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About OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING — by FRED EMIL KATZ
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The book's mission is to contribute to new vision of what we can know about how we humans live our lives, not to attack individuals. But along the way, almost as an aside, the book is

Taking on the Big Boys

Charles Darwin -- He taught us about the critical role played by the environment in the fate of species.

Yet Darwin failed to make enough allowance for transactions -- back and forth interactions -- between species and their environments. When we apply this to our human species, and how we engage in social behavior, we realize: (1) We humans sometimes create environments; and this, in turn, determines survivability of clusters of our behavior. And (2) We humans sometimes create ways to protect ourselves from our environment. As a result our environment may receive deceptive responses, delayed responses, or quite openly accepting responses -- all of which can influence the environment. These are some issues addressed in OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING.

Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz -- They created the modern version of a calculus with special focus on limits and infinitesimals. It produced the mathematical tools for virtually all our present understanding of physical dynamics, including motion, acceleration, gravitation and rates of change.

 

I am not foolish enough to suggest that I can improve the calculus developed by Newton and Leibnitz, these giants. But I do suggest that, for social space, one might develop a different calculus, a calculus of links -- of connectivity -- among entities that are not necessarily in physical proximity, as the current revolution in social networking demands. I have not attempted to work out the mathematics of such a calculus. But I hope the chapter on Links in OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING gives a glimpse of that possibility.

Sigmund Freud -- He taught us about the role of the Unconscious in the life of human beings. Freud emphasized that the Unconscious is typically created by events in early childhood — experiences that can leave a mark on the personality for the rest of an individual's life.

OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING proposes that the Unconscious can be created continually in the course of an individual's life. And that, at each stage of life distinctive kinds of Unconscious components are apt to be generated.

Stanley Milgram — His famous study of shock experiments shocked the world. He showed that people can be induced to inflict electric shocks on entirely innocent individuals when persons in authority demand it.

OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING suggests that Milgram failed to recognize the power of the local morality — the Closed Moral World -- he created in the laboratory where the experiments took place. This, rather than mere obedience to authority, is the reason for Milgram's gruesome findings. It applies to many situations in the real world, not only in a laboratory where artificial conditions exist.

Finally, a word about Rene¢ Descartes' famous dictum: I think, therefore I am. Here one's inward-looking focus defines one's identity. By contrast, OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING suggests an out-ward looking formulation about one's identity: I am connected, therefore my life has meaning. This is developed under the Link phenomenon discussion.

OUR QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE LIVING — by FRED EMIL KATZ