Much progress has been made in America in every way possible, especially with medicine, technology, and race relations. However, there is a small faction of people that tend to make it appear that American people, through the Civil Rights movement and their challenge to racism in this country, have not accomplished anything. And that is not true. This is a very revolutionary country, and the laws just simply need to be enforced. It should not take an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America to explain to the judge why a policy is discriminatory because it seems that the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was reenacted it 1870 states: “All citizens are equally protected by the law.” So, things that the Constitution of the United States defines as illegal, are illegal, and the rights granted pertain to everyone. What more needs to be said? And to suggest that things are just what they were before that got started is nonsense. Not only it is nonsense, it is an insult to our forbearers. Some people have short memories, you know? They must be a lot younger even than I am to believe that is the case. The media feeds like vampires off the imposed inferiority of non-White races, and sometimes women. Perhaps, if we stopped referring to people by their skin color, citizenship, gender, sexual preference, or race, they would be perceived and behave like land-based human beings. Because face it, corporate America and the economy depends on consumer spending, so they would want more people to have money in the bank to fund their capitalistic system. No one benefits from oppression. The state legal system is funding by taxpayers, we do not want to spend public savings to incarcerate people and prevent them from paying their fair share to the capitalistic system. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
There is a conspiracy to sell drugs in even affluent communities. It is a conspiracy made up largely of criminals, sometimes involving it for very callous reasons, sometimes involving high officials of government—occasionally it does that—it is a vicious, brutal game. However, if one spends all one’s time saying, “The government is responsible for all of this,” what you do is you tend to overlook things that Americans can do themselves, for themselves, to protect themselves from all of this. And the number one thing is, do not use drugs, and stay away from people who use them so you do not become a victim. Nearly 92,000 persons in the United States of America died from drug-involved overdose in 2020, including illicit drugs and prescription drugs. Worldwide, about 500,000 million deaths a year are attributed to drug use. More than 70 percent of these deaths are related to opioids, with more than 30 percent of these deaths caused by overdose. If you really think drugs are a genocidal conspiracy, do not use them and stay away from those who do. It can be that simple. Fight back! If you believe drugs is a genocidal conspiracy, let us fight back! Many people think that marijuana is a cool drug because “everyone does it,” but it is still illegal according to the federal government. Not only that, think about all the people that were killed, arrested and put in jail for using marijuana, possessing marijuana, and distributing marijuana. That alone should make one not want to use it. Marijuana is not cool. It destroyed families and communities. You have all these Black mayors and police chiefs and members of congress, we even had a Black president. And if it exists, none of us intelligent enough, who are in those positions, to investigate and find the evidence of this conspiracy? #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Do you understand what I am getting at? Are we so inadequate as scholars and investigators that if we went into this thing, we could not find that a genocidal conspiracy existed? Do you not think we would? Do you not think we have tried to get to the bottom of it? I have not seen an African American police chief anywhere come up and say, “I have discovered that these drugs are coming in through a conspiracy whose idea it is to exterminate of hold down the African American people.” I have never seen that. Moreover, how do you explain the high, high, high number of Americans selling the stuff, you even have stores distributing marijuana like the supermarket sells candy, and increasingly, in distributing it and in importation. If an African American police chief came out and made that statement, how do you think it would be received? If he or she had some evidence, he or she would be taken seriously. Why would one not be when speaking from a position of authority? However, nobody has. The only thing you have heard is a lot of, “Well it has got to be this way,” from people, then a lot of balderdash. One should not make charges that one should not back up, especially if they have the detrimental effect of shifting people’s attention way from the things that they should be focusing on. Now, that is basically what that is all about. Now, the Tuskegee Experiment verged on genocide. Humanity is capable of genocidal thinking. There is no doubt. It was symptomatic of genocidal thinking. However, it was not large enough scale experiment to constitute genocide. Although these people were very significant, there were 300 people and when looking at the entire community of African Americans, that is an important, but small number. This was a callous example of genocidal thinking. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Given the flimsiness of evidence, why do such theories flourish? One reason is that the war against drugs has been so ineffectual. It is like people have welcomed the drugs for the taxes they make from these big-time drug dealers. It is like these drug stores, on the corner, that truly do sell illegal drugs have flashing signs says, “I’m your neighborhood drug dealer. Got grow houses up and down through Pembroke Pines. Neighborhood dope boy, you should hit me too. It’s your neighborhood drug dealer.” (Neighborhood Drug Dealer,song by Rick Ross.) Another reason these genocidal theories flourish is because American history is replete with episodes that help make even fanciful theories seem plausible. The Tuskegee Experiment was significant because it was allowed to take place. Racism may be becoming more sophisticated. It is still ingrained in some people and cultures. Racists do resort to new techniques all the time. And socialism and communism would erode all the work done in America to establish equality because nothing the people say would matter. You think you have overcome something, and you find that you have to go back and fight that battle all over again. It is very resilient, it is a permanent feature of American life, and it is dangerous. Racism seems to have enjoyed a resurgence recently, and so has disobedience and disrespect. A lot of things are changing, but one thing that is not good is that some people have lost all regards for human lives, morals and etiquette, respect and proper behavior. However, even with more sophisticated measures, genocide is unlikely in America. We are so ingrained in the society for that to occur. There is just not a genocidal will in the American people. There are individuals who will just as soon kill people, maybe even fringed groups, and some of them are in power. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Do they have the power to carry genocide out? Sure. However, even if the media is involved in the conspiracy, and covers it up, the community would find out. Once the voices of the people start vibrating, if nothing is done to stop the illegal actions, that is when it is time to worry. We really do not want to flare up a race war. Most people in America want peace and harmony and to be happy and feel safe. And certain communities do not want to be the next New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. They like being peaceful farming/suburban communities. Sure, drugs did make Miami, Florida what it is today and has built many colosseums and stuff, but it is not the Middle America American Dream people are looking for. Of course there are people that would like to kill us all. However, I do not call that genocide because they do not have the power to carry it out, as long as you keep voting and look at the character and leadership and skills of the people you are voting for. However, overall, America has gotten significantly better at accepting others and working with them and allowing them to flourish and showing them respect. And actually, you know, some believe that racism is not becoming more sophisticated, but that it is actually becoming graphically unsophisticated. Brutal. Crass. Comrades, no we will not conquer the Heavens. Enough to have the power. War engenders war, and victory defeat. God conquered, will become Satan; Satan, conquering, will become God…As to ourselves, we have destroyed God. We must destroy our inner Tyrant, ignorance, and fear. We were conquered because we failed to understand that Victory is a Spirit, and that it is in ourselves and in ourselves alone that we must conquer racism and violence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Now, the mission of the Church of Satan is to destroy the influence of conventional religion in human affairs. They do not want everyone to be converted to Satanism as an institutional religion, but that they want to unravel the web of fear and superstition that has perpetuated all formal beliefs. Satanism should not be just another religion, it should be an unreligion. The earliest manifestation of the Christian Devil dated back to 3,400 B.C. The result was a document, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, in which Set declared the dawning of the “Aeon of Set.” According to the document, the origins of the new era could be traced back to 1904, when Set appeared to Aleister Crowley in Cairo in the guise of his guardian angel, Aiwass, and declared to Crowley the herald for the dawning “Aeon of Horus.” In 1966, LaVey ushered in the Aeon of Satan, an intermediary phase that symbolized indulgence and that was to prepare the way for the Aeon of Set, which would bring forth enlightenment. Not only was Michael Aquino anointed Worldwide leader for the new age, but he was also consecrated by Set as the Second Beast (prophesied by Crowley in The Book of the Law, as well as the Great Beast of Revelation), following not only in Crowley’s footsteps but also in those of his ill-fated disciple, Jack Parsons. “The Book of Coming Forth by Night was thus for me a veritable Pandora’s box,” wrote Aquino, “promising marvels to come, yet forecasting a personal doom which only a fool or a child would envy. Yes, continue, it said, but only if you dare to take upon yourself a degree, an office, and an image which may well subject you to even greater disbelief, fear, and antagonism than those indured by Anton LaVey. Your comfortable days as a Magister are over; you must accept or reject the Mandate itself.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Aquino accepted the Mandate and the image. Instead of shaving his head, he cut his hair in a widow’s peak, plucked his eyebrows, and had a 666, the symbol of the Antichrist, tattooed under his scalp. As the goat’s-head Baphomet symbol was also trademarked by LaVery, Aquino decided to take a plain inverted pentagram as the temple’s symbol. Grottoes became “pylons,” and old Golden Dawn hierarchy of degrees was adopted, with Lilith Sinclair designated magus, and Aquino, ipsissimus. Administrative decisions, including the advancement of initiates to a higher degree, issued from an inner committee of leaders called the Council of Nine, a name taken from the original officiating body of the Church of Satan. All of the initial members of Aquino’s Council of Nine, in fact, were ex-priests of the Church of Satan. However, while much of the structure of the Temple of Set was taken from LaVey’s The Satanic Bible, the temple teaching differed from those of the Church of Satan in several ways, most important of which was the acceptance of Set, or Satan, as a literal reality. Another main difference between the two groups was that whereas the Church of Satan exalts “egotism without tears” as the cornerstone of its philosophy, the main goal of Setians is the expansion of consciousness through a process known as “Xepering” (pronounced kepering). Xepering, which means “becoming,” is the process through which an initiate strives to evolve into a “higher man” in quest of objective and subjective knowledge. Setians believe that human intelligence was not an accident of evolution but a Promethean gift from Set, who bestowed it to enable man to manipulate nature and become a godlike being. However, to do this, man must first shake off that “sleeping state” which is his normal functioning condition, and achieve “Self-consciousness, as outlined by P.D. Ouspensky in The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
After that he may move on to a state of “objective consciousness,” in which he will be able to control all states of consciousness, know the truth about the Universe, and become an immortal superbeing. This state may be achieved by dedicating oneself to reading, absorbing knowledge, and practicing ritual. Although pylon meetings are usually held once a month, the emphasis in the Temple of Set is on individual, not group, rituals. Setian rituals are geared to concentrate the will of the practitioner in order to “break down the objective and subjective Worlds” and reveal the reality behind the material veil. All initiates are required to adopt a “magical name” which they feel corresponds to their “true nature.” During the rituals, which may vary in purpose and content, one strives to become this other persona, or Ka, a concept taken from Egyptian theology. Once identification is achieved, the ka, or magical “double,” is dispatched to the astral plane to execute the Setian’s will, whatever that may be. Rituals are held in a black room in front of an altar above which is a silver pentagram. On the altar are goblet, a bell, a central flame source, and a magical paraphernalia. Setians forgo naked human alters, and the ceremonial robes of the magician, while preferably black, may be of any color. He or she begins by ringing the bell nine times while turning counterclockwise. The flame is then lit, thus “opening the Gate” of communication between the magician and the Powers of Darkness. The invocation to Set is then read: “In the name of Set, the Prince of Darkness, I enter into the Realm of Creation to work my Will upon the Universe.” The celebrant then picks up the goblet or grail, which symbolizes truth and contains any nonalcoholic beverage (except blood), and drinks. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Following this, the magician performs the appropriate ritual for the occasion. The content is left pretty much up to the celebrant, including whatever deity one wished to invoke. After the ritual, one closes the ceremony, reversing the opening procedure. As the Workings are supposedly magical in nature and not for the purposes of worship, the emotional response is more important than the procedure one uses summoning it. “God exists as they are evoked to meaningful existences by the individual psyche.” Thus, Lovecraft’s Cthulu gods, for example, although fictitious, may have more emotional meaning for the practitioner. The only thing that is strictly prohibited by Aquino during the performance of any ritual—following the lead of LaVey, not Crowley—is the injury or sacrifice of any life-form. Nature, when pleased with an idea, never tires of applying it. She makes plains; she makes hills; she makes mountains; raises a conspicuous peak at wide intervals; then loftier and rarer ones, continents apart; and finally a supreme one six miles high. She uses this grading process in horses: she turns out myriads of them that are all one common dull gait; with here and there a faster one; at enormous intervals a conspicuously faster one; and once in a half century a celebrity that does a mile in two minutes. She will repeat that horse every fifty years to the end of time. By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happened again and again and again—and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each things in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law. The eclipse of the sun, the occultation of Venus, the arrival and departure of the comets, the annual shower of stars—all these things hint to us that the same Nature which delights in periodical repetition in the skies is the Nature which orders the affairs of the Earth. Let us not underrate the value of that hint. Are there any ingenuities whereby you can discredit the law of suicide? No. It is established. If there was such a number in such and such a town last yest, that number, substantially, will be repeated this year. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
That number will keep step, arbitrarily, with the increase in population, year after year. Given the population a century hence, you can determine the crop of suicides that will be harvested in that distant years. Will this wonderful civilization of to-day perish? Yes, everything perishes. Will it raise and exists again? It will—for nothing can happen that will not happen again. And again, and still again, forever. It took more than eight centuries to prepare this civilization—then it suddenly began to grow, and in less than a century it is become a bewildering marvel. In time, it will pass away and be forgotten. Ages will elapse, then it will come again; and not incomplete, but complete; not an invention nor discovery nor any smallest detail of it missing. Again it will pass away, and after ages will rise and dazzle the World again as it dazzles it now—perfect in all its parts once more. It is the Law of Periodical Repetition. It is even possible that the mere names of things will be reproduced. Did not the Science of Health rise, in the old time, and did it not pass into oblivion, and has it not latterly come again and brought with it its forgotten name? Will it perish once more? Many times, I think, as the ages drift on; and still come again and again. And the forgotten book, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures—is not with us once more, revised, corrected, and its orgies of style and construction tamed by an educated disciple? Will it not yet die, once, twice, a dozen times, and still at vast intervals raise again and successfully challenge the mind of man to understand it? We may not doubt it. By the Law of Periodical Repetition it must happen. Here Rousseau bursts on the scene, just at the moment of Enlightenment’s victory and the establishment of the institutions of learning as the crown of society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
An inverse Socrates, Rousseau reasserted the permanent tension between science and society, arguing that scientific progress corrupts morals and hence society, and he took the side of society. Virtue, “the science of simple souls,” is what is most necessary, and science undermines virtue. It teaches a slack and selfish relation to other men and to civil society, it calls into question the principles of virtue, and it requires a luxurious and loose society in which to flourish. The knowers who inhabit the academics lose sight of this, become easygoing and self-satisfied. If they had not been professors, the Ciceros and Bacons would not have been what they were. It was in living life as it really is, rather than in the artificially structured and protected universities, that they were able to grasp the human situation as a whole, recognize its inner tensions and take responsibility, without the protective cover of a faith in progress and without the vanity of society’s ignorantly bestowed honors. Professors had made reason into a public prejudice and were now among the prejudiced. They represented an unsatisfactory halfway house between the two harsh disciplines that make a man serious—community and solitude. Rousseau insisted on making explicit the ambiguity about the relative dignity of theory and practice implicit in Enlightenment. Enlightenment presented the thinker not as the best man but as the most useful one. Happiness is the most important thing; if thinking is not happiness, it must be judged by its relationship to happiness. Moreover, although Hobbes and Locke teach that man is rational, his rationality is in the service of passions or sentiments, which are more fundamental than reason. Thinking through their position that man is naturally a solitary being results in the recognition that speech, the condition of reason, is not natural to man. Man’s specific difference from the other animals cannot, therefore, be reason. Enlightenment misunderstands both reason and feeling. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Rousseau’s reasoning and rhetoric were so potent that hardly anyone who thought, as well as any who did not, could avoid his influence. After him, community, virtue, compassion, feeling, enthusiasm, the beautiful and the sublime, and even imagination, the banished faculty, had their innings against modern philosophy and science. The fringe bohemian, the sentimentalist, the artist became at least as much the teacher and the model as the scientist. Inspired by Rousseau, Kant undertook a systematic overhauling of Enlightenment’s project in such a way as to make coherent the relationship between theory and practice, reason and morality, science and poetry, all of which had been made so problematic by Rousseau. Kant’s survey of the whole of knowledge can also be read as a project for the fruitful coexistence of the disciplines in the Universities. Rousseau had pointed out that the ancient tension between the thinker and society, supposedly revolved by Enlightenment, had resurfaced in new and very dangerous ways. Kant tried again to resolve it. He, too, agreed that natural science had read free, moral, artistic man out of nature. He did not try to reform natural science, to translate man back into nature after the fashion of the ancients. What he did was to demonstrate that nature, as understood by natural science, does not comprehend the whole of things. There are other realms, not grasped or graspable by natural science, which are real and leave a place for the reality of the experience of humanity. Reason does not have to be abandoned to defend humanity, for reason can demonstrate that science has limits that it did not know, and reason can demonstrate that science has limits that it did not know, and reason can demonstrate the possibility of a freedom illegitimately denied by natural science. Possibility and ground become the themes in Kant, for much that is human had begun to appear to be impossible and groundless. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Changes in biotechnology, space and the Internet do not even begin to suggest the full range of technologies pouring out of rich-World laboratories around the globe. These include thousands developed for other purposes but that may, with modification, turn out to have important agriculture-related uses in the less affluent World. Cloning technologies—such as those used to clone Dolly the sheep in Scotland, Snuppy the dog in South Korea, and those used by University of Georgia scientists to clone a cow that had been dead for forty-eight hours—are steadily advancing. Whatever one’s ethical position on cloning, its potential implications for agriculture and livestock production can hardly be overestimated. Water is the lifeblood of agriculture. A pen-sized device that can purify up to three hundred liters of filthy water more effectively than chlorine or iodine has been developed for the U.S Department of Defense. Could it—or something like it—be scaled up for use in village water? Senor technology is emerging as one of the most important industries of the future. New car models are populated by sensors. Sensors are now being embedded in clothing. Why not in land and crops? Sensors that tell farmers when to irrigate wine grapes are already being tested. Some scientists even envision the day when each individual plant will have a tiny built-in biosensor and clock that signals its exact needs at exactly the right time. Others forecast sensors so tiny that they can form “smart dust” and be seeded across a field to report on soil temperature, moister and other variables. Researchers are also testing the use of liver tissue lung tissue, and neural and cardiac cells as sensors that can identify threats from agents such as anthrax. Can these or others like them be useful in identifying threats to a crop? Then there is the nanodevice—smaller, that is, than a billionth of a meter—that can monitor a living cell’s function by sensing minute changes in electrical charges of its surface. Plants are living cells. How do changes in electric charges alter their nature or output? #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Or Controlled Biological and Biomimetic Systems now being studied that collect information from insect populations? Some insects accumulate airborne bacterial spores on their bodies as they fly. Can that tell us how to protect crops? And what about magnetism that switches intracellular activities like protein synthesis or color change on and off? If current work succeeds, what impact might this have on plants? Will farmers be able to boost the vitamin content—and economic value—of a vegetable overnight with a tiny jolt of magnetism? These are just a random handful of thousands of ongoing studies that may well, directly or indirectly, impact the future of agriculture. Many of these ideas will no doubt prove silly, unworkable, useless or too expensive. However, others will not. And the truly big changes will come not from any individual technology, no matter how powerful, but from the explosive convergences of two or more of them. Sensors and wireless technology are already being combined to measure heat buildup in stored sugar beets. Or how about the combination of nanotechnology and magnetism? Scientists are studying the use of magnetism at the nano scale to monitor and control biological activity at the cellular and even the single-molecule level. While the physicist-led team at U. Brob was finishing its work on the AFM-based molecular manipular, a chemist-led team at the University of Lilliput was working furiously. They saw the U. Brob desktop machines as too larger and its expected products as too expensive. Even back in the 1980s, David Biegelsen of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center had noted, “The main drawback I see to using a hybrid protoassembler [AFM-based molecular manipulator] is that it would take a long time to build just one unit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Building requires a series of atom-by-atom construction steps. It would be better to build in parallel from the very beginning, making many trillions of these molecules all at the same time. I think there is tremendous power in parallel assembly. Maybe another field, chemistry or biology, offers a better way to do it.” The chemists at U. Lill aimed to develop that better way, building first simple and then more and more complex molecular machines. The eventual result was a primitive molecular assembler able to build molecular objects by the trillions. How did the chemists achieve this? During the years when the U. Brob team was developing the molecular manipulator, researchers working in protein science and synthetic chemistry had made better and better systems of molecular building blocks. Chemists were well prepared for doing this: by the late 1980s, it had become possible to build stable structures the size of medium-sized protein molecules, and work hard begun to focus on making these molecules perform useful work by binding and modifying other molecules. Chemists learned to use these sophisticated catalysts—early molecular devices—to make their own work easier by helping in the manufacture of still more large molecules. Another traditional chemist’s tool was software for doing computer-aided design. The early software designed by Jay Ponder and Frederic Richards of Yale University ultimate led to semiautomatic tools for designing molecules of a particular shape and function. Chemists then could easily design molecules that would self-assemble into larger structures, several tens of nanometers across. These advanced in software and chemical synthesis let the U. Lill team tackle the task of building a primitive various of a molecular assembler. Although they could not build anything as complex as a nanocomputer or as stiff as a diamond, they did not need to. Their design used sliding molecular rods to position a molecular gripper used at U. Brob, again using the surrounding liquid to control which tool the gripper held. Instead of an AFM’s electronic controls, they used the surrounding liquid control the position of the rods as well. In a neutral solution, the rods would withdraw; in an acid solution, they would extent. How far they moved depended on what other molecules were around to lodge in special pockets and block the motion. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Their primitive assemblers built much of the same sort of products that the U. Brob molecular manipulator did; the tools were similarly, and speed and accuracy were about the same. Yet there was one dramatic advantage: About 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 U. Lill assemblers could sit in the space occupied by one U. Brob manipulator, and it was easy to produce a mere 1,000,000,000,000,000 times as much product at the same cost. With the first, primitive assemblers, construction was slow because each step required new liquid baths and several seconds of soaking and waiting, and a typical product might take thousands of steps. Nonetheless, the U. Lill team made a lot of money licensing their technology to researchers trying to commercialize products they had first reached with the U. Brob machine. After starting an independent company (Nanofabricators, Inc.), they poured their research efforts into building better machines. Within a few years, they had assemblers with multiple grippers, each loaded with a different kind of tool; flashes of colored light would flip molecules from state to state (they copied these molecules from the pigments of the retina of the eye); flipping molecules would change tools and change rod positions. Soaking and waiting because a thing of the past, and soon they were pouring out parts that, when missed with liquid and added to dishes with special blank chips, would build up the dense memory layers tht made possible the Pocket Library. That was when things started moving fast. The semiconductor industry went the way of the vacuum-tube industry. Money and talent poured into the new technology. Molecular CAD tools got better, assemblers made it easy to build what was designed, and fast production and testing made molecular engineering as easy as playing with software. Assemblers got better, faster, and cost efficient. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Researchers used assemblers to build nanocomputers, and nanocomputers to control better, faster assemblers. Using tools to build better tools is an ancient story. Within a decade, almost anything could be made by molecular manufacturing, and was. Will developments in the late pre-breakthrough days be as just described? Certainly not: the technical approaches will differ, and the U.S. academic research setting implied by the scenario could easily be replaced by academic, commercial, governmental, or military research settings in any of the advanced nations. What do seem realistic are the implied requirements for effort, technology, and time, as well as the basic capabilities of different devices. We are approaching a threshold of capability beyond which further advances will become easy and fast. I have before me an essay by Sir Bernard Lovell, founder of Britain’s Jordell Bank Observatory, in which he claims that computers have stifled scientific creativity. After writing of his awe at the ease with which computerized operations provide amazing details of distant galaxies, Sir Bernard expresses concern that “literal-minded, narrowly focused computerizes research is providing antithetical to the free exercise of that happy faculty known as serendipity—that is, the knack of achieving favorable results more or less by chance.” He proceeds to give several examples of monumental but serendipitous discoveries, contends that there has been a dramatic cessation of such discoveries, and worries that computers are too narrow as filters of information and therefore may be antiserendipitous. He is, of course, not “against” computers, but is merely raising questions about their costs. Dr. Clay Forishee, the chief FAA scientist for human performance issues, did the same when he wondered whether the automated operation of commercial aircraft has not disabled pilots from creatively responding when something goes wrong. Robert Buley, flight-standards manager of Northwest Airlines, goes further. He is quoted as saying, “If we have human operators subordinated to technology, then we are going to lose creativity [in emergencies].” He is not “against” computers. He is worried about what we will lose by using them.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
M. Ethan Katsch, in his book The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law, worries as well. He writes, “The replacement of print by computerized systems is promoted to the legal profession simply as a means to increase efficiency.” However, he goes on to say that, in fact, the almost unlimited capacity of computers to store and retrieve information threatens the authority of precedent, and he adds that the threat is completely unrecognized. As he notes, “a system of precedent is unnecessary when there are too many.” If this is true, or even partly true, what exactly does it mean? Will lawyers become incapable of choosing relevant precedents? Wil judges be in constant confusion from “precedent overload”? We know that doctors who rely entirely on machinery have lost skill in making diagnoses based on observation. We may well wonder what other human skills and traditions are being lost by our immersion in a computer culture. Technopolists do not worry about such things. Those who do are called technological pessimists, Jeremiahs, and worse. I rather think they are imbued with technological modesty, like King Thamus. Again and again we are told that advanced technology cannot solve the problem of poverty. “Let us get real!” declares a typical article: “There is little evidence to indicate that information and communications technologies are poised for a ‘frontal attack’ to improve the lot of the World’s poor. Even Donald Trump has echoed this thought. However, this litany is based on three questionable premises. First, it narrowly refers to I.T., rather than the full range of technological changes sweeping across our moment of time—or the effect of I.T. on these other technologies. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Second, it is too short-term. Nobody has suggested that poverty can be eliminated withing the time frame most such statements reflect. Even with today’s acceleration and the shift toward simultaneity, technologies typically arrive in overlapping phases. In the first phase, a new technology begins to be used by early adopters. By then, it is already being improved, and technologies in seemingly unrelated fields converge with it. Thus, computers, printers, communications, and other tools are integrated to form self-reinforcing multifunctional systems. Finally, at a slower paces, users of the systemic technology alter their organizational structures to take fullest advantage of it. And it is here, but not necessarily in the next stock-market quarter, that the greatest payoffs arrive. The derogation of technology is also historically naïve. At the time the steam engine became practical, few imagined that the “newfangled” device for use in mining would have any impact on agriculture. And it did not—for many years. Then came steam-powered textile factories that benefited cotton farmers and steam-powered trains that widened markets for farm products. Steam transformed the place of agriculture in the economy. What is proposed in these pages, therefore, is not a quick technological fix but something more complex, realistic and far-reaching. However, we should not underestimate the potential impact of technology. “It is easy to dismiss the suggestion that technology can save the day….Nevertheless…new ways are needed to endure that science and technology are given the prominence needed to address a wide range of increasingly urgent global problems,” says economist Jeffery D. Sachs. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If we define ideology as a set of assumptions of which we are barely conscious but which nonetheless directs our efforts to give shape and coherence to the World, then our most powerful ideological instrument is the technology of language itself. Language is pure ideology. It instructs us not only in the names of things but, more important, in what things can be named. It divides the World into subjects and objects. It denotes what events shall be regarded a processes, and what events, things. It instructs us about time, space, and number, and forms our ideas of how we stand in relation to nature and to each other. In English grammar, for example, there are always subjects who act, and verbs which are their actions, and objects which are acted upon. It is a rather aggressive grammar, which makes it difficult for those of us who must use it to think of the World as benign. We are obliged to know the World as made up of things pushing against, and often attacking, one another. Of course, most of us, most of the time, are unaware of how language does its work. We live deep within the boundaries of linguistic assumptions and have little sense of how the World looks to those who speak a vastly different tongue. We tend to assume that everyone sees the World in the same way, irrespective of differences in languages. Only occasionally is this illusion challenged, as when the differences between linguistic ideologies become noticeable by one who has command over two languages that different greatly in their structure and history. For example, Susumu Tonegawa, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Medicine, was quoted in the newspaper Yomiuri as saying that the Japanese language does not foster clarity of understanding in scientific research. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Addressing his countrymen from his post as a professor at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he said, “We should consider changing our thinking process in the field of science by trying to reason in English.” It should be noted that he was not saying that English is better than Japanese; only that English is better than Japanese for the purposes of scientific research, which is a way of saying the English (and other Western languages) have a particular ideological basis that Japanese does not. We call that ideological bias “the scientific outlook.” If the scientific outlook seems natural to you, as it does to me, it is because our language makes it appear so. What we think of as reasoning is determined by the character of our language. To reason in Japanese is apparently not the same thing as to reason in English or Italian or German. To put it simply, like any important piece of machinery—television or the computer, for example—language has an ideological agenda that is apt to be hidden from view. In the case of language, that agenda is so deeply integrated into our personalities and World-view that special effort and, often, special training are required to detect its presence. Unlike television or the computer, language appears to be not an extension of our powers but simply a natural expression of who and what we are. This is the great secret of language: Because it comes from inside us, we believe it to be a direct, unedited, unbiased, apolitical expression of how the World really is. Kant accepted Rousseau’s reasoning that freedom must be what distinguishes man, that it is denied by the kind of causation accepted in natural science, and that therefore the practical life, the exercise of moral freedom, is higher than the theoretical life, the use of scientific reason. Natural is not all. Reason and spontaneity are not contraries. All this is established by reason, not by passion against reason. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
When you’re living in a home with an airy, open floor plan, you have space to create tasteful vignettes in every corner! 🙌
Our home at #CresleighMeadows Residence 1 has inspired us to bring in more thoughtful decor to elevate the space. Look at us – we sound like we’re on HGTV! Having an artfully designed home will do that to ya!
The open-concept kitchen flows effortlessly into the great room and dining room, making this floor plan ideal for entertaining.
Discover the possibilities at Plumas Ranch by Cresleigh Homes where you will enjoy luxurious family appointments.
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Randolph Harris Research and Development 