence” in the sense of mind activity. In reality consciousness is a particular kind of “awareness” in man, independent from mind’s activity—first of all, awareness of himself, awareness of who he is, where he is, and further, awareness of what he knows, of what he does not know, and so on. Only man himself can know whether he is “conscious” at a given moment or not. This was proven long ago in a certain line of thought in European psychology which understood that only man himself can know certain things in relation to himself. Applied to the question of consciousness it means that only man himself can know if his consciousness exists at the moment or not. That means that the presence or absence of consciousness in man cannot be proven by observation of his external actions. If man realizes that up to the moment of this realization he was not conscious, and then forgets this realization—or even remembers it—this is not consciousness. It is only memory of a strong realization. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

The fact that the consciousness in man, whatever it means, never remains in the same state. It is either there or not. The highest moments of consciousness create memory. Other moments man simply does not remember. This more than anything else produces in man the illusion of continuous consciousness or continuous awareness. Some of the modern schools of psychology deny consciousness altogether, deny even the necessity of such a term, but this is simply an extravagance of misapprehension. Other schools—if they can be called by this name—speak about states of consciousness—meaning thoughts, feelings, moving impulses, and sensations. This is based on the fundamental mistake of mixing consciousness with psychic functions. About that we will speak later, but in reality, modern thought in most cases still relies on the old formulation, that consciousness has no degrees. General, although tacit, acceptance of this idea, even though it contradicted many later discoveries, stopped many possible observations of variations of consciousness. The fact is that consciousness has quite visible and observable degrees, certainly visible and observable in oneself. First, there is duration: how long one was conscious. Second, frequency of appearance: how often one became conscious. Third, the extent and penetration: of what one was conscious, which can vary very much with the growth of man. If we take only the first two, we will be able to understand the idea of possible evolution of consciousness. This idea is connected with the most important fact very well known by old psychological schools, like for instance the authors of Philokalia, but completely missed by European philosophy and psychology of the last two or three centuries. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

This is the fact that consciousness can be made continuous and controllable by special efforts and special study. When the Catholic Church demanded that Martin Luther repudiated his attack on the authority of popes and councils, he refused to recant: “I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” Nor would he compromise: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” Luther’s intransigence was based on the divinity of his positions. When defining what was right, there was no room for compromise. His firmness had profound long-term consequences; his attacks led to the Protestant Reformation and substantially altered the medieval Catholic Church. Similarly, Charles de Gaulle used the power of intransigence to become a powerful player in the arena of international relations. As his biographer Don Cook expressed it, “[De Gaulle] could create power for himself with nothing but his own rectitude, intelligence, personality and sense of destiny.” However, above all, his was “the power of intransigence.” During the Second World War, as the self-proclaimed leader in exile of a defeated and occupied nation, he held his own in negotiations with Roosevelt and Churchill. In the 1960s, his presidential “Non!” swung several decisions France’s way in the European Economic Community (EEC). In what way did his intransigence give him power in bargaining? When de Gaulle took a truly irrevocable position, the other parties in the negotiation were left with just two options—take it or leave it. For instance, he single-handedly kept England out of the European Economic Community, once in 1963 and again in 1968; the other countries were forced either to accept de Gaulle’s vet or to break up the EEC. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

De Gaulle judged his position carefully to ensure that it would be accepted. However, that often left the larger (and unfair) division of the spoils to France. De Gaulle’s intransigence denied the other party an opportunity to come back with a counteroffer that was acceptable. In practice, this is easier said than done, for two kinds of reasons. The first kind stems from the fact that bargaining usually involved consideration beside the pie on today’s table. The perception that you have been excessively greedy may make others less willing to negotiate with you in the future. Or, next time they may be more firm bargainers as they try to recapture some of their perceived losses. On a personal level, an unfair win may spoil business relations, or even personal relations. Indeed, biographer David Schoenburn faulted de Gaulle’s chauvinism: “In human relations, those who do not love are rarely loved: those who will not be friends end up having none. De Gaulle’s rejection of friendship thus hurt France.” A compromise in the short term many prove a better strategy over the long haul. The second kind of problem lies in achieving the necessary degree of intransigence. Luther and de Gaulle achieved this through their personalities. However, this entails a cost. An inflexible personality is not something you can just turn on and off. Although being inflexible can sometimes wear down an opponent and force one to make concessions, it can equally well allow small losses to grow into major disasters. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Ferdinand de Lesseps was a mildly competent engineer with extraordinary vision and determination. He is famous for building the Suez Canal in what seemed almost impossible conditions. He did not recognize the impossible and thereby accomplished it. Later, he tried using the same technique to build the Panama Canal. It ended in disaster. The Suez Canal is a sea-level passage. The digging was relatively easy since the land was already low-lying and desert. Panama involved much higher elevations, lakes along the way, and dense jungle. Lesseps’ attempt to dig down to sea level failed. Much later, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers succeeded using a very different method—a sequence of locks, using the lakes along the way. Whereas the sands of the Nile yielded to his will, tropical malaria did not. The problem for de Lesseps was that his inflexible personality could not admit defeat even when the battle was lost. How can one achieve selective inflexibility? Although there is no ideal solution, there are various means by which commitment can be achieved and sustained. When experts are asked to forecast the future and its requirements in complex settings, their customary response is to acknowledge the difficulty of prediction and then do the best they can with their particular expertise. This strategy of making a “best guess” is entirely sensible. In many situations, any one of several actions is better than no action. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

Retrospection also shows that in hard-to-predict moments often someone did identify what would happen and had a good sense of what could have been done. For example, in the domain of information technology there was an early vision of what became of the World Wide Web. However, a carful observer of such moments also sees that there were usually many conflicting expert predictions in play, even for the effects of a single factor. Before the fact, there was no reliable way to discern which prediction would turn out to be right. Even though something may be better than nothing, and even though someone among the contending experts may be right, it can still be very disquieting to act on the “fiction” that we have a reasonable prediction of the consequences of a particular event in a complex system. An alternate line of response to the difficulty of prediction is offered by various forms of scenario generation. This is the exploration of what are thought to be major driving forces of the situation, looking for policies that are robust even if there may be changes in currently dominant factors. By encouraging structured thought about the future, scenario generation tries to secure the benefits of preparation: being ready with some plausible response as the unexpected unfolds. The approach still requires an ability to identify correctly the principal driving forces in the system, and how they will affect the outcomes of interest. The approach is hobbled if we cannot answer these questions. For example, scenarios for the future political development in less affluent countries depend of whether current social structures will hold together or fall apart. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Social structures are likely to be affected by the clear trends of increasing development of information technology in these countries. Scenario development may be impossible if we cannot say how a process such as fragmentation of social structure will be affected by technologies such as rural cellular telephones and satellite television because the driving forces remain obscure. We believe that the difficulty of prediction in complex systems does not make the situation hopeless, although it does require a large shift in the conceptual tactics. The framework we develop here can complement and strengthen conventional and scenario-building approaches to changing the future of complex systems. To see how the framework can help, we need to consider the role of complexity in prediction difficulty, and the ideas from complexity research that can be applied in response. What makes prediction especially difficult in these settings is tht the forces shaping the future do not add up in a simple, systemwide manner. Instead, their effects include nonlinear interactions among the components of the system. The conjunction of a few small events can produce a big effect if their impacts multiply rather than add. The overall effect of events can dramatically change the probabilities of many future events. A collection of complex systems is therefore a kind of dynamical zoo, a “wonder cabinet” of processes that change (or resist change) in patterns wildly unlike the smoothly additive changes of their simpler cousins. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The complex systems World is a World of avalanches, of “founder effects” (where small variations in an initial population can make large differences in later outcomes), of self-restoring patterns (in which there can be large disturbances that do not ultimately matter), of apparently stable regimes that suddenly collapse. It is a World of punctuated equilibria (where periods of rapid change can alternate with periods of little or no change), and butterfly effects (where a small change in one place can cause large effects in a distant place). It is a World where change can keep recurring in a fixed pattern where rapid and irreversible change an occur when a certain threshold of effect is reached, and where great variety can exist at a large scale, even though small patches have very little variety. These are not completely disorderly Worlds, so turbulent that useful lessons can never be learned. They have structure, and beneficial adaptation can sometimes occur. However, prediction and choice of the conventional kind are not very reliable. It is worth noting that the difficulty of predicting the detailed behavior of these systems does not come from their having large numbers to get better predictions than would be possible for smaller systems—think of the gigantic number of colliding molecules in a perfect ga, where pressure, temperature, and volume conform to Boyle’s Law. Conversely, there are some notable complex system models, such as Conway’s “Game of Life,” where very complex behaviors arise from the interactions among small numbers of extremely simple elements. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

For us, “complexity” does not simply denote “many moving parts.” Instead, complexity indicates that the system consists of parts which interact in ways that heavily influence the probabilities of later events. Complexity often results in features, called emergent properties, which are properties of the system that the separate parts do not have. For example, no single neuron has consciousness, but the human brain does have consciousness as an emergent property. Likewise, a uniform price can emerge in an efficient market of many buyers and sellers. Research in recent years has begun to develop a literature on emergent properties and other characteristics of complex systems as a class (see, for example, Belew and Mitchell, 1996). To distinguish systems that do have a lot of “moving parts” but may not be complex, we will use the term complicated. Speaking of complicated, one of the suppressed business forms struggling hardest to break free from old-style managerial bureaucracy is the mom-and-pop enterprise symbolized by people like the Rossis and D’Eustachios in Italy. There was a time when virtually all businesses were, in fact, small family-owned firms. Beginning mainly in the19th century, as companies grew larger, they transformed themselves into professionally managed bureaucracies. Today, as we have seen, independent family-run units are once more multiplying. However, in addition, we have witnessed the spread of franchising, which links mom-and-pop operators to the financial and promotional clout of large firms. The next logical step will come when family enterprises crop up as respected, powerful units within large corporations as well. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

Most large firms engage in a cynical rhetoric about “family.” A well-tailored chairman smiles at us from the pages of the annual reports as his ghostwritten text assures us that everyone in the firm, from the chairman to the janitor, is a member of “one big family.” Yet nothing is more inimical to family forms of organization and, indeed, hostile to family life itself than the typical business bureaucracy. This accounts for the widespread corporate ban against hiring both husbands and wives. Such rules, intended to guard against favoritism and exploitation, are now beginning to crack in the United States of America, as the number of highly qualified women in the work force increases and companies face difficulty in relocating one spouse when the other has a good job locally. We can expect to see couples hired by companies—as couples. Before long we will no longer see a wife-husband team placed in charge of a profit center and permitted—in fact, encouraged—to run it like a family business. The same result is likely to come from the acquisition of companies like the D’Eustachios’ Euroflex. If that firm were to be acquired, would it make sense to break up the family team that built it into a success in the first place? Smart acquirers would lean over backward to leave the family form intact. Familialism, sometimes overglamorized, presents many challenges for top management. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

A high-powered husband-wife team can be a formidable political force in the firm. The sublimation of expressed emotion—a corporate norm—may well give way to the shouts, tears, and seeming irrationality that often go with family life. Male-dominated companies may have to make room for women managers backed by husbands or other relatives. How in this system does one make sure important jobs are not handed off to the unprepared son? How should succession be handled? None of these problems is easily solved. On the other hand, fam-firms have great advantages. In contrast to large bureaucratic firms, they can make quick decisions. They often are willing to take daring entrepreneurial risks. Family firms can change faster, and adapt better to new market needs. Communication through constant face-to-face interaction and even pillow talk is swift and rich, conveying much with only a grunt or a grimace. Family members typically enjoy a deep sense of “ownership” in the firm, evince high motivation, are strongly loyal, and often work superhuman hours. For all these reasons, we can expect family firms to proliferate inside as well as outside the smarter giant firms. The Pakistani management expect Syed Mumtaz Saeed has acutely observed, “The dehumanization of the industrial era in the West has been a consequence f the relegation of the family to a purely social and non-economic role. Thus, the manager and the worker of the modern age are torn between the work-place and the home in a physical sense, and between the family and the organization in an emotional sense…This conflict is central to the problems of motivation, morale and productivity in modern Western societies.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

Saeed argues that Third World countries should reject bureaucratic impersonality and Western antifamilialism and build economies that are, in fact, based on family. What he is arguing for is the retention of a classic paternalism that not only was wiped out in most big companies in the West, but is diminishing even in Japan. However, this one is quite different from the flex-firm, in which it is theoretically possible to have one profit center that is thoroughly paternalistic and others that are decidedly not, once unit that is run like a Marine boot camp, another like a commune. In the coming shift toward diverse organizational forms, corporate anti-colonialism, as it were, will lead to the liberation of the family business within the frame of the flex-firm. Yet, the family firm is only one of a host of colorful business formats that will shift power away from manager-bureaucrats in the years ahead. Across the board, then, at almost every level, Japan faces structural rigidities that, taken together, are even more difficult to eliminate than nonperforming loans in its banks or technical and organizational backwardness in the service sector. Indeed, it is structural rigidity itself that threatens Japan as the fast-arriving future confronts it with unprecedented challenges. In Japan as elsewhere, there is a point at which rigidity becomes rigor mortis. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

Facing declining birthrates and rural depopulation, hundreds of “marginal villages,” could vanish in a few decades, but some small towns are fighting back. While young residents are leaving the countryside in droves and concentrating in larger cities, major urban centers such as Tokyo and Osaka are gaining voters. However, rural towns are attracting tourists with mascots, beer gardens, dinosaur attractions, and they are doing fairly well. In fact, during the country’s Gold Week celebrations, more than 20,000 reverlers came to Kanna’s Koinobori festival, which featured  hundreds of carp-shaped streamers decorating the village and countryside. Meanwhile, the sprawling dinosaur museum, marked visitor number 1,111,111 in the summer of 2019.  Urban-rural wave conflict has long been a fact of life in Japan and the government has used public debt to suppress this internal conflict for the past few decades. Wave conflict has been softened by massive spending, which made it possible, in effect, to buy off different sectors of the economy. For Japan, however, this game is approaching an end. It faces a weakened yen, higher energy prices, increasingly powerful competition from China and India. If China faces a “volcano,” Japan faces a serious crisis of its own. Fortunately, Japan is beginning to recognize the need for profoundly rethinking the system that served it so well for nearly half a century after World War II. One indication is the growing discussion about changing its constitution. The most immediately controversial issue—whether and how to redefine the role of military—has been on the agenda for decades. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

However, the constitutional discussion now goes far beyond this. Some proposed provisions that could affect the future of wealth would deal with the environment, bioethics and—clearly central to a knowledge-based economy—intellectual property. Perhaps also needed is a clause that calls for periodic review of the power, role and structure of the bureaucracy. A clause advancing the rights of women. And a clause that reconsiders the roles and rights of immigrants and ethnic groups who are underrepresented—not merely for the bodies they add to the labor force but for the diversity of ideas and cultures they can bring to fuel innovation and enrich Japan. Finally, Japan is painfully rethinking its entire role in the World economy in a light of the rise of China. Japanese investment in China now equals that in the United States of America, and China in 2002 bypassed the United States of America in the export of goods to Japan, and to this day, approximately 30 percent, the United States of American 12 percent, and Australia 7 percent. The main imports to Japan include mineral fuels, machinery, and food. This is not the place for a discourse on Asian geopolitics or the rising nationalism in both China and Japan. However, decisions Japan must make in the decade to come will have a powerful effect on the economy and security of the United States of America and the rest of the World. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

On the one hand, Japan is racing to take advantage of low-cost production in China and access to its internal market. At the same time, it is strengthening its military ties with the United States of America. The economic significance of the existing United States of America-Japanese security arrangement is often overlooked. Yet much of Asia’s spectacular rise might never have happened without it. Their bilateral Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security has played a key role in stabilizing the Asia Pacific region during its recent decades of rapid and widespread economic growth. Without this stability factor, Asia—including even China—would have had a much harder time attracting investment from Europe and the United States of America, not to mention Taiwan and South Korea. It is part of the reason companies such as GM, Intel and Anheuser-Busch from the United States of America as well as BMW, Siemens and BASF from Europe have risked dotting the region with factories, call centers, research laboratories and other investments. Today, as Japan simultaneously tightens its security links with the United States and its economic links with China, it could make Japan an even more pivotal force in a region with a high potential for military conflict, pandemics, environmental damage, religious collision and terrorism. However, it could, alternatively, reduce its bargaining power with both. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

While many Japanese companies are rushing to put their plants in China, the very same companies may find themselves losing global markets to low-cost Chinese goods. In the period ahead, Japan, too, needs a twin-track policy. It must reduce its reliance on exports—especially of mass-produced, low-end, impersonal consumer products. At the same time it must rapidly complete its transition to a knowledge-based economy and society—even if that requires drastic changes at home. Either that or its new generation, busy with anime, manga and games, will see Japan’s affluence and influence shrink in an increasingly unstable Asia. It is sometimes said that Japan like bamboo grows in long, straight sections of green truck periodically marked by a narrow gray-brown ring. The straight sections, we are told, symbolize Japan’s long resistance to change. The rings, by contrast, represent sudden, revolutionary upheaval. The future of wealth everywhere—from the United States and Europe to China and East Asia—will in considerable measures depend on whether Japan is approaching its next bamboo ring. Our social “scientists” have from the beginning been less tender of conscience, or less rigorous in their views of science, or perhaps just more confused about the questions their procedures can answer and those they cannot. In any case, the have not been squeamish about imputing to their “discoveries” and the rigor of their procedures the power to direct us in how we ought rightly behave. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

That is why social “scientists” are so often to be found on our television screens, and on our best-seller lists, and in the “self-help” sections of airport bookstands: not because they can tell us how some humans sometimes behave but because they purport to tells us how we should; not because they speak to us as fellow humans who have lived longer, or experienced more of human suffering, or thought more deeply and reasoned more carefully about some set of problems, but because they consent to maintain the illusion that it is their data, their procedures, their science, and not themselves, that speak. We welcome them gladly, and the claim explicitly made or implied, because we need so desperately to find some source outside the frail and shaky judgments of mortals like ourselves to authorize our moral decisions and behavior. And outside of the authority of brute force, which can scarcely be called moral, we seem to have little left but the authority of procedures. Now when we consider procedures and science, we should also think about things like smart furniture. Smart furniture are adaptive structures that will be useful in furniture with technological functionalities. For example, a drawer with a speaker nestled inside, or a lamp you can dim from your phone. Intelligent furniture pieces tend to be controlled through your phone, or through voice command. Today, we have the smart mirror features like built-Bluetooth speakers, so you can save yourself a waterproof radio and blast your shower tunes from the mirror. This bathroom gadget is backlit too. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

For a contemporary speak that is as decorative as it is functional, audio specialist brand Bang & Olufsen has nailed it. The wall-mounted speaker is made up of hexagonal tiles and while this smart technology looks more like a piece of modern art, you can stream and play music as usual. Another remarkable piece of furniture is the smart 4K TV bed frame. This tempting bead features a 40 inch Sharp ultra high-definition smartTV which rolls up from the end. With YouTube and Netflix pre-installed, it is the ultimately lazy Susan for a lazy Sunday setup. Just use the remote to bring up the TV, and our are ready for a Blockbuster night. As well as a TV, the bed features surround sound speakers. You can plug in your headphones into the side of the bed and binge your series well into the night without keeping your partner up. The USB port is a handy addition, great for charging your phone overnight. And another example of smart furniture is the Smart Desk. Thanks to a motorized height adjustment system, this smart desk lets you work as you wish, whether that is balancing on a yoga ball, or standing. You can save up to four different positions allowing you to mix it up throughout the working day. A nice alternative to a cluttered kitchen table, this piece of smart technology is great for working from home. Power has to come from somewhere and in the future your smart furniture could be powered by stored chemical energy, and lights. If nanomachines or smart materials are dunked in liquids, chemical energy can come from dissolved molecules; if they are in the open, energy can come from light; if they are moving around in the dark, they can run on batteries for a while, then run down and quit. Within these limits, much can be accomplished. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

“Smart” is a relative term. Unless you want to assume that people learn a lot more about intelligence and programming, it is best to assume that these materials will follow simple rules, like those followed by parts of drawings on computer screens. In these drawings, a picture of a rectangle can be commanded to sprout handles at its corners; pulling a handle stretches or shrinks the rectangle without distorting its right-angle corners. An object made of smart matter could do likewise in the real World: a box could be stretched to a different size, then made rigid again; a door in a smart-material wall could have its position unlocked, its frame moved a pace to the left, and then be returned to normal use. There seems little reason to make bits of smart matter independent, self-replicating, or toxic. With care, smart matter should be safer than what it replaces because it will be better controlled. Spray paint gets all over things and contain noxious solvents; the paperpaint we have talked about recently does not. This will be a characteristic difference, if we exercise our usual vigilance to encourage the production of things that are safe and environmentally sound. It may be fun to discuss wondrous new products, but they will not make much difference in the World if they are too expensive. Besides, many people today do not have decent food, clothes, and a roof over their heads, to say nothing of fancy “nanostuff.” Costs matter. There is more to life than material goods, but without material goods life is miserable and narrow. If goods are expensive people strive for them; if goods are abundant, people can turn their attention elsewhere. Some of us like to think that we ar above a concern for material goods, but this seems more common in the wealth countries. Lowering manufacturing costs is a mundane concern, but so are feeding people, housing them, and building sewage systems to keep them from dying of cholera, COVID-19 and hepatitis. For all these reasons, finding ways to bring down production costs is a worthy goal. For the less affluent, the environment, and for the freeing of human potential, costs matter deeply. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24


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Why Should Man Have What He Does Not Want?

Morality is not a vision of ends, however desirable, but a system of restraints in the pursuit of any ends. To understand the meaning of a “school,” there has to already have been an experience of the search and struggle for the change of being. These lectures are obviously not intended for everybody, but as an invitation, to those who may agree on the futility of man’s present situation, to inquire into and experience the question of what he is and what he might become. Most people want to hear new things; that is, things that they have never heard before. I know that it is not an easy thing to realize that one is hearing new things. We are so accustomed to the old tunes, and the old motives, that long go we ceased to hope and ceased to believe that there might be anything new. And when we hear new things, we take them for old, or think that they can be explained and interpreted by the old. It is true that it is a difficult task to realize the possibility and necessity of quite new ideas, and it needs with time a revaluation of all usual values. I cannot guarantee that you will hear new ideas, that is, ideas you never heard before, from the start; but if you are patient you will very soon begin to notice them. And then I wish you not to miss them, and to try not to interpret the in the old way. During the time when psychology was connected with philosophy and religion it also existed in the form of art. Poetry, drama, sculpture, dancing, even architecture, were means for transmitting psychological knowledge. For instance, the Gothic cathedrals were in their chief meaning works on psychology. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

In the ancient times before philosophy, religion, and art had taken their separate forms as we now know them, psychology had existed in the form of Mysteries, such as those of Egypt and of ancient Greece. Later, after the disappearance of the Mysteries, psychology existed in the form of Symbolical Teachings which were sometimes connected with the religion of the period and sometimes not connected, such as astrology, alchemy, magic, and the more modern Masonry, occultism, and Theosophy. When we understand the importance of the study of man from the point of view of his possible evolution, we shall understand that the first answer to the question, what is psychology, should be that psychology is the study of the principles, laws, and facts of man’s possible evolution. If we take historical mankind, that is, humanity for ten or fifteen thousand years, we may find unmistakable signs of a higher type of man, whose presence can be established on the evidence of ancient monuments and memorials which cannot be repeated or imitated by the present humanity. As regards prehistoric man or creatures similar in appearance to man and yet at the same time very different from him, whose bones are sometimes found in deposits of glacial or pre-glacial periods, we may accept the quite possible view that these bones belong to some being quite different from man, which died out long ago. Denying previous evolution of man, we must deny any possibility of future mechanical evolution of man; that is, evolution happening by itself according to laws of heredity and selection, and without man’s conscious efforts and understanding of his possible evolution. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Our fundamental idea shall be that man as we know him is not a completed being; that nature develops him only up to a certain point and then leaves him, to develop further, by his own efforts and devices, or to live and die such as he was born, or to degenerate and lose capacity for development. Evolution of man in this case will mean the development of certain inner qualities and features which usually remain undeveloped, and cannot develop by themselves. Experience and observation show that this development is possible only in certain definite conditions, with efforts of a certain kind on the part of man himself, and with sufficient help from those who began similar work before and have already attained a certain degree of development, or at least a certain knowledge of methods. We must start with the idea that without efforts evolution is impossible; without help, it is also impossible. After this we must understand that in the way of development, man must become a different being, and we must learn and understand in what sense and in which direction man must become a different being; that is, what a different being means. Then we must understand that all men cannot develop and become different beings. Evolution is the question of personal efforts, and in relation to the mass of humanity evolution is the rare exception. It may sound strange, but we must realize that it is not only rare, but is becoming more and more rare. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Many questions naturally arise from the preceding statements: What does it mean that in the way of evolution man must become a different being? What does “different being” mean? Which inner qualities or features can be developed in man, and how can this be done? Why cannot all men develop and become different beings? Why such an injustice? Why cannot all men develop and become different beings? Because they do not want it. Because they do not know about it and will not understand without a long preparation what it means, even if they are told. The chief idea is that in order to become a different being man must want it very much and for a very long time. A passing desire or a vague desire based on dissatisfaction with external conditions will not create a sufficient impulse. The evolution of man depends on his understanding of what he may get and what he must give for it. If man does not want it, or if he does not want it strongly enough, and does not make necessary efforts, he will develop. So there is no injustice in this. Why should man have what he does not want? If man were forced to become a different being when he is satisfied with what he is, then this would be injustice. Now we must ask ourselves what a different being means. If we consider all the material we can find that refers to this question, we find an assertion that in becoming a different being man acquires many new qualities and powers which he does not possess now. This is a common assertion which we find in all kinds of systems admitting the idea of psychological or inner growth of man. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

However, this is not sufficient. Even the most detailed descriptions of these new powers will not help us in any way to understand how they appear and where they come from. There is a missing link in ordinary known theories, even in those I already mentioned which are based on the idea of the possibility of evolution of man. The truth lies in the fact that before acquiring any new faculties or powers which man does not know and does not possess now, he must acquire faculties and powers he also does not possess, but which he ascribes to himself; that is, he thinks that he knows them and can use and control them. This is the missing link, and this is the most important point. By way of evolution, as described before, that is, a way based on effort and help, man must acquire qualities which he thinks already possessed, but about which he deceives himself. In order to understand this better, and to know what are these facilities and powers which man can acquire, both quite new and unexpected and also those which he imagines that he already possessed, we must begin with man’s general knowledge about himself. And where comes at once to a very important fact. Man does not know himself. Man has invented many machines, and he knows that a complicated machine needs sometimes years of careful study before one can use it or control it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

However, he does not apply this knowledge to himself, although he himself is a much more complicated machines than any machine he has invented. He has al sorts of wrong ideas about himself. First of all, he does not realize that he actually is a machine. What does it man that man is a machine? It means that he had no independent movements, inside or outside of himself. He is a machine which is brought into motion by eternal influences and external impacts. All his movements, actions, words, ideas, emotions, moods, and thoughts are produced by external influences. By himself, he is just an automaton with a certain store of memories of previous experiences, and a certain amount of reserve energy. The conductor of an orchestra in the Soviet Union (during the Stalin era) was traveling by train to his next engagement and was looking over the score of the music he was to conduct that night. Two KGB officers saw what he was reading and, thinking that the musical notation was some secret code, arrested him as a spy. He protested that it was only Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, but to no avail. On the second day of his imprisonment, the interrogator walked in smugly and said, “You had better tell us all. We have caught your friend Tchaikovsky, and he is already talking.” So beings one telling of the prisoners’ dilemma, perhaps the best-known strategic game. Let us develop the story to its logical conclusion. Suppose the KGB has actually arrested someone whose only offense is that he is called Tchaikovsky, and are separately subjecting him to the same kind of interrogation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

If the two innocents withstand the treatment, each will be sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment. If the conductor makes a false confession that implicates the unknown “collaborator,” while Tchaikovsky holds out, then the conductor will get away with 1 year (and the KGB’s gratitude), while Tchaikovsky gets the harsh sentence of 25 years for his recalcitrance. Of course, the tables will be turned if the conductor stand firm while Tchaikovsky gives in and implicates him. If both confess, then both will receive the standard sentence of 10 years. Now consider the conductor’s thinking. He knows that Tchaikovsky is either confessing or holding out. If Tchaikovsky confesses, the conductor gets 25 years by holding out and 10 years by confessing, so it is better for him to confess. If Tchaikovsky holds out, the conductor gets 3 years if he holds out, and only 1 if he confesses; again it is better for him to confess. Thus confession is clearly the conductor’s best action. In a separate cell in Dzerzhinsky Square, Tchaikovsky is doing a similar mental calculation and reaching the same conclusion. The result, of course, is that both of them confess. Later, when they meet in the Gulag Archipelago, they compare stories and realize that they have been had. If they both had stood firm, they both would have gotten away with much shorter sentences. If they had had an opportunity to meet and talk things over before they were interrogated, they could have agreed that neither would give in. However, they are quick to realize that in all probability such an agreement would not have done much good. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Once they were separated and the interrogations began, each person’s private incentive to get a better deal by double-crossing the other would have been quite powerful. Once again they would have met in the Gulag, there perhaps to settle the score of the betrayals (not of the concerto). Can the two achieve enough mutual credibility to reach their jointly preferred solution? Many people, firms, and even nations have been gored on the horns of the prisoners’ dilemma. Look at the life-or-death issue of nuclear arms control. Each superpower liked it best the outcome in which the other disarmed, while it kept its own arsenal “just in case.” Disarming yourself while the other remains armed was the worst prospect. Therefore no matter what the other side did, each preferred to stay armed. However, they could join in agreeing that the outcome in which both disarm is better than the one in which both are armed. The problem is the interdependence of decisions: the jointly preferred outcome arises when each chooses its individually worse strategy. Could the jointly preferred outcome be achieved given each side’s clear incentive to break the agreement and to arm itself secretly? In this case it needed a fundamental change in Soviet thinking to get the World started on the road to nuclear disarmament. For one’s comfort, safety, or even life itself, one needs to know the way to get out of the prisoner’s dilemma. The story of the prisoners’ dilemma also carries a useful general point: most economic, political, or social games are different from games such as football or poker. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Football and poker are zero-sum games: one person’s gain is another person’s loss. However, in the prisoners’ dilemma, there are possibilities for mutual advantage as well as conflict of interest; both prisoners prefer the no-confession result to its opposite. Similarly, in employer-union bargaining, there is an opposition of interests in that one side prefers low wages and the other high ones, but there is agreement that a breakdown of negotiations leading to a strike would be more damaging for both sides. In fact such situations are the rue rather than the exception. Any useful analysis of games should be able to handle a mixture of conflict and concurrences of interests. We usually refer to the players in the game as “opponents,” but you should remember that on occasion, strategy makes strange bedfellows. Although we do our best to foresee important consequences, there is widespread acknowledgment that this is extraordinarily hard in times of dramatic change. The Information Revolution provides excellent examples, for deep reason we will examine. Some of the most famous stories of mistaken foresight center on managers and board members at companies like IBM and Intel who were unable to grasp the World-changing potential of their own products. IBM leaders once thought a handful of computers would suffice for the entire World. The Intel board of directors discouraged the first proposals to develop a microprocessor. The National Science Foundation has remarked that its panel of distinguished information technology scientists and engineers is consistent in its unwillingness to predict the future. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Efforts of the Justice Department to redress the consequences of Microsoft Corporation’s monopoly are hampered by the inability of experts to say what operating systems might become. The gears of the digital revolution [are] turning faster then the wheels of justice. Some industry leaders were frank enough to say—two years after the deluge—that they saw the first effective Web browser, Mosaic, as an inconsequential toy. As we write, that experience of the unanticipated World Wide Web explosion is fresh in our memories. In the Information Revolution, there are clearly strong limits on our ability to foresee what is to come. A wary attitude toward prediction is probably healthy, but it presents a severe roadblock to the normal processes of designing new artifacts or strategies, or refining and implementing policies. The standard procedure of design and policy making is to develop expectations (predictions) of how the future will unfold, and to define actions we could take that would lead to more desirable predicted futures. This stance can be stretched to accommodate some uncertainty by brining in specialized techniques like Bayesian inference to deal with probability distributions on possible futures. However, the usual approaches to designing an intervention grind to a half if we acknowledge that we do not know what might happen as a consequence of our actions. What we need is a far more innovative approach to the problem of the silver wave—solutions that may have to cross the boundaries of multiple existing bureaucracies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

A key slander of retirees holds that they are unproductive. However, older people do not have to be unproductive, and most are not, once we recognize, in addition to their paid production, the economic value they create by prosuming. We need not replay the discussion of prosuming we have previously discussed. However, Japan could lead the World toward solutions of the aging problem by increasing the productivity and productivity of elderly prosumers. We know that prosumers create social capital by volunteering. Japan might envision large-scale ways to facilitate that. Or it might consider modest loans to some retirees for tools or materials with which to test their long-held idea for new kinds of products or services that might sell in the money economy. Or for woodworking tools a retiree might use to make furniture one could bater to a friend for diving one to the doctor on Wednesday afternoons. As we have seen, there are many ways in which prosumer output can be increased, and alternative forms of money that can be used in lieu of a regular paycheck. The choice for retirees requiring care does not have to be between a woman and a robot. Admittedly, some of the specific ideas sketched here may be impractical. However, to solve many twenty-first-century problems it will be necessary to explore ideas outside of the many boxes stuffed with obsolete industrial-age assumptions. Japan has repeatedly shown that it is a highly creative country, capable of finding tiny, fascinating, novel solutions to problems. To solve the problems now piling up, it will have to apply the same creativity and willingness to explore and experiment on a large scale as well. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

When Sears, Roebuck & Company, the largest U.S. retailer, announced a major reorganization of its merchandise group not long ago, the group chairman and CEO, Michael Bozie, said it was needed because “We are competing in many diverse businesses…and have essentially been using one organizational format to compete in all of these businesses.” This, critics implied, had made the firm sluggish and noncompetitive. However, even top managers who sense they need to “let go” or loosen the reins, in order to free up the energies of their people, drastically underestimate how far they will need to break the grip of bureaucracy. Scores, if not hundreds of companies have broken themselves into numerous “profit centers,” each of which, it is hoped, will act like a small, market—driven enterprise. Even some staff operations have now been designated as profit centers and must finance themselves (and thus justify their existence) by selling their inhouse services. However, what good is it to break a firm into profit centers if each of these is merely a cookie-cut miniature of the parent firm—a mini-bureaucracy nestling inside the mega-bureaucracy? What is beginning now is a much more profound and revolutionary shift, which will alter the entire nature of power in business. Most American managers still think of the organization as a “machine” whose parts can be tightened or loosened, “tuned up, or lubricated. This is the bureaucratic metaphor. By contrast, many Japanese are already using a post-bureaucratic metaphor—the corporation, they say, “is a living creature.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

This implies, among other things, that it undergoes birth, maturation, again, and death or rebirth in a new form. The Japanese term for company birth is sogyo and many companies today speak of experiencing a second or third or “new” sogyo. It is precisely at this moment of rebirth that long-term success or failure is determined. For if the new reborn firm is still organized along bureaucratic lines, like the old one it replaces, it may have a short and unhappy second life. By contrast, if at this moment firms are permitted to reach out in new direction and to assume whatever organizational forms are most appropriate, chances for adaptation to the new, innovation-rich environment are much better. The flex-firm concept does not imply structurelessness; it does suggest that a company, in being reborn, may cease being a mule and turn into a team consisting of a tiger, a school or piranhas, a mini-mule or two, and who knows, maybe even a swarm of information-sucking bees. The image underlines the point. The business of tomorrow may embody many different formats within a single frame. It may function as a kind of Noah’s Ark. To grasp the “flex-firm” concept, it helps to remind ourselves that bureaucracy is only one of an almost infinite variety of ways to organizing human beings and information. We actually have an immense repertoire of organizational forms to draw on—from jazz combos to espionage networks, from tribes and clans and councils of elders to monasteries and soccer teams. Each is good at some things and bad at others. Each has its own unique ways of collecting and distributing information, and ways of allocating power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

A company could conceivably have within it’s a monastery-style unit that write software…a research team organized like an improvisational jazz combo…a compartmentalized spy network, with need-to-know rules, operating within the law, to scout for merger or acquisition possibilities…and a sales force organized as a highly motivated “tribe” complete with its own war songs and emotional membership rituals. (The author has attended the sales meeting of a major corporation where the tribal form was incipient and the members so psyched up about their jobs they quite literally danced on tabletops.) This new way of a company as a collection of very different organizations, many of them counterbureaucratic, reflects what already exists in some firms in a semi-smothered or embryonic form. Many businesses will find themselves moving toward this free-form model simply to stay alive in the de-massified economy of tomorrow. The term flex-firm is needed because there is no handy word in the English language to describe such an entity. The French economist. Hubert Landier uses the mouth-cracking term polycellular to describe the business of the future. Others describe it as “neural” or nervous-system-like rather than machinelike. Still others refer to the emerging business organization as a “network.” Through all these words capture some facet of the new reality, none are adequate, because the drawing business form of the future embraces them all, and more. They may include elements that are polycellular or neural. They may (or may not) be networked. However, organization may also include within it units that remain thoroughly bureaucratic because, for some functions, bureaucracy remains essential. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

A key feature of post-bureaucratic firms is that the relationships of their parts are not closely pre-specified, like information force-fitted into an old-fashioned data base. Instead, the units of a flex-firm may draw information, people, and money from one another and from outside organizations as needed. They may be next door to one another or continents apart. Their functions may partly overlap, like information in a hyper-media data base; for other purposes, the functions may be logically, geographically, or financially divided. Some may use many central services provided by headquarters; others may choose to use only a few. In turn this requires freer, faster flows of information. This will mean crisscrossing, up, down, and sideways conduits—neural pathways that bust through the boxes in the table of organization so that people can trade the idea, data, formulae, hints, insights, facts, strategies, whispers, gestures, and smiles that turn out to be essential to efficiency. Once you connect the right people with the right information you get the extra value added. Information is the catalyst for effecting change at every level. That is what makes its power so awesome. Social science, social research, and the kind of work we call imaginative literature are three quite different kinds of enterprises. In the end, all of them are forms of story-telling—human attempts to account for our experience in coherent ways. However, they have different aims, ask different meanings to “truth.” In most of these respects, social research has little in common with science, and much in common with other forms of imaginative literature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Yet social “scientists” have consistently sought to identify themselves, and in more than name, with physicists, chemists, biologists, and others who inquire into the lawful regularities of the natural World. Why students of the human condition should do this is not hard to explain. The great success of modern times—indeed, perhaps the only successes—have come in medicine, pharmacology, biochemistry, astrophysics, and all the feats of mechanical, biological, and electronic engineering made possible by the consistent application of the aims, assumptions, and procedures of natural science. These successes have attached to the name of science an awesome measure of authority, and to those who claim the title “scientist” a similar measure of respect and prestige. Beyond that lies the nineteenth-century hope that the assumptions and procedures of natural science might be applied without modification to the social World, to the same end of increased predictability and control, and with the same kind of engineering success. This hope has proved both misguided and illusory. However, the illusion is a powerful one, and, given the psychological, social, and material benefits that attach to the label “scientist,” it is hard to see why social researchers should find it hard to give it up. It is less easy to see why the rest of us have so willingly, even eagerly, cooperated in perpetuating the same illusion. In part, the explanation lies in a profound misunderstanding of the aims of natural and of social Worlds. However, there is more to it than that. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

When the new technologies and techniques and spirit of men like Galileo, Newton, and Bacon laid the foundations of natural science, they also discredited the authority of earlier accounts of the physical World, as found, for example, in the great tale of Genesis. By calling into question the truth of such accounts in one realm, science undermined the whole edifice of belief in sacred stories and ultimately swept away with it the source to which most humans had looked for moral authority. It is not too much to say, I think that the desacralized World has been searching for an alternative source of moral authority ever since. So as far as I know, no responsible natural scientist, either of the Renaissance or of recent times, has claimed that the procedures of natural science or its discoveries can tell us what we ought to do—whether some way of dealing with our fellow humans is good or evil, right or wrong. Indeed, the very principles of natural science, with its requirement of an objective stance toward what is studied, compel the natural scientist to abjure in his or her role as a scientist such as moral judgments or claims. When natural scientists speak out on moral questions, on what is good or evil to do, they speak as the rest of us—as concerned citizens on a threatened planet, as rational women and men, as people of conscience who must struggle no less than you must, or I, to answer for themselves where the ultimate authority for their moral judgments lies. It is the World of desperate listeners, longing for a more powerful moral authority, that begs the natural scientist to say it is the science that speaks, not the woman or man. However, the scientist cannot honor consent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Looking further at the human environment, we find a lot of cloth and related materials, such as carpeting and shoes. The textile industry was at the cutting edge of the first industrial revolution, and the next industrial revolution will have its effects on textiles. With nanotechnology, even the finest textile fibers could have sensors, computers, and motors in their core at little extra cost. Fabrics could include sensors able to detect light, heat, pressure, moisture, stress and wear, networks of simple computers to integrate this data, and motors and other nanomechanisms to respond to it. Ordinary, everyday things like fabric and padding could be made responsive to a person’s needs—changing shape, color, texture, fit, and so forth—with the weather and a person’s posture or situation. This process could be slow, or it could be fast enough to respond to a gesture. One result would be genuine one-size-fits-all clothing (give or take child sizes), perfectly tailored off the rack, warm in winter, cool and dry in summer; in short, nanotechnology could provide what advertisers have only promised. Even bogus advertising gives a clue to human desires. Throughout history, the human race has pursued the quest for comfortable shoes. With fully adjustable materials, the seemingly impossible goal of having shoes that both look good and feel good should finally be achieved. Shoes could keep your feet dry, and warm except in the Arctic, cool except in the tropics, and as comfortable as they can be with a person stepping on them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18


Cresleigh Homes

Residence 1 at #PlumasRanch Meadows may be a single story, but it’s not small on space! From the lavish outdoor space to the two car garage (plus workshop!), it offers all the room you’ll need to spread out and do your thing. 👌

As the evening temps drop, our firepit becomes the go-to destination for us AND our guests. Enjoy all that #CresleighHomes has to offer both indoors and out!

The Rampling of the Winchester Mansion

Lights twinkled beyond, through the thick forest of the Winchester Mansion, as oak, cypress, and palm trees swayed in the wind. Wild roses and ivy hung from the observational tower, and as the crickets sang here at the twilight, thirteen witches were hanged in the year 1888. Throughout the county of Santa Clara, there had been forty-nine executions nationwide. Mrs. Winchester’s interest in seclusion was evidence from the start. One of the first tasks of the gardeners was to plant a tall cypress hedge surrounding the house. She also kept her beautiful face covered with a dark veil at all times, and she fired servants who caught a glimpse of her gorgeous face by accident. There were several mass killings in Santa Clara Valley, which illustrated that there was no mercy for youngsters who were said to have become tainted by sorcery that locals believed was emanating from the Winchester Mansion. There were occurrences of neighbors hearing a bell ring at midnight and 2a.m., which according to ghost lore are the times for the arrival and departure of spirits. Thirteen children which likewise confessed that they were engaged in witchery, died as the rest. They were all burned at the stake. Pacts with the devil were a feature of a number of trials. There were numerous witches’ covens in the surrounding villages, two were said to have admitted signing in their own blood a written contract with a man in black in return for money to live gallantly and have the pleasure of the World for a period of thirteen years. The man in black always appeared at their coven meetings when he was called, and supervised their activities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7

Witchcraft had become an obsession that was hardly quelled. The obsession had been on a scale so vast that no single cause could be pinpointed. And Mrs. Winchesters arrival was a sensational event. The Valley was thrilled by this dramatic entrance of a millionairess; by those freight cars sidetracked in Santa Clara, unloading rich imported furnishings; by building activity that turned an eighteen-room farm house into an entire city in the first six months. Here was fair game for all! They talked about Mrs. Winchester! Gossiped would be a more fitting word. Talk begat rumor and as the years passed and new towers and gables rose, the local doctor pronounced them all bewitched, and fired by imagination and malice which seduced them into signing the devil’s book. The seemed little doubt that witchcraft was being practiced by Mrs. Winchester, who blasted into town with $20,000,000 and spirits and ghost in tow, two including her husband and daughter. This provided social upheavals. Barbara Butters and Mary Moses fell into dissolute habits, becoming harlots and drawing the disgust of their community. As they were shunned by Mrs. Winchester in those of the upper-class, they sore revenge and so—according to the confessions obtained under torture—called down the services of the devil. A midnight on 13 August 1889, according to their confessions, a tall black man appeared before them and said, “Be not afraid. I too am one of the Creation, pawn to me your souls for years and two months and I will assist you for all that time in whatever you desire. Some say that started the Rampling of Mrs. Winchester. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7

The two women agreed to the request of the devil’s representative and made a covenant writing in their own blood by pricking their fingers. One year later, they were arrested by the sheriff and accused of causing the deaths seventeen men and woman, and for putting a curse on the Winchester Mansion. They were also said to have killed four of Mrs. Winchester’s great hogs, and later sent two imps to haunt her mansion. What evidence there was for such allegations cannot be imaged. They were eventually found guilty of killing three people by roasting effigies in wax into which they had stuck pins. They were executed on 17 March 1890. As they stood at the gallows on the Winchester Estate, they were asked if they wanted to say their prayers and to be forgiven for their sins. They laughed, according to the record, and called for the devil to help them in such a blasphemous manner that the sheriff, seeing their impenitence, caused them to be executed without delay being hanged until almost dead and then they were burned. It sent a shock through the community to think of it. That is existed and was widespread is beyond doubt. Observations that the countryside was catacombed with covens of witches is possible, but difficult to prove in the maze of untruths and enforced confessions. Many of the confessions were dictated and written down by the torturers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7

The evening was the longest of Mrs. Winchester’s life. Just terrified, she hovered with a tear-streaked face just by the window of her 4th floor bedroom. The twilight terrified her, it seemed an immense resonance with the darkness in her soul. She put her face behind her hands, and could never remember how she began. The stories of blasphemy and defilement became more and more frequent, and colorful accounts of exactly what Mrs. Winchester did began to emerge as gospel truth. The accusations against her were that the witches being hanged from the observational tower and burned at the stake were actually employees who she fired. But, even if that were true, was it without cause? The accusations of these witches included killing children for sacrificial purposes; killing animals by magic; murdering their enemies by imagery, id est, by forming an image in wax and stabbing it or roasting it; bringing hard to innocent people by just casting their evil eye upon them. Behind these capital changes were other accusations which included human sacrifice, cannibalism, incest and other wild pleasures of the flesh practices, not to mention blasting Mrs. Winchester’s crops and poisoning drinking wells. Others burst forth with superbly graphic and gory accounts, factual and fictitious, of the activities of witches, sorcerers and the devil’s disciples, and the mysteries of the dark and dangerous Worlds populated by evil. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7

Folks believed not only the witches, but Mrs. Winchester was also capable of some highly inexplicable activities—the unrelenting construction of her beautiful home had rambled over six acres. The sprawling mansion contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and six kitchens. Carpenters even left nails half driven when they learned of Mrs. Winchester’s death, as if fear and violent torment abruptly drew them away. And what happened in these years? What had become established in the community was the great fear of witchcraft and curses—still prevalent today. What housewife would not refuse to steal from the Winchester Mansion for fear of having a curse put on her house? In 1922, it was reported that a woman thought to be a witch was fired by Mrs. Winchester for stealing a sheep. She jumped from her chair and declared, “You will be dead in a week and nobody connected with this house shall die in bed. Within a week, however, Mrs. Winchester passed away in her sleep.  The farm manager collapsed in the field while talking to his farm hand and died instantly. A cook committed suicide and a farmer who acted as a witness died in a fire. A few weeks later, a maid fell dead from her horse. There were many such stories which abounded this beautiful but bizarre estate, and prompted a continual flow of literature, occasional prosecutions and an undying fear in society at large of anything concerned with witchcraft and the occult. During these Victorian times—fortune-telling, clairvoyance and seances with mediums was not only the ultimate form of entertainment, but also a religious practice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7

As witches themselves had, by and large, returned to the shadows of society, the few prosecutions tended to be against charlatans accused of making money from what become a twentieth-century obsession—fortune telling and contact with the dead. No matter where you open the pages of the World treasure, as you walk through its 2,000 doors, the spirits will guide you. Conveyed along each hallway is divination, in every piece of art glass, inspiration, in the beams of the ceiling demonical possessions, up and down the stairs apparitions, trances in the Blue Séance Room, ecstasies on the fourth floor balcony, miraculous healing in the Victorian garden, and occult powers possessed by the mansion itself. I do invocate and conure thee, O Spirit, Forcalor; and being with power armed from the SUPREME MAJESTY, I do strongly command thee, by BERALANENSIS, BALDACHIENSIS, PAUMACHIA, and APOLOGIAE SEDES; by the most Powerful Princes, Genii, Liachidae, and Ministers of the Tartarean Abode; and by the Chief Prince of the Seat of Apologia in the Ninth Legion, I do invoke thee, and by invocation conjure thee. And being armed with power from the SUREMEM MAJESTY, I do strongly command three, by Him Who spake and it was done, and unto who all creates be obedient. Also I, being made after the image of GOD, endued with power from GOD and according unto His will, do exorcise thee by that most mighty and powerful name of GOD, EL, strong and wonderful; O thou Spirit Forcalor. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7

And I command thee and Him who spake the Word and HIS FIAT was accomplished by all the names of God. Leay yli Ziarite zelohabe et negoramy Zien latebm dama mecha ra meti osira. Lagumen Emanuel therefore mechelag laigel yazi Zaseal. Meloch, hei alokim tiphret hod jesath. Tanabtain ainatem pagaij aijolo asnia hichaifale matae habonr jijcero. LORD GOD MOST HIGH, I do exorcise thee and do powerfully command thee, O thou Spirit Forcalor, that thou dost forthwith appear unto me here before this Circle in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity. And by this ineffable name, TETRAGRAMMATION IEHOVAH, do I command thee, at the which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runneth back, the fire is quenched, the Earth trembleth, and all the hosts of the celestials, terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded. Wherefore, come thou, O Spirit Forcalor, forthwith, and without delay, from any or all parts of the World wherever thou mayest be, and make rational answers unto all things that I shall demand of thee. Come thou peaceably, visibly, and affably, now, and without delay, manifesting that which I shall desire. For thou art conjured by the name of the LIVING and TRUE GOD, HELIOREN, wherefore fulfil thou and according unto mine interest, visibly and affably speaking unto me with a voice clear and intelligible without any ambiguity. Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The sense of a universal mirage, of a ghostly unreality, steals over us, which is the very moonlit atmosphere of the Winchester Mystery House itself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7

Winchester Mystery House

Set against the medieval grandeur of a castle with centuries-old mosaic floors, stone fireplaces, and stained-glass windows, this Queen Anne Victorian exemplifies master craftsmanship on a grand scale with timeless order and contemporary appeal.

It’s a cool and cloudy day at the Winchester Mystery House ⛅️ Truly somewhere you can relax, dream, and be creative. Open for daily tours this weekend 10-4pm!

🎟 link in bio. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/