We notice smallest things—things overlooked before, by this great light upon our minds. Today we come across a person who acts and feels like an automation; who never experiences anything which is really their own; who experiences oneself entirely as the person he or she think he or she is supposed to be; whose artificial smile has replaced genuine laughter; whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech; whose dulled despair has taken place of genuine pain. Two statements can be made about this person. One is that the individual suffers from a defect of spontaneity and individuality which may seem incurable. At the same time, it may be said that one does not differ essentially from millions of others who are in the same position. For most of them, the culture provides patterns which enable them to live with a defect without becoming ill. It is as if each culture provided the remedy against the outbreak of manifest neurotic symptoms which would result from the defect produced by it. Suppose that in our Western culture movies, radios, television, sports events and newspapers ceased to function for only four weeks. With these main avenues of escape closed, what would be the consequences for people thrown back upon their own resources? “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but this Worldly sorrow brings death,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.10. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

I have no doubt that even in this short time, without any form of media, thousands of nervous breakdowns would occur, and many more thousands of people would be thrown into a state of anxiety, not different from the picture which is diagnosed clinically as neurosis. If the opiate against the socially patterned defect were withdrawn, the manifest illness would make its appearance. For some people, the pattern provided by the culture does notwork. Many are often those whose individual defect is more severe than that of the average person, so that the culturally offered remedies are not sufficient to prevent the outbreak of manifest illness. (A case in point is the person whose aim in life is to attain power and fame. While this aim is, in itself, a pathological one, there is nevertheless a difference between the person who uses his or her powers to attain this aim realistically, and the more severely sick one who has so little emerged from one’s infantile grandiosity that one does not do anything toward the attainment of one’s goal but waits for a miracle to happen and, thus feeling more and more powerless, ends up in a feeling of futility and bitterness.) However, there are also those whose character structure, and hence whose conflicts, differ from those of the majority, so that the remedies which are effective for most of their fellow people are of no help to them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

Among the group of people whose conflicts differ from those of the majority, we sometimes find people of greater integrity and sensitivity than the majority, who for this very reason are incapable of acing the cultural opiate, while at the same time they are not strong and healthy enough to live soundly against the stream. The foregoing discussion on the difference between neurosis and the socially patterned defect many give the impression that if society only provides the remedies against the outbreak of manifest symptoms, all goes well, and it can continue to function smoothly, however great the defect created by it. History shows us, however, that this is not the case. It is not always personal doubt that undermines and empties a system of idea and values. It can be the fact that they are no longer understood in their original power of expressing the human situation and of answering existential human questions. (This is largely the case with the doctrinal symbols of Christianity.) Or they lose their meaning because the actual conditions of the present period are so different from those in which the spiritual contents were created that new creations are needed. (This was largely the case with artistic expression before the industrial revolution.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

In such circumstances a slow process of waste of the spiritual contents occurs, unnoticeable in the beginning, realized with a shocks it progresses, producing the anxiety of meaninglessness at its end. Ontic and spiritual self-affirmation must be distinguished but they cannot be separated. Human’s being includes one’s relation to meanings. One is human only by understanding and shaping reality, both their World and oneself, according to meanings and values. One’s being is spiritual even in the most primitive expressions of the most primitive human being. In the first meaningful sentence all the richness of human’s spiritual life is potentially present. Therefore the threat to one’s spiritual being is a threat to one’s whole being. The most revealing expression of this fact is the desire to throw away one’s ontic existence rather than stand the despair of emptiness and meaninglessness. The death instinct is not an ontic but a spiritual phenomenon. Dr. Freud identified this reaction to the meaninglessness of the never-ceasing and never-satisfied libido with human’s essential nature. However, it is only an expression of one’s existential self-estrangement and of the disintegration of one’s spiritual life into meaninglessness. If, on the other hand, the ontic self-affirmation is weakened by nonbeing, spiritual indifference and emptiness can be the consequence, producing a circle of ontic and spiritual negativity. #RandolphHarris4 of 12

Nonbeing threatens from both sides, the ontic and the spiritual; if it threatens the one side it also threatens the other. It is true indeed, that human beings, in contrast to other living beings, shows an almost infinite malleability; just as one can eat almost anything, live under practically any kind of climate and adjust oneself to it, there is hardly any psychic condition which one cannot endure, and under which one cannot carry on. One can live free, and as a slave. Rich and in luxury, and under conditions of half-starvation. One can live as a warrior, and peaceably; as an exploiter and robber, and as a member of co-operating and loving fellowship. There is hardly a psychic state in which a person cannot live, and hardly anything which cannot be done with one, and for which one cannot be used. All these considerations seem to justify the assumption that there is no such thing a nature common to all humans, and that would mean in fact that there is no such thing as a species of humans, expect in a physiological and anatomical sense. Yet, in spite of all this evidence, the history of humans shows that we have omitted one fact, Despots and ruling cliques can succeed in dominating and exploiting their fellow humans, but they cannot prevent reactions to this inhuman treatment. Their subjects become frightened, suspicious, lonely and, if not due to external reasons, their systems collapse at some point because of fears,suspicious and loneliness eventually incapacitate the majority to function effectively and intelligently. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

Whole nations, or special groups within ruling cliques, can be subjugated and exploited for a long time, but they react. They react with apathy or such impairment of intelligence, initiative and skills that they gradually fail to perform the functions which should serve their rulers. Or they react by the accumulations of such hate and destructiveness as to bring about an end to themselves, their rulers and their system. Again their reaction may create such independence and longing for freedom that a better society is built upon their creative impulses. Which reaction occurs, depends on many factors: on economic and political ones, and on the spiritual climate in which people live. However, whatever the reactions are, the statement that people can live under almost any condition is only half true; it must be supplemented by the other statement, that if one lives under conditions which are contrary to one’s nature and to the basic requirements for human growth and sanity, one cannot help reacting; one must either deteriorate and perish, or bring about conditions which are more in accordance with one’s needs. Human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and hence a while society can be sick. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

Human nature is common to the human race, throughout all cultures and ages, and of certain ascertainable needs and strivings inherent in that nature. Radoslav  Hvorostovsky is 29 years of age and an insurance producer. He has a bright and sparkling personality, at least in the superficial sense of that word. He has a quick wit and an enormous memory for humor. He knows more stories than any ten people around him. Radoslav had had twelve different jobs since he got out of the Army at 21. His training was in business management, but some how Radoslav never got into a management slot. It was not his clowning around; that won him a lot of friends and made his dismissal or by-passing difficult for his superiors. They had agonized over the decision to give a promotion to Radoslav. Even when the evidence showed that he could not handle administrative decisions or control his subordinates, the superiors would shake their heads at the thought of telling Radoslav that he was not going to get the advancement. However, Radoslav did not really want the job. It entailed far more responsibility than he felt he could handle. He could not give orders and back them up. He did not like firing people or hurting them, because he did not like not being liked. So, he presented himself as jovial, easy-going, lovable, Radoslav Hvorostovsky. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

At parties Radoslav had people cracking up and rolling on the floor. He got a lot of satisfaction from his audiences’ applause, but he got much more satisfaction from knowing that nobody really took him seriously, and none of them would give him any kind of real responsibility. Radoslav was a Life of the Party because it protected him from having to look at any other aspect of himself. He knew, but hid from, the fears he had about decision-making and being responsible. In a sense, his self-acknowledgment makes him a more actualizing person than the one who, perhaps, is not away of why he plays certain games. However, Radoslav also felt a dull, nagging sense of dissatisfaction in one’s own life. He had more ability than he exhibited but was afraid that showing it would put him on the spot, make him come through with more than he cared to do. The Croupier is a person who literally rakes money across tables in a gambling casino. The person who in everyday life portrays oneself as The Croupier is one who not only talks about how much money he or she makes, very often one actually makes it. Whether this person is a talker about money-making or  tycoon, this person’s whole portrayal of oneself is that of being economically wise. One describes oneself as a money person and tends to evaluate everything and everyone in dollars and cents: “That shack of mine really sets me back a bundle,” or “He or she is a 3 million-dollars-a-year type, a really fine person!” #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

The economic type of individual has allowed his or her economic interest to dominate one’s life and success is equated with monetary gain for oneself as well as for others. One spends much time taking about the big deals one is involved with, the bonus one just got or is going to get, the fantastic sums that have been lost become someone (not the individual) lacked foresight, the difference between what one makes and what another person makes, or did make at a similar age. This economic mask is much more common than we might at first thing. Somewhere in one’s life, The Croupier has come to place money far above any other values in human existence. Perhaps one had an impoverished childhood or was seduced by seeing somebody get rich quick. Whatever the motivation, one limits one’s life-expression to that which can be shown on an accounting ledger. Big Spender (B.S.) is another, fairly similar, economic type of mask wearer.B.S., as we will call this person, has found that if one throws money around, buys enough gifts and trinkets, one has a steady supply of friends. These friends are, of course, as constant as one’s supply of cash. Gold-digger often associates with B.S. Gold-digger is not always a female, incidentally. If male, he is person who allows his friendship, patronage, support, or laughter to be bought. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

For a dollar, a drink, a dinner, Gold-digger will provideB.S. with all the love and all the companionship one might require. Thesepeople will sell themselves to the highest bidder. Whatever type of personality in demand, that is what Gold-digger will be. Women who wear the Gold-digger mask are usually people who have never learned that they can be valuable as full-fledged persons. They are only learned to seek out the Big Spenders in life. If aperson will take care of them economically, that is what they will settle for. Culture and civilization develop an ever-increasing contrast to the needs of humans,and creates a social neurosis. If the evolution of civilization has such a far-reachingsimilarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods areemployed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems ofcivilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have becomeneurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim agreat practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with people butalso with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

The diagnosis of collective neurosis of an individual we canuse as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and one’s environment which we assumed to be normal. No such background as this wouldbe available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be  some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of ourknowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt in therapy? Inspite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. A sane society is one that which corresponds to the needs of human—not necessarily to what one feels to be one’s needs, because even the most pathological aims can be felt subjectively as that which the person wants most; but to what one’s needs are objectively, as they can be ascertained by the study of humanity. It is our first task then, to ascertain what is the nature of human beings, and what are the needs which stem from this nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

We then must proceed to examine the role of society in the evolution of humans and to study the recurrent conflicts between human nature and society—and the consequences of these conflict, particularly as modern society is concerned. In addition to conscious minds and material objects, there are at work in the Universe spiritual plastic powers, which are capable, like minds, of acting and of having purposes but not of being conscious. They operate even in the human soul, as is particularly clear in our dreams; the activities of organisms derive wholly from our dreams; the activities of organisms derive wholly from them. God works through such powers, although he does not directly govern their day-to-day activities, and it is by virtue of their presence in nature that nature can properly be described as spiritual. “God shall give unto you knowledge by His Holy Spirit, yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the World was until now; which our forefathers have awaited with anxious expectations to be revealed in the last times, which their minds were pointed to by the Angels, as held in reserve for the fulness of their glory; a time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.26-28. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12