There are a number of ways in which a person can be helped to cultivate a set of values that represent the fullest expression of who one is and which are fairly workable within the limits of the society in which one lives. There are motives that are universal to each member of the species of Homo Sapiens. At the core level are the physiological motives, those tensions created by tissue needs—hunger, thirst, elimination, air, and so on. Few humans and animals ignore them. After these are put into proper perspective, into a relatively regulated process, humans are motivated by needs for safety, for love and belongingness, for esteem and ego-identity, and for self-actualization. The self-actualizing person, our model of mental and emotion health, is a person who recognizes first of all one’s terrestrial nature as well as one’s divine nature. One is a person whose value system is based on this recognition of one’s many-sided nature. An individual appreciates one’s natures, one tries to gear one’s life to the optimum meeting of all his or her needs, the individual recognizes these needs in others and one tries to create a World in which he or she and all others can meet their needs. The contemporary social character seems to touch upon the deepest level of the modern personality; it is the most appropriate if one is concerned with the interaction between the contemporary socioeconomic structure of the average individual. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

There is also a level of alienation, which is one of the fundamental economic features of Capitalism, the process of quantification and abstraction. The modern business person not only deals with millions of dollars, but also with millions of customers, thousands of stockholders, and thousands of workers and employees; all these people become so many pieces in a gigantic machine which must be controlled, whose effects must be calculated; each mortal eventually can be expressed as an abstract entity, as a figure, and on this basis economic occurrences are calculated, trends are predicted, decisions are made. Today, when only about 40 percent of our working population is self-employed, the rest for somebody else, and a mortal’s life is dependent on someone who pays one a wage or a salary. However, we should say something, instead of someone, because a worker is hired and fired by an institution, the managers of which are impersonal parts of the enterprise, rather than people in personal contact with the mortals they employ. Let us not forget another fact: in pre-capitalistic society, exchange was to a large extent one of the goods and services; today, all work is rewarded with money. The close fabric of economic relations is regulated by money, the abstract expression of work—that is to say, we receive different quantities of the same for different qualities; and we give money for what we receive—again exchanging only different qualities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Practically nobody, with the exception of the farm population, could live for even a few days without receiving and spending money, which stands for the abstract quality of concrete work. In the modern industrial enterprise, when it comes to the division of labor, the worker is not in touch with the is not in touch with the whole product at any point, unlike in the past when there was more vertical integration. Now days, the worker is engaged in the performance of one specialized function, and while he or she might shift in the course of time from one function to another, one is still not related to the concrete product as a whole. The worker develops a specialized function, and the tendency is such, that the function of the modern industrial worker can be defined as working in a machine like fashion in activities for which machine work has not yet been devised or which would be costlier than human work. The only person who is in touch with the whole product is the manager, but to he or she the product is an abstraction, whose essence is exchange value, while the worker, for whom it is concrete, never works on it as a whole. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Undoubtedly without quantification and abstraction modern mass production would be unthinkable. However, in a society in which economic activities have become the main preoccupation of mortals, this process of quantification and abstractification has transcended the realm of economic production, and spread to the attitude of mortals to things, to people, and to oneself. We are starting to relate to ourselves as objects: one can relate to oneself to it in its full concreteness, then the object appears with all its specific qualities, and there is no other object which is identical with it. And one can relate oneself to the object in abstract ways, that is, emphasizing only those qualities which it has in common with all other objects of the same genus, and this accentuating some and ignoring other qualities. The full and productive relatedness to an object comprises this polarity of perceiving it in its uniqueness, and at the same time in its generality; in its concreteness, and at the same time in its abstractness. In Western culture this polarity has given way to an almost exclusive reference to the abstract qualities of things and people, and to a neglect of relating oneself to their concreteness and uniqueness.  We are supposed to have an efficient perception of reality and a comfortable relationship with it so we can detect what is real and authentic and gravitate toward it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

However, many people are now dividing reality and unreality into mutually exclusive compartments. They no longer know and appreciate the facts of existence because they are minimizing the importance of imagination, fantasy, dreaming, and fiction. Instead of forming abstract concepts where it is necessary and useful, everything, including ourselves, is being abstractified; the concrete reality of people and things to which we can relate with the reality of our own person, is replaced by abstractions, by ghosts that embody different quantities, but not different qualities. It is quite customary to talk about a three-million-dollar house, a hundred-thousand-dollar car, a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch, and this not only from the standpoint of the manufacturer or the consumer in the process of buying it, but as the essential point in the description. When one speaks of the three-million-dollar house, one is not primarily concerned with its usefulness or beauty, that is, with its concrete qualities, but one speaks of it as a commodity, the main quality of which is its exchange value, expressed in a quantity, that of money. This does not mean, of course, that one is not concerned also with the usefulness or beauty of the house, but it does mean that its concrete (use) value is secondary to its abstract (exchange) value in the way the object is experiences. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The famous line by Gertrude Stein “a rose is a rose is a rose,” is a protest against this abstract form of experience; for most people a rose is just not a rose, but a flower in a certain price range, to be bought on certain social occasions; even the most beautiful flower, provided it is a wild one, costing nothing, is not experienced in its beauty, compared to that of the rose, because it has no exchange value. In other words, things are experienced as commodities, as embodiments of exchange value, not only while we are buying or selling, but in our attitude toward them when the economic transaction is finished. A thing, even after it has been bought, never quite loses its quality as a commodity in this sense; it is expendable, always retaining its exchange value quality. A good illustration of this attitude is to be found in the behavior displayed by a homeowner, Justin. During one of the first days after they had moved into a new house they just had built for them, he got a call from a real estate agent, saying that some people were interested in buying that particular house and wanted to look at it. Although he knew that it was most unlikely that the family would want to sell their new home a few days after they had moved in, he could not resist the temptation to know whether the value of the house had risen since they had bought it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Justin spent one or two valuable hours showing the real estate agent around the house. He writes: “Very interested in fact we can get an offer for more than we have invested into this house. Nice coincidence that offer comes before we moved all our furniture in. All agree it will be good for our family’s morale to learn that the house will sell for a good deal more than we spent to have it built. Let us see what happens.” In spite of all the pride and pleasure in the new house, it had still retained its quality as a commodity, as something exchangeable, and to which no full sense of possession or use had been attached yet because it had not been lived in. The same attitude is obvious in the relationship of people to the cars they buy; the car never becomes fully a thing to which one is attached, for many people, but retains its quality as a commodity to be exchanged in a successful bargain; thus, cars are sold after a year or two, long before their use value is exhausted or even considerably diminished. This abstraction takes place even with regard to phenomena which are not commodities sold on the market, like a flood disaster; the newspaper will headline a flood, speaking of a “million-dollar catastrophe,” emphasizing the abstract quantitative element rather than the concrete aspects of human suffering. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

However, the abstactifying and quantifying attitude goes far beyond the realm of things. People are also experienced as the embodiment of a quantitative exchange of value. To speak of a man as being “worth one hundred and fifty million dollars,” is to speak of him not any more as a concrete human person, but as an abstraction, whose essence can be expressed in a figure. It is an expression of the same attitude when a newspaper headlines an obituary with the words “Rifle Heiress Dies.” Actually a woman has died, a woman with certain human qualities, with hopes and frustrations, wit a husband and children. It is true that she manufactures guns, or rather, that she owned and managed a corporation in which workers served machines manufacturing guns; but if it is said that a “Rifle Heiress Dies,” the richness and concreteness of a human life is expressed in the abstract formula of economic function. The same abstractifying approach can be seen in expressions like “Mr. Ford produced so many automobiles,” or this or that general “conquered a fortress”; or if a person has a house built for oneself, he or she says, “I built a house.” Concretely speaking, Mr. Ford did not manufacture the automobiles; he directed automobile production which was executed by thousands of workers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

The general never conquered the fortress; he was sitting in his headquarters, issuing orders, and his soldiers did the conquering. The man did not build the house; he paid the money to an architect who made the plans and to contractors who did the building. All this is not said to minimize the significance of the managing and directing operations, but in order to indicate that in this way of experiencing things, sight of what goes on concretely is lost, and an abstract view is taken in which one function, that of making plans, giving orders, or financing an activity, is identified with the whole concrete process of production, or of fighting, or of building, as the case may be. The same process of abstractification takes place in all other spheres. A Newspaper recently printed a news item under the heading: “B.Sc. + PhD. = $3 million.” The information under this somewhat baffling heading was that statistical data showed that a student of engineering who had acquired his Doctor’s degree will earn, in a lifetime, $3 million more than a person who has only the degree of Bachelor of Sciences. As far as this is a fact it is an interesting socioeconomic datum, worth reporting. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The economic equation is mentioned because the way of expressing the fact as an equation between a scientific degree and a certain amount of dollars is indicative of the abstractifying and quantifying thinking in which knowledge is experienced as the embodiment of a certain exchange value on the personality market. It is to the same point when a political report in a news magazine states that the President Trump administration feels it has so much “capital of confidence” that it can risk some unpopular measures, because it can afford to lose some of the confidence capital. Here again, a human quality like confidence is expressed in its abstract form, as if it were a money investment to be dealt with in terms of a market speculation. How drastically commercial categories have entered even religious thinking is show in the following passage by Bishop Sheen, in an article on the birth of Christ. “Our reason tells us that if anyone of the claimants (for the role of God’s son) came from God, the least that God could do to support His Representative’s claim would be to preannounce His coming. Automobile manufacturers tell us when to expect a new model,” so writes the author. Or even more drastically, Billy Graham, the evangelists declared, “I am selling the greatest product in the World; why should not it be promoted as well as soap?” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

The process of abstractification, however, has still deeper roots and manifestations than the ones described so far, roots which go back to the very beginning of the modern era; to the dissolution of any concrete frame of reference in the process of life. In a primitive society, the World is identical with the tribe. The tribe is in the center of the Universe, as it were; everything outside is shadowy and has no independent existence. In the medieval World, the Universe was much wider; it was seen with the Earth as the center and mortals as the purpose of Creation. Everything had its fixed place, just as everybody had one’s fixed position in feudal society. With the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, new vistas opened up. The Earth lost its central place, and became one of the satellites of the Sun; new continents were found, new sea lanes discovered; the static social system was more and more loosened up; everything and everybody was moving. Yet, until the end of the nineteenth century, nature and society had not lost their concreteness and definiteness. Mortal’s natural and social World was still manageable, still has definite contours. However, with the progress in scientific thought, technical discoveries and the dissolution of all traditional bonds, this definiteness and concreteness is in the process of being lost. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Whether we think of our new cosmological picture, or of theoretical physics, or of atonal music, or abstract art—the concreteness and definiteness of our frame of reference is disappearing. We are not any more the center of the Universe, we are not any more the purpose of Creation, we are not any more the masters of a manageable and recognizable World—we are a speck of dust, we are a nothing, somewhere in space—without any kind of concrete relatedness to anything. We speak of millions of people being killed, of one third or more of our population being wiped out if a third World War should occur; we speak of trillions of dollars piling up as a national debt, of thousands of lights years as interplanetary distances, of interspace travel, of artificial satellites. Tens of thousands work in one enterprise, hundreds of thousands live in hundreds of cities. The dimension with which we deal are figures and abstractions; they are far beyond the boundaries which would permit of any kind of concrete experience. There is no frame of reference left in which is manageable, observable, which is adapted to human dimensions. While our eyes and ears receive impressions only in humanly manageable proportions, our concept of the World has lost just that quality; it does not any longer correspond to our human dimensions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

This is especially significant in connection with the development of modern means of destruction. In modern war, one individual can cause the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, and animals. One could do so by pushing a button; one may not feel the emotional impact of what one is doing, since one does not know how they people whom one kills; it is almost as if one act of pushing the button or pulling the plug and their death had no real connection. The same person would probably be incapable of even cursing, not to speak of killing, a helpless person. In the latter case, the concrete situation arouses in one a conscience reaction common to all normal people; in the former, there is no such reactions, because the act and one’s object are alienated from the doer, one’s action is not that individual’s any more, but has, so to speak, a life and a responsibility of its own. Science, business, politics, have lost all foundations and proportions which make sense humanly. We live in figures and abstractions; since nothing is concrete, nothing is real. Everything is possible, factually and morally. Science fiction is not different from science fact, nightmares and dreams from the events of next year. Mortals have been thrown out from any definite place whence one can overlook and manage one’s life and the life of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Mortals are driven faster and faster by the forces which originally were created by them. In this wild whirl mortals thinks, figures, busy with abstractions, ore and more remote from concrete life. People used to have the ability to accept themselves, other people, and nature as they are. They did not experience extended morbid psychological guilt, anxiety, shame, anger, or chagrin. The emotions were there as they were in most people, but extreme degrees and prolongation are becoming more common. Many people are replacing their humanity with idolatry of money. Some of these people no longer enjoy eating, they think a shake, pill, or tea can adequality nourish them. Virtual intimate encounters are replacing passionate relationships. Pills and coffee and other substance are meant to replace sleep. Machines, computers, and robots are replacing workers. Physical activity is being replaced by virtual reality and medical procedures for weight loss are increasingly common. Many people are also more defensive than they should be. They are particularly disgusted by bodily functions, as they do not see them as normal and natural. They are car more about what other people might say about them and no longer seem to behave spontaneously and naturally. #RandolpHarris 14 of 19

The Existentialist point of view is being lost. Existentialism is a philosophical movement stressing individual existence and holding that mortals are totally free and responsible for their acts. The existence of mortals in their World is being put into brackets. Mortals become pure consciousness, a naked epistemological subject; the World (including mortal’s psychosomatic being) becomes an object of scientific inquiry and technical management. Mortals in their existential predicament disappear. It is, therefore, quite adequate that behind the sum lies the problem of the nature of this sum which is more than consciousness—namely existence in time and space and under the conditions of finitude and estrangement. The Existentialist point of view deals with confrontation of human sin and divine forgiveness. However, much like during the Middle Ages, some people, in this technological era are so removed from spirituality that they believe in the doctrines of justification and predestination. As children of God, we are supposed to stress the unconditional character of the divine judgment and the free character of God’s forgiveness. We are also supposed to be suspicious of any analysis of human existence, that weaken the divine-human relationship. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Reasonable management of oneself and one’s World are part of what is required in the industrial and technological era. Existence is resolved into essence. The World is reasonable as it is. Existence is a necessary expression of essence. History is the manifestation of essential being under the conditions of existence. Its course can be understood and justified. A courage which conquers the negativities of the individual life is possible for those who participate in the universal process in which the absolute mind actualizes itself. The anxieties of fate, guilt, and doubt are overcome by means of an elevation through the different degrees of meanings toward the highest, the philosophical intuition of the universal process itself. We must unite the courage to be as a part (especially of a nation) wit the courage to be as oneself (especially as a thinker) in a courage which transcends both and has a mystical background. History is not a place where the individual can reach happiness. Either the individual must elevate oneself above the universal process to the situation of the intuiting philosopher or the existential problem of the individual is not solved. Self-actualizing, authentic people often act on impulse, on the basis of wanting to. Doing something because it feels good is not quite the same as infantile gratification-seeking or compulsive behavior. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Self-actualizers experience each moment as precious and valuable, as something to be enjoyed merely because it exists. They don the cloak of conformity voluntarily and with good grace because certain conforming behaviors may be important to people who are important to and loved by these self-actualizing people, not because they care whether people will talk if they do not. Their ethics tend to be humanistic; that is, they value human life, human experience, and they define good and evil in terms of what benefits and what detracts from human happiness. “Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have exploited no one. I do not say this to condemn you; I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.2. It is important to remain problem-centered rather than self-centered. Self-actualizing people focus their energies and attention on things outside themselves, although the opposite may seem to be the case. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

We are not mean to be seen as God’s perfect, bright-shining examples, but to been seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of God’s grace. People who are driven by their id are usually so hung-up on holding together a slipping sense of self-worth that one has not the time or energy for anybody else’s problems expect insofar as other people and their problems can help define one’s sense of self. Self-actualizing people have such a healthy self-appreciation and self-respect that they have time and energy to deal sincerely and genuinely with matters outside themselves. They are usually engaged in the larger issues of human experience, appear to have a goal or mission in life, and work on large-scale problems like poverty, bigotry, hostility, warfare, ecology, and so on. These individuals are Being-Motivated (or Growth-Motivated), as opposed to being Deficiency-Motivated. They express their fullness rather than attempt to fill voids. They have a sense of detachment. Self-actualizers like their own company and often enjoy privacy. Solicitude does not disturb or panic them. They can easily transcend the petty demands of environment, yet remain completely part of the World and its people. They are autonomous. B-Motivation enables these individuals to strike out on their own and to live their own lives. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

 D-Motivators are busy making up for deficiencies, compensating, or engaging in futile competition. Self-actualizing people need other people, but retain the right to make important decisions autonomously. When they seek out others for company, companionship, or advice, they tend to gravitate toward others with similar motivations. Your faith in Jesus Christ gives life enduring meaning. Remember, we are on a journey to exaltation. Sometimes we have experiences that yield more happiness than others, but it all has purpose with the Lord. We are a covenant people. If there is a distinguishing feature about self-actualizers it is that we make covenants. We need to be known as a covenant-keeping people as well. Making promises is easy, but to follow through and do what we have promised is another matter. We can remain true to our word by staying to the course, being constant and consistent. We are able to keep the faith and be faithful to the end despite success or failure, doubt or discouragement. The ability to draw near the Lord is another characteristic as it fulfills our hearts. We do whatever we promise to do with all out might—even when we might not feel like it. “And charity suffers long, and is kind, and does not envy, and is not puffed up, seeks not one’s own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, and rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” reports Moroni 7.45 #RandolphHarris 19 of 19