Although the groups to which people belong have a major influence on their life chances in the United States, Americans—particularly those in the mainstream—are highly individualistic in their value orientations and behaviors. The nuclear family reinforces individualism in U.S. culture. One result of this strong individualism is that married children usually expect their older parents to live independently or in homes for senior citizens rather than with them. The strong individualism in U.S. culture contrasts sharply with the groupism and group commitment found in Asian nations, such as China and Japan. Individualism is viewed rather negatively in these societies. One is expected to be committed first to the family and group and then to oneself. Some U.S. social scientists, such as Lasch and Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton, lament the extent of individualism in U.S. society. They believe it is harmful to the common national culture. Some observers believe that groupism is too strong in China and Japan and that individualism should be more valued in those nations. Perhaps modernized, pluralistic nation-states can best benefit from a balance between individualism and groupism, with neither characteristic dominating.

There can be little doubt that in many an emotionally abusive home, the mental health of a child has been saved by the presence of a pet with whom it could communicate, in the physical presence of human beings who could not. In this context, Drs. Samuel and Elizabeth Corson and their colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at Ohio State University have conducted some interesting experiments in custodial institutions with patients ranging from adolescents to the old and infirm. The experimenters selected patients who had failed to respond to the traditional forms of therapy and brought in dogs of various breeds who were offered as pets to the patients. The responses were dramatic. Only three of the fifty patients refused to accept the dogs as pets, but the other forty-seven adopted them with enthusiasm, and from the outset showed a striking improvement. One man who had not spoken for twenty-six years began to speak.

As you build up your mystery readers' advisory reference collection, it can be quite tempting to discard an old copy of a reference book when a new edition arrives. When it comes to removing your mystery readers' advisory sources, however, the watchword is caution. Some newer editions do not include all previous material when they are revised or updated. A good example is Detecting Women, by Willetta L. Heising. The latest, third edition notes that 225 new authors have been added. Quite a number of authors have also been dropped, however, because of the death of the author or for other considerations. The earlier editions of Detecting Women are the sources for information on books by these authors. Hold on to them. Even if you don't have room in your ready-reference collection, space should be found for these still valuable sources.

In leadership seminars I've been asking participants this question: "How many of you think of yourselves as leaders?" In a group of 50 people, typically only six raise their hands. Even though these are usually people who have come together for leadership development, only about 10 percent identify themselves as leaders. Perhaps people are being modest and they think that if they say they're leaders they'll appear arrogant. Maybe so. But we think there's more to it than that. A mythology about leadership persists that makes people reluctant to claim leadership for themselves. It's as if leadership starts with a capital L and is reserved only for those with some special talent, birthright, gene, calling, position, or title. This perspective creates an invisible barrier and is a limiting belief that stops many from answering the call.

Linguists today are much concerned over the loss of indigenous languages, as endangered tongues pass quietly from the scene when the few village elders still speaking them die. Already, youngsters in the community will be using a tongue with wider circulation, and no passionate campaign to save the fading language is mounted by locals. If such an effort is made, it is likely to come from outsiders aware of the particular significance or value of the syntax, grammar, or vocabulary as these relate to the ecological setting of a language, or the way the language reflects the worldviews of its speakers. The great majority of the languages being lost have never been written or recorded, but among them some are likely to contain crucial pieces of evidence concerning such matters as environmental change, early migration, ecology, and belief systems. A growing movement is under way to document such languages to the extent that research funds allow, but the accelerating rate of loss will render it inevitably incomplete.

Many international negotiations demonstrate that the stronger side should not take its power for granted but rather should analyze it carefully. In particular, it should ask what its sources of power are in this specific negotiation rather than merely calculating its total resources. Had the United States objectively examined this question at the outset of the conflict in Vietnam, the country might not have wasted the men and resources that it did in the war. The failure of the strong to understand their power may also lead them to behave unwisely in a negotiation. Through words and actions, a party may communicate its power in arrogant ways, ways that provoke the hostility of the other side, make it defensive, and in the end hinder negotiation.

Intuition is an imaginative way of perceiving the world around you. While your five senses see factual detail, your intuition sees the nuances or shades of meaning. For intuitives, the world is full of possibilities, and exploring new ideas, people, places, and things is what gives life its zest. They love to seek what's possible in the future; they aim to understand whole systems rather than just the parts. This is the aptitude used by scientists to raise new questions and think outside the box. Poets employ intuition to create metaphors and playfully manipulate the commonsense meaning of words. Actors use it to imagine the inner life and motives of the characters they portray.

Restricting power has been one of the great achievements of human culture. Even in groups of animals, the leader can do almost anything he (or less often she) wants. Humans have gradually learned to hold their leaders responsible. The progress of culture has included imposing more and more restrictions on power, so that even the topmost leaders can be arrested, put on trial, and removed from office against their will. Even in the family, the husband or father no longer holds the extreme power over his wife and children that was common in many earlier societies, a power that at times has extended to life and death. Humans use laws—which are among the most powerful elements of culture—to restrict and restrain the uses of power.

The concept of ‘artificial intelligence' is a vast one which includes all the forms of thinking produced by artificial machines. The concept of AI is therefore strongly related to that of automation, that is, of machines behaving autonomously, albeit in response to certain inputs and in the presence of programs. Any inorganic machine conceived and construed by humans—be they desktop computers or semi-mobile robots, dishwashers or power looms—and able to carry out the tasks that humans carry out using their own intelligence is an automaton. In other words, a certain category of sets of elements are ‘universal' in the sense that one can assemble such elements into machines with which one can realize functions which are arbitrary to within certain reasonable restrictions. Given this definition, it follows that all functioning automata are endowed with a certain degree of artificial intelligence. The refrigerator is less intelligent than a PC, in more or less the same way as an insect is less intelligent than a vertebrate. And some do not hesitate to compare the various forms of organic and inorganic intelligence.

On a recent trip to the family farm, several of us went on our traditional afternoon walk. We hiked to the spot we call Coyote Hill. I decided to search for evidence that this was indeed a hill frequented by coyotes. Shortly thereafter, I found coyote tracks and some coyote feces. The evidence confirmed my suspicions. Yes, this was definitely a coyote hill. Or so I thought. My niece casually remarked that the tracks and feces were probably from the local farm dog, out with the cattle. My doubt returned. I don't actually know what coyote feces or paw prints look like, although they are undoubtedly distinct from those of dogs, as their respective diets and activities are clearly different. Nonetheless, I had unconsciously forced my concept of dog feces and paw prints to be accepted into the evidence I found because coyotes fit so nicely into my existing dog category. We instinctively impose our model of the world effortlessly.

Positive freedom emphasizes both the removal of barriers and the creation of a social context necessary for free action. This is the view of freedom that Martin Luther King Jr. was advocating when he criticized communism for its excessive social barriers and criticized capitalism for its excessive individualism. "Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both." Positive freedom reminds us that our individual autonomy is wrapped up with the freedom and autonomy of others. One person's freedom to smoke can limit another person's freedom to breathe clean air and live a healthy life. One person's freedom to sell their house to anyone they please can limit another person's freedom to live wherever they please. One person's right to hire and fire employees can limit someone else's freedom to work and earn a living.

Many people see a negotiation as a struggle in which their task is to obtain as much value for themselves as possible. For them, a negotiation is, basically, a distributive process. The parties are fighting over a pie whose size is fixed, and each side is seeking to obtain for itself as big a slice as possible. Certainly, every negotiation involves issues of distribution over which the parties must struggle. Discussion about the price of the goods to be purchased, the amount of capital to be contributed to a joint venture, the interest rate to be charged by a lender, and the royalty rate to be paid by a trademark license are all examples of issues involving the distribution value. Every additional dollar gained by one side in the negotiation of these issues is a dollar lost by the other side.