The facts of moral judgment and of moral action force the philosopher to a monistic view of social life and to a metaphysics of the self as a being that can be itself only by transcending itself. When you cannot fall asleep because your reality is better than your dreams, you know you are in love. Being deeply loved by someone gives me the strength, and loving someone deeply gives me the courage to wake up every day and face life with a smile because I feel I am truly blessed that I am able to manage my dangerous, but natural urge to demolish ambiguous evidence or to deny ambivalent intentions. I have learned to acknowledge that ambivalence is a far more common state of mind than many assume. High pressure situations can make dealing with someone else’s ambivalence more unpleasant, but that does not make ambivalence less real.  Others can also make sure that individuals with low tolerance for disorder are not the ones making decisions during acute or prolonged crises. The need to resolve issues can be used as a personality assessment to identify people who might be vulnerable to stressful situations. Revelation can tell us far more about the place of an individual in nature than can science.  #RandolphHarris 1 of 3

It is not for the moral philosopher to tell people what to for, but rather to dispel false views of the nature of morality and to provide an analysis of morality that can stand up to philosophical criticism. People are what they are because the society in which they are born and bred is what it is. The community is not, as some assume, a mere collection of individuals who are logically prior to it, but is a real being and can be regarded (if we mean to keep to facts) only as the one in many. Morality is a self-realization. People are not confined to any particular station, and they also set themselves ideals that go beyond what mere duty would require them. Perhaps human kind is the beneficiary in such cases, but human kind is not a being or community in the way a state or a nation is. The objective World of my station and its duties and ideals of social and nonsocial perfection are constituted. These various sphere and duties often clash with one another, but the moral philosopher cannot formulate rules that would enable the clashes to be avoided or settled. Conflict and failure are inseparable from morality, which could not exist without them.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 3

Will you tell me of a fate, of a destiny, willing you to become base?—pre-ordaining your weakness and guilt?—Impossible! Among the forces which sweep and play throughout our Universe, untutored humans are but a wisp in the wind. Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided b instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. When Fate is fighting with all its might against a human soul, the greatest victory that the soul can win is to reconcile itself to the unpleasant, which is never quite unpleasant afterwards. Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. As poisonous adders luck beneath the cover of the most delightful shrubberies, so falsity and deceit are concealed under alluring language. In calamity, trouble, sorrow, it is wonderful how the ties of blood assert themselves. We live in a World of transgression and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true; though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness humans have been fashioned, are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes. No person born into the World without his or her particular allotment.  #RandolphHarris 3 of 3