Sketch for an Excessive Suffering Control Network Called the Algonet

About Suffering in the World (homepage) / Toward Systematic Mutual Assistance

DRAFT FOR AN EXCESSIVE SUFFERING CONTROL NETWORK

By Robert Daoust

Note — The following text is taken from a Robert Daoust's website that was on-line in 1998. It is offered here in order to stimulate thinking about the creation of a universal program for the control of suffering. The Algonet Excessive Suffering Control Network has been inspired by Roan Carratu's conception of the "Geonet".

The Algonet Excessive Suffering Control Network is a geodesic organization of members who cooperate, in small teams but as a single body, to plan and to carry out a series of collective interventions aimed at reducing systematically the number of registered excessive suffering events occurring in the lives of individuals throughout the world.

The notion of excessive suffering refers to any particular psychoneural phenomenon that is experienced as too aversive to be acceptable as a part of a humane existence. Excessive suffering events may be associated with any kind of condition or problem: physical or psychological illnesses and disabilities, social or economic problems (war, poverty, hunger, human and animal exploitation, torture, crime and punishment...), accidents, disasters, etc. Excessive suffering seems impossible to define objectively. But what people say about it constitutes a body of data upon which a humanitarian network could act. It is believed that the geodesic dynamics would be a most appropriate means for conveying people's words and actions on such matters.

A geodesic network is a new kind of organizational structure in which relationships between people are modeled by, for instance, the Epcot Center dome rather than the Cheops pyramid. The advantages of a geodesic structure, it is said, are many: equality between the participants (direct democracy and bottom-up initiatives are allowed), scalability of cooperation (concerns may be addressed by each member at any level of grouping, from the team level to the whole network level), tensegrity (inherent checks and balances between agreeing and opposing people or views are provided), organic growth (from a few hundred members to many millions)... Here is an instance of one possible geodesic network organization: individual members cooperate within a team; a team has twelve members; each member belongs to two teams; each team hold one meeting each week; meetings produces results; some results circulate between teams to get improved or adopted; the network interacts with the surrounding world by inputs and outputs of information and energy through its individual members.

Members will participate in the Algonet by giving money and time (e.g. 9.99 dollars and 3 hours 59 minutes each week). The work to be done will be the planning and the implementation of collective interventions. One round of activity at the network will consist of five succeeding sub-cycles : 1-information, 2-proposition, 3-decision, 4-preparation, 5-action.

The interventions planned and implemented by the Algonet will be time-limited actions of all the members acting together as one single body. Later eventually, local, regional or sectorial actions will be performed as well. Each action of the whole network will be the result of one full round of activities at the Network. The aim of each intervention, as well as the whole series of them, will be very specific: to reduce the number of excessive pain cases. It is believed that making this precise intent systematically operational on an extensive scale will contribute significantly to the advent of an effective control of pain and suffering in the world.

To make sure that the action of the Network will be measurably efficient, the target of each intervention and of the series of all interventions will have to be the "registered" number of excessive suffering events occurring to individuals across the world. And among the possible criteria for deciding what collective intervention will be implemented, the following ones can be mentioned: number of people helped, gravity of the suffering relieved, success probability of the intervention (nothing short of 98 % for the first years of operation), the costs/benefits analysis in terms of money, labor, time, matter and energy.

Let us imagine that the Algonet has been set up and launched successfully. How would it work? What would it do? A small geodesic network with teams of twelve members would comprise about 700 persons, let's say. Those people would exchange messages during at least four hours each week. They would inform themselves about the number of individuals experiencing excessive pain at this time in the whole world; about the nature and the causes of their problems; about the solutions to their problems that are already attempted or that could be attempted. The Network members would propose and discuss various interventions that they could perform together as a single body. They would come to decide what particular intervention they would achieve concretely. For instance, they could decide that they can target three hospitals and make sure that these institutions will provide to cancer patients an adequate treatment for pain, setting an example for other hospitals. Or, as another instance, they could decide that in a period of one month they can help a hunger stricken village of 700 people in such a way that the villagers would be able to take care of themselves from then on. The Network members would prepare to act accordingly to their decision, and finally they would act. After acting, they would inform themselves again, and the whole cycle would repeat indefinitely. Successful interventions would bring more people to participate in the Network, larger interventions would bring larger successes, and in time, within twenty or fifty years, with millions of participants and millions of people preserved from pain, and with progresses in pain control occurring in other human activities as well, a fairly good control would be established over most events that threaten to make people suffer excessively.

Original text below (inserted hyperlinks are obsolete):

Welcome to the Algonet project!

The Algonet Building Site will be, hopefully, a group undertaking that 
will set up a network for humanitarian action called the Algonet.  The 
Algonet is projected to be a wide-scale organization of individual 
members working as a team to further a new kind of global control over 
human and animal suffering.

WHAT WOULD BE THE ALGONET?

The Algonet would be a geodesic network of people who cooperate to plan 
and to carry out a series of collective interventions aimed at reducing 
the number of registered excessive suffering events occurring in the 
lives of individuals throughout the world.

The conception of the Algonet (algo=pain, net=network: the network about 
pain) would be improved and made operational through the work to be done 
at the temporary "building site" of the Algonet.  The design department 
on that site would define  precisely the structures and functions of the 
network, and it would test and simulate them before the launching.  The 
assembly department would assist the network in the recruiting of its 
first members and in the launching of its first round of activities, 
tentatively scheduled for January 2000 or before.  Here follows a 
provisional presentation of what would be the Algonet.

The notion of excessive suffering refers to any particular psychoneural
phenomenon that is experienced as too aversive to be acceptable as a part
of a humane existence.  Excessive suffering events may be associated with
any kind of condition or problem: physical or psychological illnesses and
disabilities, social or economic problems (war, poverty, hunger, human
and animal exploitation, torture, crime and punishment...), accidents,  
disasters, etc.  Excessive suffering seems impossible to define 
objectively.  But what people say about it constitutes a body of data 
upon which a humanitarian network could act.  It is believed that the 
geodesic dynamics should be a most appropriate means for carrying 
people's words and actions on such matters.

A geodesic network is a new kind of organizational structure in which
relationships between people are modelled by, for instance, the Epcot
Center dome rather than the Cheops pyramid.  The advantages of a geodesic
structure, it is said, are many: equality between the participants 
(direct democracy and bottom-up initiatives are allowed), scalability of 
cooperation  (concerns may be addressed by each member at any level of 
grouping, from the team level to the whole network level), tensegrity 
(providing inherent checks and balances between agreeing and opposing 
people or views), organic growth (from a few hundred members to many 
millions)...  The individual in a geodesic network would cooperate within 
a team; a team would have, for instance six members; each member would 
belong to two teams; each team would carry on, for instance, one meeting 
each week; a meeting would produce results that would be circulated 
between teams in the geodesic structure; the information and energy flow 
that would circulate and become structured within the geodesic network 
would have inputs and outputs from and to the world outside the network, 
so that an informed action in the world would be possible for the 
network.

Members would participate in the Algonet by giving money and time (e.g. 
9.95 dollars and 3 hours 55 minutes each week).  The work to be done 
would the planning and the implementation of collective interventions.
One round of activity at the network would probably consist of five 
succeeding sub-cycles:
1-	information,
2-	proposition,
3-	decision,
4-	preparation,
5-	action.

The interventions planned and implemented by the Algonet would be time-
limited collective actions, each one being the result of one full round 
of activities at the network.  The aim of each intervention, as well as 
the whole series of them, would be very specific: to reduce the number of 
excessive pain cases.  It is believed that making this intent operational 
on a comprehensive scale would contribute significantly to the advent of 
an effective control of pain and suffering in the world.

To make sure that the action of the network would be measurably 
efficient, the target of each intervention and of the series of all 
interventions would have to be the registered number of excessive 
suffering events occurring to individuals across the world.  And among 
the possible criteria for deciding what collective intervention would be 
implemented, the following ones can be mentioned: number of people 
helped, gravity of the suffering relieved, success probability of the 
intervention (nothing short of 99.9% for the first years of operation), 
the costs/benefits analysis in terms of money, labor, time, matter and 
energy.

Let us imagine that an Algonet has been set up and launched successfully.  
How would it work?  What would it do?  The smallest possible geodesic 
network with teams of six members would comprise 376 persons (this exact 
number is a guess, it has to be confirmed by experts).  Those peole would 
exchange messages during at least four hours each week.  They would 
inform themselves about the number of individuals experiencing excessive 
pain at this time in the whole world; about the nature and the causes of 
their problems; about the solutions to their problems that are already 
attempted or that could be attempted.  The Algonet members would propose 
and discuss various interventions that they could make together, as one 
body.  They would come to decide what particular intervention they would 
achieve concretely.  For instance (it is clear that in reality, the 
decision would be quite something else), they could decide that in a 
period of one month they can provide the means to keep a village of one 
hundred people free of hunger diseases during two years, in such a way 
that the villagers would be able to take care of themselves from then on.  
The Algonet members would prepare to act, and finally they would act.  
After, they would inform themselves again, the whole cycle would repeat 
indefinitely.  With years of successful interventions, more and more 
people (up to millions) would participate in the Algonet, and an 
increasing number of people would be saved or preserved from trouble, 
until a fairly good control would be established over the phenomenon of 
suffering in the world.


End of "What would be the Algonet"

A WORD FROM THE PROMOTER

My name is Robert Daoust.  I am the promoter of the Algonet project.  I 
am a self-taught independant researcher, forty-nine years old, living in 
Montreal, Quebec, and presently earning my life as a part-time 
telemarketer.

My dearest wish, and probably the wish of many people as well, is to 
contribute to a common endeavour that would bring a fundamental 
improvement relatively to the overall amount of suffering in the world.  
But how could such a wish be fulfilled?

I have looked for an answer since twenty years.  During the Fall of 1997 
I had for the first time the feeling that a workable solution was in 
view!  Here are the events that brought the Algonet project into shape.

In 1976, the idea came to me to organize within a single framework 
everything that pertains to suffering, theoretically and practically, so 
that we could find the best possible way to control the phenomenon of 
pain in the world.

In 1987, after ten years of much thinking and research, I wrote a 
manuscript entitled "L'Organisation generale contre les maux" (For a 
General Organization against Ills).  The seventy pages manuscript 
presented a table of contents ordering the matters pertaining to 
suffering under five headings:
	1-The conception of a general organization against ills
	  (five chapters of this part were included in the manuscript)
	2-The ills and their sources
	3-The solutions and their agents
	4-The specialized domains in the fight against ills
	5-The domains linked in some way to the organization
	  against ills.
The manuscript was presented to many people, but while everybody said 
this approach was interesting, nobody made any move to collaborate in its 
furtherance.

In January 1997, I came to the Internet to find people with whom I could 
work eventualy.  I was not able at first to locate someone concerned with 
a global approach of suffering.  Later, in June, I found 
The Hedonistic Imperative
and very recently, in January 1998, I found the
International Society for Panetics
But during last April I was still searching.  Therefore, I tried to work 
with the organization that was to my knowledge the most relevant to my 
concern, the
Union of International Associations
and its Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential.  It turned 
out to be impossible to work with them, but in the process I met the 
New Civilization Network
and began to participate there in a discussion list about the making of a 
better world.  On this interesting list I read Roan Carratu explaining 
his conception of a geodesic network that he called 
The Geonet


Roan's Geonet appeared to me as an effective way for people to organize 
themselves in the pursuit of a world transforming vision with the aid of 
other people who have the same vision.  Last November, I imagined using 
the Geonet idea with the principles outlined in "For a  General 
Organization against Ills".  Some drafts were presented to the discussion 
group at the New Civilization Network, and people encouraged me to go 
ahead with this idea.  The Algonet project is now in front of you.


DESIGN DEPARTMENT

The Design Department has the job to define precisely the structures and 
functions of the Algonet, and to test or simulate them before the 
launching of the Algonet.

The Main Shop of the Design Department is now open.  You can see in the 
next paragraph what there is to see in that shop at this time.  If you 
want to participate in the work being done on these matters, go to the 
experimental Web forum now opened at the New Civilization Network.
Web forum about the Algonet

In front of you, when you enter the Main Shop, lies a definition of the 
Algonet, for working purpose.  There are a dozen parts to the definition, 
all of them in a provisional shape.  Each of them could be eventually the 
object of a specialized shop at the Design Department.  Here they are:
1-	The Algonet
2-	is a geodesic network
3-	of members who cooperate
4-	to plan
5-	and to carry out,
6-	within a global perspective
7-	and according to a set of evaluation criteria,
8-	a series of collective interventions
9-	that aim specifically and systematically to reduce
10-	the number of registered
11-	excessive suffering
12-	events occurring in the lives of individuals throughout the world.


LIBRARY

You will find here useful documents for the work to be done at the Algonet Building Site.

Roan Carratu's Geonet
World Game Institute's What the World Wants


MAP OF THE ALGONET BUILDING SITE


Design Department
	Main Shop
	Specialized Shops: language, geodesics, membership, confering 	
		process, effectuation process, global perspective, criteria, 
		interventions, aim, register, excessive suffering, suffering 
		individuals...
		inter-organizational relationships...
		meta-considerations...
	Bench Testing
	Web Forum
		Algonet: An Experiment
		Algonet: Main Shop
Assembly Department
	Recruiting Office
	Launching Center
Management Department
	Monitoring Office
		Supervision
		Crew Lounge
		Schedule
	Documentation Office
		Operating Manual of the Algonet
		Records
		Library
	Communications Office
		External Collaboration
			Useful Links
		Web Site of the Algonet Project
		Visitors Desk
			Guest Book


VISITORS DESK

Welcome to the Visitors Desk. You may write to Robert Daoust (humane@cam.org) for any question or comment. You may participate freely to the experimental Web forum about the Algonet now opened at the New Civilization Network. You may also hire yourself to work as a crew member of the Algonet Building Site. Please inquire to

Robert Daoust

First display: 98-01-30                        
Last update: 98-02-02