We want to believe that we are not prisoners of our ethnic histories. Resistance creates both the opposition and the forward movement in life. Friction, or resistance, is an interesting phenomenon. Without this force, a person or vehicle could not move about, or if already in motion, could not be stopped except by collision. The law of friction or resistance that we think of as only applying to science seems to find application in our personal lives. The afflictions and sorrows that have or will come to us because of the competitive World we live in will ultimately result in good. “Thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine affliction for thy gain,” reports 2 Nephi 2.2. Many people endure hardship pursuing their dreams. In the United States, some 37,500 cinema screens feature about 500 movies a year: 500 movies a year for a population of 325 million people. The average cost of making and marketing each movie is around $89 million. China has adopted a Western-style idealization of fame. China’s best-known movie directors now have 20-something young girls who have become famous overnight. The power of those role models is boundless. When Zhang Yimou held a star search contest for the leading role in his next film, a staggering one hundred thousand hopefuls turned up for the audition. However, in China, just as in Hollywood, the star machine mostly churns out broken dreams. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

There was one hopeful, a nineteen-year-old girl who had been eating just one meal a day to save money to get to Beijing for the audition. Upon arrival she discovered that her application had been rejected, and she never even got to try out for the part. Still, society’s ever-more-powerful need to be seen and heard through mass culture means that we can accept any degradation of our culture, so long as it continues to promise us access. We will accept any lowering of standards, any perversions of information into entertainment, any invasion of our private mental space, so long as it seems that pop culture is on the verge of giving us what we have been promised: recognition. Pop star popularity is traded like virtual stock, with an artist’s shares going up or down in value as his or her popularity index crests and wanes. We came to mortal life to encounter resistance. It was part of the plan for our eternal progress. Without temptation, sickness, pain, and sorrow, there could be no goodness, virtue, appreciation for the well-being, or joy. The law of opposition makes freedom of choice possible; therefore, our Heavenly Father has commanded his children to choose God this day, and serve the Lord God who made you. As we look back in retrospect, we see that it was because of the opposition encountered in our early history that our progress has been made possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

Many years ago, the southern newspaperman Hodding Carter reported on how as a young man he served on a jury. The case before the jury involved an irascible gentleman who lived next door to a filling station. For several months he has been the subject of various jokes played by the attendants and the miscellaneous loafers who hung around the station, despite his warnings and his notorious short temper. One morning, he emptied both barrels of his shotgun at his tormentors, killing one, maiming another permanently, and wounding a third. When the jury was polled by the incredulous judge, Hodding Carter was the only juror who recorded his vote as guilt. As one of the others put it, “He wouldn’t of been much of a man if he hadn’t shot them fellows.” Only in a culture of honor would it have occurred to the irascible gentleman that shooting someone was an appropriate response to a personal insult. And only in a culture of honor would it have occurred to a jury that murder—under those circumstances—was not a crime. The reason is that allowing someone to disrespect you and suffering in pain would ordinarily produce behaviors that would hurt your chances for survival, not help them. Out of that caldron of persecution and heartache, the Lord answered many soul-cries. And if you endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

There is some truth to the idea that when we love and hate we do so in a rush of neurochemicals that flow through our entire systems. If you want to understand what happened in those small towns in Kentucky in the nineteenth century, you have to go back into the past—and not just one or two generations. You have to go back two or three or four hundred years, to a country on the other side of the ocean, and look closely at what exactly the people in a very specific geographic area of that country did for a living. Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social demographic condition that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing our attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our World without them. Groups of people living in circumstances pretty similar to their ancestors’ act a lot like their ancestors. Once a chemical is released by one cell and received by another, the process sparks an electrical impulse in the receptor neuron, and the whole sequence is repeated until it culminates in a feeling. Scientists have not only linked certain brain chemicals to certain feelings, they have also determined that brain cells are specialized to such an extent that they send and receive only certain of these mood-producing chemicals. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

People from the northern part of the United States, when they have been insulted, usually treat the incident with amusement. They laugh it off. Their handshakes are unchanged. And their levels of cortisol usually go down, as if they are unconsciously trying to defuse their only anger. However, when you insult a southerner, they get angry because it is a culture of honor and words and actions and reputations are extremely important. Their cortisol and testosterone levels elevate. Their handshakes get more firm. And they tend to become more offensive. What we are seeing is the culture of honor in action: the southerners react like Wix Howard did when Little Bob Turner accused him of cheating at poker. Even though, many generations later, these southerners might me in the middle-class or wealthy, they still have a strong urge to demand the respect they are due. Northerners tend to give off displays of anger, up to a certain point, at which they level off. However, southerners are much less likely to be angry early on. Yet, at some point they catch up to the northerners and shoot past them. They are more likely to explode, much more volatile, much more explosive. How are these kinds of attitudes passed down from generation to generation? Through social heritance. The same way as accents persist over time.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

Whatever mechanism passes on speech patterns probably passes on behavioral and emotional patterns are well. Our brains do not receive only one chemical bath. Each emotion is instead accompanied by a kind of biochemical cocktail. When, for example, your body gets a dose of the stress hormone ACTH (which triggers anger and fear in response to a perceived threat), it also gets a rush of what are called beta endorphins. Endorphins, the mood-elevating and pain-buffering opiates of the brain, are one thousand times more potent than their synthetic cousin morphine. So when your body is folded with the chemicals of fear and rage, it has also flooded itself with the biochemical ingredients of pain relief and euphoria. It is clear that endorphins can serve as a window into our evolutionary past. In the past is a World most of us are lucky enough never to have encountered, and environment in which we must fear a host of natural predators that could kills us at any moment. What would you do to protect yourself and survive? People from the south adopted a culture of honor. People in the north typically did not endure conditions as harsh. “If you are called to pass through tribulation, know that all these things shall give you experience, and will be good for you,” report Doctrines and Covenants 122:5,7. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6