In the twilight between mortality and spirituality, I breathe deeply and slowly. Every day I ask myself why I am not the person I would like to me. Think of the promises that are made to you in the beautiful and glorious years of childhood and adolescence. There is a right way to live and be happy.  The deepest hunger in the American soul today is for something truly useful to do with one’s life. There is a mass confusion in the minds of my generation in trying to find a solution for ourselves and the World around us. What values does work really have if, as is so often the case in America now, the end result is human exploitation, environmental destruction, or debasement of values? Young people need to arrive at a synthesis whereby both self-identity and social relations are affirmed for a more self-actualizing life. Moral development is not limited to adolescence. We live in a World so full of choices. Happiness is the object of the design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Physical consequences determine whether an action is good or bad. Avoidance of punishment and unquestioning deference to power are values.  We must develop discipline of self so that, more and more, we do not have to decide and redecide what we will do when we are confronted with the same temptation time and time again. A right action is one that results in something good for oneself and sometimes for others.  We need only to decide some things once. Good behavior is that which pleases others. How great of a blessing it is to be free of agonizing over and over again regarding a temptation. To do such is time-consuming and very risky. Conformity to societal images of nice or good behavior is important. Right and wrong behavior is based on external authority, fixed rules, and the social order. The sooner we take a stand, the taller we will be. Law and order is important for its own sake. The Lord has blessed us with symbols of purity to keep us on the right course to choose the right. Right action is based on social contract—the greatest good for the greatest number. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

 Mortality is based on individual rights and standards which have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society. We need to have the conviction deep down in our hearts to live the kind of life that will cause us to make the right choices, not only for peace and happiness in the World right now, but also for peace and happiness eternally. Right is defined by the individual conscience in agreement with a Universal morality. The Universal principles (such as justice and equality) are higher than any law or social control. This is what they great religious and philosophical system of the World are based on. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” reports Joshua 24.15. What does it mean to be an adult? We have promised our Father in Heaven that we will serve him and others with love and do his will in all things. This means that to be an adult, there are certain rights and privileges that do not belong to children and adolescent, for one thing. However, for such fringe benefits, there are dues to pay. These dues come in the form of responsibilities, obligations, and expectations of other individuals and society. When we reach a certain age, we undergo a change-of-life experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

Many of the adult’s life goals in middle adulthood become achieved. This can result in a sense of loss or letdown and a force a confrontation of values and goals. The adult may ask now: Is this what I am? Is this what I want the rest of my life to be like? What about all my dreams, my plans, my expectations? Is this what life is really all about, after all? The disillusionment that often accompanies these questions may create conflict between husband and wife, parents and children, and even among friends and co-workers. Divorce figures are high for this age group. Experiencing death by suicide also rises during middle adulthood, and both physical and mental health complaints increase. Clearly, important changes are taking place during this period. When we better understand the nature of these changes, we will be better able to meet our needs and the needs of others as middle adults. However, there are also many people who remain fully functioning human beings, and who no more deserve to be called old (meaning outworn, useless, and unimportant) than does an aged bottle of fine wine. With a holistic approach to human psychology, we insist that life is viewed as a continuous, integrated fabric, with earlier stages leading naturally and beneficially into later stages. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

Human beings are a whole entity—a fusion of many parts and pieces. These fragments work together; they can never be completely separated. Therefore, we believe it is not possible to look at mind or body; it is only possible to look at the person. We achieve the abundant life by becoming true disciples of Jesus Christ—by following in his ways and engaging in his work. Believing in Go leads to faith him and developing trust in his word. Faith causes our hearts to grow in our love for God and others. As that love grows, we are inspired to emulate the Savior as we continue our own great journey on the path of discipleship. Just as work has become alienated, the expression of the will of the voter in modern democracy is an alienated expression. The principle of democracy is the idea that not a ruler or a small group, but the people as a whole, determine their own fate and make their decisions pertaining to matters of common concern. By electing one’s own representatives, who in a parliament decide on the law of the land, each citizen is supposed to exercise the function of responsible participation in the affairs of the community. However, by principle of the division of powers, an ingenious system was created that served to retain the integrity and independence of the judiciary system, and to balance the respective functions of the legislature and executive. Ideally, every citizen is equally responsible for and influential in making decisions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

In reality, the emerging democratic system was best by one important contradiction. Operating in states with tremendous inequalities of opportunity and income, the privileged classes naturally did not want to lose the privileges which the status quo gave them, and which they could easily have lost if the will of the majority, who were without property, had found its full expression. To avoid such a danger, many among the property-less population were excluded from the franchise, and only very slowly was the principle accepted that every citizen, without restrictions and qualifications, had the right to vote. In the nineteenth century it seemed as if universal franchise would solve all problems of democracy. Feargus Edward ’Conner, one of the Chartist leaders, declared in 1838: “Universal suffrage would at once change the whole character of society from a state of watchfulness, doubt and suspicion to that of brotherly love, reciprocal interest and universal confidence,” and in 1842 he declared, “Six moths after the Charter is passed, every man, woman and child in the country will be well fed, well houses and well clothed.” Since then, all great mocracies have established general suffrage for men and women and children, but in in the richest country of the World nearly 30 percent of the population is still ill fed, ill housed, and ill clothed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

It is not the aphorism that cures. It is the love of God that rescues, restores, and revives. God knows you. You are his child. He loves you. Even when you think that you are not lovable, God reaches out to you. The introduction of universal suffrage not only disappointed the hoes of the Chartists, it disappointed all those who believed that universal suffrage would help transform the citizenry into responsible, active, independent personalities. It became clear that the problem of democracy today is not any more the restriction of franchise but the manner in which the franchise is exercised. How can people express their will if they do not have any will of conviction of their own, if they are alienated automatons, whose tastes, opinions and preferences are manipulated by big conditioning machines. Under these circumstances universal suffrage becomes a fetish. If a government that can prove that everybody has a right to vote, and that votes are counted honestly, it is democratic. If everybody votes, but the votes are counted honestly, it is democratic. If everybody votes, but the votes are not counted honestly, or if the voter is afraid of voting against the governing party, the country is undemocratic. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

It is true indeed that there is considerable and important differences between free and manipulated elections, but noting this difference must not lead us to forget that even free elections do not necessarily express the will of the people. If a highly advertised brand of toothpaste is used by the majority of the people because of some fantastic claims it makes in its propaganda, nobody with any sense would say that people have made the right decision in favor of the toothpaste. All that could be claimed is that the propaganda was sufficiently effective to coax millions of people into believing its claims. In an alienated society the mode in which people express their will is not very different from that of their choice of buying commodities. They are listening to the drums of propaganda and fact mean little in comparison with the suggestive noise which hammers at them. In recent years we see more and more how the wisdom of public relations’ counsels determines political propaganda. Accustomed to make the public buy anything for the build-up of which there is enough money, they think of political ideas and political leaders in the same terms. They use television and the news media to build up political personalities as they use it to build up a soap; what matter is the effect, in sales or votes, not the rationality or usefulness of what is presented. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

This phenomenon found a remarkably frank expression in the recent statements about the future of the Republican Party, one must find a personality who wants to represent the Party—then he or she will get the votes. In principle this is not different from the endorsement of a new application on a mobile phone by a famous athlete or movie actor. Actually, the functioning of the political machinery in a democratic country is no essentially different from the procedure on the commodity market. The political parties are not too different from big commercial enterprises, and the professional politician try to sell their wares to the public. Their method is more and more like that of high pressure advertising. A particularly clear formulation of this process has been given by a keen observer of the political and economic scene, J.A. Schumpeter. He starts out with the formulation of the classical eighteenth-century concept of democracy. The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions which realizes the common good by making the people itself decide issues through the election of individuals who are to assemble in order to carry out its will. #RandolpHarris 9 of 16

Schumpeter then analyzes modern mortal’s attitudes toward the problem of public welfare, and arrives at a result not too different from the ones outlined above. However, when we move still farther away from the private concerns of the family and the business office into those regions of national and international affairs that lack a direct and unmistakable link with those private concerns, individual volition, command facts and method of inference soon cease to fulfill the requirements of the classical doctrine. What strikes me most of all and seems to me to be the core of the trouble is the fact that the sense of reality is so completely lost. Normally, the great political questions take their place in the psychic economy of the typical citizen with those leisure-hour interests that have not attained the rank of hobbies, and with the subjects of irresponsible conversation. These things seem so far off; they are not at all like a business proposition; dangers may not materialize at all and if they should they may not prove so very serious; one feels oneself to be moving a fictitious World. This reduced sense of reality accounts not only for a reduced sense of responsibility but also for the absence of effective volition. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

One has one’s phrases, of course, and one’s wishes and daydreams and grumbles; especially, one has one’s like and dislikes. However, ordinarily they do not amount to what we call a will—the psychic counterpart of purposeful responsible action. In fact, for the private citizen musing over national affairs there is no scope for such a will and no task at which it could develop. One is a member of an unworkable committee, the committee of the whole nation, and that is why one expends less disciplined effort on mastering a political problem than one expends on a game of bridge. The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen’s ignorance and lack of judgment in matter of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble situations. Information is plentiful and readily available. However, this does not seem to make any difference. Nor should we wonder at it. We need only compare a lawyer’s attitude to his or her brief and the same lawyer’s attitude to the statements of political fact presented in one’s newspaper in order to see what is the matter. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

In the one cause the lawyer has qualified for appreciating the relevance of one’s facts by years of purposeful labor done under the definite stimulus that is no less power one then bends one’s acquirements, one’s intellect, one’s will to the contents of the brief. In the other case, one has not taken the trouble to qualify; one does not care to absorb the information or to apply to it the canons of criticism one knows so well how to handle; and one is impatient of long or complicated argument. All of this goes to show that without the initiative that comes from immediate responsibility, ignorance will persist in the face of masses of information however complete and correct. It persists even in the face of the meritorious efforts that are being made to go beyond presenting information and to teach the use of it by means of lectures, classes, discussion groups. Results are not zero. However, they are small. People cannot be carried up the ladder. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as one enters the political field. One argues and analyzes in a way which one would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of one’s real interests. One becomes a primitive again. There is also a similarity between the manufacturing of the popular will in political issues by using the TV news media as a commercial advertising. The ways in which issues and the popular will on any issues are being manufactures is exactly analogous to the ways of commercial advertising. We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious. We find the same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are. We find the same evasions and reticences and the same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical faculties of the people. And so on. Only, all these arts have infinitely more scope in the same sphere of public affairs than they have in the sphere of private and professional life. The picture of the prettiest girl that ever lived will in the long run prove powerless to maintain the sales of a bad mobile phone. There is no equally effective safeguard in the case of political decisions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Many decisions of fateful importance experiment with them at its leisure and at moderate cost. Even if that is possible, however, judgment is as a rule not so easy to arrive at as it is in the case of the mobile phone, because effects are less easy to interpret. One the basis this analysis, we arrive at a definition of democracy which, while less lofty than the first one, is undoubtedly more realistic. The democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote. The comparison between the process of opinion formation in politics with that in the commodity market can be supplemented with another one dealing not so much wit the formation of opinion, but rather with its expression. I am referring to the role of the stockholder in America’s big corporations, and of the influence of one’s will on the management. As has been pointed out above, ownership in the big corporations rests today in the hands of hundreds of thousands of individuals, each of whom owns an exceedingly small fraction of the total stocks. Legally speaking, the stockholders own the enterprise and hence have the right to determine its policy and to appoint the management. Practically speaking, they feel little responsibility for their ownership, and acquiesce in with what the management does, satisfied to have a regular income. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

The vast majority of the stockholders do not bother to go to the meetings and are willing to send the required proxies to the management. As has been pointed out above, only 6 percent of the big corporations is control exercised by total or majority ownership. The situation of control in a modern democracy is not too different from the control in a big corporation. It is true, over 50 percent of the voters cast their votes personally. They make the decision between two party machines competing for their votes. Once one of the machines is voted into office, the relationship to the voter becomes remote. The real decisions often do not lie any more with the individual members of the parliament, representing the interests and wises of their constituency, but with the part. However, even there decisions are made by influential key personalities, often little known to the public. The fact is that while the individual citizen believes that he or she direct the decisions of his or her country, one does it only a little more than the average stockholder participates in controlling of one’s company. Between the act of voting and the most momentous high-level political decisions is connection which is mysterious. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

One cannot say that there is no control at all, nor can one say that the final decision is an outcome of the voter’s will. This is exactly the situation of an alienated expression of the citizen’s will. One does something, voting, and is under the illusion that one is the creator of decisions which one accepts as if they were one’s own, while in reality they are largely determined by forces beyond one’s control and knowledge. No wonder this situation gives the average citizen a deep sense of powerlessness in political matters (though not necessarily consciously so) and hence that one’s political intelligence is reduced more and more. For while it is true that one must think before one acts, it is also true that is one has no chance to act, the thinking become impoverished; in other words, if one cannot act effectively—one cannot think productively either. Emotions function as responses to many of our motives, and they also may themselves motivate us, may set up wants and needs. This very day—every day—God reaches out to you, desiring to heal you, to lift you up, and to replace the emptiness in your heart with an abiding joy. God desires to sweep away any darkness that clouds your life and fill it with the sacred and brilliant light of his unending glory. Our personal relationship with God is something we have explicit control over. Without faith it is impossible to please God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16