Carl Rogers on Personal Power

1977
Delcorte Press, New York


(Actualizing tendency)
P 7-8
There is in every organism, at whatever level, an underlying flow of movement toward constructive fulfillment of its inherent possibilities. There is a natural tendency toward complete development in man. The term that has most often been used for this is the actualizing tendency, and is present in all living organisms. It is the foundation on which the person-centered approach is built.

The actualizing tendency can be thwarted, but cannot be destroyed with destroying the organism. I remember that in my boyhood the potato bin in which we stored our winter supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small basement window. The conditions were unfavorable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout--pale while sprouts so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow two or three feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. They were, in their bizarre futile growth a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become a plant, never mature, never fulfill their real potentiality. But under the most adverse circumstances they were striving to become [self??]. Life would not give up even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. SO unfavorable have been the conditions in which these people heave developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet the directional tendency in them is to be trusted. The clue to understanding their behavior is that they are striving, in the only ways available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To us the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life's desperate attempt to become itself. This is the potent tendency, which the underlying basis of client centered therapy and al that has grown out of it.


(Freud and control)
P 16-17
The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit and which dominates and sometimes ill-treats them.
A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has not critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. Anyone who wishes to produces an effect upon it needs no logical adjustment... he must exaggerate and he must repeat the same thing over and over again.
It wants to be oppressed and to fear its masters... groups have never thirsted for the truth... a group is an obedient herd which could never live without a master... it submits instinctively to any one who appoints himself as its master.

Freud-- the human is at its deepest level untrustworthy, sick people have an innately destructive core.

(Skinner / Walden II)
P 18-20
For the good of the person, an elitist technocracy of behaviorists sets the goals that will make the person happy and productive. Secretly, through operant conditioning, the community achieves these goals, because, after all, behavior is completely determined by the environment and this might better be planned so as to make everyone happy socialized and moral. Who sets the environment is always deftly avoided.

(Twin Oaks-- Skinner commune)
Residents choose for themselves which behaviors they wish to change, and select the rewards, which will be most reinforcing (a playboy model??). This completely opposes the politics of Skinner since is it self initiated and self evaluated.

(Ideal therapist)
Six in-depth interviews with well-known therapists were recorded and rated by eighty therapists from twelve different therapeutic orientations. Variables such as "therapist directed" or "systematically reinforcing" were linked to controlling behaviorists whereas "warm and giving" and "equalitarian" and "empathic" indicated therapists who would give control to the client.

The eighty therapists uses these kinds of variables to give their picture of an ideal therapist there was substantial agreement that the outstanding characteristics where non-controlling and there was a desire to treat the client as an autonomous person. Of the six studied therapists, only two where client centered, the remainder used controlling techniques.

(Self actualizing behavior)
P 99

• Engages in personal fantasy, daydreams, and fictional speculations
• Expresses hostile feelings directly (Is this safe ?? Would it not start fights w/ non-centered people)
• Enjoys sensuous experiences; touch, taste, smell, physical contact
• Thinks and associates to ideas in unusual ways, has unconventional thought processes
• Is concerned with philosophical problems, religion, values, meaning of life
• Has insight into own motive s and behavior
• I skilled in social techniques of imaginative play, pretending and humor
• Values own independence and autonomy

** In other words, a kid

(Management)
The self actualizing person is warmer and more original, open, expressive, with broad interests. The stereotypical manager holds back all feelings (in preparation of firing employs for any or all reasons)

The ideal leader is dependable, productive, serious, candid, someone you can lean on but not a dreamer nor an entirely autonomous person.

On the surface, the self actualizing person would not be a good leader or manager. According to GW Cherry there are clusters of traits associated with the capacity for close relationships such as compassion and considerateness that correlate with productivity, creativity, cooperativeness, and job satisfaction. On the other hand, a cluster of traits associated with corporate behavior such as power hunger, aggressiveness, a willingness to exploit, deceive and manipulate to reach personal goals is not in anyway related to productivity and is more closely related to frustration, poor social conditions, and very likely to dangerous health conditions.

(Perfect factory)
According to Rogers, friend of his, a social consultant for a major factory operator, was allowed to apply the humanistic approach to a series of plants while holding other plants in the stat quo as control groups. The emphasis was on building two-way communication in all directions and the fair delegation of the responsibilities of making decisions. In a word, productivity tripled. The managerial staff was reduced to twenty percent. It is not surprising that cooperation among the staff would produce such increases in output and likewise reduce the need for straw bosses, but it works against the basic concepts associated with the management of the wage slave and how productivity is encouraged, usually, in the slave-wage with the negative reinforcement of the fear of homelessness.


Unfortunately, the level of success was so great that the consultant only reported this to Rogers with the agreement that no details be revealed.

(Helping the oppressed)
P 113
To help facilitate meetings of folks under the gun:

• Facilitative attitudes (and skills) can help a therapist gain entry into the group
• Freedom from a desire to control the outcome, and respect for the capacity of the group, and skills in releasing individual expression
• Openness to all attitudes no matter how extreme or unrealistic they may seem
• Acceptance of the problems experienced by the group where they are clearly defined as issues
• Allowance of the freedom of choices in direction, either for the group or individuals particularly in the near future

This openness and flexibility will produce:

• An outpouring of long suppressed feelings, in particular negative, hostile and bitter expressions
• An acceptance and understanding of attitudes as more and more members feel free to express a range of experiences
• Recognition for individuals' uniqueness and strength, mutual trust will develop
• A defusing of irrational feelings as they are fully expressed and as the group the experimental knowledge of the members overlaps through welcome feedback
• Feelings based on common experiences by group members will clarify issues and strengthen resolve
• Growth in the self confidence of the members and confidence in the unity of the group
• More realistic consideration of the issues with less irrationality
• Greater mutual trust and fewer ego trips, as in the completion for leadership
• Motion towards innovative, responsible and revolutionary steps
• Dispersion of leadership in the group as individual members realize what specific leaderships skills they have
• Constructive and actionable steps, where there is significant progress in changing the situation
• Enough mutual support within the group to assure members that the group will support them even when taking steps that might be perilous.

(Global peace strategy)
P 116
Finlay and Hovet-- To deal constructively with world problems, a global strategy is necessary. Such a strategy must attempt the seemingly impossible: to establish a sense of common cause amongst the vastly disparate and competing nations f the world. It requires that nations move beyond self-interest defined in terms of power and concentrate on common interests defined in terms of realizing man’s fullest potentialities.

(Gestation of social evolution -- slow)
P 117
In major social change there is a long quite period of gestation, experimentation and model building before anything happens. Information is gathered solutions are discovered and often unsuccessful attempts are made to promulgate these solutions. Meanwhile the average citizen is becoming frustrated by superficial attempts at correction. Then the public may discover that the solutions are available already on a small scale.

Since most social problems are highly complex no miracle will appear, but the public can develop the ~will~ to put positive solutions into action and put the enormous efforts needed into motion.

Technological problems are complex too, especially when involved with the information society where many unforeseen difficulties have arisen.

The telephone, radio, and car all went through slow gestation before the public was able to realize their value and demand their development.

Effective birth control was described along with the discovery of the process of human reproductively, and in the early 1900s it was made available in an organized format yet it was not until the 1960s that it started to impact the problems of overpopulation. Its final popular acceptance came from the persistent efforts of a small number of dedicated and expert activists.

Pollution has been a problem as long as there have been mines and smoke stacks, yet strict controls only came in the 1960s with the deaths of huge lakes and the asphyxiation of major cities.

(Power struggles, within and without)
P 119
Just as it seems too late, society grasps the seriousness of the problems and begins to gain momentum. Sometimes changes occur with tragic slowness, sometimes with surprising speed.

Political policies are destructive, yet the person centered approach provides an alternative by making the public truly aware in a way that relates the effects of society on each individual. By becoming more aware, people may start to look for alternatives, partially based on the experiences of the past and also based on the openness for new and imaginative solutions.

(Each has two, one inside, one out-- schism)
** I thought so !!!
Internal conflict is the most basic of all struggles. One of the commonest problems in therapy is provided by the individual who feels at war within himself yet is well accepted as a person by society. Able to make a living, and have a degree of recognition in the community, there yet exists internal fear. Feelings for worthlessness, bad impulses, and evil intentions create an irreconcilable discrepancy between what I am perceived as and how I perceive myself. If people could see me as I do, they would reject me.

Rogers learned to accept these flatly contradictory feelings, the contradictory internal and external parts could each be accepted and live comfortable in one person, that they are not fundamentally incompatible. It is not true that one part is bad and one is good, one right and one wrong. One can work openly for approval of others and strive for recognition, yet one can also resist being controlled and do as one wishes and not simply do what is expected by management or others. Elements within the emotional range, which seem incompatible, even out of touch with each other, can live comfortably within the person.

(Bridging individuals)
Human beings trying to cope with life have vast pools of common experiences to draw on, if we are all open sharing these commonalities, then race or gender or other separators make no difference. There is a large area in which understanding is possible. Even people on opposite sides of conflict can find pathways to constructive resolution if they can tap the pool of common experiences. They can resolve the issues of economics, ideology, civil justice, and revolutionary violence.

P 137
International groups are very similar to encounter groups. As soon as the person is discovered the national and racial difference become unimportant. When people start to openly communicate, they talk of family, honesty, showing emotions, changing circumstances, improving attitudes and developing self confidence. Who is to say which idea would come from which person, there is no way to differentiate these expressive ideas based on culture or race. These are human concepts.

(Case of sexual abuse by a youth-- schism)
P 247
A teenage boy brought up in strictly religious home, where parental acceptance meant that sexual thoughts, impulses and behaviors had to be viewed as evil was caught one night in the home of a next-door neighbor, trying to tear the night dress off a sleeping girl. He said, with firm belief, that he had not done this act, it was not his behavior. His natural impulses and curiosities had been so thoroughly denied that he was unaware of their existence, yet they existed and they went on to satisfy natural needs, but outside of the scope of his awareness. His conscious mind could honestly say, as a result of parental conditioning, that he had not done these evil things.

Introjected beliefs or constructs can be so rigid because they pushed in from the outside. They are not part of the normal process of the evaluation of experience and growth in a fluid, dynamic way. A child can reject his own growth process when it is superceded by an introjected construct, cutting him off from his natural internal self, creating a schism that can cause problems. If the disassociation between internal growth, now driven into the subconscious, and the world of rigid constructs becomes too great, very tragic results may occur.

Individuals are culturally conditioned, rewarded or punished, reinforced for behaviors that are misdirections or terminations of self actualization which can be perverted into horrific directions.
** Rape by homosexual priests

(Constriction today)
P 225
Constitution and Bill of Rights are both decidedly person-centered in their values. They values are increasingly questioned by a disbelief, however cynical, that political democracy is workable in our society. It seems hopeless that the diffusion of power could be accepted. There is evidence that the Bill of Rights, if written today, would be rejected by popular vote. Concepts or rights and responsibilities are no longer precious.
** Rights cannot be added to, yet they cannot be removed either, rights are often perverted to actually increase control -- religious freedom was often an escape from reformation, social contributions by individuals can be co-opted by some control faction to create veils of "political correctness" and even democracy can be the vehicle of repression if the population can be controlled enough, usually with some artificial perception of freedom carefully constructed to repressive damage, or, in corporate cases, monopolistic market controls. Property rights developed in the early history of the US were used to justify the ownership of slaves, ignoring rights of the slaves.

(Religion)
P 257
Churches are lacking in any significant societal influence, they are opposed to the person centered approach and they are completely hierarchical with strict rules laid out for the faithful in an leader/follower (sheeples) relationship where the leader is prized only for charismatic qualities over the skills needed to advance society. To the extent that it exerts any influence, it is in support of authority rather than democracy.


(Inner space)
P 272
The emerging person, the quiet revolutionary, clearly desires to explore the vastness of inner space. They are more willing to be aware of self, of inner feelings, and inhibitions. Internal communication between the various aspects of self is accepted now, easing the possibilities of communication across cultural lines. Barriers of repression, which cut off internal communication as much as societal openness can be kept at a distance and the people of today can potentially be much more aware than previous generations. This describes the emerging persons of the quiet revolution.
** As with all gestation, psychic growth took many odd and experimental turns, but the basic concepts of openness have empowered the information society beyond any expectations.

Einstein-- the supreme task is to arrive at those universal laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws, only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of the experience can reach them.

** Meditation can derive truths by allowing consideration and comparison between concepts and possibilities in an open and flowing consciousness. As free comparison strengthens concepts with the overlapping evidences of experiences a model is internally built within the mind and, until now, only in the mind. Linux can change that with the LinuxBIOS as a tool to effectively and cheaply create the necessary computational power to actually make all these experiential comparison based on vast and fluid data.

This experimentation has an almost Elizabethan quality, everything is possible and anything can be tried
** The openness of this emergence is then hardly a new concept

Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford

1934
Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, NY

Comments on the author:
Mumford coined the term "technic" to define development of technology as it has grown with society and changed humanity. With in that term he defines three periods; eotechnic, paleotechic, and neotechnic. He credits another for these well defined periods in human growth, yet he shows a social and technical cycle that occurs with clockwork precision which most recently occurred in the year 2000 with globally disastrous results. This book was written in 1930 just as the airplane and radio communications began to define what is now called the "information communication technology." He paints a very not-pretty picture of exploitation by controllers and owners, something I experienced in more than a decade in the financial services industry. He supports Marxian economics as a viable approach, and Marx certainly describes economic problems very accurately.

Missing from his range of knowledge is the concept of cooperation only now possible with the growth of neotechnic phase into the truly democratic "Information Society" of the Internet. This new market concept is called e-mutual ism, sometimes known as "open source", and the single most powerful free market organization, Microsoft, credits it as its greatest threat.

He defines the social foundation of our technological world so accurately it is a wonder that his concepts are not household words. Even within e-mutual ism, which I coin the "opentechnic", he offers clues to the forces at work within its micro-society. According to Milton, he was a close ally of my sociological and therapeutic influences, Maslow and Rogers despite his technological slant.

He was an urban planner by trade and knowledgeable about art, especially photography. In photography he found harmony between human creativity and the machine. While the camera is technically speaking an ICT, or information communications technology, and the motion camera by Carl Rogers was important in linking humanistics with the Information Society, the focus of the Information Society continues to be scientific study and communication, especially with the technology of the Internet.

When reading Mumford's Tenics and Civilization, it may be helpful to simply substitue the phrase _the machine_ with the term technology. However, he often uses the phrase to include the systematic side of society meaning an _economic machine_ similar, possibly to a _political machine._ He also often refers to the _economic man_, possibly as the operator of _the machine._

(Will to Order)
P 3
The machine had been developing steadily for the past seven hundred years [in Western Civilization] before the industrial revolution. Men had become mechanical before they perfected complicated machines the will to order had appeared in the monetary, the army and in the counting house.

(Birth of Science)
P 39
No one can put his finger on the place where magic became science, where alchemy became chemistry, where astrology became astronomy

P 40
Alchemy creates the tools of science, the herbalist becomes the botanist; magic was the bridge that united fantasy with technology.

(Beginnings of Factory Control)
P 42
compulsively drawing society into a regimented mold, was the methodical routine of the drillmaster and the book-keeper, the soldier and the bureaucrat [who] gained full ascendancy in the seventeenth century.

(Work Ethics of the Bourgeoisie)
The new bourgeoisie, in the counting house and the shop, reduced life to a careful, uninterrupted, routine ... Waste of time became one of the most heinous sins ... mere sociability, or even sleep, was reprehensible.

P 50
Isolation and abstraction, while important to research, are conditions under which organisms die the rejection of experience in its original whole had a grave result the belief in the dead. [science required organisms to be dead for dissection] they substituted the dissected corpse for the living body, dismantled individuals for men in groups to
achieve a limited mastery at the expense of the truth

P 82
The call of the hunter for weapons was to increase the food supply he is the beast of prey, and the needs of his appetite as well as the excitement of the chase cause him to inhibit every other reaction-pity or esthetic pleasure in the act of killing. The herdsman domesticates animals and in turn is domesticated by them the lessons of the crop and herd are in cooperation, solidarity and the nurture of life. The hunter can have no respect for life as such. He has none of the responsibilities [of] the farmer. Trained in the use of the weapon, killing is his main business. Shaken by insecurity and fear, the
hunter attacks not merely the game but other hunters. The predatory mode of life not die out with the success of agriculture it tended to direct their animus against other groups.

Unarmed hands and feet are relatively innocent, their range is limited; their effectiveness is low. It is with the regimentation of the army that conflicts have reached heights of beastiality and terrorism

P 83
Robbery is perhaps the oldest of labor saving devices, to obtain women without processing charm, to achieve power without processing intelligence, to enjoy the rewards of labor without lifting a finger in work or with out a single useful skill. As civilization advances, the hunter turns himself to systematic conquest: he seeks slaves, loot, power, and he founds the political state.

P 105
The machine had come into our civilization, not to save man from servitude, but to make possible mass servitude to the immoral standards of consumption that had grown up among the military atrocities.

(Eotechnic)
P 109
Three phases: eotechnic, paleotechnic, neotechnic
Eotechnic, dawn age of modern technics. 1000 to 1750, climax with Leonardo.
Paleotechnic: Coal and iron, mining and factories, the world of Oliver Twist
Neotechnic: A joining of concepts such as the designs of Leonardo with the age of today by the benefits of the machine with social advancement.

**Many nations skipped the suffering of the paleotechnic age to join the eotechnic with the neotechnic. Holland and Switzerland are examples.

(Glass)
Glass typical neotechnic advance, allowing light in, modifying it with color, creating
glasses to see better, telescopes and microscopes. The mirror allows introspection, the
better the technology of the glass the better one can see things as they really are.

(Oceans)
Clipper ships, ready to wear sailors clothes, ship biscuit factories


(Eotechnic Organization)
P 132
Guild monopolies, cave way to the bestowed monopolies of chartered companies and
then to the owners of patents for specific inventions.

Invention was a way of escaping from ones own class, amateurs can make decisive
changes. Inventions broke the caste lines of industry and they were to threaten the caste
lines of society itself.

P 133
The experimental method was the most important innovation.

P134
Clock first instrument of precision, pattern of accuracy for all other instruments.
Clockmakers, blacksmiths and locksmiths were the first machinists.

Its perfection delineates the eotechnic phase, to this day it is a symbol of fine automatism.

The printing press is vital to the Information Society. Block printing came from the
Middle East, and paper from Asia. The Germans create moveable type with Gutenberg
and perhaps a more primitive mode was used by Coster in Haarlem.

It saturated society in fifty years despite attempts at secrecy and monopoly and it was
encouraged by government which freed from taxes and guild regulations. Print became
the means of communication and discussion.

(Laboratory)
P 138
Invention of the laboratory combines the monks cell, the study, the library and the
workshop.

(Factory)
P 139
Creation of the factory simplifies the collection of materials and the distribution of
product. Concentrated skills by dividing the processes of production and provided a
common meeting place for workers allowing them to overcome the isolation and
helplessness of the cottage based handicraft worker when the guilds had become
dilapidated.

Factory had two roles, it gave a vehicle for capitalistic investment in the form of the joint
stock company giving the powers that be a significant weapon; it also created a meeting
place for the worker and gave him the opportunity to participate in efficient production
and presumably benefit in this highly profitable system.

(Eotechnic Decline)
Energy Shortages: As society becomes more coordinated on the basis of time, delays and
stoppages caused by variations in nature especially with respect to wind and water mills,
were very costly.

Lost Social Controls-Guilds: New industries were outside the controls of the old order.
Glass making was near the fuel supply, wood, which was in the forests, beyond the reach
of guild regulators was semi-capitalistic. Mining and iron-making defined capitalistic
structure by being capital intensive, printing escaped guild regulation legally, and other
industries escaped out to the country. Industry escaped the regulations of the guilds and
the state itself such as the statue of app
rentices allowing capital industry to grow with out
social controls. Mechanical improvements flourished with out improvements for the
worker that had been introduced by the craft guilds. These social voids allowed a
widening gap between the owners and workers, masters and men.

The progressive character moved to more naked forms of human exploitation.

(Manufacturing)
P 145-146
Manufacturing, organized and partitioned handwork carried in large establishments with or
without power-machines, breaks down the process of production into a series of
specialized operations. Dividing the operations is a form of analysis of the working
process; the series of human motions can be translated into mechanical operations.
Rebuilding the entire process into a machine is now possible.

The machine becomes humanized by developing the mechanical equivalents of human
actions. Humanizing the machines is the dehumanization of humans. The works tasks of
craftsmanship cannot be compared to it. The human is, in effect, divided up by assigning
repetitive motions to a specific part of the body in an unnatural and hazardous way. All
the beauty of being human is left behind, manufacture forces the worker to become
specialized at the cost of a productive world of impulses and facilities. (Marx)


P 148
Energy surpluses create renascence, in Holland where the dikes and windmills had
created greater and more reliable energy, and canals new cities aided social
communication, vast fields of tulips where a hungrier nation would have had to grow
food.

Fine textiles from other countries replaced course linens, water systems created a clean
environment by bringing natures streams into the cities. Cooking comes into its own as
an art form as copper pots and pans replaced rough iron pots. Fine glassware allows the
wine taster to appreciate color as much as taste. Block printing brings art into every
house, even second-rate common prints had the content of great works.

(Paleotechnic industry)
P 153
With the breakdown of European society there was a shift from life values to pecuniary
values. Work was no longer a means for enrichment and necessary for a livelihood, but
became a means unto itself. Industry moves out of the cities to the country to avoid the
influence of culture and to be able concentrate on its capital intensive purposes. People
caught in the shift from crafts and farms drifted towards work in mining or
manufacturing. Vast areas become bleak with the after effects of high energy production
supplied by coal. Progress having removed any cultural memories and social meaning
allowed for only one activity, steady toil. Any popular traditions were erased, one lived
and died within sight of the coal pit or factory. Competition with mechanization drives
wages further down, and if wages could not support normal families, paupers could be
pressed into service.



(Iron and Coal)
P 156
The invention of the blast furnace where coal instead of charcoal is used to create iron.

(Energy for free)
P 157
The heritage of past ages in the Earths history provide energy in huge amounts. Instead
of intense investment in drawing active energy from nature such as in windmills or dams,
potential energy stored in the distant past could be released in a reliable stream allowing
much closer coordination of factory processes by owners.

Coal allows the creation of more iron, iron becomes the steam engine, increasing the
demand for coal. Trains as a combination of locomotives and trains of cars begin in the
mines and are adapted to passenger and cargo transport a generation later. Iron rails give
eventually them unlimited life and the steam engine is applied to the waters, though
sailing ships, an eotechnic invention, survive almost to the modern age.

Coal and iron benefit capitalized industry so much that it creates a fever of exploitation
where coal and iron are the pivots of all of society.

Energy and material mining is a robber industry, the mine owner is constantly
consuming the resource and the end result is a befouled pit and an abandoned town. No
pit lasts forever and the land was never returned to its original uses.

(Blood and Iron)
P 163
Iron and coal dominate the paleotechnic period. Their color, black, dominated the era,
coaches were black, top hats were black. The landscape of the period was covered with
soot and cinders and the center of English industry was called the Black Country.
Pittsburgh in the United States, similarly had a black cast over it during this period.

**Some nations such as Holland and Swizterland barely experienced this era. They
advanced from the developmental

P 164
Military demand created cheaper more efficient iron production facilities and techniques.
The Bessemer process of de-carbonizing cast iron to create steel made it feasible to create
bigger weapons, cheaper transport systems such as the rail and its engines, and cheap iron
enabled nations to build vast fleets of warships.

From the middle of the 1800s onward, the paleotechnic regime specialized in a newly
defined extrema of war. Mass weapon builders successfully created paranoia and
competition between nations, with the loyal support of their stock holders. They wrecked
peace conferences as part of a century long strategy consisting of thousands moves to
create demand for their lethal products.

P 167
There was crudeness in the production and use of iron. It rusts when exposed and melts
under heat but it is the second most available material on Earth and the energy need to
produce it was cheap. The engineering was weak and much of the paleotechnic structure
was purely dead weight. As early as the American Revolution, Ben Franklin suggested
re-burning coal smoke to garner more energy and to eliminate pollution. He was, of
course, ignored. Coal was burned only once and chimneys were erected so the wind
could carry the unburnt waste somewhere else. While small individual mills could trust
nature to absorb their atmospheric sewage, conglomeration of twenty or so instantly
destroyed the local environments.

P 172
This age defines the ultimate degradation of the worker. Humans were treated just as the
environment, a means for cheap production. The poor propagated like flies, matured at
twelve years, promptly served in mills or mines and died inexpensively.

P 173
castration of skill, discipline of starvation and the closing of alternatives by means of
land monopoly and dis-education.

With landowning, education and travel options cut off, the worker becomes part of the
machine.

starvation, ignorance and fear

(Factory Regimentation)
P 174

Richard Arkwright creates the code of factory discipline. He ends the happy-go-lucky
habits of the craftsmans' traditions, the prerogative of stopping when he pleased,
eliminating any threat to the clockwork of production.

As the machine grows, the worker becomes an attendant to the machine, fixing its
failures. Children are just as useful now, providing behavioral control is harsh enough,
and vastly cheaper. Increased automation is the answer to the factory discipline and
striking workers actually increased the need for more automation as often as any other
need.

P 175
In 1770 the House of Terror had been proposed to put paupers to work, effectively a
prison for fourteen hours a day the workers were controlled by starvation. This became
the model for the paleotechic factory.

Industrial disease increases with the increases in the speed of production, from
contamination to accident.

The sudden increase in population creates labor as a new natural resource. The industrial
owners feigned moral indignation at the introduction of contraceptives, philanthropists
and health specialists were a threat to an important resource. The breakdown of
humanity through handicap and stupefication didn't necessarily harm industry, the
factory only uses a portion of the human, the rest isnt necessary to production.

The owners drove themselves as hard as the workers, the gospel of work applied to
themselves as much as the wage-slaves. Will to power drove them as much as the fear of
starvation drove the workers.

(Wealthy Repent)
P 177
Economic Man: Penny in the slot automation ... bare rationalism. Sacrifice everything in the "untrammeled pursuit of power and money"

With more money can can be used and more power that can be exercised, they repent. Nobel, explosives to peace, Carnegie, Rockefeller.

Privately become victims of art dealers, mistresses, tailors.

(Starvation of Life)
P 178-180
Homes of workers so far away from nature, that it would be alien to them. Adulterants become commonplace. Flour and plaster, pepper and wood, bacon preserved with boric acid, milk with embalming fluid. Medicines were bottled from bilge water. As the palette dissapears, hard liquor and tobacco further befuddles the senses and becomes the "quickest way out of Manchester." Rather than "religion being the opiate of the poor, opiates become the religion of the poor."

poor begin to imitate the clumsily "the graceful boredom of the idle and the leisured"

Sex, above all, was starved and degraded in this environment. IN the mines and factories, indiscriminate sexual intercourse of the most brutish kind was the only relief from the tedium and the drudgery of the day: in some English mines, the women pulling the carts worked completely naked -- dirty wild and degraded as only the worst slaves of antiquity had been ... girls and boys [where thrown] into the same sleeping quarters ... power [was given] to the overseers of the children which they frequently abused: sadisms and perversions of every kind were common ... home life was crowded out of existence [while] moralists looked upon [the nude] as a lewd distraction that would take the mind of work and undermine the systematic inhibitions of the machine industry.

Clothes eliminate the legs, arms, sexual organs, they even misshape the human figure.

P 185
The laborer sells himself to the highest bidder. The market has no other standard than buying cheap and selling high. Even law and medicine are undermined. The mines that used Watt's steam engine refused to pay him the royalties they owed. Shuttle clubs were formed to by [textile] manufacturers to assist members sued by Kay for royalties on his invention.

P 203
Visual world of the renascence has been obliterated. Art declines but music grows in the concert halls. France alone does not succumb to decay or progress, where painters like Delacroix and Renior survive. Despites its distance from the centers of music, Coketown's residents at least had a glimpse to the nourishment of music over its spoiled and adulterated foods, shoddy clothes and jerrybuilt houses.

(Neotechnics)
Links the renascence to the world of modern living. Visions of Leonardo are now turned into engineering drawings. Society now does what could only have been done by solitary individuals. Neotechnic phase failed to transform the iron and coal complex.

Transformed by many inventions either creating or making use of power, especially electricity.

P 225
Size of production is controlled by the operation itself. A small unit can compete with a big unit, it is the process not management that determines efficiency and therefore profitability.

P 231
Aluminum sets lightness standards, develops airplane and electrical transmission. Most abundant material on earth, requires huge electricity to produce. Efficiency of the water turbine (92%) provides that.

P 235
Petroleum evolves from snake oil to distillates -- transportable energy.

P 241
Instantaneous communication over long distances, radio TV links leaders and groups, creates political unity, risk greater than benefits. Secondary personal contact with voice and image may increase mass regimentation.
** one way communication, challenged by the matrix of the Internet

(Contraception)
P 260

Fallopious, discoverer of the fallopian tubes, describes both male and female contraceptives. Until the 19th century, contraception remained the property of the upper classes, and its practical use had to wait for discoveries in the processing of rubber. The first great decline in the English birthrate took place between 1870-1880 when the gas engine, the generator, the telephone and the light bulb became practical. Neotechnology provided an answer to the irresponsible birthing of humans. It also allowed sexual relations to be an art or recreation available to all including the poor despite repression by industrial owners.

Contraception stabalized family relationships by removing possibly tragic results until a more mature decisions could be made by potential parents. It restored sex to a more central role in the human personality allowing the personal relationship to have influences on society.

An economic equilibrium as has been established where the size of the population can tune itself to the rescources locally available. Planning on the mass scale becomes possible and waste and suffering can be elminiated. Unfortunately, it has come too late and now, in the 21st Century, is still being discouraged by those who benefit from a high human birth rate who have been able to define morality to this end.

(Speeding Machine)
P 283
**This provides clues to the yet-unexplained disaster of the technical bubble of Y2K
Machine was an attempt to substitute quantity for value in life. Because social evaluation is absent in the development of the machine, it raced like an engine without a governor, overheating and wearing out without any benefit to society.

Those who might object to this wasteful pattern lack the knowledge to make their points and publicize them. The problem of the equal distribution of products is supposedly offset by creating a wasteful abundace of them. The process is justified solely in terms of production and profits. Purchasing power, however, fails to keep up with produciton and the machine suddenly goes into a meltdown, sucking down the economy in its downdraft.

The machine is both an instrument of liberation and one of repression. While creating apparent order it has caused global chaos. An this has not gone unnoticed, humanity will object and attempt to slow the uncontrolled process.


P 284-285
The most direct resistance to the machine is to smash it and kill its inventor, but the power of the industrialist and the military makes this an uneven battle. Soldiers with machines protect the machines. Only in the attitudes of those who work the machines can the machine be influenced to where the machine is working for the worker rather than vice-versa.

Utilitarian: The spreading of the ideals of manufacturing, money, power, comfort, technology and science through free trade with other societies. With some filtering down of the benefits from the owners to the "under privaledged" classes done prudently enough to keep them in a state of respectful submission.

P 286
The sentiments that clustered around an old house may sand in the way of opening mine that ran underneath it, the affection between master and servent under the old order might stand in the way of self-interest which could impact the dismissal of the worker. However the belief that honor and affection might be more important that cash in adding value to life prevents a clean victory for capitalism and the ideals of industry. Not just modern activists, but old school aristocrats balk at the concepts of the the purely financial model. Ancient thought is still alive and rebels against the uncontrolled machine.

(Sport)
P 303
Unlike play, mass-sport requires an element of mortal chance or hazard. Instead of chances occuring spontaneously, as in mountain climbing, it must take plcae in accordance with the rules. Play is found in every human society and among most higher species, but sport in the sense of the mass spectacle, with death to add to the excitment, comes when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to the point of needing vicarious participation in feats of strength or skill. The demand for sadistic expoits and for blood is characteristic of s civilizations that are losing their grip: Rome under the Caesers, Germany under the Nazis. These are signs of impotence and a death wish.

P 306-309
Sport which was originally a drama becomes an exhibition. Instead of fair play, the rule is now "success at any price."

Sport in this mechanized society is no longer a game but a profitable business where the maintainence of the sport is as important as any other profit making mechanism.

Thus sport which began as a sponteaneous reaction against the machine, has beomce one of the mass-duties of the machine age. It is aprt of the univerissal reginmentation of life, for the sake fo private profits or nationalistic exploit.

Sport has turned out to be one of the least effective reactions against the machine, the other less effective in its reaction to the machine, more ambitious and ultimately disasterous, war.

(The Cult of Death)
Conflict is a component of human societies and war is a specialized institutional drama of conflict where the aim is not to resolve differences but to annihilate the defenders of opposing views or at least reduce them to submission. Whereas conflict is the inevitable in any active system of cooperation to be welcomed for the diversity it introduces, war is a speicalized perversion of conflict descentant of predatory hunting groups which is no more necessary to society than cannibalism or infanticide.

Ranging from the ritualistic warfare of primitive societies to systematic combats between entire nations, it now occupies the majority of time an resources of "advanced" and "peaceful" industrial nations. Our food gathering ancestors were more peaceful before the invention of the hunting weapon than the civilized peopels of today.

It indicates a throwback to the infantile psycal pattern on the part of people who can no longer stand the exacting strain of the life in groups with all the necessities for compromise, give and take, live and let live, understanding and sympathy that life demands, and with all the complexities of adjustment involved. They seek by the knife and the gun to unravel the social knot. They are collective competitions where the the battlefield takes the place of the market.

War is the supreme drama of a compltetely mechanized society; what puts it above all the predetory forms of mass sport is that it is real. In sport it does not really matter who is victorious, except to the gambler. In war, there is no doubt to the realness of it. Success may bring the reward of death just as surely as failure and it may come to the remotest spectator as likely as the gladiators in the vast arena of global war.

It brings about a release from the sordid routine of profit making and self-seeking that govern the business enterprise. It has the significance of high drama.

The death or maiming of the body gives the drama the element of sacrifice. The effort is sanctified and intensified by the scale of the holocaust.

For peoples who have lost the values of culture and can no longer respond to the symbols culture, the abandonment of the whole process of life and reversion to non-rational dogmas is abetted by war. If no enemy exists, than one is created to further this de-evolution.

War breaks the tedium of a mechanized society and relieves it from daily efforts. War sanctions the utmost exhibition of the primitive at the same time deifies the mechanical; the raw primitive and the clockwork mechanical become one.

War is the most disasterous outlet for the repressed impolses of society that has been devised, with the dead, crippled, insane people, devestated regions, moral corruption and anti-social hatred and gangsterism. The difference between the ritualized battle of the primitive tribes and the armies who face each other with weapons of mass destruction is the difference between the ritual of dance and and the routine of the slaughterhouse.

War, like a neurosis, is the destructive solution of an unbearable tesnsion and conflict between organic impolses adnt the code and circumstances that keoop one from staisfying them.

The destructive union of the machine and the savage primitive is the alterantive to the humanized culture capable of directing the machine to enhance life. If our life were an organic whole this perversion would not be possible. The primitive impulses which we have repressed by excessive preoccupations with the machine would find natural outlets in appropriate cultural forms.

Until we are able to acheive an open culture, war will remain the constant shadow of the machine. Wars between armies, gangs, classes all driven by the drill of regimentation and propaganda of war. Society that has lost its life's values will make a religion of death which satisfies the paranooiacs and sadists that a disrupted society produces.

We cannot give up the hope that it will be possible to unite technics and art in a higher rhythimical unity. We must see, feel, touch, sing, dance, and communicate before we can extract from the machine any further sustenance for life. If we are empty to begin with, the machine will only leave us emptier.

The Information Society by Christoper May

2002
Polity Press, Malden, Massachusetts


(Consequences of ICTs)
P 26
Digital divide, data theft, loss of privacy, increase of surveillance,

(Luddites)
P 27
Luddites were correct in their immediate analysis of the impacts of technology despite the long term-benefits of advances in the textile industry.
** What were the immediate impacts ?? What did the Luddites do ?? How was the textile industry important to the Information Age ??

(Authoritarian and Democratic Technics)
P 28-29
Mumford: Father of the study of the history of technology Technological Determinism: Danger of allowing society to be controlled by technology rather than democratically shaping its path.

Technics: Crossover between technology and society. Authority uses technology to centralize power but technologies can empower resistance against authoritarian power; Democratic Technics.

Authoritarian Technics
First Wave, Egypt, Rome
Starts with pyramid builders in Egypt, collecting labor, they utilized communication, writing, math to collect and control labor as well as engineering the structures. Could only support technology in urban areas, since control was dependant on fragile communication. Failed communication collapses empires and authority ceases. Barbarians
initiated Democratic Technics by allowing localized societies free from centralized authority, service and tribute. Evolved through the dark ages to the nation/state, a more resilient social structure.

Enlightenment and scientific revolution promise democratic societies but fail when authority implements the tools (weapons) of technology to re-centralize power, industry and the military.

No longer sovereign location of power, the control systems self-actualize authority. Power is no longer locatable and attempts at democratic change are diffused for lack of focus while the system generally provides the majority an
abundance of material goods further diffusing a need for social growth. If the needs and wants of the population are failed by the supply system, the population challenges the systems.

Self-discovery, changing process of the individual (self actualization, healing) undermines authority when the systems fail or fail to satisfy more human needs. Supply by the system is a bribe that undermines individual growth and social
change.
**Authority only fails when it fails to supply the needs and luxuries of the population?

Democratic is localized, it has low organizational needs
Authoritarian: centralized which allows ambivilance to local needs, and it has the overhead of distant between organizational nodes

Democratic productivity fulfills needs, allowing the luxury of leisure time for creativity,
Authoritarian productivity defines work for work's sake (work: factory rather than community ethic?)

When technology is beneficial, it incorporates all the person, not just (some of) the muscles. Effect of technology is simply in how it is applied, it has no character itself. (Luddites were wrong)

Passivity in the face of technology is pointless since the Authoritarian Technic self-actualizes.

The piracy of MP3s represent a reassertion of the Democratic Technic, is sharing the crime of stealing??

(Capitalism)
P 38
For capitalism to exist, there must be capital and capitalists. Capitalism consists of finance, the means of production, land and the relationship between property holders and laborers.

**Added to these properties is intellectual property, only suddenly a big issue with respect to the information society. New patenting laws create a system patent lawyers of 50 years ago would not have recognized.

Stephen Marglin: division of labor results from a need to hide appropriated surplus by claiming only they can organize complex processes. The workforce is controlled with the division of labor and the bigger picture is hidden from labor
by limiting workers to specific tasks and by periodically recycling them into the market (especially as soon as they openly identify w/ the Democratic Technic, which was a prerequisite for the new-economy).

Companies wish to separate workers from their skills by identifying skills as intellectual property (ATT/SCO) and returning workers to the market pool of the unemployed.

Information and processes are commodified by government representatives influenced by lobbyists to create increasingly cryptic copyright and patenting law. Universalization (Wood, 1997) is the self-actualizing tendency of capitalism to impose it's own logic on more and more aspects of life. (Time is money even within leisure)

But who is doing this ?? What unwritten conspiracy is behind this process. How do managers communicate this philosophy to underlings, without being detected. How is the market corruption passed from generation to generation
without the knowledge of the population. Is there a different kind of person who naturally imposes these capitalistic conditions. An authoritarian gene (flaw) perhaps ??

(Contracting vs. Full-time Employment)
P 51
Knowledge work will move towards the Hollywood project-based economy as workers become more creative

** Contracting, free of parasitic problems w/in corporations, able to provide for own services without overhead of go-betweens, work in comfort of home and have flexibility to retain position through various employers. Person attains corporate status giving considerable tax advantages.

** Lacking purchasing leverage of corporations, at mercy of service suppliers, not as influential within corporations and vulnerable to competitive slander, much more easily dismiss-able, as every information technology contract includes any "cause" to terminate contract. Workers often feel guilty for being at home causing harder work, no health related breaks. Typical jobs, data entry or directory inquiries, not ideal jobs. Labor is truly divided and unable to achieve collective bargaining.

(Automation Creates New Jobs)
P 54
EU: New jobs will offset jobs lost through automation (and job export?)

P 70-71
Rights to privacy are suspended as companies have access to data passing through their systems.

Indirectly, behavior may be analyzed by software designed personality profiles based on all collectable data, such as absences, resulting in arbitrary dismissals.

P 72
The Hollywood model brings back all the problems of early capitalism; short-term hiring, lockouts, no worker's rights, and cyclic lay-offs. (de-centralization of workers prevents labor union formation)

** Technology workers, especially in finances, universally opposed to united labor.

P 72-73
Corporations are quickly claiming knowledge that has been freely available just as the landowning aristocracy laid claim to common lands during the growth of intensive farming.
** See appendix I
** GNU strategy of copy-lefting

Companies force contractors into a relation with owners by owning (patenting, copyrighting) the means of production. All the advantages of the Information Society are lost, as innovation and creativity are the sole domain of organizations best known for control, exploitation and uneven distribution of profits.

** Forces piracy, criminal activity to maintain individuality

P 74
Skills workers have developed as a result of the tasks they performed for their contract holder or employer is rendered the property of the employer.

Creative contracts can include the transfer of property rights from artist to company simply because the artist will never have the means to reach audiences.

Even government fees for patenting prevent creators from owning processes.

**Sue them to death -- definition of individual and company as same thing

P 75
Taylor's codification of the workshop floor Taborsky put on chain gang for "stealing" technology he developed in parallel to work he was doing while contracted by University of South Florida. Utility owned all output and brought criminal charges against inventor.

** Loss of differentiation between civil and criminal crime

(Loss of Unionization)
P 77
Simply the threat of relocation to lower cost areas is enough to get concessions from labor. The promise of re-employment by the service economy has given slipped to lower cost countries.
** These countries are supplying service to the host nations, causing a further deficit and are not developing business that they can depend on.

** Developing nations complain about brain drain while absorbing jobs through globalization. Calling for global unionization while helping multinational corporations break first world unions. The solution is to bring all the worlds nations up
to the same standards with nominally equal rates of exchange rather than bleeding one to support another for any reason.

(Online Society / Internet Communities)
P 86
Technology has the most profound effect when it alters the way people come together and communicate. Online communities meet any reasonable definition of community. They offer improvements in organization and communication over the traditional community. In particular, anti-globalization and environmentalism have organized exclusively through the net and in at least one case it has enabled local revolution, the Zapatistas.

These communities define the Democratic Technic and they will probably never be co-opted by authoritarian rule, breaking the historical cycle of the Technic. In fact, they all seem to be organized specifically to defy centralized
authority.

They entirely consist of the minds of the members and operate at negligible cost. More traditional communities exist based on where we live or work, our class or race and the existing hierarchy tends to be self-succeeding.

Very few identify exclusively with one community, but they may define themselves with their own web presence, through web pages, web logs or by developing communities based on their own personality. Nobody will stop them,
and, usually, if they are interesting in some way, they will develop a following, which it will remain individualistic. Taken for granted today, these new possibilities for independent and group expression are unique in the history of human society.

Achieving online life also requires a personal motivation, passive followers probably won't find themselves online very much.

E-mutual communities will resist any kind of greed that typifies corporate acquisition protecting itself from the kind of information absorption that threatens fair competition in the free market economy.

P 86
Zapatista revolution, globalization and the MAI in Seattle, examples of revolutionary actions that completely depended on ICTs for global validation and coordinated organization.

P 88
Technology itself has no leaning and democracy will not spring forward from it, but the new Information Society has advanced multiple factors over previous forms communication technology in that it is not just two-way in nature, but
communicates over a matrix defined by the numbers of users, which are presently in the hundreds of millions.

In a typical online community, exclusion is rare though it may be difficult to gain credibility with the other members. Exclusive lists lack the dynamics to draw members and generally die. Many people, or even most, may choose not to
participate in the global dialog, but the Information Society now defines democracy better than any previous system because anybody, literally, has their say, and others will no doubt be exposed to it, even if by accident.

Existing studies of Internet communities have been limited to mailing lists and the UseNet. Web logging and software specifically designed to support and analyze complex topic and thread based communication will be invented to make
all the users experiences more meaningful.

The only entry fee is access, which at 20 cents per minute at Kinko's is still expensive.

(e-mutualism)
P 97
The most remarkable product of the Internet is the Linux OS, a student project that has grown into Microsoft's biggest nightmare. If Gore had one and Congress persuade the anti-trust allegations against Microsoft, their operating
system and office software divisions would have been split. Microsoft Office would have be ported to Linux and NT would have died on the vine. In fact, early on, Microsoft considered abandoning NT (which has evolved into XP and
Microsoft Server).

The primary advantages to software created by e-mutualists are that anyone can use the code and develop from it. So find achievement in dissecting the software to for weaknesses, publishing their findings along with the solutions.
The weakness become common knowledge and the aware technicians apply the fixes. The rest may or may not suffer the consequences of laziness, but everything is out in the open and the solutions are provided free of cost.

By comparison, knowledge of the inner workings of Microsoft software is not just a civil violation but also a federal felony, making individual protection of a system you own a crime in of itself. Users must wait for fixes, which are
provided at Microsoft's leisure. For this reason, the vast majority of security breaches are with Microsoft systems, since profit figures into every action they take.

A recent modification to the most popular e-mutualist code compiler, the GCC, has halted the most common form of weakness in public software, which is called stack smashing. Another software giant, IBM, which has embraced the Linux OS, has provided the most recent fix of this type.

The open software model is simple. The builders hope not to charge for the software but for its implementation. Initial creation is only a small part of the software economy, distribution, testing, configuration and customization are necessary just to get started. Then companies are faced with the expense of their own development. Open software technologists are highly available and are able to train each other on freely downloaded software systems making them
more competitive in comparison with proprietary solutions. Nonetheless, the free software model is the antithesis of the capitalistic and authoritarian models. Recently, in typical capitalist maneuvering, a failed Linux company acquired the Unix licenses initially copyrighted by ATT. ATT had a decade before alleged that any person having been influenced by Unix owed their knowledge to ATT and therefore ATT owned considerable portions of their
minds. At the time, it seemed laughable and ATT wisely sold their licenses to disable the legal departments. Novell briefly owned the licenses, which was unable to create usable Unix products. Eventually they wound up with Caldera/SCO, also unable to provide competitive software products, they are now resorting to the same predatory tactics. Somehow, a decade later, the threat seems more real. In Europe the EU parliament has supported the open model and hopes to fine Microsoft for anti competitive practices, but another sector, the EU commission has go the opposite direction, and is creating a model where every single software component is, by law, owned and for which royalties have to be paid. Since even simple systems consist of thousands if not millions of individual components smaller corporations and individual developers and instantly eliminated from the software market.

(Repressive copyright laws)
P 101
Photocopying newspaper articles, sharing books and making cassette tapes from recordings has never been illegal and didn't pose any kind of threat to publishers and music labels. The invention of the MP3 music compression format
changed that by enabling the efficient transmission of music over the Internet. Two college students formed the Napster file sharing service and the rest is familiar history. The record industry claims losses of 10 percent of its revenue and the numbers of users sharing files could be a significant percentage of the online population. The public software community has entered the arena by producing libraries for a system, which uses no central services. Instead a matrix of users is formed providing no single target for the industry to pursue as they did with Napster. Instead it would have to sue millions of users, in courts where judges no doubt have themselves family members who have been sharing files.

Besides the RIAA, two active voices against file sharing have been the band Metallica and the singer Neil Young. Having been a fan of both, I was surprised at their enforcement stances because both have developed their followings as being voices of the counter culture. These particular musicians are successful and wealthy and probably do not literally feel any pain as a result of the sharing of their songs. Most other musicians and, in particular less wealthy ones, either are not too concerned about these copyright infringements or wholly support file sharing. New musicians see file sharing as the only way they can get the exposure necessary to succeed as other channels to the market are controlled by the recording industry in the style of the robber barons on the Danube.

(Music industry)
The music industry has a history of excesses, best illustrated recently on television, by rap stars dumping bottles of Crystal Champagne on the floor to demonstrate their rises from poverty to wealth. Despite decades of extreme and
hypocritical examples of waste sometimes even resulting in death by the music industry in this way, the legal system feels morally obligated to protect the industry on the principles of the law. Suddenly copyright infringement becomes
more aligned with an economic and moral stabilizing effort which supported, by a vast number of Americans by breaking these laws. This effort would be characterized as typical of "Democratic Technic" rebellions against the
"authoritarian Technic."

Digging deeper into the realities of the music industry one increasing has to wonder if there is any benefit to music itself by the industry. I find it doubtful, that in a country of two to three hundred million, there would be only such a small percentage of musical talent as represented on the radio. Musicians have always been activist and one of the most popular genres of music today on the radio grew from the political upheaval of the sixties, more recently however, a very rich singing group known as the Dixie Chicks met their demise by questioning the recent presidential decision to hurry into Iraq, a move questioned by many Americans. The group was banned by a large radio conglomeration and lost popularity and was boo-ed on stage as being traitors against the nation.

(MP3 sharing, global de-centralized model defined by rebellion against Internet copyrights)
The technology itself, is now considered the future of computing, allowing computer nodes to support each other without necessarily relying on central servers. The MP3 crisis is unique in that is embraces legal, moral, economic
and technical issues that may in the end revert the entire Information Society to a democratic de-centralized control model where the entire globe is the matrix but globalize is irrelevant.

If information control is decentralized, then what do centralized organizations process beyond the technology of control, meaning weapon systems, without any profitable use for them.

(Psychological profiles derived by trusted systems)
P 109
Statistical collection of the types of information viewed by paying customers (or authenticated users) allows information publishers to create a profile, which can be used to create a presumption of guilt based on a guessed-at psychological analysis.

(Government and Internet)
P 114
States and government increases with use of the Internet. Only way to keep the old patterns in the face of new technology is to use government regulation of small companies and the average person. They have done this historically to protect class divisions.

Internet distributes power seeming to decentralize it, but power has long been diffused by the Authoritarian Technic by creating vast and spread out control structures.

(National Borders)
P 119
National borders are breached by the use of corporations' networks. Markets are setting rules and governments can resist them only as much as the seek to lose corporate controlled capital, technology, jobs and the ability to balance trade budgets.

(Bill Gates)
P 120
Gates: governments can help determine the rules of the road, the guidelines within which companies compete but they shouldn't try to design or dictated the nature of the network because governments aren't very good at out guessing the
competitive market place", in other words the market place should dictate how we live.

(Role of Government)
If government cannot protect us from control from the few corporations left to compete, or if they totally lose control allowing single corporation domination, as they have with Microsoft proving unable to protect the citizens
economically, why should their citizens protect them politically. Both corporations and governments can soften in their means of operation. Traditionally only the most driven individuals will develop necessary innovations to keep markets competitive and those controlling the markets may choose to ignore and therefore marginalize them. Unless government can be persuaded to keep these technologies from self actualizing in their own shops then there is a strong possibility they may ultimately replace the existing ICTs and their supporting corporations. If ICTs become cheap simple and cheap enough not to require capital investment to sponsor manufacturing then centralized capital becomes meaningless with respect to information. Industries completely dependent on information, such as medicine, would become threatened by independent development and the more physical markets may suffer from innovations in material production and enhanced morality based on democratic communication.

(Corporations dependant on government)
Without the regulative control of government and the automated behavior of soldiers, tradition market corporations may collapse under their own weight; the only way they can save themselves would be to increase the pressure on
government representatives away from democratic representation and towards lobbyist control, the selection process would have to go away from democratic elections and towards behavioral control through the media and corrupted
electoral decisions in the courts. It is known that the majority of the people did not elect the present president and it is said that he was not even elected in the state of Florida where he ultimately was granted the powers of state. Today the president's party struggles to redistrict localities to attempt to lock in long-term power in a process known as gerrymandering.

(Libertarians)
P 121
Libertarians see the role of the state as the protection of property rights.

(WTO position on government in emerging nations)
P 130
Government should only protect property and contract law
Richard Posner: Legal reform is an important part of the modernization of poor countries, but the focus should be on creating rules of contract and property rather judiciary or civil liberties. -- Protect those who have and allow them
full control by minimalizing justice and eliminating the needs of the greater population. What possible motive for this form of "liberalization" and the enhancement of "free" markets except possibly global suicide through the uncontrolled spread of disease caused by poverty and the neglect of the mass of the population.

(Finland)
P 138
Finnish first true Information Society, creator of Linux -- not substantial in of itself, obsolete before it was created, but its Finnish origin was all that it needed to become the biggest threat the world's most powerful corporation has.

(Old computers)
P 152
One million PCs go to landfills every year; no computer is obsolete except for power usage.
example: old laptops 1/10th of cost of 1/100th power - reverse of Moore's law.

(Tech One and Tech Two)
P 153
Tech one uses technology to enhance existing process, Tech two creates process that were unimaginable before the new global matrix. Problem is when corporations label tech one as tech two preventing tech two from receiving the necessary
investment.

Increased communication called tech two but isn't, its just an increase over the phone, a better tech two is the creation of vastly new technology, biotech or even better, revolutionary economic matrixes where all technology is accelerated through e-mutualism.


(Information bubble linked to oil prices)
P 160
The Information Society is perceived as something new to which older analyses are invalid.. Bit if the Information Society is capitalistic then it makes sense to apply older criticisms to understand it, after looking at the recent tech crash, we have to admit that older rules still apply. The rising oil prices of the turn of the millennium indicates that the deployment of ICTs may have less to do with the new economy than the sudden change in the price of oil after the historically low prices during the nineties.
**This follows the concept that surplus energy creates Renaissance, as the canals and windmills of Holland allowed the planting of tulips rather than food (Mumford)

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

1995
Bantam Books, New York

Goleman explores a part of the brain which enhances the human experience more than any other. Human intelligence as measured by IQ tests rests on a part of the brain evolved to help us love our families, to protect our young. Intelligence springs from the emotional center. Besides making us good people, it makes us stronger too by allowing emotions to enhance our intelligence.

He also explores family or group relationships, trauma, specific physiology, animal empathy, the work environment, the topic of crime and even Robin Hood's purported quotes.

He is brilliant, is adept at the crossover relationships between topics so relevant to my study and breaks many new trails through the studies of psychotherapy and sociology.

References and Notes:
(Emotions)
P 6
Anger: Blood flows, heart rate increases, and a rush of hormones allows us to be more vigorous

Fear: Face is blanched and runs cold as it is shunted to the legs making it easier to flee. The body becomes edgy, going on general alert making quick decisions easier

Happiness: The brain inhibits negative feelings and releases available energy. Quiescence allows the body to recover from upsetting emotions. Rest, readiness and enthusiasm

Love: Tenderness and sensual pleasure create empathic feelings and parasympathetic arousal. Feelings of calm and contentment allow interpersonal commitment

Surprise: Eyes open to take in a larger visual sweep. Openness to the situation allows for more information to be able to figure out what is going on and create a plan of action
Disgust: Globally universal, disgust has the same expression everywhere. Something is offensive to the nose, or metaphorically so. As Darwin suggested, a primordial attempt is made by curling the lips to spit out the offensive substance.

Sadness: Helps us adjust to significant loss such as death or disappointment. It brings a drop in energy and enthusiasm and approaches depression where the metabolism slows. Withdrawal allows for introspection, mourning and a chance to grasp life's consequences. The loss of energy may keep saddened organisms close to home.

(Amygdala)
P 14-17
Large in humans, near the brainstem, the amygdala and hippocampus gave rise to the cortex and the neocortex. The amygdala is the specialist for emotional matters. Without it one is unable to gauge the emotional significance of events, affective blindness; one loses affection. It’s a storehouse for emotional memory and thus significance itself. Life without it is stripped of personal meanings.

All passion depends on it. Tears are an emotional response unique to humans. Triggered by the amygdala and the cingulate gyrus, sobbing stops when these regions are soothed by being held.
Joseph LeDoux, Center for Neural Science at NYU

Amygdala scans every experience; it has a powerful emotional responsibility. If there is fear of some significant concern it reacts instantaneously, telegraphing messages to all parts of the brain.

(Regions / Emotions)
P 22-23
Hippocampus: Narrative memories
Neocortex: Rational thought
Thalamus:

Hippocampus and amygdala work together, each receives and stores information and the amygdala determines if it has any emotional valence. The amygdala is formed much closer to birth and is formed by life's earlier experiences especially the relationships between newly born infants and parents. The experiences are stored in their pure and raw form having been stored before the skills of description have been formed. Reactions caused by the amygdala can be so baffling because they date back to a time when almost all experience was bewildering and had no links to rational analysis.

The amygdala and other lymbic areas prime the emotional reaction and the prefrontal cortex dampens the feeling in order to act more effectively. Sensory information from the thalamus goes to the neocortex where a response is coordinated by the prefrontal lobes, the planning area for goals including emotional ones. If an emotional response is called for, the prefrontal lobes dictate it.

This is the cascading process for everything except emergency reactions. Within moments the prefrontal lobes determine a "risk/benefit" ratio to the possible emotional reactions to find the one that is best; when to run or attack and also to placate, seek sympathy, etc.

The neocortal response is slower but more reflective than the amygdalan response. In hijacking the amygdala reacts but there is a failure of the neocortex to dampen the response. The rational mind is flooded by an emotional emergency. The left prefrontal lobe regulates negative emotions where the right one holds negative feelings such as fear and aggression. The left moderates the right.

(Intelligence at Harvard University)
P 35
In the 1940s, before students were chosen or culled by intelligence quotients by the University system, a study was initiated which followed the students into middle age. Those with high intelligence test scores where not as successful as those with lower scores in terms of such free market measurements as salary, productivity and professional status. Nor did they get as much satisfaction from life such as in relationships.

Other studies prove that IQ ratings can predict socioeconomic status but measurements emotional abilities are much greater predictors. This compared against societal free market measurements, not internal more nebulous personal achievements.


(Emotional Intelligence)
P 43
** since therapy is personal yet a "tango", empathy is everything below
Knowing one's emotions: recognizing feelings as they happen

Managing emotions: Handling feelings builds on self awareness, ability to shake off anxiety, gloom, irritability and being able to bounce back from life's upsets.

Motivating one's self: Getting emotions into the flowing state towards goals while stifling impulsiveness or delaying gratification.

Recognizing emotions in others: Empathy and altruism allows us to understand what other people want or need, creating professional skills.
** Evil empathy as in human resource exploitation (management / Mumford)

Handling relationships: As empathy is proactive sympathy, relationships are proactive empathies.

(Pure IQ Types w/o emotional intelligence)
P 45
High IQ type: a caricature of intellect

High IQ male: ambitious, productive, predictable, dogged -- critical, condescending, fastidious, inhibited, sexually/sensually impaired, unexpressive, detached and bland

High IQ female: intellectually confident, can express thoughts, have intellectual and aesthetic interests -- introspective, prone to anxiety, rumination, guilt, express anger indirectly rather than openly
** Passive aggressive -- back stabbing??
** isn’t aesthetic an emotional skill?? -- are they faking it??
** Possibly these studies separated male/female traits as a consequence of testing

(Anger)
P 59-62
Calculated: From neocortex, outrage at unfairness or injustice

Spark of Rage: From amygdala

Franklin, Ben: "Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one"

Dampening Anger: Rage is the mood most unable to control or escape; most intransigent. It is seductive, propelled by the self-righteous inner justification for venting rage. Energizes and even exhilarates

Defusing: Brooding gives more "good" reasons to be angry, but analyzing the train of thoughts and reframing the situation helps put the anger to rest (Tice)

Self-perpetuating: Every event in a sequence of provoking situations becomes a "mini-trigger" to escalate the intensity of anger. Amygdala excretes catecholamines and the effect subsides only gradually. If the secretions are too frequent, the brain heats up and violence erupts. People become unforgiving and exist beyond reason, oblivious to the consequences of reactions fostered by the illusion of power and invulnerability. Failing cognitive guidance (experiential intelligence) becomes primitive. Limbic urge is ascendant; brutality becomes the guide to action (Zillmann)
** Animus of the hunter (Mumford)

Solution: Timing, challenge the thoughts that created the anger as soon as possible, preferably even before the anger erupts (Zillmann)

Nature: I left and vowed I would never return, but it was a beautiful summer day and the stillness and the beauty of the country lanes soothed me and melted my anger.

Cooling down: Can help reduce the anger especially with exercise, but can also be used to rationalize the anger developing cooler reappraisals which can deepen the anger

Catharsis, venting rage: may feel satisfying but does nothing to reduce anger and the target of this "appropriate response" of anger may actually retaliate

Handling anger: Don’t suppress it, but don’t act on it (Tibetan teacher)

(Enthusiasm)
P 80
Pleasure in what we do and an optimal amount of anxiety at the consequences of failure can propel us to achieve life long goals. Guiding emotions allows us to facilitate ourselves and achieve goals rather than allowing emotions to selfishly and impulsively interfere with them

P 87
(Optimism)
Strong expectation that things will turn out alright, buffers against apathy, hopelessness, depression when faced with adversity.

Unrealistic optimism can be disastrous

P 96
(Empathy)
Emotional attunement, capacity for sympathy (in another's shoes)
Builds on self-awareness (congruence), more open to others if we are in touch with ourselves. Our internal knowledge gives us the ability to understand all the subtleness of others' communications; the weaving of sounds and motions in other's language and motions, telling silences or trembles. Possibly navigating by "dead reckoning", guessing how others would be feeling, where they are on the emotional map by regarding our own navigation system.

Absence of empathy seen in rapists, molesters, psychopaths (and some therapists?)

Tone of voice, gesture, facial expressions.

(Attunement)
P 100
Part of the rhythm of relationship, mothers let their infants know that they have a sense of what the infant is feeling. When the baby squeals with delight, the mother affirms it by cooing or giving a gentle shake. If the baby shakes a rattle, the mother gives a shimmy in response. The mother matches the baby's level of excitement. The attunements give the baby the feeling of being emotionally connected; mothers give these messages once a minute
** Like servers calling to each other to assure "state" (infosoc)

Love makers sense each others emotional states, shared desire, intentions, increasing arousal, mutual empathy (congruence).

Absence of attunement in the child damages the emotional health of the child. Without emotions, joys, tears, cuddles, the child avoids expression and possibly loses emotions that are necessary for interactions in life.

Unfortunate emotions can be attuned to by the child; depressed mothers can bring about more anger and sadness in their child's play.
** What about self actualization, can the child grow anyway??

An imbalance in early life can be corrected later, life is an ongoing experience and others can fulfill the gaps left by a less fortunate childhood.

Foster home to foster home is the condition the cruelest of criminals share, emotional neglect and no opportunity for attunement
** Definition of criminal ... changers may need to break laws to change this process
** Why "emotional person" bad in free market environment, un-attunement component of the economic system

Hyper attunement: Children of continual abuse are hyper alert to emotions around them, post traumatic vigilance. Those gifted at empathy very often developed their empathic skills surviving abusive childhood environments.
** The best humans, found in Africa??
** Pain will never go away, no shortage of hurt yet attuned humans to look for
** What comes around goes around??

P 103
(Animal Empathy)
Researchers have developed data proving animal empathy, by using excruciating electrical shock to prove their points. Monkeys were allowed to prevent other monkeys from being shocked by researchers by recognizing fear in their cage-mates faces.
** Would these researchers be Maslow's "well adjusted Nazis", they must be empathic as they are studying empathy, yet they themselves would probably benefit from electro shock to enhance their own empathic experience as "to feel with another is to care" (therapeutic contradiction)

P 104
"Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee"

(Hoffman)
P 105
In the progression of empathy from babyhood onward, a one year old feels distress when another infant cries as if they were hurt, by one year they will actively soothe another crying child.

Putting oneself in another's shoes (empathy), allows the formation of moral principles.

(Political Empathy)
P 106
Empathic people support the economic distribution of resources based on need.
** We no longer need morality, a derived human lesson, when empathy is both political and given at birth

P 110
Consequences do not trigger anxiety in psychopaths; they lack concern for what they do. As they cannot feel fear nor fear pain, they have no empathy, or concern, for fear and pain in others.
** Suppressing fear is bravery, ignoring the consequences of the potentially painful or lethal results of dangerous selfless acts is psychopathy. The consequences will include post trauma where society consistently, and appropriately, punishes self sacrifice as no good deed goes unpunished.
** is the psychopath, the punished, the backbone, the survival of humanity??

(Interpersonal Intelligence)
Organizing groups: skill of the leader, networking peoples skills and efforts
** No longer a network, a matrix
Negotiating Solutions: mediator, preventing conflicts
Personal Connection: Empathy, team players, dependable family members and friends
Social Analysis: insights about others feelings, motives, and concerns. Competent therapist or novelist
** As opposed to empathy (or sympathy)
Interpersonal polish
(Hatch and Gardner)

P 125
Emotional brilliance, Aikido, the art of reconciliation

(Stonewalling)
P136
Ultimate defense, the face goes blank, withdrawing from communication, sending a powerful, unnerving message, distance, superiority and distaste. Devastation to relationships cuts off all possibility of reconciliation.

(Cooling down)
P 144
Time out when emotional flooding begins


(Moving towards reconciliation)
P 155
Listen during the emotional hijackings, listen past the anger, hear peace offerings

P 148
(Fear-boss)
McBroom is a pilot who had his air-crew so scared that failed to tell him about the depleted fuel during an emergency and the plane crashed. Arrogance, intimidation and other deficiencies can cause an organization (or a planet) to crash and burn.

Feeling empathy or compassion puts people in conflict with organizational goals. Feeling for others would prevent "hard" decisions and though empathy they may allow a more humane implementation.
**Or would they fake empathy, publicize superficial platitudes and affect a cruel and satisfying implementation of a business decision.



(Empathy and healing)
P 168-169
Chemical impact on the immune cells, fear causes problems in surgery and prevents healing. Blood pressure can cause excess bleeding.

Chronic anxiety, sadness, pessimism, tension, hostility, cynicism, suspiciousness doubles the risk of diseases, asthma, arthritis, headaches, ulcers, heart disease. Emotions are as big a risk indicator as smoking or cholesterol for heart disease.

P 173
Stress doubles likelihood of virus infection

P 178
Isolation doubles risk in illness for men. Being cut-off is emotional risk.

P 179
Health is dependant on relationships

P 180
Robin Hood: "Tell us they troubles and speak freely. A flow of words doth ever ease the hear of sorrows. It is like opening the waste where the mill dam is overfull."

Openness has a beneficial medical effect (Pennebaker, Southern Methodist University)

(Aggression passed generation to generation)
P 197
Study of 870 in Upstate NY: Followed from age 8 to 30, the quickest to habitually use force were most likely to drop out and have a criminal history by age 30. Their children were also the most likely to have similar problems in school.

The troubled kids, as parents, made family life a school for aggression. As children they were punished arbitrarily and with relentless severity. As parents they continued the process. Other than punishment, there was little interest in the children's lives and the children were ignored. The acts of punishment were transported to the playground and carried throughout life. The parents wished for the best for their children but they were repeating the style of parenting that had been modeled for them historically.
** Historic patterns developed during the anti-empathic paleotechnic by moralists working to help the factory owners exploit the human resource

The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Maslow

1971
Viking Press, New York

From this book I only sought to learn about the relationship between Maslow and Rogers. Instead I found a fascinating chapter in which he recounts a lecture by his colleague, Ruth Benedict, where she discusses a way of quantifying success in a society or community. This is synergy, which defines cooperation between people, specifically support, which makes communities strong and resilient and able to live happily and spiritually.

Much of the book works around the topic of self-actualization which is the core of much of Rogers’s work where there is a direction of life and a point of living in every organism, which gives us all reason to be optimistic about each new day.

A successful person is viewed has having self-actualized, meaning reached out in all directions to have met their potentials, and possibly more. One would expect self-actualization, synergy and the all-important empathy, to be components of successful persons and viable communities. There is probably much to be learned from people with these qualities which can be applied to the Information Society and the underlying technology community.

Synergy has been linked to technology by the life works of the engineer Buckminster Fuller. Self-actualization, however, has been only recently attached to it as an extension of the Techniques concept (May).

(Self actualizing people)
P 43-46
The people I selected for my study were older people, people who had lived much of their lives out and were visibly successful. When you pick out fine and healthy people, creative people, saintly people, sagacious people, then you get a different view of mankind. You are asking "what can a human become?"

Being-values: Self-actualizing people are, without exception, involved in a cause outside their own skin, in something outside their selves. The are devoted, working at something, something which is very precious to them -- some calling or vocation in the old sense, the priestly sense
**Maslow, who may have "actualized" the rebellion of the 60s, here evokes old-school values
They are working at something which fate has called them to somehow and which they work at and which they love...
**Here he gives fate, or even guidance from above, a contributing role to self-actualization
They devote their lives to the search for what I have called the being values, the ultimate values which are intrinsic...
Being values: these include truth, goodness, wholeness, acceptance, spontaneity, uniqueness, completion, justice, rightness, simplicity, totality, beauty in form, beauty in function, playfulness, and identity.
Humanistic therapists help "counselees" move and grow toward self-actualization. Children, who seem little more than snotty, would love to have something to devote themselves to, to be patriotic about.
Self-actualizing means experiencing fully, vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption. At this moment of experiencing, there is wholly and fully human, this is the self-actualizing moment.

Youngsters suffer from too little selflessness and too much self-consciousness; they should be come totally absorbed so they can forget their poses, defenses and shyness. It is an ongoing process, it means making each of many little choices, and it means to make each of these choices a growth choice.

There is a self and the self has to emerge. Most of us, most of the time, listen not to ourselves, but to interjected voices of authority, parents or tradition. The process of the emergence is "listening to the impulsive voices."

(Function of behavior)
P 201-208
Ruth Benedict struggled to reconcile the various behaviors of Native American tribes she studied with her own gut-feeling of what was good in a society and what was bad. In the beginning she could only define cultures as having lots of affection, or the opposite, lots of hatred. Initially she described cultures as being secure and insecure.

Eventually, in comparing cultures, she determined that the external behaviors of cultures did not determine whether they were secure or insecure. It was the motivations behind the behaviors that determined this rather than the over behavior itself. There was then a much more subtle power at work defining a society than could be determined by observing superficial characteristics.

Eventually, after tallying all the characteristics of the cultures, she determined that there were cultures that worked well together and those that were internally combative. A single term became the measurement of cultural effectiveness that was synergy; a society had either high or low synergy, or something in between or, as in our own complex society, a mixture of the two on different planes.

High synergy "provides for acts that are mutually reinforcing" whereas low synergy "provides for acts that are mutually opposed and counteractive." In "high societies with high social synergy where their [customs] insure mutual advantage from their undertakings, and society with low social synergy where the advantage from their undertakings becomes a victory of one individual over another." "The majority who are not victorious" must do as they can to survive. (Benedict)

In specific terms, she defines the siphoning of wealth as being the economic system of a high synergy society, and the funneling of wealth associated with a low synergy society. Siphoning refers to the ability of society members to place a spoon in the community pot of wealth where the better standing members of that society contribute to that pot. The funnel system found in low synergy societies produces the opposite effect; all the wealth tends toward individual members who benefit from a phenomenon where wealth attracts more wealth. Increased concentrated wealth guarantees that the increased leverage will further increase that concentrated wealth until the majority of the society members become so poor that they can no longer support the system and the economic equilibrium of the system slows, or possibly crumbles, as a result of the imbalance.

In both types of societies, hard work and the accumulation of wealth is the primary step to developing standing in the society.

In a high synergy society, the wealthy gain respect by supporting the society by helping those less fortunate, poverty stricken by bad luck, for instance, or sickness or old age. In the highest synergy societies, the ultimate measure of wealth and source of pride was to give away all possessions to the needy. Such a society would then guarantee that even this wealthy generous person would in the end be supported by this system if they should ever falter, or when, they themselves, become old.

In a low synergy system, greed is the key characteristic of the successful and the result is a far poorer culture where there is much less life and happiness in the population and the cultural symbols are more representative of harshness and control rather than generosity and happiness. Key vital statistics, such as interest rates, crime, substance abuse and health are much lower in low synergy system than one that is high in synergy.

Our own society is one that is mixed in synergy. We encourage success in individuals but then use the benefits of success in a variety of ways, some low and some high in synergy. The central re-distribution system of our society, or as Benedict would say, "the siphon", is taxation. Some taxes are collected in ways that are generally beneficial for the bulk of society both rich and poor. We support health and educational systems and defend the nation as a unified front in event of attack. These taxes are proportional to income so that the resources of the wealthy can be "siphoned" for the greater good. Other tax systems, such as local property taxes virtually guarantee that only the wealthy will benefit from the resources of the wealthy. This is clearly evidenced by the disproportionate (and embarrassing) difference between schools of different taxation districts. A neighborhood replete with mansions will have palatial educational edifices and one that is racked with poverty will have schools which more resemble corrupt prisons where children are daily debased by both the administration and resident criminal forces. As further evidence of low synergy in education, these same schools will exist within the same tax districts, meaning that the wealth siphoned for the greater good, as in high synergy, is then "funneled" giving those who have even more as defined by low synergy. The process of controlling district lines to reinforce this low synergy practice is called gerrymandering and the only legal description for it is "corruption." Hence we live in a society of mixed synergy where low synergy is actually a crime but is, for some reason, tolerated even encouraged systematically. Of great concern in our society would be the spread of disease; drastic differences in health care, presumably also affected by low synergy funneling could mean the sudden spread of a disease, which, like the plague of centuries ago, may not stop at the gates of the mansion owners.

** This low and high synergy equation helps define confusion in government. It breaks down very simply, the most important role of the government is to protect the people, but in a legal perversion sometimes referred to as "corporate personhood", the government instead attacks the people as the bequest of corporations and other institutions of wealth and control. The maximalized copyright and patenting laws of the last decade are an important example but not a new one. Watts, the inventor of the steam engine, and the inventor of the flying shuttle were unable to collect much if not all the royalties due them for the courts were more greatly influenced by "clubs" of industrial owners. As an expedience to bypass the need to corrupt the courts, the copyright and patent laws have been perverted so much that they would not be recognizable to original lawmakers who sought to protect inventors and writers.

**low and high synergy have been applied to science and information in a more direct way by Buckminster Full who engineered the futuristic foundations of a purely high energy society, controlled by a high synergy political system which, through electronics, allowed direct access to the decision making process. Nowhere in Fuller's synergy is found the now necessary computers of communication, yet his society would entirely rely on ICTs to function.

As part of the introduction of Benedict’s synergy concepts to society in general and in particular sociological applications, management concepts have been created to try to encourage generosity within the corporate structure where giving responsibility when appropriate would then foster greater productivity creating a much better bottom line. More generally referred to as "delegating power", it is a form of paradox where "the more power you give away the more you have." Needless to say, this is not a new concept, it has been discussed since antiquity in the East and these practices are often preceded with the word "Zen" revealing the influence of the Buddha. Bible belt societies would refer to this as behavior “mighty Christian" proving that generosity is a key tenant of Christ's teaching. Both these spiritualities could only be defined as having exceptionally high synergy, at least as meant by their namesake founders.

**To quote our most popular popular singer, John Lennon, "the love you give is equal to the love you get."

**Having mentioned Christianity and Buddhism, I feel compelled to relate an experience with an old-school Jew of NY background who I feel was the most synergistic man I ever met. His name was Sydney and he owned a small public park near Santa Barbara, California, called, El Cid Park, an appropriate play on words. I was working as an oil-rig diver and on my days off I could not feel but happy when ever he came around. Anybody could hangout at El Cid Park despite the low synergy attempts of the other local landowners to close it to the public. On site was a trampoline system, which, for a price could catapult you very high in the air as were benches and a used bicycle business. Police infiltrated constantly, practiced racist repression but they could not impact the synergy of Sidney’s spirit. Further infuriating the low synergy controllers, was the fact that he owed two self-storage complexes adjoining the park, where the "parkies" could establish themselves as residents in Spartan cells for a few dollars in an otherwise high rent district. The police skirted the laws of the land constantly, yet fortunately refrained from the violent practices which we have associated with the city to the south of Santa Barbara which is Los Angeles. Sid to me struck a cord with me that brought back a lot of the culture that made New York City special during its brief renaissance during the 60s and early 70s. I now wonder if Sid was a student of synergy, his generosity was complete, yet, despite common experience, it actually strengthened him rather than weakened him against the low synergy practices found in American suburban sprawl. Or maybe he was naturally on the level of Christ and the Buddha guided by the fate mentioned by Maslow in his definition of a self-actualizing person.

(All good and no fun)
P 315
Maslow is credited with popularizing humanistic thinking so much so that he is given credit for "kicking off the 60s." While he carried out studies on LSD, it appears he was no fan of partying and may have been moralistic to a detrimental and isolating degree. In this way, he may have departed Roger's concepts of self-actualization, to the point of wanting to punish "good old fun." His "B" values of successful self-actualizing included such examples of wholesomeness that would imply that projects unfinished are a total waste where the means would be more important than the journey, totally contradicting Rogers, and that perfection is a goal in of itself, a trait practiced by the suburban home-ist Martha Stewart and deplored by most of today's therapists. Mumford too would question these thoughts as he attributed the concept of work for works sake as one of the primary evils in our society and the phony moral justification used to promote "wage slavery."

Here he cites Nelson Algren's statement "politicians and intellectuals bore me" as they don't seem real. The ones that seem real are "whores, thieves and junkies, etc." He labels Algren's statement as hatred and "counter valuing" or the Nietzschean ressentiment, presumably a very bad thing. Well, no doubt the lives of whores, thieves and substance abusers are very real, they feel reality's harshness with every moment as the low synergy forces of today’s tactical enforcers track them down and concentrate them into maximal prisons designed to destroy the minds with the unusual practices of isolation and humiliation. Whores and thieves live in their squalor largely as a result of the funneling of resources away from their needy families. There are heroes and heroines who remain strong in our culture centuries after their deaths as heroes who had just those occupations. The two most familiar names are Robin Hood, quoted for his therapeutic openness, and Billy the Kid, the "regulator" who sought to re-establish fairness in the west through his method of siphoning which was bank robbery. Less known would be Christ's "girlfriend", Mary Magdalene who was reputed to be a prostitute. Highly self-actualized successful people know right from wrong, whereas unsuccessful people suffer from "value-confusion." My assumption of Algren from this statement is that he enjoyed observing the harshness of the reality of those lives. Maslow himself founded studies based on the use of LSD which contradicts his moral bend. Malsow clearly contributed to the openness of our society in significant ways, and may have kicked of the revolution that was the 60s, but from this book it seems that was Ruth Benedict, his mentor, who actually got out and experienced "the journey" while Maslow allowed his brilliant thinking to be skewed by the isolation of the psychotherapist’s environment.