{"id":1198,"date":"2018-01-05T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2019-01-03T21:18:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T21:18:41","slug":"arms-for-the-rest-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"ARMs for the Rest of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">ARMs<span id='easy-footnote-1-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-1198' title='Applied Research Methodologies'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> for the Rest of Us<span id='easy-footnote-2-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-2-1198' title='About this article: I am using an experimental style to try to several conflicting aims: significance, rigor, documentation, ease of reading, and concision (see &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/style_notes\/&quot;&gt;style notes&lt;\/a&gt;).'><sup>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> <span id='easy-footnote-3-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-3-1198' title='I&amp;#8217;m grateful to Luke Swinson for help writing this article; and Joseph Sweeney, Josh Mitteldorf, Eugene Louis de Klerk, Aurora Casta and Larry Starr for feedback on an earlier draft. '><sup>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Humanity today possesses powers beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors. But this contrasts sharply with <em>personal<\/em> <em>powerlessness<\/em>, strangely, even <em>collectively.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From any historical vantage point, the powers that humanity has acquired in the past few generations are mind-boggling. For humanity&#8217;s first 100,000 generations, most people had to toil most waking hours to try to secure food and shelter; and despite these toils, a vast array of plagues, pestilence, predation and other calamities would prematurely extinguish life as a matter of course.<span id='easy-footnote-4-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-4-1198' title=' At nearly all times for nearly all living things, life on earth is foremost a struggle for survival; for the moment at least, most of humanity has, largely escaped Darwinian existential reality.&amp;nbsp;the primary preoccupations that have characterized life for time immemorial \u2013 hunger, disease and predation \u2013 are, for most of us, no longer primary, ever-present threats.&lt;br \/&gt;\nConsider the first and foremost preoccupation of life \u2013 calories. In the developed world, starvation has largely been eliminated; even the poorest people on the planet rarely starve to death and if they do, it emanates from war rather than insufficient food supply. Today in Europe, as in North America, diseases of over-eating are more than 10 times greater than malnutrition (Lim, et al 2012) \u2013 which itself is a long way from starvation. But until 100 years ago, day-to-day sustenance was the basic preoccupation of life, and whether you&amp;#8217;d have enough to eat was never a given. Large portions of the population would periodically starve to death: for example, Finland 1696\u201397 (~33%), East Prussia 1708\u201311 (~41%); Ireland 1740\u201341 (~33%) and again in &amp;#8220;the Great Famine&amp;#8221; (1845-1849) ~13% died and another 13% emigrated under starving conditions to America. 10% of France may have starved to death in each of 14 famines between 1696 and 1778; Austrian Galicia (present day Poland, Ukraine) suffered a series of 14 famines in between 1804 and 1913.&lt;br \/&gt;\nGlobally, the situation has been even worse and continued longer, right up until the Green Revolution of the 1960s. In China, 1,828 major famines were recorded between 108 BC and 1911 AD, or one nearly every year. In four years of these years \u2013 1810, 1811, 1846, 1849\u2013 a total of 45,000,000 cumulatively perished. Another 60,000,000 perished during droughts from 1850-1873. More recently, 15 million perished starved during Mao&amp;#8217;s Great Leap Forward. In South Asia, 10,000,000 (~33% of the local population) died during the &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Bengal_famine_of_1770&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;Great Bengal famine of 1770&lt;\/a&gt;. Etc.\u2026, etc.\u2026.&lt;br \/&gt;\nFamine Sources: Wikipedia &amp;#8220;list of famines&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;famines in China,&amp;#8221; both accessed 6\/16\/18; &amp;#8220;Great Famine&amp;#8221; Kinealy (1994).'><sup>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Today, however:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A single US farmer can feed 175 people<span id='easy-footnote-5-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-5-1198' title='Sullivan (2014). Also see Trimarchi (2014): US farmers in 2000 produced on average 12 times as much output as a farmer did in 1950.'><sup>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, a number that rises every year. Worldwide the system feeds eight (8) billion (a number that also rises every year) a diet rich in protein and calories.<\/li>\n<li>Modern medicine controls communicable disease that would routinely decimate populations; saves life and limb in the aftermath of wounds that once meant amputation or death; and staves off an ever-increasing array of formerly fatal conditions.<\/li>\n<li>Shelter for average people has never been so secure (or comfortable). People are less likely than ever to suffer physical violence.<span id='easy-footnote-6-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-6-1198' title=' &amp;#8220;News,&amp;#8221; entertainment and standard political fearmongering suggest the world is a very dangerous place. Well, certainly not by historical standards: across the globe, people in 2018 are &lt;em&gt;far &lt;\/em&gt;less likely to suffer injury or death from violence than at any time in recorded history, a steady downward trend that precedes even the world wars (Pinker 2011; Roser 2018). '><sup>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For the first time in history of life on earth, one species, <em>Homo sapiens<\/em>, is winning not only battles against the four horsemen of biblical Revelations, but perhaps even the war.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr align=\"center\">\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" colspan=\"2\"><span id='easy-footnote-7-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-7-1198' title=' &amp;#8220;Four Horsemen of Apocalypse&amp;#8221; Painted by Viktor Vasnetsov in 1887. Via Wikimedia Commons '><sup>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"622\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Apocalypse-vasnetsov.jpg\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr align=\"center\">\n<td width=\"78%\">\n<p style=\"font-size: 14px; margin: -25px 15px 15px 15px; color: #0000ff; text-indent: 0px;\">A transformation in the history of life: Humanity is no longer powerless against the four horsemen of biblical Revelations. Yet Doomsday has never been nearer.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td width=\"22%\">\n<p style=\"margin-top: -25px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"155\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Doomsday-Clock-2018-2min2midnite.jpg\"><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top: -25px;\">A Paradox of Power and Powerlessness<\/h2>\n<p>These powers, however, mask a simultaneous powerlessness. This is plain with respect to weaponry. War currently kills fewer than ever, but that can change in a flash\u2014literally. Prior to World War I, soldiers could kill a single person at a time; thirty years later, a single bomb, &#8220;Little Boy,&#8221; razed Hiroshima and in a flash killed 80,000 people.<span id='easy-footnote-8-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-8-1198' title='All told about three-quarters of Hiroshima&amp;#8217;s 300,000 residents would perish, most of the rest from burns and radiation poisoning. (Atomic Heritage Foundation 2014) '><sup>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. By the time Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind, humanity had also leapt into a theoretical self-annihilation era.<span id='easy-footnote-9-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-9-1198' title='Dupuy (1979) developed a Theoretical Lethality Index for weapons to identify their killing capacity. Lemarchand (2009) used his tools and measures to graph &amp;#8220;advances&amp;#8221; in theoretical lethality over time. &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Theoretical-Lethality-Index-Dupuy-1979-1.png&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;27&quot; class=&quot;size-medium wp-image-819&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Theoretical-Lethality-Index-Dupuy-1979-1-279x300.png&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; vspace=&quot;10&quot; hspace=&quot;10&quot;&gt;&lt;\/a&gt; (click to enlarge the image). Note that we entered the Theoretical Lethality Era not in 1945 or even 1953 because early nuclear weapons, even the fearsome Hydrogen Bomb, could only blow a small portion of the globe into oblivion. It wasn&amp;#8217;t until the 1960s that any one power (i.e., the US) accumulated sufficient nuclear weaponry to annihilate humanity'><sup>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Although this leap looms less large than it once had, rulers of a growing number of nations<span id='easy-footnote-10-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-10-1198' title='In the center of every major city in Pakistan, one of about a dozen Club Nuclear nations, sits a replica of the mountain home of Pakistan&amp;#8217;s nuclear test site commemorating the &amp;#8220;Islamic Bomb.&amp;#8221; &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Chaghi-Commemorative-monument-Islamabad-Faizabad-Interchange-300x200.jpg&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;&lt;img width=&quot;30&quot; class=&quot;size-medium wp-image-819&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Chaghi-Commemorative-monument-Islamabad-Faizabad-Interchange-300x200.jpg&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; vspace=&quot;10&quot; hspace=&quot;10&quot;&gt;&lt;\/a&gt; (click to enlarge the image). See Landesman (2002) for an account of its veneration and the sincere hope expressed by one prominent Pakistani that his country use it.'><sup>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> now can annihilate humanity and most other life on the planet in any of a growing number of ways.<span id='easy-footnote-11-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-11-1198' title='Nuclear weaponry is only one of an ever-increasing number of brilliant new ways humanity keeps discovering to destroy itself (Mirani 2015). A partial list of extinction threats aside from that posed by nuclear arsenals includes climate change, biological warfare, cyberwar, synthetic biology that could destroy food chains or create new pandemics and artificial intelligence through any number of paths, e.g., lethal autonomous weapons (or &amp;#8220;killer robots&amp;#8221;). Indeed, it&amp;#8217;s hard to keep up with all the ways apocalypse may befall. Del Monte (2017), for example, claims that Nano-weapons may soon render humanity extinct.'><sup>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> These threats are collectively so substantial that in 2018 the Doomsday Clock Science and Security Board advanced its iconic clock to two minutes till midnight, equaling the most perilous rating it has ever issued.<span id='easy-footnote-12-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-12-1198' title='The Doomsday Clock Science and Security Board&amp;#8217;s assessment (Mecklin, et al 2018) that we are &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/thebulletin.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2018%20Doomsday%20Clock%20Statement.pdf&quot;&gt;now at two minutes till midnight&lt;\/a&gt;, i.e., on the verge of annihilation, is &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/thebulletin.org\/multimedia\/clock-brief-history&quot;&gt;matched only by the 1953 issuance in the wake of Hydrogen Bomb development&lt;\/a&gt;.'><sup>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Powerful weapons also now provide any one person the ability to efficiently liquidate large assemblages or any powerful entity to discretely liquidate any one person. Statistically speaking, we may on average be safer than ever, but our safety is no longer in our hands. Neither strength nor skill nor conventional armaments provide protection against modern weaponry or institutional power; indeed, they may well provoke it.<\/p>\n<p>As individuals, we&#8217;re as helpless against technology as our ancestors were against the forces of nature. Not just armaments, but almost every technological development. Consider fossil fuel extraction: energy companies shatter the earth<span id='easy-footnote-13-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-13-1198' title='Fracking literally shatters the earth, causing earthquakes and infrastructure degradation. Other eco-effects include groundwater contamination, air pollution, methane pollution, leading to human illness, animal deaths and climate change. Massive quantities of water consumption lead to depleted supplies. Some sources include Hoffman (2018), Ridlington &amp;amp; Rumpler (2013). More at: &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/cpor.org\/fracking.cgi&quot;&gt;Crisis Preparedness and Organizational Resilience: Fracking&lt;\/a&gt;. Now a &amp;#8220;&amp;#8216;Major Second Wave&amp;#8217; of U.S. Fracking Is About to Be Unleashed Upon the World (Worland 2018) '><sup>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and remove mountaintops<span id='easy-footnote-14-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-14-1198' title=' Mountaintop removal: q.v., Ward (2017), Cooper (2018). See also powerful imagery on Willie Nelson&amp;#8217;s 2014 music video, &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/youtu.be\/-WmJxZP_tAI&quot;&gt;America The Beautiful?&lt;\/a&gt; '><sup>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, using toxins by the ton.<span id='easy-footnote-15-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-15-1198' title=' Warner (2013): \u201cUnlike the regulation of other heavy industries, fracking has been exempted from federal reach, leaving regulation to the states, which appear vulnerable to capture by energy interests.\u201d&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 included a provision widely derided as the \u201cHalliburton Loophole,\u201d explicitly exempting fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act.&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 Fracking waste is exempted from regulation of hazardous waste under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976, even though some toxic components of fracking would normally fall under RCRA\u2019s strict requirements&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 Fracking waste is exempted from disclosure requirements under the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act. The act requires companies to submit annual Toxic Chemical Release Forms reporting their use of toxic chemicals to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Fracking industries claim that some of the chemicals they use are proprietary and that their disclosure would harm their competitiveness).&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 Neither the federal Clean Water Act dealing with disposal issues, nor the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act covering transport of hazardous chemicals, regulates key components of fracking.&lt;br \/&gt;\nSee also Soraghan (2015) '><sup>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Or the massive transformations in information technology: increasingly &#8220;they&#8221; know more and more about you<span id='easy-footnote-16-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-16-1198' title=' Remember Edward Snowden? The spying scandal exposed by the high-level programmer revealed that U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had:&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 Collected and stored phone records of all the tens of millions Verizon customers on an &amp;#8220;ongoing daily basis&amp;#8221;&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 Tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, to track online communication in a &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-23027764&quot;&gt;surveillance program&lt;\/a&gt; (Prism)&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 With the UK&amp;#8217;s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), tapped into 200 fiber-optic cables allowing it to monitor up to 600 million international communications every day&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2014\/jan\/16\/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep&quot;&gt;Collected and stored&lt;\/a&gt; almost 200 million text messages per day across the globe&lt;br \/&gt;\n\u2022 &lt;a href=&quot;http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives\/2013\/08\/29\/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html&quot;&gt;A &amp;#8220;black budget&amp;#8221;&lt;\/a&gt; for secret operations of $53 billion in 2013 (this is &lt;em&gt;in addition to&lt;\/em&gt; its massive &lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;on&lt;\/u&gt;&lt;\/em&gt;-the-books appropriation!)&lt;br \/&gt;\nAn easy, excellent introduction to the modern NSA is Oliver Stone&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;Snowden&lt;\/em&gt; (2016), an extraordinary film, both as entertainment and expos\u00e9.&lt;br \/&gt;\nAnother way in which &amp;#8220;they&amp;#8221; know more about you than you probably ever imagined: &amp;#8220;California Found to Be Harvesting Newborn DNA For Decades Without Parental Consent&amp;#8221; (Burns 2018)'><sup>16<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u2014while you know less and less about &#8220;them,&#8221; (even who &#8220;they&#8221; are).<span id='easy-footnote-17-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-17-1198' title='Please suggest in the &lt;a href=&quot;#respond&quot;&gt;comments&lt;\/a&gt; any thoughts about technological developments fundamentally changing the balance of power between institutions and individuals and other relevant examples.'><sup>17<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"4\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountaintop-removal-cropped.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"741\" height=\"173\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-662\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountaintop-removal-cropped-300x70.jpg\" border=\"0\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountaintop-removal-cropped-300x70.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountaintop-removal-cropped-768x179.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountaintop-removal-cropped-1024x239.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountaintop-removal-cropped.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 741px) 100vw, 741px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountainroadshow.com-002.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" height=\"180\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-886\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountainroadshow.com-002-300x190.jpg\" border=\"0\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountainroadshow.com-002-300x190.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountainroadshow.com-002-768x485.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/mountainroadshow.com-002-1024x647.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; text-indent: 0px; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff; margin-top: -15px;\">Mountaintop removal mining increases flooding, contaminates drinking water, and cracks building foundations. The accompanying blasting showers towns with dust, noise and occasionally deadly projectiles. Over 300,000 acres of Appalachian hardwood forests have already been bared and left barren.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff; margin-top: -5px;\">Below left: A &#8216;Major Second Wave&#8217; of U.S. fracking is about to be unleashed upon the world. Fracking effects include earthquakes and infrastructure degradation, severe air and groundwater contamination, and greenhouse gas release. Right: The 1.5 billion-dollar one million square-foot NSA Utah data center, the &#8220;<a class=\"blue\" href=\"https:\/\/governorblog.utah.gov\/2012\/02\/2012-energy-summit\/\"> first facility in the world to gather and house a yottabyte<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 0px;\">(Pictures and captions are inadequate to convey the scale and scope of these activities, but click on images to enlarge and see the annotations above for additional information.)<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"4\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"48%\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/fracking01-1020x610.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/fracking01-1020x610.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/td>\n<td width=\"52%\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/nsa-utah-data-center-large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" height=\"289\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/nsa-utah-data-center.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p style=\"margin-top: 22px;\">Paradoxically, we seem even <em>collectively <\/em>powerless regarding technology. For example, despite relentless labor saving technological innovations, organizations demanding ever more from those who remain\u2014to the point of sickness, even death.<span id='easy-footnote-18-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-18-1198' title='q.v. Pfeffer (2018)'><sup>18<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Fifty years ago, vibrant labor unions across the globe would systematically engage in collective action to ensure a share of productivity gains, through better wages and benefits as well as dignity for workers. All that is an anachronism, almost erased from memory.<span id='easy-footnote-19-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-19-1198' title='There are actually several paradoxes here:&lt;br \/&gt;\n(1) Humanity is no longer powerless against plagues, pestilence, predation, etc&amp;#8230; yet Doomsday has never been closer; that humanity has these formerly unfathomable powers, but individuals are perhaps less in control of their destiny than ever.&lt;br \/&gt;\n(2) Even collectively people don\u2019t have much power, which is a paradox because how can it be that \u201chumanity\u201d has power if people \u2013 even collectively! \u2013 do not? What is humanity if not people \u2013 even collectively?&lt;br \/&gt;\nAn earlier draft was probably better, or at least more clear, because I drew on some examples, but because they were political, I didn\u2019t want to include them. It\u2019s difficult now to even mention names, \u201cTrump,\u201d \u201cObama\u201d or most any world leader really, without seriously turning some people off. And I didn\u2019t want to do that, and certainly not in a first piece. If you\u2019re interested, let me know. Perhaps we\u2019ll take it up in a future piece.&lt;br \/&gt;\n(3) Then there is the example that I &lt;em&gt;do &lt;\/em&gt;use, that despite relentless labor saving technological innovations, people are working if not harder than ever, certainly much harder than 50 years ago. As a boy, my father easily supported a family of 5 on a HS equivalency degree technician\u2019s salary. He also had time to coach our little league teams, take us on trips almost every weekend; and start a business on the side. Try doing any of that now!'><sup>19<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The Turbine of Technology and Institutional Gains<\/h2>\n<p>For most of the two-and-a-half million years or so of human existence, the parameters of life did not change dramatically from generation to generation. With the rise and fall of knowledge over the past few millennia, civilization would lurch forward and slide back. But institutional application of science over the past few generations now drives relentless technological change \u2014 with compounding acceleration.<span id='easy-footnote-20-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-20-1198' title='Perhaps I draw a timeline in a future piece: the history of civilization is less than \u00bd of 1% of human history, and the history of science only a small fraction of that. And then it\u2019s application only a fraction of that. But maybe someone has already done this?'><sup>20<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Technological capability derives from capacity to acquire and apply scientific knowledge for practical purposes \u2014 in short, applied research methodologies, or ARMs as we&#8217;ll call them.<\/p>\n<p>Such capacity, however, is narrowly concentrated. A few sectors function at the center of this complex: The US federal government alone funds close to $100 billion annually on military-related research.<span id='easy-footnote-21-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-21-1198' title=' A principle function of engineering research resources at leading institutions is to provide weapons that make the glitziest gadget of James Bond and his progeny look like primitive flints in comparison.'><sup>21<\/sup><\/a><\/span> US \u201chealth-care\u201d research expenditures coming both from and to a variety of sources including providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and the like may well top that.<span id='easy-footnote-22-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-22-1198' title='In return they get the income that flows from the miracles of modern medicine, as well as the increasingly irreplicable findings that nevertheless justify ever more expenditures. A privileged few are also anticipating the realization of significantly extended lifetimes.'><sup>22<\/sup><\/a><\/span> And the massive infrastructure and brain-power in schools of management and much of social science support the world\u2019s dominant financial and industrial institutions.<span id='easy-footnote-23-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-23-1198' title='The relationships goes well beyond direct funding. For example, Penn\u2019s Wharton School is now a worldwide behemoth with an annual budget exceeding $500 million. Financial institutions support some research directly \u2013 but principally they support 500 faculty members with lavish facilities and opportunities, including scandalously high paying consultancies, speaking fees, board positions, etc\u2026 Students are inspired to dole out hundreds of thousands in tuition and several prime young years of life in the expectation of positive ROI.'><sup>23<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Not always directly \u2013 even management professors tend to skew left \u2013 but the critics too play a critical role (perhaps most important of all) in identifying vulnerabilities and shortcomings to manage as well as in advocating reforms to keep the system afloat.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond this central complex, most successful firms in competitive markets employ research effectively in their core competency, e.g., energy companies know how to remove mountain tops or how to fracture the earth (and how to manipulate governments not only for statutory relief, but subsidies as well!); the rest of their operations, usually no. Even the most heavily ARMed institutions tend to falter on staff functions; few companies employ extant knowledge well, let alone produce knowledge to aid in functions such as human resource management.<span id='easy-footnote-24-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-24-1198' title='I\u2019d like to do some piece on people analytics and workspace issues soon, as well as perhaps a case study on how retrograde some units are of major companies and institutions. Perhaps also a piece on how poorly management works at leading schools of management and how poor the operations can function at leading technological institutes.'><sup>24<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>And then there is your organization \u2026 and you. If you\u2019re outside the core operations of a core complex institution, it\u2019s unlikely that management research and education address your needs. As, for example, when I found myself at the head of a non-profit organization: How to manage volunteers? How to cultivate relations with donors? Never in two decades of management research and education had these kinds of issues come up. The vast resources and brainpower of higher education focus, rather, on what\u2019s of interest to the likes of Goldman Sachs and Google. Everyone else is playing keep up. And odds are long that you\u2019re falling further and further behind.<\/p>\n<h2>Benefits and Consequences: Winners and Losers: Past, Present and Future<\/h2>\n<p>Most of us have on-the-whole benefited from most technological change, but the distribution of benefits has been unequal, and these inequalities may be poised to explode. Those who control the applications and algorithms are on the verge of (or already in possession of) godlike powers; those who know nothing about them except how to play a video game are on the verge of superfluity.<span id='easy-footnote-25-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-25-1198' title='For further reading, see &lt;em&gt;Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow&lt;\/em&gt; (Harari 2016), an illuminating, provocative and engaging book on the subject. Harari examines how we might expect new godlike technologies, such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, to impact the world.'><sup>25<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Over the past two centuries, machinery has remarkably freed humanity from the consuming physical labors of life\u2014and correspondingly eliminated a great swath of the labor market. Despite difficult transitions, many workers around the world who once might have done manual labor now do so-called knowledge work. Silicon, however, does cerebral even better than steel does cerebellious. Algorithms increasingly perform knowledge work cheaper and better than humans can\u2014and correspondingly will eliminate an even greater swath of present jobs, including those of many highly-paid professionals (yes, yours too)!<span id='easy-footnote-26-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-26-1198' title='(Drum 2017)'><sup>26<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"558\" height=\"244\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/ibm-watson-800x350-web.jpg\"><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"183\" height=\"244\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Guillotene-Cropped.jpg\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center;\" colspan=\"2\">\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; text-indent: 0px; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff; text-align: center; margin-top: -11px;\">IBM&#8217;s Watson shown here easily defeating two all-time human Jeopardy champions is one of industry&#8217;s most widely deployed artificial intelligence agents. At the time, 2011, Watson required a room-sized computer; now a microprocessor can do the work.<span id='easy-footnote-27-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-27-1198' title='Watson: Yao (2017). Increasingly, machines don&amp;#8217;t even need human programmers to learn. Self-taught computers can outperform those programmed to take advantage of the history of human learning after only a few hours of experimentation (Drum 2017; Roeder 2018)'><sup>27<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Right: IBM was recently indicted for purging older workers <em>en masse<\/em>.<span id='easy-footnote-28-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-28-1198' title='Gosselin (2018)'><sup>28<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>No one likes being exploited, but those perceived as useless may end up longing for it.<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"color: #876d03;\">Technological Progress and Systems Pushed to the Brink<\/h3>\n<p>For all the wonders applied science has delivered, capacity for <em>systemic improvement <\/em>\u2014or even sustainability\u2014has languished. Consider two of applied science&#8217;s most remarkable contributions\u2014the transformational advances with which we began this column: winning the war against famine and disease.<\/p>\n<p>Industrial agriculture<span id='easy-footnote-29-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-29-1198' title='For a striking six-minute industrial agriculture montage, see this sequence from the film &lt;em&gt;Samsara&lt;\/em&gt; (2011): &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k56NBsZXjr8&quot;&gt;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k56NBsZXjr8&lt;\/a&gt; '><sup>29<\/sup><\/a><\/span> is winning the war against hunger (for the moment); and doing so with high animal-protein diets that require far more land, cultivation and energy than plant-based nutrition. But industrial agriculture has also brought soil depletion; destruction of fresh water systems; oceanic dead zones; and a living death march through hell for the condemned chickens, calves, pigs and fish. This system plays a significant role in global warming<span id='easy-footnote-30-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-30-1198' title='Gilbert (2012): One-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. Vandermeer (2009): Overwhelmingly, these emissions come from industrial agriculture rather than traditional or alternative agroecological techniques. '><sup>30<\/sup><\/a><\/span>; the biotic crisis<span id='easy-footnote-31-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-31-1198' title='Johnston (2017): Industrial farming is driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth.&lt;br \/&gt;\nMunroe (2014): Humans, the animals we eat and pets we keep now account for more than 90% of all large land mammal biomass.'><sup>31<\/sup><\/a><\/span>; and, ironically, epidemics of obesity<span id='easy-footnote-32-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-32-1198' title='You may have seen this two-minute video showing just how fast the US got very fat: &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uH0tWM4H0h8&quot;&gt;US Obesity Epidemic, 1985-2010&lt;\/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uH0tWM4H0h8&quot;&gt;https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uH0tWM4H0h8&lt;\/a&gt;, a brief year by year map sequence showing the dramatic increase in obesity rates across America from 1985 to 2010 based on statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The trend has not abated. And it&amp;#8217;s not just America anymore. Much of the rest of the world has gotten even fatter even faster. A massive study produced by more than 100 scientists (Ng, et al. 2014) published in &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;\/em&gt; shows that as of 2013 many countries throughout the world are now even more overweight than the US. More than half of adults were overweight in more than half of all countries. More than 75% were overweight in many, including most Middle Eastern nations and island nations globally. Strikingly, more than half of women over 20 were obese in Qatar, Kiribati, Libya, Micronesia and Kuwait. In Tonga and Samoa, more than two-thirds were. '><sup>32<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and other diseases of overindulgence, which now account <em>globally<\/em> for three times as many deaths as malnutrition <span id='easy-footnote-33-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-33-1198' title='(Adams 2012)'><sup>33<\/sup><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"10\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"63%\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"98%\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/DeathMarchThruHell-Sows-confined-in-gestation-crates.jpg\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"36%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/BiomassLarge-LandMammals2.jpg\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff; margin-top: -11px; text-indent: 0px; text-align: center;\">Life in the state of nature may sometimes be nasty, brutish and short, but at least it&#8217;s life. Historian\/ futurist Yuval Harari on sows confined in gestation crates: &#8220;These highly social and intelligent beings spend most of their lives in this condition, as if they were already sausages.&#8221;<span id='easy-footnote-34-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-34-1198' title='Harari (2016) Chapter 2 The Anthropocene, page 71'><sup>34<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<td>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; margin-top: -14px; margin-left: 29px; text-indent: 0px; text-align: center; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff;\">Humans, the animals we eat and pets we keep now account for more than 90% of all large land mammals.<span id='easy-footnote-35-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-35-1198' title='Munroe (2014)'><sup>35<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Modern medicine extends lives, but often without regard to quality or meaning of life. Even children are now overweight and heavily medicated. In the middle we suffer from an array of diseases and addictions unknown in pre-industrial eras.<span id='easy-footnote-36-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-36-1198' title='Per the &amp;#8220;Global Burden of Disease Study&amp;#8221; (Lim, et al. 2012) published in a special edition of &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;\/em&gt;: Between 1990 and 2010 overall global life expectancy at birth rose by about five years. But people are spending more of their years in poor health, due largely to increases in diseases linked to obesity, including type II diabetes, heart disease and cancer.'><sup>36<\/sup><\/a><\/span> At end, nursing home and hospital protocols keep increasingly incapacitated \u201cpatients\u201d nominally alive, without regard to what\u2019s actually important to all involved.<span id='easy-footnote-37-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-37-1198' title='Gawande (2014)'><sup>37<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It&#8217;s a train wreck of a system, now approaching 20% of GDP in the US\u2014a system so bloated, inefficient, and wasteful that even the most avaricious insurance company investor can barely abide.<span id='easy-footnote-38-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-38-1198' title='Years ago, maybe as (the U.S.) Congress was debating Obamacare, I read an op-ed essay (&amp;#8220;My View&amp;#8221; or something like that) in a newsmagazine (probably TIME or Newsweek) written by a health insurance company that I&amp;#8217;ve been unable to track down. He lamented the toxic effect of government interference in the market and how people didn&amp;#8217;t understand insurance (e.g., how his massage therapist wanted massages covered). Even he, having become phenomenally rich from the system\u2014and most undeservedly so!\u2014pointedly criticized the system as an abomination.'><sup>38<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Traditional science, including traditional ARMs, achieves its success by narrowing a problem, isolating two variables and measuring the impact of one upon the other. Spurred by its success, the formula, <em><span style=\"font-weight: 600;\">one problem=one solution<\/span><\/em>, drives most modern thought and action. But life of course is inextricably interconnected and complex. Imposing solutions without appreciating systemic considerations inevitably spawns &#8220;unanticipated consequences&#8221; that are often far more consequential than the ostensible main effect.<span id='easy-footnote-39-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-39-1198' title='I put &amp;#8220;unanticipated consequences&amp;#8221; in parentheses because these systemic impacts are referred to euphemistically as &amp;#8220;unanticipated&amp;#8221; or unintended&amp;#8221;, they usually are anticipatable. For example, &amp;#8220;side effects&amp;#8221; of fracking include groundwater contamination, air pollution, impact of Methane on climate change, exposure to toxic chemicals, blowouts due to gas explosion, waste disposal issues, massive freshwater use (lowering water tables), earthquakes, workplace safety and infrastructure degradation. (Hoffman 2018)&lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;Institutions develop technology for their commercial benefit, but introduce them for how they will help or even save mankind and ignore or try to cover up collective costs and detriments. The HBO comedy, &lt;em&gt;Silicon Valley,&lt;\/em&gt; regularly lampoons these would-be tech billionaire pronouncements of &amp;#8220;trying to make the world a better place.&amp;#8221;&lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;I may do a column specifically on &amp;#8220;unanticipated consequences.&amp;#8221; An interesting prediction with respect to several points in this article were the long held, and often continuing, certainty of economists&amp;#8217; expectations of automation leading to unprecedented leisure, e.g., Economist John Maynard Keynes 15-hour working week (Pecchi and Piga 2008).&lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;Ironically, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) correlate with perhaps the most beneficial societal development of all. Despite periodic regional conflagrations and international stand-offs, the past 70 years represent an historically unprecedented period of world peace. People in 2018 are less likely to suffer injury or death from violence than at any time in recorded history, a steady downward trend that precedes even the world wars (Pinker 2011; Roser 2018).&lt;\/p&gt;\n&lt;p&gt;In short, lacking a systemic perspective, systemic costs (and benefits) are almost totally decoupled from institutional objectives and the propaganda with which they are introduced.'><sup>39<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Where we\u2019re at: (people in general)<\/h2>\n<p>Despite advances in science and technology, we remain today much like early hominids at the mercy of a fearsome, poorly understood array of threats. But whereas our ancestors were humbled by forces of nature, we face faceless institutional forces that (for the moment) have the upper hand even on nature.<\/p>\n<p>Much like the gods of antiquity, these heavily ARMed institutions operate on an Olympian plane, their human proxies battling in corporate, political and military war rooms, the rest of us relegated to the sidelines<\/p>\n<p>In Ancient Rome, long after republican principles were overwhelmed by oligarchic and imperial interests, plutocrats and high officials would regularly stage games with gladiator battles, spectacular <em>damnatio ad bestias<\/em> and re-enactments of foundation myths. Classical historian Mary Beard explains, &#8220;people were watching myth re-enacted in a way that was vivid, in your face and terribly affecting. This was theater, cinema, illusion and reality, all bound into one.&#8221;<span id='easy-footnote-40-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-40-1198' title='Mueller (2011) '><sup>40<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"10\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"39%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/roman-Col.jpg\"><\/td>\n<td><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"369\" height=\"250\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Roman-Galley-Slaves.jpg\"><\/strong><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"252\" class=\"image-center\" src=\"http:\/\/sffreeman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Colosseum-Secrets-vertical-winches-3.jpg\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p style=\"font-size: 13.5px; line-height: 17px; color: #0000ff; margin-top: 2px; text-indent: 0px; text-align: center;\">Left: The Roman Colosseum: A theater of blood lust. Center: According to our tour guide, slaves were chained and many never saw the light of day (as depicted in <em>Ben Hur <\/em>1925); working deep in the stadium&#8217;s bowels, they pushed vertical winches (<em>right<\/em>) to propel elevators that carried animal cages up to the arena.<\/p>\n<p>Today, we&#8217;re likewise treated to endless games, theater, cinema and illusion, though it all may pale in comparison to the vivid brutality experienced by Roman citizens live in the grandeur of the Colosseum. Our virtual experience may be more comparable to that of the slaves locked deep in the stadium&#8217;s bowels<span id='easy-footnote-41-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-41-1198' title='In 2010, the Roman Colosseum&amp;#8217;s vast underground labyrinth was opened to the public after a major renovation. To me, this hypogeum was even more impressive than the Colosseum itself. According to our guide, slaves could spend their entire lives there, never seeing the light of day. Per German archaeologist Heinz-J\u00fcrgen Beste: &amp;#8220;It was as hot as a boiler room in the summer, humid and cold in winter, and filled all year round with strong smells, from the smoke, the sweating workmen packed in the narrow corridors, the reek of the wild animals&amp;#8230; The noise was overwhelming\u2014creaking machinery, people shouting and animals growling, the signals made by organs, horns or drums to coordinate the complex series of tasks people had to carry out, and, of course, the din of the fighting going on just overhead, with the roaring crowd.&amp;#8221; (Mueller 2011)'><sup>41<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, only seeing shadows and hearing echoes of the spectacle.<\/p>\n<h2>Where we&#8217;re aiming: (You and I)<\/h2>\n<p>This column and the intellectual program from which it emerges is a way out of the labyrinthian entrails, maybe even a way to peel ourselves free from the spectacle and its effects\u2014to remedy ignorance, blind techno-determinism, and powerlessness. In short, we aim to:<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #876d03; font-size: 15.5px; font-weight: 600; text-indent: -1em; margin-left: 1em;\">1. Broaden the benefits conferred from science and its applications, i.e., <em><u>extend them<\/u><\/em><u> <em>to you<\/em>! <\/u><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #876d03; font-size: 15.5px; font-weight: 600; text-indent: -1em; margin-left: 1em;\">2. Broaden understanding of research application, i.e., <em><u>to consider problems systemically<\/u>, <\/em>minding the larger purposes we hope to achieve.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #876d03; font-size: 15.5px; font-weight: 600; text-indent: -1em; margin-left: 1em;\">3. Broaden the benefits also to <em><u>us collectively<\/u><\/em>; if enough of us can understand science, application and systems thinking &#8230; who knows?<\/p>\n<p>Goal #1 is the idea behind a professional research doctoral program. I&#8217;ll try to convey here the material as best as possible within the limits of mass communication.<\/p>\n<p>Goal #2 is the intellectual motivation unique to our professional research doctorate. I&#8217;ll also try to convey some of the ideas of systems thinking here, especially as they pertain to research methods.<\/p>\n<p>Goal #3 is the motivation behind this column. Only a small number of students can matriculate into ours or any doctoral program, but real world systemic change requires that many of the rest of you understand science and systems: My hope here is to provide the insights and tools that enable you to see through and cast aside charlatanry that parades as fact and wisdom, to end reliance upon purported authoritative expertise, and provide instead the tools for intellectual self-reliance, to be able to cull extant knowledge and avail yourself of it, to identify what you need to know and then be able to come to know it.<\/p>\n<p>All three goals begin with understanding ARMs and developing the skills to use them.<span id='easy-footnote-42-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-42-1198' title='Please weigh in on your recommendations or requests for future articles in the &lt;a href=&quot;#respond&quot;&gt;comments&lt;\/a&gt; section!'><sup>42<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>References<\/h2>\n<section class=\"group refs\">\n<div class=\"col gridof2\">\n<p>Adams, Stephen (2012-12-13) &#8220;Obesity killing three times as many as malnutrition&#8221; The Telegraph (UK) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/health\/news\/9742960\/Obesity-killing-three-times-as-many-as-malnutrition.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/health\/news\/9742960\/Obesity-killing-three-times-as-many-as-malnutrition.html<\/a>Atomic Heritage Foundation (2014) &#8220;Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki &#8211; 1945&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atomicheritage.org\/history\/bombings-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-1945\">https:\/\/www.atomicheritage.org\/history\/bombings-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-1945<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ben Hur (1925) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. Producers: Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, Irving Thalberg <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.afi.com\/Catalog\/moviedetails\/2811\">https:\/\/catalog.afi.com\/Catalog\/moviedetails\/2811<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Burns, Jack (2018) &#8220;California Found to Be Harvesting Newborn DNA For Decades Without Parental Consent&#8221; Free Thought Project, June 10, 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/thefreethoughtproject.com\/california-found-harvesting-newborn-dna-without-parental-consent\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/thefreethoughtproject.com\/california-found-harvesting-newborn-dna-without-parental-consent\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cooper, Dave (2018) <em>The Mountaintop Removal Road Show<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mountainroadshow.com\/\">http:\/\/www.mountainroadshow.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Del Monte, Louis A. (2017) <em>Nanoweapons: A Growing Threat to Humanity<\/em>. U of Nebraska Press.<\/p>\n<p>Drum, Kevin (2017-11) &#8220;You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot\u2014and Sooner Than You Think&#8221; <em>Mother Jones<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dupuy, T.N. (1979) <em>Numbers. Predictions and War: Using History to Evaluate Combat Factors and Predict the Outcome of Battles<\/em>. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis\/New York.<\/p>\n<p>Gawande, Atul (2014) <em>Being mortal: medicine and what matters in the end<\/em>. Metropolitan Books.<\/p>\n<p>Gilbert, Natasha (2012-10-31) &#8220;One-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.&#8221; <em>Nature News<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/one-third-of-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from-agriculture-1.11708<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Gosselin, Peter and Ariana Tobin (2018-03-22) Inside IBM&#8217;s Purge of Thousands of Workers Who Have One Thing in Common&#8221; <em>Mother Jones<\/em> in partnership with <em>ProPublica<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Harari, Yuval Noah (2016) <em>Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow<\/em>. Random House.<\/p>\n<p>Hoffman, Joe (2018-03-05) Potential Health and Environmental Effects of Hydrofracking in the Williston Basin, Montana Geology and Human Health <a href=\"https:\/\/serc.carleton.edu\/67733\">https:\/\/serc.carleton.edu\/67733<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Johnston, Ian (2017-08-26) &#8220;Industrial farming is driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, says leading academic&#8221; <em>The Independent Online<\/em>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/environment\/mass-extinction-life-on-earth-farming-industrial-agriculture-professor-raj-patel-a7914616.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/environment\/mass-extinction-life-on-earth-farming-industrial-agriculture-professor-raj-patel-a7914616.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Kinealy, Christine (1994) <em>This Great Calamity<\/em>. Gill &amp; Macmillan, ISBN 0-7171-1881-9<\/p>\n<p>Landesman, Peter (2002-03) &#8220;A Modest Proposal From the Brigadier: What one prominent Pakistani thinks his country should do with its atomic weapons&#8221; <em>The Atlantic Monthly <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/issues\/2002\/03\/landesman.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/issues\/2002\/03\/landesman.htm<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lemarchand, G. A. (2009) &#8220;The Lifetime of Technological Civilizations and their Impact on the Search Strategies.&#8221; Bioastronomy 2007: Molecules, Microbes and Extraterrestrial Life. Vol. 420.<\/p>\n<p>Lim, Stephen S., et al. (2012) &#8220;A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990\u20132010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010.&#8221; <em>The Lancet<\/em> 380.9859: 2224-2260<\/p>\n<p>Littleton, Cynthia (2016-06-25) &#8220;Oliver Stone Talks &#8216;Snowden&#8217; Financing Struggle, Film vs. TV and Military &#8216;Adulation&#8217; in Movies&#8221; Variety <a href=\"http:\/\/variety.com\/2016\/film\/news\/oliver-stone-snowden-tv-conan-the-barbarian-midnight-express-1201803664\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/variety.com\/2016\/film\/news\/oliver-stone-snowden-tv-conan-the-barbarian-midnight-express-1201803664\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Malik, John (1985-09) &#8220;The Yields of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Nuclear Explosions&#8221; Los Alamos National Laboratory 8819:&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/large.stanford.edu\/courses\/2018\/ph241\/furrer2\/docs\/la-8819.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/large.stanford.edu\/courses\/2018\/ph241\/furrer2\/docs\/la-8819.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mecklin, John, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board (2018) &#8220;It is now two minutes to midnight: 2018 Doomsday Clock Statement&#8221;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thebulletin.org\/2018-doomsday-clock-statement\">https:\/\/thebulletin.org\/2018-doomsday-clock-statement<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col gridof2\">\n<p>Mirani, Leo (2015-01-15) &#8220;Humanity keeps discovering brilliant new ways to destroy itself&#8221; <em>Quartz<\/em>. <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/326517\/humanity-keeps-discovering-brilliant-new-ways-to-destroy-itself\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/qz.com\/326517\/humanity-keeps-discovering-brilliant-new-ways-to-destroy-itself\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mueller, Tom (2011-01) Secrets of the Colosseum: A German archaeologist has finally deciphered the Roman amphitheater&#8217;s amazing underground labyrinth. <em>Smithsonian Magazine&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history\/secrets-of-the-colosseum-75827047\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history\/secrets-of-the-colosseum-75827047\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Munroe, Randall (2014-03-05) &#8220;Large mammals&#8221; <em>xkcd<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/xkcd.com\/1338\/\">https:\/\/xkcd.com\/1338\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ng, Marie, et al (2014) &#8220;Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults 1980-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study&#8221; <em>The lancet<\/em> 384.9945: 766-781.<\/p>\n<p>Pecchi, Lorenzo and Gustavo Piga, eds (2008) <em>Revisiting Keynes<\/em>. MIT Press<\/p>\n<p>Pfeffer, Jeffrey (2018) <em>Dying for a Paycheck: Why the American Way of Business Is Injurious to People and Companies<\/em>. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 9780062800923. OCLC 1017972923<\/p>\n<p>Pinker, Steven (2011) <em>The Better Angels of Our Nature.<\/em> Viking<\/p>\n<p>Ridlington, Elizabeth, and John Rumpler (2013-10) &#8220;Fracking by the Numbers: Key Impacts of Dirty Drilling at the State and National Level&#8221; <em>Environment America.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/environmentmaryland.org\/sites\/environment\/files\/reports\/MD_FrackingNumbers_print.pdf\">https:\/\/environmentmaryland.org\/sites\/environment\/files\/reports\/MD_FrackingNumbers_print.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Roeder, Oliver (2018-01-03) Chess&#8217;s New Best Player Is a Fearless, Swashbuckling Algorithm <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/chesss-new-best-player-is-a-fearless-swashbuckling-algorithm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/chesss-new-best-player-is-a-fearless-swashbuckling-algorithm\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Roser, Max C. (2018) The Visual History of Decreasing War and Violence: A short presentation about the rise of political freedom and decline in violent deaths.) accessed June 21, 2018. Our World in Data <a href=\"https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/slides\/war-and-violence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/ourworldindata.org\/slides\/war-and-violence\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Samsara (2011) Magidson films. Producer: Mark Magidson. Director: Ron Fricke. Food sequence: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k56NBsZXjr8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k56NBsZXjr8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Soraghan, Mike (2015-08-18) &#8220;The fracking &#8216;loophole&#8217; that just keeps growing.&#8221; Energy &amp; Environment News https:\/\/www.eenews.net\/stories\/1060023558<\/p>\n<p>Snowden (2016) Director: Oliver Stone. Endgame Entertainment, Vendian Entertainment, KrautPack Entertainment<span id='easy-footnote-43-1198' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/2018\/01\/05\/arms-for-the-rest-of-us\/#easy-footnote-bottom-43-1198' title='The film ultimately had to be made in Europe with financing from German and French production companies. See Littleton (2016) for the many obstacles and difficulties, Stone faced in making this film.'><sup>43<\/sup><\/a><\/span>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.snowdenfilm.com\/\">https:\/\/www.snowdenfilm.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sullivan, Alison (2014) Gazette <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thegazette.com\/subject\/news\/government\/fact-check\/fact-check-reynolds-says-one-iowa-farmer-feeds-155-people-worldwide-20140524\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.thegazette.com\/subject\/news\/government\/fact-check\/fact-check-reynolds-says-one-iowa-farmer-feeds-155-people-worldwide-20140524\/<\/a> (sourced from U.S. Farms and Farmers 2012 Census of Agriculture report highlights: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.agcensus.usda.gov\/Publications\/2012\/Preliminary_Report\/Highlights.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.agcensus.usda.gov\/Publications\/2012\/Preliminary_Report\/Highlights.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Trimarchi, Maria (2014-10-26) &#8220;How many people does one farmer feed in a year?&#8221; <em>HowStuffWorks<\/em> accessed 23 June 2018<\/p>\n<p>Vandermeer, John, et al. (2009) &#8220;Effects of industrial agriculture on global warming and the potential of small-scale agroecological techniques to reverse those effects.&#8221; <em>La Via Campesina<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ward, Ken Jr. (2017) &#8220;Another study confirms mountaintop removal&#8217;s impacts on Appalachian water quality&#8221; Charleston Gazette-Mail, July 14, 2017 <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wvgazettemail.com\/coaltattoo\/2017\/07\/14\/another-study-confirms-mountaintop-removals-impacts-on-appalachian-water-quality\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/blogs.wvgazettemail.com\/coaltattoo\/2017\/07\/14\/another-study-confirms-mountaintop-removals-impacts-on-appalachian-water-quality\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Warner, Barbara, and Jennifer Shapiro (2013) &#8220;Fractured, fragmented federalism: A study in fracking regulatory policy.&#8221; Publius: The Journal of Federalism 43.3: 474-496.<\/p>\n<p>Worland, Justin (2018-03-06) &#8220;A &#8216;Major Second Wave&#8217; of U.S. Fracking Is About to Be Unleashed Upon the World.&#8221; <em>TIME<\/em>. <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/5187074\/fracking-energy-oil-natural-gas\/\">http:\/\/time.com\/5187074\/fracking-energy-oil-natural-gas\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yao, Mariya (2017-03-05) 10 Major Brands Using IBM Watson <a href=\"https:\/\/www.topbots.com\/10-major-fortune-500-brands-using-ibm-watson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.topbots.com\/10-major-fortune-500-brands-using-ibm-watson\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<hr>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><b>Why you need to understand ARMs<\/b>&#8230; Applied Research has transformed the world, creating winners with god-like powers, but narrow applications have also created vast corresponding powerlessness. Systems on which the rest of us all depend are repeatedly and increasingly pushed to the brink and will at some point they will fail, probably sooner rather than later. This article introduces the site and the program, which is to:<\/p>\n<div class=\"hangingindent\">\n<p style=\"text-indent: -10px;\"> 1. broaden the benefits conferred from science and its applications, i.e., extend them to you!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent: -10px;\">2. broaden understanding of research application \u2014 to consider problems systemically, replacing narrow wins and broad losses with overall systemic health.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1205,"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sffreeman.com\/ARMs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}