Life cannot be understood in the light of merely contributing factors as a frontier situation, the need to amalgamate many nationalities, the long isolation from active World politics, the influence of religion and so on. In order to understand life one must ask: Which is the type of courage underlying certain features which have endured throughout history, how does it deal with the anxieties in human existence and how is it related to the manifestation of the courage to be as oneself? Broadly, one who leads a marginal existence lives on the borders of one group (the individual may be a nominal member) but practices the lifestyle of a different group. Visually a mortal may obviously be a member of the African American race but he or she lives, works and plays in an all-White environment (as do many African American children in suburbia). As a neighbor, co-worker, friend, one is often faced with a conflict of roles. In addition to having to decide whether one is a spokesperson for one group or the other, one may carry inside of oneself the tension of not fully knowing who he or she is, or of not liking who he or she is. Many young people are faced with the task of keeping the best of their heritage while moving into the present and future. The marginal person is often forced to sort among the various aspects of oneself and live out only those that are easiest. However, the conflicts can be devastating. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

Present-day America has received, since the 1930’s, influences from Europe and Asia which represent extreme forms of the courage to be as oneself, like Existentialist literature and art, or attempts to overcome the anxiety of our period by different forms of transcendent courage. However, these influences are still limited to the intelligentsia and to people whose eyes have been opened by the impact of the World historical events to the questions asked by Existentialism. They have not reached the masses of people in any social group and they have not changed the basic trends of feeling and thought and the corresponding attitudes and institutions. On the contrary, the trends toward being as a part and toward affirming one’s being by participation in given structures of life are rapidly increasing. Conformity is growing, but it has not yet fully manifested. The economic system which has become dominant in the West since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is Capitalism. Common features of Capitalism are: the existence of politically and legally free people; the fact that free mortals (workers and employees) sell their labor to the owner of capital on the labor market, by contract; the existence of the commodity market as a mechanism by which prices are determined and the exchange of the social product is regulated; the principle that each individual acts with the aim of seeking profit for oneself, and yet that, by the competitive actions of many, the greatest advantage is supposed to accrue for all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

While these features are common to Capitalism throughout the last few centuries, the changes within this period are as important as are the similarities. The technique and industry were in the beginning compared with the development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and at the same time the practices and ideas of medieval culture still had a considerable influence on the economic practices of this period. Thus it was supposed to be un-Christian and unethical for one merchant to try to lure customers from another by force of lower prices or any other inducements. If there were overgrown tradesmen who had more money than their competitors, and thus were not forced to use credit, bought their wares directly from the producer, transported them himself, instead of through a middleman, and sold them directly to the retailer, thus enabling the latter to sell the material for one penny cheaper per yard. The result of this whole method is only to enrich this covetous man, and to enable another person to buy his cloth a little cheaper, a very small advantage which is in no relation to the damage done by the businessman. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

We find similar prohibitions against underselling in ordinances in Germany and France throughout the eighteenth century. It is well known how skeptical people were in that period toward new machines, inasmuch as they threatened to take work away from mortals. Machines were considered the pernicious enemy of labor because they would diminish the number of workers. The various attitudes just mentioned are based on principles which had determine the life of mortals for many centuries. Most important of all was the principle that society and economy exist for mortals, and not mortals for them. If it hurt the group within the society, no economic progress was supposed to be healthy that could do such a thing. Needless to say this concept was closely related to traditionalist thoughts in so much as the traditional social balance was to be preserved, and any disturbance was believed to be harmful. By transforming the courage to accept fate passively into an active wrestling with fate, it actually prepared the way of courage in America. In the symbolism of Renaissance art fate is represented as the wind blowing on the sails of a vessel, while mortals stand at the steering wheel and determines the direction as much as it can be determined under the given conditions. Mortals try to actualize all their potentialities; and their potentialities are inexhaustible. For mortals are the microcosm, in whom all cosmic forces are potentially present, and who participates in all sphere and strata of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

Through mortals the Universe continues the creative process which first has produced one as the aim and the center of creation. Now mortals have to shape their World and themselves, according to the productive powers given to them. In humans, nature comes to its fulfillment, it is taken into their knowledge and their transforming technical activity. In the visual arts, nature is drawn into the human sphere and mortals are posited in nature, and both are shown in their ultimate possibilities of beauty. The bearer of this creative process is the individual who, as an individual, is a unique representative of the Universe. Most important is the creative individual, the genius, in whom, the unconscious creativity of mortals breaks into the consciousness of mortals like Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo da Vinci, Giordano Bruno, Shaftesbury, Sarah Winchester, William Randolph Hearst, Goethe, Juila Morgan, Harriet Tubman, Schelling were all inspired by this idea of a participation in the creative process of the Universe. In these people enthusiasm and rationality were untied. Their courage was both the courage to be as oneself and the courage to be as a part. The doctrine of the individual as the microcosmic participant in the creative process of the macrocosm presented them with the possibility of this synthesis. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

Through God’s compassion, kindness, and love, we will all receive more than we deserve, more than we can ever earn, and more than we can ever hope for. We believe in truth, justice, and mercy and that good will win in the end. However, in this fallen World, things are not always fair or equal. For some, this is a difficult concept to swallow. At times, greater faith is necessary to maintain course and perspective. Most of us experience some measure of what is called the furnace of affliction. Though the justice and mercy of a loving Father in Heaven, the refinement and sanctification possible through challenges can help us achieve what God desires us to become. However, when a person is not rewarded for their efforts, on someone suffers from infirmary, the think that life is not fair. As adults our sense of fairness gets offended when we perceive the way people in power seem to get away with things. Why should some people be born into affluence, while some are born into poverty? Why should some people be healthier, prettier or more charismatic than others? The World has never been fair. Our lives might not look like the way we imagine they should be. “My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. God hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. God has confounded mine enemies, unto the causing them to quake before me,” 2 Nephi 4.20-12. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

Mortal’s productivity moves from potentiality to actuality in such a way that everything actualized has potentialities for further actualization. This is the basic structure of progress. In parts of the ancient World, some people see the movement from potentiality to actuality as vertical, going from the lower to higher forms of being. In modern progressivism the movement from potentiality to actuality is horizontal, temporal, futuristic. And this is the main form in which the self-affirmation of modern Western humanity manifested itself. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility,” reports 2 Nephi 2.11. It was courage, for it had to take into itself an anxiety which grew with the growing knowledge of the Universe and our World within it. The Earth had been thrown out of the center of the World by Copernicus and Galileo. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

It had become small, and in spite of the heroic affect which Giordano Bruno divided into the infinity of the Universe a feeling of being lost in the ocean of cosmic bodies and among the unbreakable rules of their motion crept into the hearts of many. The courage of the modern period was not simple optimism. It had to take into itself the deep anxiety of nonbeing in a Universe without limits and without a humanly understandable meaning. This anxiety could be taken into the courage but it could not be removed, and it came to the surface any time when the courage was weakened. This is the decisive source of the courage to be as a part in the creative process of nature and history, as it developed in Western civilization and, most conspicuously, in the New World. However, it underwent many changes before it turned into the conformistic type of the courage to be as a part which characterize present-day American system. The cosmic enthusiasm of the Renaissance vanished under the influence of Protestantism and rationalism, and when it reappeared in the classic-romantic movements of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries it was not able to gain much influence in industrial society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

The synthesis between individuality and participation, based on the cosmic enthusiasm, was dissolved. A permanent tension developed between the courage to be as oneself as it was implied in Renaissance individualism and the courage to be as a part as it was implied in Renaissance Universalism. Extreme forms of liberalism were challenged by reactionary attempts to re-establish a medieval collectivism or by attempts to produce a new organic society. Liberalism and democracy could clash in two ways: liberalism could undermine the democratic control of society or democracy could become tyrannical and a transition to totalitarian collectivism. Besides these dynamic and violent movements, a more static and unaggressive development could take place: the rise of a democratic conformity which restrains all extreme forms of the courage to be as oneself without destroying the liberal elements that distinguish it from collectivism. This was, above all, the way of Great Britain. The tension between liberalism and democracy also explains many traits behind the American democratic conformism. However, behind all these changes remained one thing, the courage to be as part in the productive process of history. And this is what makes the present-day American courage one of the great types of the courage to be as a part. Its self-affirmation is the affirmation of oneself as a participant in the creative development of humankind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

There is something astonishing in the American courage for an observer who comes from Europe: although mostly symbolized in the early pioneers it is present today in the large majority of people. A person many have experienced a tragedy, a destructive fate, the breakdown of convictions, even guilt and momentary despair: one feels neither destroyed nor meaningless nor condemned nor without hope. When the Roman Stoic experienced the same catastrophes, they took them with the courage of resignation. The typical American, after one has lost the foundations of one’s existence, works for new foundations. This is true of the individual and it is true of the nation as a whole. One can make experiments because an experimental failure does not mean discouragement. The productive process in which one is a participant naturally includes risks, failures, catastrophes. However, they do not undermine courage. “Do you supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make use of the means which the Lord has provided for us?” reports Alma 60.21. This means that it is the productive act itself in which the power and the significance of being is present. This is a partial answer to a question often asked by foreign observers, especially if they are theologians: the question For What?  #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

What is the end of all the magnificent means provided by the productive acidity of American society? Have not the means swallowed the ends, and does not the unrestricted production of means indicate the absence of ends? Even many born Americans are today inclined to answer the last question affirmatively. However, there is more involved in the production of means. It is not the tools and gadgets that are the telos, the inner aim of production; it is the production itself. The means are more than means; they are felt as creations, as symbols of the infinite possibilities implied in mortal’s productivity. Being—itself is essentially production itself. The way in which the originally religious word creative is applied without hesitation by Christian, and non-Christian, alike to mortal’s productive activities indicates that the creative process of history is felt as divine. As such it includes the courage to be as a part of it. “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of the Lord’s throne; love and faithfulness go before you. Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; and they exult in your righteousness” reports Psalm 89.14-16. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11