(1) Cultural norms so completely surround people, so permeate thought and action, that few ever recognize the assumptions on which their lives and their sanity rest. As one observer put it, if birds were suddenly endowed with scientific curiosity they might examine many things, but the sky itself would be overlooked as a suitable subject; if fish were to become curious about the world, it would never occur to them to begin by investigating water, for birds and fish would take the sky and sea for granted, unaware of their profound influence because they comprise the medium for every act. Human beings, in a similar way, occupy a symbolic universe governed by codes that are unconsciously acquired and automatically employed, so much so that they rarely notice that the ways they interpret and talk about events are distinctively different from the ways people conduct their affairs in other cultures.

(2) As long as people remain blind to the sources of their meanings, they are imprisoned within them. These cultural frames of reference are no less confining simply because they cannot be seen or touched. Whether it is an individual neurosis that keeps an individual out of contact with his neighbors, or a collective neurosis that separates neighbors of different cultures, both are forms of blindness that limit what can be experienced and what can be learned from others.

(3) It would seem that everywhere people would desire to break out of the boundaries of their own experiential worlds. Their ability to react sensitively to a wider spectrum of events and peoples requires an overcoming of such culturalparochialism. But, in fact, few attain this broader vision. Some, of course, have little opportunity for wider cultural experience, though this condition should change as the movement of people accelerates. Others do not try to widen their experience because they prefer the old and familiar, seek from their affairs only further confirmation of the correctness of their own values. Still others recoil from such experiences because they feel it dangerous to probe too deeply into the personal or cultural unconscious. Exposure may reveal how tenuous and arbitrary many cultural norms are; such exposure might force people to acquire new bases for interpreting events. And even for the many who do seek actively to enlarge the variety of human beings with whom they are capable of communicating there are still difficulties.

(4) Cultural myopia persists not merely because of inertia and habit, but chiefly because it is so difficult to overcome. One acquires a personality and a culture in childhood, long before he is capable of comprehending either of them. To survive, each person masters the perceptual orientations, cognitive biases, and communicative habits of his own culture. But once mastered, objective assessment of these same processes is awkward since the same mechanisms that are being evaluated must be used in making the evaluations.

(1) Every year, 2,000 American lives are saved by the selflessness of others. These are the bone marrow donors who give the gift of life to patients fighting deadly diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, and aplastic anemia. That’s the good news. The bad news is that thousands more die each year because not enough people have signed on to the registries that would help the ill find a suitable match for a transplant.

(2) Bone marrow or stem-cell transplants are usually a last resort, intended for those whose illnesses have not responded to traditional treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation. How do they work? We all store a special type of cell in our bone marrow called stem cells. These primitive cells give rise to the three types of blood cells: red, white and platelets. Everyone’s stem cells have certain genetic characteristics or markers that make them unique from others. Despite this uniqueness, there are some shared characteristics between people. This is important, because a patient’s immune system will reject blood or organs received from someone else if they do not share sufficient similarities.

(3) Family members, especially siblings, are always the first to be considered as donors, because there’s a greater chance that the genetic markers on their cells will have enough in common to prevent rejection after transplantation. In many cases, however, a familial match can’t be found and then the search begins for an unrelated donor. These donors typically come from a pool of people who have already signed up on a donor registry in the event that their cells match a needy recipient.

(4) Once the lab has verified a match between donor and recipient, the next phase starts. The patient is given radiation or chemotherapy to kill the unhealthy cells. Healthy cells are harvested from the donor—either extracted from the pelvic bones or taken from the arm in a way that is similar to having blood drawn—and prepared in a laboratory. Once they’re ready, they’re given to the patient through a vein—the same way as one would receive a blood transfusion. Once these transplanted donor cells get settled within patient’s bone marrow, they make the healthy red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets necessary to support life.

(5) One of the major problems currently faced by transplant centers is that while bone-marrow transplants can cure more than 70 different diseases, there aren’t enough donors on the registry to treat the more than 3,000 patients awaiting transplants. The National Marrow Donor Program, the largest registry in the country, has approximately 4.8 million adult volunteer donors, but that isn’t nearly enough for the thousands who need transplants.

(6) Why isn’t a pool of more than 4 million donors isn’t enough to cover 3,000 needy patients? Here’s the reason: in the vast majority of cases, finding a suitable match isn’t easy. Because we are unique individuals with a variety of ancestral backgrounds and integration patterns, finding someone similar to us is a major task. In the end, it comes down to a numbers game—the more potential donors listed on the registry, the greater a chance of finding a match, especially for those with unusual genetic characteristics.

(1) As a child I was slave to my impulses; now I am slave to my habits, as are all grown men. I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future. My actions are ruled by appetite, passion, prejudice, greed, love, fear, environment, habit, and the worst of these tyrants is habit. Therefore, if I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habits. My bad habits must be destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed.

(2) I will form good habits and become their slave.

(3) And how will I accomplish this difficult feat? Through these scrolls, it will be done, for each scroll contains a principle which will drive a bad habit from my life and replace it with one which will bring me closer to success, for it is another of nature’s laws that only a habit can subdue another habit. So, in order for these written words to perform their chosen task, I must discipline myself with the first of my new habits which is as follows:

(4) I will read each scroll for thirty days in this prescribed manner, before I proceed to the next scroll.

(5) First, I will read the words in silence when I arise. Then, I will read the words in silence after I have partaken of my midday meal. Last, I will read the words again just before I retire at day’s end, and most important, on this occasion I will read the words aloud.

(6) On the next day I will repeat this procedure, and I will continue in like manner for thirty days. Then, I will turn to the next scroll and repeat this procedure for another thirty days. I will continue in this manner until I have lived with each scroll for thirty days and my reading has become habit.

(7) And what will be accomplished with this habit? Herein lies the hidden secret of all man’s accomplishments. As I repeat the words daily they will soon become a part of my active mind, but more important, they will also seep into my other mind, that mysterious source which never sleeps, which creates my dreams, and often makes me act in ways I do not comprehend.

(8) As the words of these scrolls are consumed by my mysterious mind I will begin to awake, each morning, with a vitality I have never known before. My vigor will increase, my enthusiasm will rise, my desire to meet the world will overcome every fear I once knew at sunrise, and I will be happier than I ever believed it possible to be in this world of strife and sorrow.

(9) Eventually I will find myself reacting to all situations which confront me as 1 was commanded in the scrolls to react, and soon these actions and reactions will become easy to perform, for any act with practice becomes easy.

(10) Thus a new and good habit is born, for when an act becomes easy through constant repetition it becomes a pleasure to perform and if it is a pleasure to perform it is man’s nature to perform it often. When I perform it often it becomes a habit and I become its slave and since it is a good habit this is my will.

(11) Today I begin a new life.

(1) With its common interest in lawbreaking but its immense range of subject-matter and widely-varying methods of treatment, the crime novel could make a legitimate claim to be regarded as a separate branch of the traditional novel.

(2) The detective story is probably the most respectful (at any rate in the narrow sense of the word) of the crime species. Its creation is often the relaxation of university dons, literary economists, scientists or even poets. Fatalities may occur more frequently and mysteriously than might be expected in polite society, which is familiar to us, if not from our own experience, at least in the newspaper or the lives of friends. The characters, though normally realized superficially, are as recognizably human and consistent as our less intimate associates. Such a story set in a more remote environment, African jungle or Australian bush, ancient China or gas-lit London, appeals to our interest in geography or history, and most detective story writers are conscientious in providing a reasonably authentic background. The elaborate, carefully-assembled plot, despised by the modern intellectual critics and creators of significant novels, has found refuge in the murder mystery, with its sprinkling of clues, its spicing with apparent impossibilities, all with appropriate solutions and explanations at the end. With the guilt of escapism from real life nagging gently, we secretly revel in the unmasking of evil by a vaguely super-human detective, who sees through and dispels the cloud of suspicion which has hovered so unjustly over the innocent.

(3) Though its villain also receives his rightful deserts, the thriller presents a less comfortable and credible world. The sequence of fist fights, revolver duels, car crashes and escapes from gas-filled cellars exhausts the reader far more than the hero, who, suffering from at least two broken ribs, one black eye, uncountable bruises and a hangover, can still chase and overpower an armed villain with the physique of a wrestler. He moves dangerously through a world of ruthless gangs, brutality, a vicious lust for power and money and, in contrast to the detective tale, with a near-omniscient arch-criminal whose defeat seems almost accidental. Perhaps we miss in the thriller the security of being safely led by our calm investigator past a score of red herrings and blind avenues to a final gathering of suspects when an unchallengeable elucidation of all that has bewildered us is given and justice and goodness prevail. All that we vainly hope for from life is granted indirectly.

(1) Tourism develops culture. It broadens the thinking of the traveler and leads to culture contact between the hosts and guests from far-off places. This can benefit the locals, since tourists bring culture with them.

(2) Tourism may help to preserve indigenous customs, as when traditional shows, parades, celebrations and festivals are put on for tourists. The musicals, plays and serious drama of London theatres and other kinds of nightlife are largely supported by tourists. Such events might disappear without the stimulus of tourism to maintain them.

(3) On the other hand, tourism often contributes to the disappearance of local traditions and folklore. Churches, temples and similar places of worship are treated as tourist attractions. This can be at the expense of their original function: how many believers want to worship in the middle of a flow of atheist invaders? Who would want to pray while curious onlookers shuffle to and from with guide books, rather than prayer books, in their hands?

(4) Tourism may bring other indirect cultural consequences in its wake. Tensions which already exist between ancient and more modern ways may be deepened by tourists’ ignorance of local customs and beliefs. Tourists, if not actually richer, often seem more well-off than natives. The former may therefore feel superior, leaving the latter embarrassed about their lifestyles. The result maybe an inferior feeling which hardly helps the sense of identity which is so important to regional culture. The poverty of a locality can look even worse when contrasted with the comfortable hotel environment inhabited by tourists. Prosperous retired or elderly tourists from Britain, where the average life expectancy is 75 years, may well generate resentment in Sierra Leone, where the local population can expect to live to no more than 41 years. The relative prosperity of tourists may encourage crime. In Gambia, unemployed young people offer to act as “professional friend”—guides, companions or sexual partners in return for money. When the tourism season is over they can no longer get wages that way so they turn to petty stealing from the local populace. All this affects the local social life and culture adversely.

(5) Culture erosion can also take place at more subtle levels. Greek villagers traditionally prided themselves on their hospitality. They would put up travelers for free, feeding them and listening to their stories. To take money would have been a disgrace. That has changed now. Tourists exist to be exploited. Perhaps this is hardly surprising if the earnings from one room rented to a tourist can exceed a teacher’s monthly salary.

(1) A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info (information) rich and the info poor. And that divide does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces that work against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic.

(2) There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized, it is in the interest of business to universalize access—after all, the more people online, the more potential customers there are. More and more governments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combating world poverty that we’ve ever had.

(3) Of course, the use of the Internet isn’t the only way to defeat poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormous potential.

(4) To take advantage of this tool, some impoverished countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices with respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is an invasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrials infrastructure, it didn’t have the capital to do so. And that is why America’s Second Wave infrastructure—including roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on—were built with foreign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French were investing in Britain’s former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americans built them.

(5) Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thing would be true in places like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure, which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better off you’re going to 3e. That doesn’t mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important they can be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take full advantage of the Internet.

PASSAGE ONE

PASSAGE TWO

PASSAGE THREE

PASSAGE FOUR

PASSAGE FIVE

PASSAGE SIX