Well, now that is fascinating! So this dapper dude with the easy smile on his lips, wonderfully sunburnt tan skin, large and almost Graeco-Roman features, wearing the de rigueur New Orleans white linen three-piece suit does not always know what he is doing. My thesis is correct! I tried desperately to read the thoughts behind Erich’s words, but I could not. These May’s were so casually and maddeningly gifted. Maybe the man was not defenseless. He was just so strong he did not bother to put up any defenses. Obsessional work alone would drive people just as crazy as would complete laziness. With the combination, they can live. Besides, both contradictory attitudes correspond to an economic necessity: twenty-first century capitalism is based on maximal consumption of the goods and services produced as well as on routinized teamwork. Theoretical considerations demonstrate that radical hedonism cannot lead to happiness as well as why it cannot do so, given human nature. However, even without theoretical analysis the observable data show most clearly that our kind of pursuit of happiness does not produce well-being. We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent—people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Ours is the greatest social experiment ever made to solve the question whether pleasure (as passive affect in contrast to the active affect, well-being and joy) can be a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. For the first time in history the satisfaction of the pleasure drive is not only the privilege of a minority but is possible for more than half the population. The experiment has already answered the question in the negative. The second psychological premise of the information age, that the pursuit of individual narcissism leads to harmony and peace, growth in everyone’s welfare, is equally erroneous on theoretical grounds, and again its fallacy is proven by observable data. To be a narcissist not only refers to my behavior but to my character. It means: that I want everything for myself; that possessing, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have; that I must feel antagonistic toward all others; my customers whom I want to deceive, my competitors whom I want to destroy, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied, because there is no end to my wishes; I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. However, I have to repress all these feelings in order to represent myself (to others as well as to myself) as the smiling, rational, sincere, kind human being everybody pretends to be. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The passion for having must lead to never-ending class war. The pretense of the socialists and communists that the communists that their system will end class struggle by abolishing classes is fiction, for their system is based on the principle of unlimited consumption as the goal of living. As long as everybody want to have more, there must be formations of classes, there must be class war, and in global terms, there must be international war. Greed and peace preclude each other. Radical hedonism and unlimited egotism could not have emerged as guiding principles of economic behavior had not a drastic change occurred in the eighteenth century. In medieval society, as in many other highly developed as well as primitive societies, economic behavior was determined by ethical principles. Thus, for the scholastic theologians, such as economic categories as price and private property were part of moral theology. Granted that the theologians found formulations to adapt their moral code to the new economic demands (for instance qualification to the concept of just price); nevertheless, economic behavior remained human behavior and, hence, was subjected to the values of humanistic ethics. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Through a number of steps eighteenth century capitalism underwent a radical change: economic behavior became separate from ethics and human values. Indeed, the economic machine was supposed to be an autonomous entity, independent of human needs and human will. It was a system that ran by itself and according to its own laws. The suffering of the workers as well as the destruction of an ever-increasing number of smaller enterprises for the sake of the growth of ever larger corporations was an economic necessity that one might regret, but that one had to accept as if it were the outcome of a natural law. American people are all supposed to be happy and nice because American culture is all about the American Dream, where people get an education, buy a house work hard and their dreams come true. America is supposed to be the beacon of light for the World. The development of this economic system was no longer determined by the question: What is good for Mortals? but by the questions: What is good for the growth of the system? One tried to hide the sharpness of this conflict by making the assumption that what was good for the growth of the system (or even for a single big corporation) was also good for the people. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

This construction was bolstered by an auxiliary construction: that the very qualities that the system required of human beings—narcissism, selfishness, and greed—were innate in human nature; hence, not only the system but human nature itself fostered them. Societies in which narcissism, selfishness, and greed did not exist were supposed to be primitive, their inhabitants childlike. People refused to recognize that these traits were not natural drives that caused industrial society to exist, but that they were the products of social circumstances. Not least in importance is another factor: people’s relation to nature became deeply hostile. Being freaks of nature who by the very conditions of our existence are within nature and by the gift of our reason transcend it, we have tried to solve our existential problem by giving up the Messianic vision of harmony between humankind and nature by conquering nature, by transforming it to our own purposes until the conquest has become more and more equivalent to destruction. Our spirit of conquest and hostility has blinded us to the facts that natural resources have their limits and can eventually be exhausted, and that nature will fight back against human rapaciousness. The information age has contempt for nature—as well as for all things not machine-made and for all people who are not machine makers. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

People are attracted today to the mechanical, the powerful machine, the lifeless, and ever increasingly to destruction. However, the ideal of the brotherhood and sisterhood of mortals is to a considerable extent furthered by economic competition—the tremendous scientific gains, the new factories and the more rapid moving of the wheels of the industry increased mortal’s material weal and physical health immensely, and for the first time in history our factories and our science can now produce so much that it is possible to wipe starvation and material want from the face of the Earth. One could well have argued that science and competitive industry were bringing humankind ever closer to its ethical ideas of universal humanity. However, in the first few decades it has become clear that this marriage is fully of conflict, and is headed for drastic overhauling or for divorce. For now the great emphasis on one person getting ahead of the other, whether it being getting higher grades in school, or more stars after one’s name in Sunday school, or gaining proof of salvation by being economically successful greatly blocks the possibilities of loving one’s neighbor. And, it even blocks the love between brother and sister and husband and wife in the same family. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Furthermore, since our World is now made literally one World by scientific and industrial advances, our inherited emphasis on individual competitiveness is as obsolete as though each mortal were to deliver one’s own letters by one’s own pony express. The final eruption which showed the underlying contradictions in our society was fascist totalitarianism, in which the humanist and Hebrew-Christian values, particularly the value of the person, were flouted in a mammoth upsurgence of barbarism. Some may be thinking that many of the above questions are stated wrongly—why does economic striving need to be against one’s fellow mortals, and why reason against emotion? True, but the characteristic of a period of change like the present is precisely that everyone does ask the wrong questions. The old goals, criteria, principles are still there in our minds and habits, but they do not fit, and hence most people are eternally frustrated by asking questions which never could lead to the right answer. Or they become lost in a potpourri of contradictory answers—reason operates while one goes to class, emotion when one visits one’s over, will power when one studies for an exam, and religious duty at funerals on Easter Sunday. This compartmentalization of values and goals leads very quickly to an undermining of the unity of the personality, and the person, in pieces within as well as without, does not know which way to go. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

As we see the splitting up of the personality, we must find a new unity in our lives. If the husband simply goes off to business, keeping one’s work and one’s family in different compartments like a good banker, and treats his wife as a doll, the house will collapse. As far as art goes, it must deal with the honest realities of life, and beauty has more to do with integrity than with prettiness. If people repress their emotions and try to act as unpleasant things do not exist, they end up neurotic. One must work out a technique for oneself to being out the deeper, unconscious, irrational levels in personality which have become suppressed, thus helping the person to become a thinking-feeling-willing unity. When done well, the benefits can be extraordinary. And as we learn to communicate, long-standing stereotypes can be dissolved, mistrust overcome, and visions shaped and grounded in a shared sense of purpose. People previously at odds with one another can come into alignment on objectives and strategies. New perspectives and insights can be gained, new levels of creativity stimulated, and bonds of community strengthened. Yes, we live in perilous times, but as we stay on the covenant path, we need not fear. I pray that the Holy Ghost will enlighten each of us as we consider how the principle of gathering together in one all things in Christ applies in practical ways to learning and living his restored gospel in our daily lives. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

People have seen the destruction of values which is occurring in our time, the loneliness, emptiness and anxiety which is engulfing some of us. We cannot ride on the goals of the past. Science is becoming a factory, and it is feared that mortal’s great advances in techniques without a parallel advance in ethics and self-understanding will lead to nihilism. There is a parable about the death of God. It is a haunting story of a madman who runs into the village square shouting, “Where is God?” It was written by Friedrich Nietzsche, and the people around did not believe in God; they laughed and said perhaps God had gone on a voyage or emigrated. The madman then shouted: “Whither is God? I shall tell you! We have killed him—you and I! Yet how have we done this? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when unchained this Earth from its Sun? Whither do we move now? Away from all Suns? Do we not fall incessantly? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there yet any up and down? Do we not err as through an infinite naught? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Here the madman became silent and looked again at his listeners: They too remained silent and looked at him. “I come too early,” he said then. “This tremendous event is still on its way.” Friedrich Nietzsche is not calling for a return to the conventional belief in God, but he is pointing out what happens when a society loss its center of values. That his prophecy came true is sown in the waves of massacres, pogroms and democratic tyranny. This tremendous event did not descend on us out of nowhere; a frightful night of barbarism did not just suddenly hit like the flood of Noah’s Ark. We have not yet found the new center which will enable us to choose our goals constructively, and thus to overcome the painful bewilderment and anxiety of not knowing which way to move. There is another form of impersonal soul which is society’s normal expression for at least part of this need. This is the curious phenomenon of masquerades and masked balls. Here is the cultivation of the fascination of the soul in anonymity—we do not know whose eyes are those of the person who seizes us or whom we seize to dance. We are freed, for the moment, from the perpetual responsibility—often wearisome indeed—of controlling our personal conduct. The masquerade, carnival and Fasching are forms in which society permits us to temporarily go back to the freedom of the soul in anonymity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

As I recall from my own experience while living in Mediterranean countries, the carnivals before Lent were a great and delightful relief in which one could let off steam; they performed a catharsis not unlike that which the Dionysian festivals must have provided for the ancient Athenians. This cultural form of the soul seems to draw off urges for violence. It is of the essence of the exciting pleasures of this abandon, however, that it is temporary, sanctioned by the community, and that everybody participates. Oases of free abandon to the soul, these masked balls can exist only in the larger context of community catharsis and social approval. The next stage after the impersonal, both in the development of the infant and in each immediate experience of the adult, is to make the soul personal. To be human means to exist on the boundary between the anonymous and the personal. If we can channel the soul, we can become more individualized; if we let it disperse, we become anonymous. Mortal’s task, by virtue of the deepening and widening of one’s consciousness, is to integrate the soul into oneself. Making the soul anonymous personal requires standing up against the tendency of the soul to drive one into anonymity. This means enlarging our ability to break the automatic chain of stimulus and response; we can then, to some extent, choose what and what not to respond to. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

If the family training is rigid, or if there are traumatic experiences associated with it, the whole soul may be blocked off. No pleasures of the flesh can be experienced, or in some homes, never is any anger to be shown; the stage is then set for later demonic possession—and ultimate explosion. For these urges do not sleep; and, if they cannot be expressed beneficially, they explode or are projected on whoever is the enemy of the person or the group. The trick here is that we learn not to let our wills be sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought and lose the name of action, but rather that we integrate the soul power without destroying our spontaneity. This is possible in the new dimension of consciousness of which I speak. Thus, the soul becomes the personal power, the particular pattern of being which constitutes my own center, in this sense, individualizes. We can now understand how, in such a highly developed individual, the soul can be experienced as inner guidance: it is the voice in which one participates. However, having take cognizance of the fact that there are rational criteria for judging the soul, we must not forget the central and most perplexing issue, that it is impossible ever to make the soul fully rational. The soul will always be characterized by the paradox inhering in the fact that it is potentially creative and destructive at the same time. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

This is the most important question facing modern psychotherapy, and the most fateful also—for on it hinges the lasting success and the survival of therapy. If we try to avoid the dilemma of the soul, as many therapist wittingly or unwittingly do, by helping the patient adjust to the society, by offering one certain habits which we think are better for him or her, or by making one over to fit the culture, we are then inevitably engaged in manipulating the individual. If we surrender to our devils, we will lose our angels, too. The soul, which is part of knowledge and underlies love and will, acts as a gadfly to our consciousness by throwing us into continual dilemmas. The deepening and widening of consciousness we seek in psychotherapy consist not of the solution of these dilemmas—which is impossible anyway—but the confronting of them in such a way that we rise to a higher level of personal and interpersonal integration. In the classical Roman Catholic theology the will to believe is not an act which originates in mortal’s striving, but it is given by grace to one whose will is moved by God to accept the truth of what the Church teaches. Even so, it is not the intellect which is determined by its content to believe, but it is the will which performs what the intellect alone cannot do. This kind of interpretation agrees with the authoritarian attitude of the Roman Church. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

For it is the authority of the Church which gives the contents, to be affirmed by the intellect under the impact of the will. If the idea of grace mediated by the Church and motivating the will is rejected, as in pragmatism, the will to believe becomes willfulness. It becomes an arbitrary decision which may be supported by some insufficient arguments but which could have gone in other directions with equal justification. Such belief as the basis of the will to believe is certainly not faith. The will to believe demands the obedience of faith. It can also be the element of commitment which is implied in the state of ultimate concern. In the state of ultimate concern, all mental functions participate—which is certainly true. Obedience of faith can also mean subjection to the command to believe as it is given in prophetic and apostolic preaching. Certainly, if a prophetic word is accepted as prophetic, for instance, as coming from God, obedience of faith does not mean anything other than accepting a message as coming from God. However, if there is doubt whether a word is prophetic, then term obedience of faith loses its meaning. It becomes an arbitrary will to believe. The demand to be obedient is the demand to be what one already is. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

No command to believe and no will to believe can create faith. This is important for religious education, counseling and preaching. One should never convey the impression to those whom one wants to impress, that faith is a demand made upon them, the rejection of which is lack of good will. Finite mortals cannot produce the certainty which belongs to faith. This is in strict analogy to what we said about the impossibility of reaching the truth of faith by arguments and authorities, which in the best case give finite knowledge of a more or less probably character. Neither arguments for belief nor the will to believe can create faith. In a sense, the neighbor group is the most important unit in the community. It is a leaven and lever. It is required to meet at one of the families’ home and at no other place. There, while drinking coffee, all the issues are thrashed out together. Minutes of the meeting are taken down and sent to the Chief of Community, who sums up the minutes of all the neighbor groups. Answers to their questions are then given by those who are in charge of the different departments. In that way neighbor groups not only ask questions but voice discontent or make suggestions. It is also of course in the neighbor groups that people come to know each other best and help each other. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Another feature of the community is the court. It is elected by the general assembly, and its function is to decide on conflicts which arise between two departments, or between a department and a member; if the Chief of the Community cannot iron it out, the eight members of the Court (unanimous votes, as usual), do so. There is no set of law, and the verdicts is based on, and directed by the constitution of the Community, the common ethic minimum and common sense. The social department deals with all activities other than technical ones. All members, including wives, are expected to carry on their spiritual, intellectual, artistic and physical development. Reading the Rocklin Trails Le Lien monthly report is enlightening. Reports and commentaries on everything: football matches (competing with outside teams), photographic displays, visits to art exhibits, cooking recipes, ecumenical gatherings, reviews of musical performances such as Loewenguth Quartet, appreciation of films, lectures on Marxism, basketball scores, discussion on conscientious objections, accounts of the day at the farm, reports on what America has to teach, passages from St. Thomas Aquinas regarding money, reviews of books such as Louis Bromfield’s Pleasant Valley and Sartre’s Dirty Hands, etcetera. A resilient spirit of good will permeates it all. Le Lien is a candid picture of people who have said “yes” to life, and this with a maximum of consciousness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Perhaps better than any definition, some statements of members of the Community can give an idea of the spirit and practice of the Community of work: “I consider that one of the most beautiful human values is tolerance and the respect of religious and philosophical opinions. For that reason I feel particularly at home in Rocklin Trails. Not only is my freedom of thought and expression left intact, but I find in the community the material means and the time necessary to a deeper study of my philosophical conviction.” Another person declares, “I have been in the community for a while. I belong to a Catholic group. Like all Christians I am trying to build a society in which liberty and the dignity of the human beings will be respected. I declare, in the came of the whole Catholic group, the community is the type of society that a Christian can wish for. There, every person is free, respected, and everything inclines one to do better and to search for the Truth. If outwardly that society cannot be called Christian, it is Christian in fact. Christ gave us the sign through which it is possible to reorganize one’s own: And we do love one another. The community is composed of people who love one another fulfills our wishes to see people living in harmony together and knowing why they want to live.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

A Humanist writes: “I was 15 years old when I left school, I left the church at all, after my first communion. I had gone a little ahead in my schooling, but the spiritual problem was gone out of my mind. I was like the great majority: I did not give a d————–. At 22 I entered the community. At once I found there an atmosphere of study and work like in no other place. First I was attracted by the social side of the community, and it was only later that I understood what the human value could be. Then I rediscovered that spiritual and moral side which is in man and which I had lost at the age of 11. I belong to the humanist group, because I do not see the problem like the Christians or the materialists do. I love our community because through it all the deep aspirations which are in each of us can be awakened, met and developed, so that we may be transformed from individuals into men.” The community is not a new form of enterprise nor a reform in order to harmonize the relation capital-labor. It is a mode of living in which people find their fulfillment of life, equality, and fraternity. The real learning in this situation is that after a few trials, you begin to recognize certain patterns that do not work (call them blind alleys or errors), and so you eliminate then and concentrate only on those that give promise of working the two nails loose. Gradually, by eliminating more and more wrong twists and turns, you learn to solve the puzzle. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Many life problems are solved by the trial-and-error-or trial-and-success—method. It is one of our most basic learning strategies. People often learn best this way. They perform an action over and over again, gradually eliminating errors, doing a better job each time, until the task is learned. The original source of morality is experience. The only source of reformation is new and better experience. Why are we all not thieves? We are not thieves only partly because we learned the difference between mine and thine and that what is thine should stay thine. The people who learned no more than that did not actually learn even that. What they learned was that to expropriate what is thine can have unpleasant consequences, if the theft is discovered. If they are clever, they learned devious ways to seize what is not theirs, like the use of union funds for personal profit, or rigging the bidding on government contracts or manufacturing questionable medicines for large profits, and so on, endlessly. “Beware of this troubled World, watch out for Earthquakes. Goodbye to open sores, to broken semaphore. You know we miss her. We miss her picture. Sometimes it is fated. Disintegrated it for fear of growing old. Sometimes it is fated. Assassinated it for fear of growing old. Hang on, through we try, it is gone. For fear of growing old, cannot stop growing old,” reports Emma Hewitt (This Picture). #RandolphHarris 19 of 19