Doubt must be genuine, not feigned, and unless it is employed in good faith, one is likely to err in doubting real evidence, just as, without methodological doubt one is likely to err in allowing unwarranted belief. Accordingly, doubt has no privileged status over belief. Ability to attain truth as well as falsehood must underlie the quest for truth, and freedom is thus a condition of the possibility of knowing truth as well as of being mistake. “Better for one person to perish than for a nation to dwindle in unbelief,” reports 1 Nephi 4.13. Freedom is a double dilemma. Either causal necessity or freedom is a fundamental truth, and each doctrine must be asserted either necessarily or freely. If necessity is the true doctrine, my affirmation thereof is eo ipso necessary, but since neither doubt nor belief relative to evidence would function in that determination, doubt results. If necessity is true but I affirm freedom, then in addition to my inconsistency (for my affirmation is made necessarily), there is only a subjective foundation for knowledge and morality. Given the truth of determinism, erroneous as well as true judgments are necessary, and any supposed distinction between them is illusory. “Come to knowledge of true Messiah,” reports 1 Nephi 10.14. Stop listening to the tyranny of the natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

According to the hypothesis of freedom, if I freely affirm global necessity I am fundamentally inconsistent. If I affirm freedom under the same hypothesis, not only is my affirmation consistent with the hypothesis but I have a foundation for knowledge and morality. Under the double dilemma, the only satisfactory alternative is freely to affirm freedom. Freedom is essentially the power to add some novel reality to the existing World. Causality must be explained through the freedom and not vice versa. The data that are present to given event of consciousness arise out of the past relative to that event; they are past actualities, but present potentialities for the internal character o that event of consciousness out of which a determining decision is made. Human consciousness is a succession of self-creative events, each of which is given its ancestor selves as well as other data, and each of which is partially causa sui, a dependent independence. Thus, the totality of causal conditions of any human experience does not make this experience necessary, but only possible, while internal decision makes it contingently actual. All choice-making contains some arbitrary. “Because people are redeemed from Fall, they have become free forever,” 2 Nephi 2.26. The Savior has set us free from sin. We must reply on this energy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

In extending these doctrines to theology, and taking as axiomatic the concept that freedom, responsibility, and moral and religious values depends upon choice-decisions that an omniscient God need not know future contingents, since, in relation to any divine experience, they are not yet existent. To be knowable is to be determinate, and if all were known from eternity, then all would be eternally determinate, and time and choice-making would be illusions. Also since contingents are unequivocally in part causa sui, they are not wholly dependent on divine power. Far from viewing divine power as absolute total control, it is insisted that the only power worthy of God is the far greater one of creating self-creators. Real choice in the World is incompatible with all-embracing necessity, and it is neither metaphysically requisite nor religiously desirable that God be wholly immutable and eternal. God must have a temporal aspect in order to come to know contingents as they are realized; thus he remains always omniscient in knowingly all there is to know. This theology is thus that of an eternal-temporal being, his omniscience and omnipotence being relative to the irreducible contingency and self-creativity in the World. #RandolpHarris 3 of 13

The essence of the self is consciousness of action against the resistance and limitation of reality. This could be rendered: I will, or I strive, therefore I am. Thus, personality is existence as it is formed by the double cogito: hindered by obstacles, elevating itself by and towards value. People participates in absolute and transcendent value. Although value outruns one and is not wholly one’s creation, it is made determinate by one in a given, concrete situation. Reality, then, is at once the organ of self-creation and an obstacle to it. In a sense it degrades value, yet it actualizes value by making it determinate. We are, moreover, called back to awareness of the value-creating source in which we participate. This is a spiritual flow, or upsurge (essor). Some obstacle has to break the continuity of the upsurge before the self, concentrating upon it the body’s energy, begins to will. The willing self owes its being and consciousness to the obstacles it encounters. We participate in a World of absolute value and a World brute reality and create ourselves unceasingly through them. Therefore, our experiences, even the undesirable ones, make us who we are, even if it is not who we intended to be when we set foot on this journey in life. However, the important thing is to keep faith in God and follow his doctrines and covenants so we can like who we are and feel good about our lives. Because as long as we have faith, our dream will still come true. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

Once we realize all that it cost God to forgive us, we will be held as a vise, constrained by the love God. The worth of a person does not consist in the truth one possesses, or thinks one possesses, but in the pains one has taken to attain that truth. For one’s powers are extended not through possession but through the search for truth. In this alone one’s ever-growing perfection consists. Possession makes one lazy, indolent, and proud. If God held all truth in his right hand and in his left the everlasting striving after truth, so that I should always and everlastingly be mistaken and said to me, “Choose,” with humility I would pick on the left hand and say, “Father grant me that; absolute truth is for thee alone.” What is required of humanity is not to assent to the propositions of a creed, but sincerity, human love, and tolerance. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the less affluent by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.  Though there are less affluent people in our society, the average American has enough food and clothing—at least enough so that these are not one’s only concerns in life. As one moves up the scale of motivations during one’s early childhood and concentrated more and more on the second level of the hierarchy, safety and security needs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

Children are explorers, testers, discoverers for themselves. How else can I discover me? A small boy (five years old) called Trayvon told me, “I am smarter than people thing I am!” I asked him, “In which way?” His answer was….”I do dangerous things (like walking to the store by myself) and I do not get hurt!” I did not tell him that he should not nor that he should. How else can there be freedom? How else can there be joy? Naturally, it is important to teach a child how to avoid danger. However, in teaching this lesson, the adult must be sure the child does not also learn to fear the source of potential anger, in and of itself. We have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. As one grows through childhood, the individual moves from being dominated by the need to learn and maintain one’s safety and security to the stage of testing out one’s abilities in a more social area. However, we learn if we put our trust in human beings first, then end result will be our despair and hopelessness toward everyone. We must trust what God’s grace can do. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

Life, as we live it today, is more highly socialized, more urbanized, more—so far as external relationships are concerned—standardized than it used to be. The World has become uncomfortably small; we have not yet gained a complete control of our excessive procreational activity; so that there are far too many  of us, and, being so closely crowded together, we have to adopt all sorts of new precautions to avoid friction and permit of the greatest amount of mutual freedom available within our unduly narrow frontiers. So many of the old traditional social taboos having become antiquated or no longer adequate, there has been a furious activity in making new laws and regulations, without a due recognition of the fact that old taboos can only be replaced by new taboos, and that mere legal enactments, enforced, or left unenforced, by paid officials or the police, to be effective mist themselves become taboos, printed on the fleshy tablets of the individual citizen’s heart. And as a supernatural miracle of God’s grace, we stand justified, not because we are sorry for our sins, or because we have repented, but because of what God has done. Through identification with God, we can be freed from sin and have God’s very righteousness imparted as a gift to us. “The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies who hate and persecute you,” Deuteronomy 30.7. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13Challenging—and being challenged by—other is essential for our growth as is nurturance, but this does not mean that relational challenge is always a good thing. If challenge is not delivered with at least some compassion, it will tend to overpower rather than empower, and it will generate either submission or rebellion. If it is too soft or indirect, it will likely lack in needed impact; if it is aggressive, it will more often than not be met with defensiveness, defiance, or a caving in that does no one any real good. One of the most difficult things about a challenge itself is that it is inherently confrontational—not in some melodramatic way, but in the literal sense of the word confront, to stand in front of. Nothing sideways or devious or passive-aggressive about it. To confront is to directly come up against, to be face-to-face with. Unfortunately, this often carries some negative connotations, suggestive of hostility or pushiness. However, compassionate confrontation does not have to a contradiction. If we engage in it with strongly embodied presence, compassion, and clarity, confrontation can be a life enhancing process. This in itself is a real challenge, asking plenty of us, but not so much that it is not doable. “Great blessing of the Lord upon the family of Lehi in wilderness,” 1 Nephi 17.2 #RandolphHarris 8 of 13Challenging—and being challenged by—other is essential for our growth as is nurturance, but this does not mean that relational challenge is always a good thing. If challenge is not delivered with at least some compassion, it will tend to overpower rather than empower, and it will generate either submission or rebellion. If it is too soft or indirect, it will likely lack in needed impact; if it is aggressive, it will more often than not be met with defensiveness, defiance, or a caving in that does no one any real good. One of the most difficult things about a challenge itself is that it is inherently confrontational—not in some melodramatic way, but in the literal sense of the word confront, to stand in front of. Nothing sideways or devious or passive-aggressive about it. To confront is to directly come up against, to be face-to-face with. Unfortunately, this often carries some negative connotations, suggestive of hostility or pushiness. However, compassionate confrontation does not have to a contradiction. If we engage in it with strongly embodied presence, compassion, and clarity, confrontation can be a life enhancing process. This in itself is a real challenge, asking plenty of us, but not so much that it is not doable. “Great blessing of the Lord upon the family of Lehi in wilderness,” 1 Nephi 17.2 #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Managers are typically evaluated as to how effective and efficient they are. Managing effectively and efficiently requires certain skills—leadership, technical expertise, conceptual skills, analytical skills, and human relations skills. “The Lord’s power is over all inhabitants of the Earth,” reports 3 Nephi 4.1. It is important to commit organizational resources to develop innovative goods and services and expand internationally to obtain new customers for the organization’s products. Good managers must move quickly to take corrective action to deal with unexpected problems facing the organization from the external environment, such as a crisis like an oil spill, or from the internal environment, such as producing faulty good or services. “Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, bless is one that believes in the word of God,” reports Alma 32.16. For a business to stay afloat, one must allocate organizational resources among different functions and departments of the business; set budgets and salaries of middle and first-level managers. One must also work with suppliers, distributors, and labor unions to reach agreements about the quality and price of input, technical, and human resources; work with other organizations to establish agreements to pool resources to work on joint projects. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

Healthy challenge is not an attack. It asserts, sometimes forcefully so, but does not aggress or violate. Nor does it shame the other, though it sometimes may—without trying to do so—elicit a healthy shame in the other that catalyzes their conscience regarding questionable behavior on their part, while helping draw forth the kind of vulnerability that makes heartfelt remorse possible. Managers must also be able to monitor, evaluate the performance of other managers and employees in different function and take corrective action to improve their performance; watch for changes occurring in the external and internal environment that may affect the organization in the future, and inform employees about changes taking place in the external and internal environment that will affect them and the organization; one must also communicate to employees the organization’s vision and purpose. “Turn to the Lord with full purpose in heart,” reports Mosiah 7.33. One must also be a competent spokesperson. A successful business has the ability to launch a national advertising campaign to promote new goods and services; give speeches to inform the local community about the organization’s future intentions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

A good leader has the ability to influence employees to work toward organizational goals. Strong leaders manage and pay attention to the culture of their organizations and the needs of their customers. The intention of a healthy challenge, however fiery its expression might be, is not to dominate nor diminish others, but to clearly highlight and buttress life-giving possibilities, not leaving obstruction to well-being unaddressed. People tend to be more at ease with the delivery of this than with the reception of it, so sometimes the greater challenge is not to let one’s reactivity to being challenged get in the way of opening to it (assuming that such challenge is not abusive). Interpersonal cohesiveness is an important quality because the figurehead has to outline future organizational goals to employees at company meetings; open new corporate headquarters building; state the organization’s ethical guidelines and the principle of behavior employees are to follow in their dealings with customers and suppliers. Leader should possess the ability to provide an example for employees to follow; give direct commands and orders to subordinates; make decisions concerning the use of human and technical resources, and mobilize employee support for specific organizational goals. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

 Being a liaison is another quality one has to display. Coordinating the work of managers in different departments; establishing alliances between different organizations to share resources to produce new goods and services is a priority and must be done with good intentions. Of equal importance is that we do not exclude from our challenging of another—however strong that might be or might need to be—and that we remain as open as possible to however the challenge might be received. Much of our work here is not to armor ourselves with our challenge—giving—hiding behind its delivery—but rather to remain transparently present as we express it, not letting our passion or conviction obscure or dilute our sensitivity to our recipient. Our succinct, well-grounded intuition, in as fittingly assertive and skillful a form as possible. And there is often a vulnerable piece here: through such challenge, we sometimes might risk our relationship with others, even as we perhaps recognize that it is an even greater risk to not thus speak up. A healthy manager can be fierce and can be gentle. One have to be emotionally vital and emotionally muted. Great leaders can be powerful motivators because they demonstrate a great deal of trust and confidence in their employees. If we do not deliever, we drift on stagnant seas, removed from not just the reefs, but also the depths. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13