As he reasons his way through this age-old debate, he observes that "as we move progressively further into a global community, no one can guess the exact form that agreements will take from one culture to the next. The process, however, can be predicted with assurance. It will be democratic, weakening the clash of rival religions and ideologies. History is moving decisively in that direction, and people are by nature too bright and too contentious to abide anything else. And the pace can be confidently predicted: change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard, even when they are demonstrably false."

It is precisely because we are in this transformational flux that I believe Panetics must face up to the problem, unanswered so far, of how we are to weigh suffering and its causes.

In early formulations, we tended to think in terms of straight-forward inflictions by one party on another.

Then we admitted that suffering is often self-inflicted.

Then, in trying to apply panetic analysis to more complex instances, such as health care decisions, we recognized that it is far too simplistic to simply assign the responsibility to determine the intensity of suffering to the victim alone. Too many other parties are affected. And often their perceptions differ profoundly from those of the primary victim.

The Complex Context of Most Suffering

Indeed, most human suffering occurs in highly complex contexts.

Most political issues involve conflicts in perceptions, values and interests among groups. Each group is understandably preoccupied with its own suffering or lack of it. To expect each group to assign values to its degree of suffering that will be acceptable to others is unrealistic. But that weight can not be assigned arbitrarily by the uninvolved. The perceptions of all the parties involved must be taken into account.

What is more, any panetic analysis involved in such a case must try to sort out the contradictions and self-delusions and misunderstandings inherent in such situations.

To address this challenge, we can turn to processes that facilitate group consensus which are already tried, tested, and accepted in the arenas of business and public decision-making.

Facilitators and mediators of many different stripes have employed group processes that use nominal group techniques to help individuals of very divergent views come together, agree on a definition of the problem, establish a sufficient level of trust to reach consensus on what strategies are likely to ameliorate the problem, settle on a decision, and agree on who has responsibility for implementation.

The most systematic and comprehensive effort to assemble this array of techniques into a coherent body of decision-making tools has been led by John N. Warfield, at George Mason University. Through the use of a set of computer-assisted graphic devices, Warfield's procedures for facilitated "Interactive Management" help accelerate the ability of individuals with divergent views and perceptions to arrive at agreement and, themselves, produce projections and decisions they believe credible.

Using Nominal Group Techniques, this approach would ask a group representing all of the parties involved in a panetic decision to rank, on their own, the direct, indirect and anticipated consequences in the infliction or alleviation of human suffering and add their own evaluation of intensity. These are collected and the composite assembled in a table that enables the group to structure a "Problematique."

In a facilitated discussion by the group, the categories can be both clarified and consolidated so that the group reaches agreement on the "map" of interconnections– present and future–that the problem or decision entails. Then, through facilitated discussion and scoring by participants, they can proceed through a series of steps to agree on decisions and actions.

The Republic of Georgia Case Study

In a recent panetic analysis of corruption in the Republic of Georgia, for example, it was found that high and low-level corruption in the customs service, electric power, medical care, education, and the tax system all drain the capacity of the country to provide adequate public services. In rebellion against these deficiencies, people then engage in another round of corruption (refusing to pay taxes or fees, or cheating the system) which aggravates their public service deprivations still further. Corruption in the banks, customs service, workforce, education, and business regulatory systems all divert, or deter, the capital investment necessary to revive the economy. This perpetuates low incomes and joblessness, which in turn lead to still more corrupt acts because of economic desperation and anger.

Similarly, corruption in the marketplace, workplace, the customs service, medical services and in the power and water systems drives prices for goods and services beyond levels people can pay because of their very low incomes. Again, out of desperation and anger they refuse to pay their electricity and water bills and taxes and engage in still more corruption, aggravating their problem still further. Every infliction triggers another, then another, which, in turn, feeds back on itself and others to create system-wide consequences which, unfortunately, incite a whole new round of similar inflictions.

Such circularity in causes and effects can be likened to a black hole–a self-perpetuating whirlpool of corruption and suffering from which it becomes increasingly difficult to escape.

With the "problematique" of corruption in Georgia mapped, facilitated sessions were held with representatives of the citizenry on the one hand, and with leaders from the Parliament, the Chancellery, and the ministries on the other. Recognizing that they were trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle that hobbled chances for the country's economic and social recovery, they grappled with what interventions could break the cycle.

They recognized that a purely punitive approach ran the risk of re-igniting civil war and brigandage, as well as requiring re-creation of agencies not unlike the old Soviet KGB in their powers. So they turned to a series of reforms that increase the "transparency" of transactions so that open accounting and auditing and fewer and fewer face-to-face cash transactions take place. In addition, appointments to public positions will be shifted to a competency-based merit system and away from the current reliance on nepotism and cronyism.

American Case Studies

For four years, as Director of the satellite-based, interactive Civic Television Network linking community organizations throughout the US, I have sought out and filmed cases in communities that have tried to alleviate suffering and conflict by bringing groups together to discover their common interests and air their differences, both real and perceived.

Case #1: Emerging from Political and Social Feudalism: Del Ray Beach

Sometimes, the political leadership is itself the problem.

Del Ray Beach, Florida is part of the metropolitan conurbation between Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach. Until nine years ago, Del Ray Beach was in steady decline. Its City Council had been captured by out-of-town developers interested only in building gated or exclusive vacation communities near the beach or to the west of the town's center. The center of the town was left to decay. Del Ray Beach has the highest percentage of minority residents–24%–in Palm Beach County. To meet court-imposed desegregation guidelines, Palm Beach County was busing Del Ray Beach minority students to distant schools throughout the County. Meanwhile it was closing minority neighborhood schools in Del Ray Beach itself. In the past, the minority community had been left out of mainstream decision-making by Del Ray's majority community, but suddenly all residents discovered a common interest: they wanted to rescue their town from its slide downward. They met and, in a sense, mapped their "problematique."

The downtown merchants wanted to save downtown. Minority residents wanted to save their schools and get the drug dealers out. Local residents wanted to save their property values.

Local developers wanted to rescue the schools, too, since it was the major deterrent to home sales in the community. All of these once-hostile groups came together for a weekend, agreed on a plan, organized to get rid of the worst offenders on the City Council at the next election and re-assert control over their community.

They elected a new Council and Mayor and hired a new City manager who promptly changed the connection between the city government and the citizenry. Citizens were organized into groups to define the problems and priorities and the city administrators sat alongside them as facilitators and runners, making city responses directly to the priorities.

A Chief of Police with strong commitments to community policing put a substation in the minority neighborhood. Regarded at first with suspicion, the sub-station staff soon became part of the neighborhood when it offered to help paint some houses. Several adult drug addicts in the neighborhood joined them, went off drugs, and formed a patrol to get pushers out of the neighborhood. Residents of the neighborhood were soon serving on community boards where they had never participated before.

The community then pressured Palm Beach County to alter its school busing plan and even build a new school in the minority neighborhoods of Del Ray Beach.

Today, Del Ray Beach is a thriving stable community, one of the most attractive and livable in that metropolitan stretch of Florida's East Coast. The community continues to operate on the basis of the "public administrator as help-meet" philosophy. The whole community today possesses an extraordinary esprit de corps.

Case #2: Sandtown-Winchester (Baltimore)

"You Can't Change This Around Me Unless You Change Me First"

A few years ago, Sandtown-Winchester was one of the most desperately poor neighborhoods in Baltimore. A 40 square-block area, it contained the highest concentration of joblessness, crime, teen-age pregnancy, school drop-outs, and delinquency of any area of the city.

At its heart sat a giant abandoned bakery which had become a dumping ground for the city. Filled with trash, garbage, abandoned cars, the bakery was a focal point for drug pushers and crime. Mayor Schmoke proposed to remove this canker from the center of the neighborhood and replace it with new low and moderate income housing. Residents turned down the offer at first and told the Mayor that they would rather get together, define their problems, and come up with their own plan and then they would come to see him.

"You canít change all this around me unless you change me first!," one Sandtown community leader told him. He agreed and offered the assistance of several city administrators as they sat down to analyze their problems and draw up their plans.

In facilitated sessions, residents produced their own "problematique" and produced a plan that, as often as not, turned to their own self-help as a solution. Mothers formed a team that would call door-to-door to locate where pregnant teen-agers were and identify their needs and begin preventive education. Fathers formed a brigade to look out for school truants and get them back in school. Other men in the neighborhood formed an anti-drug team to get pushers out of the neighborhood.

Through this process, they were able also to identify where and what kind of help they needed from the City or elsewhere. The mission of the city administrators assigned to work with them was to serve as resource persons, helpmeets, and "runners" who would carry back to City Hall a definition of the kind of help needed.

Coherence was brought to their efforts by the fact that these needs were defined by the victims rather than the by the narrow, specialized views of professionals organized in what have come to be called "stovepipe" bureaucracies. People live life in the whole, not by the boundaries of disciplines.

In the process of mapping their panetic "problematique", the residents of Sandtown-Winchester came to understand their own self-inflictions and responsibilities, as well as the consequences of outside inflicters who were often well-meaning.

Not all suffering is inflicted by the malevolent.

This is why process is so important for effective panetic analysis. Without it, reliance upon the victim to assign proper cause and weight to his or her suffering can lead to a serious miscarriage of purpose.