WARFIELD. Thanks for your kind responses to the questions. Let me take a moment to summarize, perhaps somewhat superficially, what I have heard. This will lay the basis for my third question. As I will try to explain, it will reflect my concern that your thoughts so far are not necessarily adequate guides to action by members of the Panetics Society, or by their friends. This is not a major point, since Ralph Widner, President of the Panetics Society, has reminded us that Dr. Siu wanted us to study the infliction of suffering and not necessarily to try to go out and alleviate it with just a small core group of members. Still, one of my goals is to encourage you to bring your thoughts to a level of specificity adequate to support action, if possible.

I suggest that what you have told us so far can be encapsulated in three themes:

—History of Human Behavior

—Thought and Language

—Science and the Demands on Science

History of Human Behavior. I see a heavy emphasis on the history of human behavior in Foucault’s work, and also in Hayek’s work. Both discuss the connections among human behavior and institutions, and the power relations that govern human behavior in these institutions.

As I see it, what you have said here carries a strong warning that the history of human behavior when power is involved, has not been exemplary to say the least, in regard to the infliction of suffering. Perhaps the principal lesson for the Panetics Society is the old saying that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Still one may temporarily, at least, delve somewhat deeper. Perhaps the strong leader lacks the communication capability to do more than issue orders for subordinates to carry out. In other words, rather than demonizing leaders, one might find a way to influence their behavior.

While Dr. Siu was never one to demonize anyone, it was quite clear from his discussions and his writings, that he saw overemphasis on economics as a dominant factor in governmental decisions, and it was his intent to affect the behavior of leaders by supplying them with evidence of the (dare we say) moral impact of decisions based on economics alone. In this way, he hoped that political decisions would be more eclectic in their tone and character, yielding a balance to the application of power that may be almost absent in government actions (as distinct from what politicians say).

Thought and Language. The theme of thought as it is reflected in language permeates your comments. It seems that Foucault is suggesting that academic areas require "founders of discursivity", and that through bottom-up reasoning, along with thinking in sets, categories can be constructed from components, through which the discourse can be enriched. The role of logic seems NOT to be that which is often imputed to it. Instead, if logic is to be useful, according to Peirce, it must be formal logic, because of the fallibility of human beings, who are not competent to apply logic informally in domains of complexity (even though they often do). Formal logic, so to speak, protects people against their own fallibility.

To achieve these benefits, to structure the discursivity of the field of Panetics, it may be necessary to engage in the application of formal logic, following a kind of structuralist philosophy, rather than taking the language as it is presented to us. Moreover, we anticipate that major politicial decisions made upon the basis of the application of this language, and of the structures of the field of Panetics, will follow, rather than precede, the application of formal logic; and will be guided first by ethics and finally by aesthetics.

Application of ethical principles, presumably, will not be sufficient to screen options for action, but it will rule out those that involve the prospects for major suffering, hopefully leaving some attractive options that do not violate the ethical principles.. Then whatever political options remain could possibly undergo a final screening through the applications of aesthetics.

These ideas are foreign to the positivist philosophy, as Dr. Hayek’s book on abuse of reason has made crystal clear. But the positivist philosophy is heavily ingrained in our decision-making apparatus at all social levels. Hence there will be a major challenge in striving to modify the processes of exercise of political power along the lines described.

Science and the Demands on Science. Lastly, I see that you have brought science and the demands on science into the discussion. You have all experienced misuse of science, including exploitation and corruption of the ideas of the great originators. Comte corrupted the views of the predecessors at the Ecole Polytechnique, and the churches of the times connected to that type of false flow, making it easier for the corruption and the ensuing suffering to occur in large amounts.

Apparently two relationships must be kept in mind at all times in evaluating the development of a science of Panetics. They both involve the concept of balance between competing or complementary ideas. They are:

· The importance of balancing observability and quantification,

not allowing a strong imbalance between these two in the science

· The importance of a strong balance (even a tension) between

the theoretical and the empirical, in assessing conditions of

suffering, enroute to the establishment of a science

The best time to apply these, I believe, is after a component of the science has been developed. Those who study creativity know that it is better to start with a wide avenue and exercise free notions of generation. It is only later after many options have arisen that the concepts of balance can be most wisely applied, because at that time the full field of possibility is available for review.

WARFIELD. With this preamble to my third question (which you should certainly feel free to criticize), I put the question as follows. Without regard to what others have written, and whether you agree with them or not, what would you wish to emphasize in a science of Panetics (possibly expanding on what has been said, or introducing a new idea that you think is critical, and which is elaborated in your writings)?

FOUCAULT. It is generally agreed that all of the sciences incorporate particular forms of communication often referred to as "jargon". Often it is taken for granted that the jargon is an essential component of a science, arising out of the conditions inherent in its development, and reflecting the continuing growth of terminology as the science undergoes change. From that perspective, the jargon is like a random process with steadily increasing products that enter the arena of discourse to be stationed along with all of the terminology that was already there.

Regardless of the extent to which that image of scientific language is true, another perspective is available that views such a language over a long time scale, and includes the idea that, from time to time, individuals produce linguistic paradigms that get adopted and form the basis for dialog. While my own interests were predominantly in the "human sciences", I am very concerned about the way in which those sciences affect the professions. It appears that there has been little research into the possibility of founders of discursivity in the professions. In such a development special emphasis must be placed upon the idea of "thinking in sets", which I see as an essential attribute of any founder of discursivity.

As you may know, discursivity refers to the care with which a certain language has been constructed, so that it enables dialog based in logic, as opposed to more-or-less-disconnected discussion. This generally demands thinking in sets, and the sets are relevant to what the modern-day thinker refers to as a "shared linguistic domain": an essential characteristic of discursivity1. Such a domain can come about primarily through these two processes:

By engagement in a designed communication process. In one way [the method applied in using Interactive Management2—Warfield], a group of people engage in a discourse that is highly regulated in structure (but not in content) through the use of Interpretive Structural Modeling and other methods aiming to help groups gain an understanding of both (a) a set of terms which they have generated and clarified and (b) one or more types of relationship among those terms, the nature of which is determined in each specific instance By prolonged literature osmosis. In a second way, an individual scholar’s work becomes well-known and is accepted (at least in part) as an integral component of an academic discipline (or other identifiable area of joint interest to some community), through a variety of discussions over perhaps a long period of time. Every discursivity necessarily involves a shared linguistic domain, but the converse is not true because of the requirement that the discursivity involve "the conscious use of reasoning rather than intuition". But there is a domain where the two ideas can be thought of as virtually identical. That is the domain of complexity and, in particular, those areas of application involving complexity. The reason is that for each such application there is no single individual whose insight encompasses the territory, so if a discursivity is to be possible it must involve the shared application of conscious reasoning. The possibility of developing such a discursivity, i.e., of consciously involving a group as a cooperating founder of discursivity, has been made real by the introduction of Interactive Management: a system of management in which conscious reasoning, governed by principles of Western logic, and disciplined by Harary’s reachability equation M2 = M, enables a group to construct a shared linguistic domain and, thereby become a founder of discursivity. To enable this discursivity to extend into the larger arena one must take further steps. In the normal course of scientific evolution, years or even decades may pass before the founder’s work has extended into the general scientific realm. But in the domain of applications, i.e., in the professions, timeliness is of the essence.

Because the impact of ill-founded discursivities can be extensive, and because errors in conceptualization may not be discovered for years or decades, the social costs of flawed discursivities can ultimately be extensive to those who continue to accept them as the basis for their practice.

The development strategy then becomes crucial: As my friend, Paul Rabinow, has said:

"Whereas in the biological or physical sciences the original texts, say James

Clerk Maxwell’s equations or those of Albert Einstein, are fully absorbed and

surpassed by the scientific work that follows them3, this is not the case in the

[contemporary] human sciences....In the latter case, one finds a constant

return to the texts of certain ‘founders of discursivity’, despite advances in

factual content, verification of hypotheses, and method."

In my work, I constantly tried to promote a highly skeptical point of view about both the "Absorb and Surpass" strategy and the "Return to Founder" strategy, but for different reasons. While the former is an outstanding way to erect a structure of belief, it clearly is highly sensitive to the beliefs that lie at the base. The latter strategy, on the other hand, eschews structural development, making it virtually inaccessible to practitioners. So while these two strategies are perhaps the only distinct ones available (i.e., not significantly overlapping each other), it is critical that they be applied with the utmost care.

Even more telling, the members of professions are generally ignorant of their founders-of-discursivity predecessors, unless those predecessors are remarkably positioned in science (e.g., Maxwell), and the members of the professions are also usually quite ignorant of philosophical foundations. (I think Hayek may speak to this point, as part of the explanation of why it was so easy for Comte to make inroads into the professions.) As James Bryant Conant noted4, Maxwell himself was inclined to demean engineering practice (as when informed of Bell’s invention), and serves as a master prototype of today’s analytical engineering student, often superb in analysis, but unable to design anything systematically.

Paul Rabinow has described a change in orientation in part as follows (page 24): "Once these disciplines crossed the scientific threshold of ‘formalization’ evidence, verification, etc., then the name of the author was no longer central to the authority of the text. Truth became more anonymous."

But this remark applies with, perhaps, even more force, to the non-formalized but discursive philosophies that could have been integrated into engineering education. An example of such a philosophy that literally begs to be incorporated is that of Charles Sanders Peirce (whom history is beginning to reveal as the documentable inventor of the concept of electromechanical digital computing, though not with the stored program concept of Von Neumann, even though that might yet yield to the continuing study of Peirce’s writings). Amazingly, a man extolled by such figures as James, Popper, Dewey, Hookaway, Ketner, and others, has found no place in the professions (so far) except in a very limited arena of precision marine measurements. This is absolutely regrettable, and demands remedy.

Now I will speak of three examples of thinking in sets which I think are critical in developing a science of Panetics, and sustaining control of its quality. Excuse me if I number them and attach my name to them. It is only for ease of reference.

Foucault Set 1. The Different Modes by Which Human Beings are Made Subjects [A set of 3, p.7-115]. Mode 1. Dividing Practices.

Mode 2. Scientific Classification

Mode 3. Subjectification

I don’t want to go into detail here on these three modes, but I just want to say that each of them potentially plays a role in the personal development of self-image. I think there is much study required to decide how people who cause widespread suffering attain a self-image that sustains them in their evil practices. I have found the three categories to be quite helpful in thinking about this topic. But the study of individuals such as Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, and others whose talents included the ability to inflict massive suffering, through the actions of their followers, seems to me to demand better insights into how they learned to view themselves; and what it is in their personal development that leads them into the kind of practices they have followed. If better insights can be gained into this, perhaps better ways can be found to influence the evolution and development of persons who would, if left untouched, become sources of infliction. Perhaps their obvious leadership talents can be diverted into productive use in organizations and nations. As Baudelaire put it, perhaps it will be possible to enable an individual to develop the will to invent oneself, rather than trying to discover oneself. But the former is a design practice, and the latter is an analysis practice, isn’t it?

Now I divert my discussion briefly to mention two conditions set forth by Kant concerning how mankind can escape from its immaturity—immaturity that I think enables evil people to gain status and to direct others into habits of infliction of suffering.

Kant Set. Two essential conditions under which mankind can escape from its immaturity [A set of 2, p. 34-37]. Condition 1. The realm of obedience and the realm of the use of reason must be clearly distinguished from one another.

Condition 2. Reason must be free in its public use, and submissive

in its private use.

If I can summarize what I think Kant has said: people must understand the difference between belief stemming from science, and belief arising only from authority. Then, in public, openness is essential in making necessary enhancements to belief, while one must be disciplined in behavior in order to make socially adjustments possible in response to the emerging authority of belief.

A second small set that I have developed has to do with coherence of belief.

Foucault Set 2. Types of coherence in the labor of diverse inquiries. [A set of 3, p. 50]. Type 1. Methodological coherence

Type 2. Theoretical coherence

Type 3. Practical coherence

If a coherent scientific base can be developed for Panetics, and if the means of doing this are honest and valuable, then application in practice may possibly ensue; but if only one or two of these conditions is met, it is not too likely that an intellectual product, such as an area of discursivity or a science, will meet with much approval. Hence one who would be involved in the development of a science of Panetics should look to this set of types of coherence to make a self-assessment, and to find guides to enhancement.

If the foregoing ideas are pursued, then it may be helpful to the inquiring individual to attend to the next set:

Foucault Set 3. Four aspects of how the individual construes him/her self as a moral subject of his/her own actions [Set of 4, p. 352] Aspect 1. The ethical substance: What part of myself/my behavior is

concerned with moral conduct (e.g., desire, or intentions, or feelings)?

Aspect 2. Mode of subjection: How am I invited or incited to recognize my moral obligations (e.g., by love of political power, glory, immortality, beauty)?

Aspect 3. Self-forming activity: How can I change myself in order to

Become an ethical subject?

Aspect 4: The Telos. Which is the kind of being to which I aspire when I behave in a moral way(e.g., pure, immortal, free, master of myself, etc.)?.

Thought as a Topic of Thought. As I stated in Paul Rabinow’s Foucault Reader,

"For a long time I have been trying to see if it would be possible to describe the history of thought as distinct both from the history of ideas—by which I mean the analysis of systems of representation—and from the history of mentalities—by which I mean the analysis of attitudes and types of action (schémas de comportement). It seemed to me that there was one element that was capable of describing the history of thought: this was what one could call the element of problems or, more exactly, problemizations." [p. 388, uttered shortly before my death in 1984]. What distinguishes thought is that it is something quite different from the set of representations that underlies a certain behavior; it is also something quite different from the domain of attitudes that can determine this behavior. Thought is not what inhabits a certain conduct and gives it its meaning; rather, it is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and question it as to its meaning, its conditions, and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem." [p. 388]

"...the work of a history of thought would be to rediscover at the root of these diverse solutions the general form of problemization that has made them possible—even in their very opposition; or what has made possible the transformations of the difficulties and obstacles of a practice into a general problem for which one proposes diverse practical solutions. It is problemization that responds to these difficulties, but by doing something quite other than expressing them or manifesting them: in connection with them it develops the conditions in which possible responses can be given; it defines the elements that will constitute what the different solutions attempt to respond to. This development of a given into a question, this transformation of a group of obstacles and difficulties into problems to which the diverse solutions will attempt to produce a response, this is what constitutes the point of problemization and the specific work of thought."

"...One tries to see how the different solutions to a problem have been constructed; [and] also how these different solutions result from a specific form of problemization. And it then appears that any new solution that might be added to the others would arise from current problemization, modifying only several of the postulates or principles on which one bases the responses that one gives. The work of philosophical and historical reflection is put back into the field of the work of thought only on condition that one clearly grasps problemization not as an arrangement of representations but as a work of thought." [p. 390]

I hope this view of thought would offer a constructive approach to the development of a science of Panetics, and I thank you for the opportunity to expose these thoughts to the Panetics community through their journal.

HAYEK. In my previous remarks, I emphasized my work on the abuse of reason, as found in the works of the early 19th century French school epitomized by Saint-Simon and Comte. Now I will take the opportunity to return to the primary focus of my life’s work—economics—but with the benefit of additional learning. If I may use a simple metaphor, let me say that many works in economics are "cool" in the sense that they treat the person in a highly restricted way: a "producer", a "consumer", etc., while it is possible to treat the person in a very "warm" way as one who feels pain, offers, love, etc. I think it is clear prima facie that a science of Panetics will be a warm science. It may have cool contributions, but essentially it must be a warm science.

Medical texts are beginning to use the term "systemic" in a valuable way. For example, in describing prostate cancer, it is critical to successful treatment in many cases to distinguish between "local disease", by which they mean that the cancer is confined to the prostate gland; as opposed to "systemic disease", by which they mean that the cancer cells are spread throughout much or all of the body. Some insist that the disease is inherently systemic, hence local treatments should never be cited as a cure in the sense that the malignancy is completely eliminated.

I think this analogy can be fruitfully applied to the study of the infliction of suffering. I want, in particular, to discuss what I will call "systemic suffering". By this I mean suffering that occurs throughout a community, and is inflicted on a whole community, and which cannot be eliminated without changes throughout that community.

Let me take a modern example. To those who study such things, it is known that precious metals, in particular gold, held value over the millennia. While gold was one of the gifts of the Magi, silver also has a remarkable (if less known) history. A large silver mine near Athens provided the wealth that enabled the so-called "Golden Age of Greece", and was the core reason for war between the Greeks and the Romans.

As a result of the long-time awareness of the significance of the precious metals, many records have been kept, showing trends in the prices of these metals. Since the electronic stock market entered the picture, with corresponding huge increases in trading, and continuing swings in prices, it has become well-known that the price of gold reflects inflation. There has been a "flight to quality" in periods of economic uncertainty, causing the price of gold to rise with a rise in uncertainty and to fall when a normal economy is perceived.

Yet, in the past very few years, the market behavior of gold has changed abruptly and dramatically. It has fallen to very low levels and has not reacted to conditions where it would normally have risen. Statistical analyses show, in particular, that the New York gold market has gone down regularly after it has risen in the overseas market, on a daily basis for several years. Statisticians have noted this departure from the past. Court cases are being filed that reflect a belief in concerted attempts to hold down the price of gold for a variety of reasons. The interested reader can find much detail in the web site www.gata.org. It is not my goal here to promote that site. I only mention it as a source of support for the credibility of the example of systemic suffering that I described. My main goal it to discuss the impact of a low gold price on the suffering of many people, and as a source of systemic suffering. Specifically, I wish to discuss conditions in South Africa, a major gold producer, although I could have chosen Ghana or other African nations as examples of what I am about to say.

I choose to discuss Africa because, of all the continents, it is where the greatest human suffering is taking place today; and therefore offers an appropriate realm to discuss systemic suffering. That locale would also be a very interesting place to study should some corrective measures be taken or occur spontaneously, to see whether a positive change was reflected systemically; i.e., whether most or all of the society benefits from the change.

Without prejudice to the truth or falsity, assume that the price of gold IS being held down deliberately, for whatever reason, by sources external to Africa; such that if released, it would rise at least 100% from its level today ($268 per ounce). Let us consider the systemic suffering that occurs as a result of the presumed, deliberate holding-down action.

The South African economy is heavily oriented toward mining, and has been for a long time. Closure of mines throws large numbers of miners out of work, this in a country where unemployment is already high, and the population suffers from a long history of apartheid, only broken in the last decade.

Attempts to ease the suffering that has been induced by inability to find employment in the mines encounter the difficulty that there are no suitable replacements to employment in mining. This illustrates the first point that I must emphasize about systemic suffering.

Hayek Systemic Suffering Point 1. Importance of External Effects. Suffering brought about by inability to find employment, because there is no alternative, is systemic suffering that cannot normally be eased from within a nation and, if correctable at all, requires intervention from without.

In a sense this was also seen in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, the suffering of unemployment beginning to end only when outside forces started World War II, which gave a shot in the arm to the U. S. economy. Attempts to correct the economic problems of the depression could not be resolved in over a decade of trying.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in North Korea today, where reports of extensive suffering continue to surface, and governmental unwillingness to take action to allow effective external intervention sustains the systemic suffering.

Hayek Systemic Suffering Point 2. One Step Removed. Systemic suffering of the type mentioned differs from local suffering such as that which occurs when one person stabs another, or engages in extramarital adventures. The latter are examples of directly-induced suffering, while the former is one step removed, and historically much more difficult to deal with. Proof of individual misdeed is often possible, but the more subtle misdeeds of individuals and organizations often escape public scrutiny, at least in a form that is actionable in court.

The individual who inflicts direct suffering may find himself or herself lacking for support when called to task. But the individual or organization that inflicts indirect suffering on a large scale is normally surrounded by fellow inflictors. There is often a "club" or "fellowship" of inflictors, none of whom wishes to have the stigma of "blowing the whistle" on the other members of the club. And this points up the benefits of enforced disclosure rules for large-scale financial transactions.

Today, for example, it is believed that the number of outstanding "derivatives" on gold alone are priced at much more than the total amount of gold available to back up these derivatives; but there is no enforceable requirement to know who is responsible for this trading in gold derivatives, although circumstantial evidence is very strong that it involves a few New York banks, possibly with collusion of the former U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and the former President—the only two people authorized by law to make decisions for the Exchange Stabilization Fund. (The latter is also authorized to trade in foreign currencies, again with extremely closely-held actions.)

This situation has now led to a lawsuit filed in Boston, charging the persons mentioned, along with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, with engaging in practices of the type mentioned.

If found to be true, these charges would reflect very substantial infliction of systemic suffering upon hundreds of thousands of people in South Africa alone; and in other countries as well, including other gold producers such as Canada and silver producers, such as Mexico.

Hayek Systemic Suffering Point 3. Necessity of Information-Openness in Capitalist Societies. In closing my remarks, I just want to say that the idea of systemic suffering is certainly not new. Clearly it was part of the Marxist polemic. Anybody who knows my work knows that the last thing I would want is to be placed in the class with the Marxists. But it is my very strong belief that a well-administered capitalist society, with a highly-open set of books, will provide social clearance; i.e., the buildup of mass systemic suffering will be foreclosed by the system, analogous to the way in which open markets clear.

My final point on systemic suffering is this: Open systems are necessary if capitalist societies are to function properly, and powerful people will always strive hard to maintain secrecy, using every fine-sounding argument available to them, and applying power in all the ways they can think of to sustain their secret advantages.

My mentor, Ludwig von Mises, may have been the first to explain that socialist societies could never work well for the citizen, all else aside, because the vast amounts of information needed to make economic decisions for all could never be collected, organized, and correctly interpreted by powerful decision makers. But I think that even he did not realize the other side of this coin—that information which can be legally withheld because of inadequate laws in a capitalist society—could have the same effect in a capitalist society as the absence of information could have in a socialist society.

The urge to minimize or eliminate systemic suffering is not confined to Marxists, although it may often seem so. And you can usually tell the Marxist from the non-Marxist because the only solution the Marxist offers is revolution—a condition which, in itself, produces extensive systemic suffering–the very evil which it was proposed to alleviate..

PEIRCE. The systemic concept is one that is very dear to my heart. As you may recall, I stated that I set out to produce a systemic architectonic that would change the face of philosophy and logic for a long time to come. Such a concept applied to Panetics may do the same as a way of eliminating suffering. Let me suggest that a warm approach to local conditions will involve thinking in sets, something discussed previously in this dialog, and which is very appropriate to minimizing or eliminating individual suffering in a systemic mode.

I have become aware of a theorem by a 20th-century pioneer in systems thinking called "The Law of Requisite Variety". This law, expressed by Ross Ashby, and stated in very colloquial language, as well as can be done in a limited space, says that if you want to resolve complexity with some activity, you must have as much variety available to the resolver as the difficulty involved in the situation. In other words, it takes variety to resolve variety.

I note that Ashby himself was a student of the theory of relations, and produced a long paper on set theory and the nature of relationship as constraint, and it was in following up on that subject with him that I was introduced to his Law of Requisite Variety.

It seems to me that Ashby’s Law is highly relevant to resolving systemic conditions where some people and organizations inflict large-scale human suffering on other people.

One identifies the factors which, collectively account for the suffering, and then strives to put in place a system of remedial activities, one for each of those factors.

There is a saying I have heard that "if you give a man a fish, you will have helped him for an instant; but if you teach him to fish, you will have helped him for all of his life". To put this another way, it won’t help much if you alleviate a person’s suffering for one day, when the systemic effects are completely unaffected by that action.

To try to move this idea forward, and give it more practical import, suppose that we understand the following conditions in a systemic, Panetic situation:

A) Extensive Suffering. Each of many individuals suffers to more or less the same degree in the systemic situation.

B) Necessity for Cessation by the Inflictor. The inflictor must be dissuaded from sustaining the systemic situation, whether by direct action on the inflictor, or by action to eliminate future rewards and, possibly, even recover fully those rewards previously gained by the inflictor.

C) Necessity for Intervention. It is not likely that the victim can eliminate the systemic conditions by individual action, nor is it likely that the inflictor will stop without powerful incentives to do so; hence intervention is required both to assist the victim, and to interrupt the inflictor’s actions.

D) Unequal Impact. The systemic situation typically does not grasp everyone equally in a given region, so it is best thought of as being defined in terms of socioeconomic status in that region.

E) Irrelevance of Blame. To blame the victim for the suffering doesn’t make much sense, since the victim did not generally choose to suffer.

F) Necessity for Action by the Victim. The systemic situation cannot be resolved without action on the part of the victim.

G) One Effect of Intervention. A goal of any corrective effort should be to make the victim aware of and knowledgeable of the available options.

H) Another Effect of Intervention. A second goal is to make possible the victim’s action to take advantage of a chosen option.

We should understand that even if the actions that sustain the systemic situation were eliminated abruptly, this does not mean that the victim would suddenly be free of suffering. On the contrary, time would be required for the situation to reach a new and more satisfactory status.

I would like to be able to offer a more detailed resolution of such situations, but I think it is only possible to go a limited distance with generalities. Instead, each systemic situation must be carefully defined and dealt with as a unique situation, but I do believe that the remarks we have made here will be very helpful in developing a science of Panetics, with the aim of understanding better the infliction of suffering on human beings by human beings.

Now let me discuss a matter raised by Foucault. He has proposed the idea that an important task for Panetics research is to find those factors that are active in developing and sustaining the personality of the leader in charge of systemic infliction of suffering on a large scale. It is easy to agree with this point of view.

I would like to add a related topic to the Panetics research agenda. It has been observed before that it is not possible to have a leader without followers. A key research topic for Panetics is discovery of the factors that induce people to be followers of those leaders. It seems unlikely that the factors involved in developing and sustaining the personality or self-image of the leader of infliction are the same as those involved in developing the personality or self-image of the followers.

And once these matters are studied enough to shed light on the issues, a third issue becomes very relevant and probably derivable from the previous work. That is to categorize the leaders and followers. It would be simple enough to suppose that the factors relevant to the one are common to all such leaders, and that a single set of factors would define all followers. But there are too many documented instances in previous discovery where that is not the case. One would expect that there are categories of leaders, and certainly categories of followers, and only by discovering these will it be possible to mount effective campaigns or practices that annul the evil associated with the infliction of suffering on humans by humans.

And to achieve these results, I would anticipate that the Theory of Relations developed by the great man whom I met in London, Augustus De Morgan, could play a critical and constructive role, if appropriately used.

WARFIELD: I thank all of you on behalf of the Panetics Society, and I trust that your wisdom can play a role in its future.

END