p.14 What do you regard as the conditions of well-being? Are they constant or do they vary?
p.15 Industrialization bears man along on a torrent of sequential events, which work incessant and
irreversible change... The impact of industrialization depends in part on the forces which drive it, still more on
how and how far these forces are controlled... Industrial development has shown itself everywhere to be a vastly de-stabilizing
force.
p.28 The more rapid the rate of change, the harder it is for any of us to furnish ourselves with
an effective set of expectations for the future and the less likely that any two of us will hold the same set.
p.32 conceived as dynamic balance, stability is a condition of all development and indeed of all
the activity of living things; for in the world of life, a world essentially dynamic, stability can be nothing but
dynamic balance... Conceived as dynamic balance, the concept of stability is the governing concept of our age.
p.36 The decision that at a given moment this, rather than that, shall have priority,
is an act of valuation, which must be explained in terms of human nature, as well as in terms of history.
p.41 The criteria we actually use in matters of human well-being are of three main kinds.
I will call them standards of behaviour, standards of need and standards of "want."
p.42 we have and use a number of notions about what human beings need; and if we
see that they lack some condition which we think is essential... we judge their state to be one of ill-being, irrespective
of their behaviour. Alternatively - or in addition - we may suppose that what people want
has some relation to what they need and we may measure their ill-being or well-being by
the gap which separates their wants from their satisfactions.
p.43 These criteria of need, like the criteria of behaviour, are sometimes expressed
positively as norms to be sought and held, sometimes negatively as thresholds of danger to be avoided.
p.44 We are moved to action, on the other hand, by wants and notwants, which in turn throw
up objectives which we pursue and the threats which we elude. These wants and notwants, however they arise, serve our needs
with a double margin of error; for our wants do not necessarily satisfy our needs nor do our objectives necessarily
satisfy our wants.
p.46-47 The governors of behaviour are not goals to be attained or dangers to be avoided once for
all. They are continuing relationships which can only be maintained by continuous seeking and thresholds beyond which such
relationships must not be allowed to stray... I call such governing relationships norms when they are positive
and limits when they are negative, to distinguish them from goals which can be attained once for
all; and such goals I call objectives... Specific objectives are a necessary link in the chain which
leads to action... It remains true that no attainable "objective" can be more than the means to attain a norm or to
escape a threshold... The immediate objective in each instance is only a segment of an activity which has to be infinitely
extended in time in order to maintain with our environment some continuing relationship which has become established as a
norm... We cannot make sense of any human behaviour unless we identify, behind the objective, the continuing
need which it is supposed to serve. And this need is always to establish or maintain, to break or avoid a relationship
between the self and some aspect of the environment, physical or social... It is equally true, I think, of intellectual
and aesthetic pursuits.
p.55 the key to well-being lies more in the design of our aspirations
than in the devising of means to satisfy them
p.73 the character of a man or a society is revealed largely by the way in which competing claims
for action are resolved. What is noticed and what is ignored, what comes first and what takes place second, what
responses are tried first and what responses are never envisaged
p.77 There must be room for the deviant, for every faith begins as a heresy. On the other
hand, there must be an orthodoxy to deviate from.
p.78 effective action depends on information flowing back to the action-centre quickly enough to
guide future action.
p.79 The kinds of policy which emerges from a battle of interests depends not merely on
their relative strength but on the extent to which they share, however unconsciously, a common sense
of responsibility for preserving the coherence of the whole through time.
p.80-81 all action and all thought directed to action takes place within some phase... of which time is
an inescapable dimension; and within any such situation judgments of value... are essentially judgments of priority,
judgments about what matters most at the time... Regarding these changes which concern us, there are three kinds
of question which we must answer... We need first to know better how these changes happen and what is and might be
the scope of our influence over them... We need next to know better the effect on us of these changes; in
other words, the cost to us of what we cause or allow to happen to us. This involves a deeper knowledge of the real
significance of those impacts on us... Finally, we shall still be seeking the answer to the question, "In these circumstances
of space and time, what matters most?"
p.91 I will not attempt to list even the major norms and limits comprised in Canada's [essential
relations to be maintained] today. They include security from attack from outside and from subversion within;
minimum subsistence for all; certain freedoms, including the freedom to undertake and leave any work
(and correspondingly, to "hire and fire"); equality of certain opportunities, including opportunities for
employment and for business enterprise; a continually rising standard of living; and minimal
taxation, government activity and state control. All these define relationships not necessarily
consistent with one another; and the course of legislation and of business and social activity reflects the seeking
and shunning of whichever of these norms and limits has succeeded for the moment in winning attention.
p.92-93 What is the regulating process... which continually adjusts behaviour (B) so as to preserve E [essential
relations to be maintained]; and equally adjusts E so as to keep B's task within the limits of the possible? [JLJ - this is
in a nutshell, the essence of the problem of directing search and exploration efforts in playing a game.] ...We must credit
R [the regulation process] with at least three major functions. It must be able to receive information about how things are
going in relation to how they should be going to maintain E; and it must be able to send signals to initiate behaviour which
will affect the course of events in the interests of E. And between these two functions... we must posit the all-important
function of selecting what to do out of the limited number of behaviours which are possible in the circumstances.
p.94-95 It is useful, therefore, to distinguish signals which compel action from
those which merely invite it, a distinction which runs closely parallel to the distinction between urgency
and importance.
Clearly, a modern society would not hold together for a year if R did not begin to work until it
received signals of incipient breakdown. These signals are supplemented in varying degrees by prediction... R receives
warning that something different is required of it from signals consisting either of breakdown or of forecasted breakdown...
The problem for R is to choose a way of behaving which will neutralize the disturbance threatening the maintenance
of E... Success means initiating behaviour which will reduce the deviation between the actual course of affairs and
the course which would be consonant [JLJ - in harmony with] with E; or at least will prevent its nearer approach to the limit
of the unacceptable or the disastrous.
p.96-97 Systems are said to be error-controlled when the results of their behaviour return to them as a
signal to control their subsequent behaviour... In so far as we can compare what is happening with what ought to be
happening... we are kept informed of what is going wrong and perhaps of the rate and direction in which it is going
wrong. Control by error in this sense is valuable and not uncommon.
p.98 Control by error enables us to compare the way things are going with the way we want them to go...
To select a behaviour because it is likely to have a foreseen and desired result is to be controlled by purpose.
p.103 Suppose a very simple system. Its essential relations (E) are coherent and fixed; so are the limits
within which the system can deviate from them without suffering irreversible change. Its repertory of behaviour (B) is also
fixed. Its problem is so to behave as to keep within the limits of E... Such problems, however complex, could at least in
theory be programmed for and solved by a computer. [JLJ - a great idea with applications for game theory.]
p.104 At the simplest organic level adaptation means directing behaviour so as to keep within acceptable
limits the relationships which are essential to the system... It is a task of regulation.
p.105 The resolving of conflict, exceptional in most creatures, is man's most constant
and familiar activity. This is what decision means.
p.109 I have distinguished three functions: norm-setting, by which I mean
the evolution of those positive and negative governors of behaviour which we seek to follow (E) [essential relations to be
maintained]; regulation, in which I include all devices (R) by which we direct our behaviour so as to follow
them; and valuation, which I reserve for the resolution of conflict.
p.111 The decisions which men and societies are always taking and through which they exercise
whatever influence they have over the course of history are... decisions about what matters most in given circumstances
of time and place.
p.116 As the volume of disturbance approaches the limit of the system's adaptability, the first
result is a general sense of stress... Unless foreseen, the signal for action takes the form of some specific
breakdown. Some customary response is found to be no longer available. The regulative mechanisms become fully occupied
with the short term at the expense of the long term, with the urgent at the expense of the important... Unless the
disturbance can be neutralized without causing another at least as bad, the gap between what is achieved and what is called
for... will sharply widen.
p.123 when all is said, the limitation of the source of disturbance is bound to be of ever greater
importance among the means of dealing with it.
p.126-127 The present and the immediate past do not provide evidence from which the future can be predicted...
We can only forecast its results by deepening our understanding of the systems... which its impact disturbs, of the ways in
which such systems are bound to respond, and of the extent to which they are free to choose between these ways of responding.
Our understanding of these processes forms the essential background to any discussion
p.131 The economic conditions of well-being have long been known as freedom
from want.
p.138 The economic man is supposed to know what he wants. The job of economics is to show
him how to maximize his satisfactions.
