Community policing provides an illuminating activity for observing panetics in action. It offers an opportunity for us to learn from the police in the field, and they to learn from us. This is essential if we are to significantly improve our knowledge of inner city panetics and contribute to the minimization of suffering among all parties concerned.

The proposal is made that the International Society for Panetics put together a group of interdisciplinary paneticists to work with the Police Executive Research Forum. ISP should develop a liaison with the Forum, to work with it, and carry out joint research toward enhancement of people's well-being through continuing advancement in the art of community policing.

Reasons why the time may be propitious to introduce the use of Panetic Analyses into some government decision-making. Examples of situations to which Panetics may be applied. Government institutions where the capability may exist to conduct such analyses. Arenas of decision-making in which Panetic Analysis, in its current state of development, might prove most practicable. A number of conundrums which must be answered through further research and development before Panetics can be applied broadly to government decision-making on a wider scale.

Presidents make policy judgements in a highly complex domestic and international political environment. The variables are countless and the mix is continuously changing.

I believe the challenge is not to measure the amount of pain in a given situation, but to enhance the likelihood that policy-makers and the policy-influencing public will respond effectively to it.

First and foremost, I believe it is essential to learn what connections Americans see between their larger interests and suffering far from where they live. People act to deal with problems when they feel the connection between what they value and the problem.

Second, I would give attention to defining the paradigm shift in a way that captures your concerns and then I would give attention to gaining the broadest possible academic and public attention possible to that emerging conceptual framework. I would consider all possible media for calling attention to the damage done by continuing to ignore that the old lenses will not help us see our way into the world that is becoming.

Third, I would give attention to strengthening narrative and dramatic ways of making vivid the many dimensions of pain in the world, ranging from the obvious costs of violence to the subtle costs of corruption in a society.

Fourth, I would commission a few studies on why our government has been slow to respond to complex emergencies, such as the genocide in Rwanda.

Widner proposes that the analysis by Hoffman and the Notre Dame contributors be used to frame a Year 2000 policy research effort by ISP in collaboration with a number of academic centers. He suggests that this be used as the focus for the Year 2000 Siu Memorial Lecture and debate.

The authors set out ten axioms for discussion, debate and refinement on the grounds that until Panetics is based on some solid axioms it will remain in immature discipline.

While he he is comfortable with a two-track approach to the development of panetics--one track consisting of efforts to quantify human suffering, Striner believes a "value based" methodology may prove more feasible and useful. He schoes the skepticism of others (see Saunders) about the ultimate utility of the dukkha.

(Written in 1995)

The newly elected President George Herbert Walker Bush promised on his first day of office that he was going to make the United States of America a "kinder and gentler nation."

Did he succeed? No way of telling, for sure.

Why not? Because there was no direct method for calculating the net amount of suffering that were actually being borne by all of the Americans put together, as well as by peoples elsewhere upon whom the country might have been inflicting suffering and bestowing benefits, and whether the trend figures were going up or down as a consequence of the government's decisions and actions.

Siu suggests that a "GND" report is not only eminently desirable, it is also eminently feasible.

Langmuir attempts to examine possible relationships between dukkhas of suffering and wealth. It is obvious that poverty can cause suffering and, wealth can alleviate it. Might the dukkha offer a way of expressing this axiom in some quantitative way?

This was one of the early efforts to test the feasibility of Ralph Siu's proposed dukkha.

Three ISP members present a dozen "ideal" examples of cross-disciplinary, cross-professional research and applications for panetics.

Dr. Graetz examines three ways to map the infliction of suffering. Map Alpha charts relations in control and domination.Map Beta, borrowing a grid or matrix approach from the late planner Doxiadis, would map all the relationships identified through panetic research.Map Gamma would borrow graphic concepts from Edward Haskell's ways of charting ecological relationships.

For practical application, panetic analyses must address four methodological challenges:

1. The Challenge of Complexity and Trade-offs.

2. The Challenge of Forseeability.

3. The Challenge of Time Limits.

4. Conflicting Perceptions and Values.

The author proposes that an interdisciplinary team be organized to address these issues through a major research and development initiative.

The author is concerned about current lines of inquiry pursued by panetics and suggests that a more fertile field for exploration is the special role played by law in modulating social exchanges.

This essay examines the impact of suffering that is inflicted in the management of community affairs. It invites your attention to ways in which this infliction can be alleviated, as well as to opportunities for promoting alternatives that cultivate happiness.