I followed him into the front hallway and then up the broad staircase. How curious it was, to be his guest, to be walking on this wool carpet as if I were a mortal. Sleeping under the roof that was not mine. Next I would be doing in a Cresleigh Rocklin Trails. This could get out of hand. Please let it get out of hand. As a laid there, I pondered our loss of language for personal communication. It became clear to me, along with the loss of the sense of self has gone a loss of our language for communicating deeply personal meanings to each other. This is one important side of the loneliness now experienced by people in the Western World. Take the word “love” for example, a word which obviously should be most important in conveying personal feelings. When you use it, the person you are talking to may think you mean Hollywood love, or the sentimental emotion of the popular songs, “I love my baby, my baby loves me,” or religious charity, or friendliness, or sexual impulse, or whatnot. The same is true about almost any other important word in the nontechnical areas—truth, integrity, courage, spirit, freedom, and even the word self. Most people have private connotations for such words which may be quite different from their neighbor’s meaning, and hence some people even try to avoid using such words. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

We have an excellent vocabulary for technical subjects; almost every person can name the parts of a BMW M5 engine clearly and definitely. However, when it comes to meaningful interpersonal relations, our language is lost: we stumble, and are practically as isolated as native people who are left in tribe and it is considered a breach of law to contact them. Our dried voices, when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass or birds’ feet over shattered glass in our dry cellar. This loss of the effectiveness of language, it may seem strange to point out, is a symptom of a disrupted historical period. When you explore the rise and fall of historical eras, you will note how the language is powerful and compelling at certain times, like the Greek language of the fifth century B.C. in which Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote their classics, or like Elizabethan English of Shakespeare and the King James translation of the Bible. At other periods the language is weak, vague and uncompelling, such as when Greek culture was being disrupted and dispersed in the Hellenistic period. I believe it could be shown in researches—which obviously cannot be gone into here—that when a culture is in its historical phase of growing toward unity, its language reflects the unity and power; whereas when a culture is in the process of change, dispersal and disintegration, the language likewise loses its power. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

“When I was eighteen, Germany was eighteen,” said Goethe, referring not only to the fact that ideals of his nation were then moving toward unity and power, but that the language, which was his vehicle of power as a writer, was also in that stage. In our day the study of semantics is of considerable value, to be sure, and is to be commended. However, the disturbing question is why we have to talk so much about what words mean that, once we have learned each other’s language, we have little time or energy left for communicating. There are other forms of personal communication than words: art and music, for example. Although repetition often implies monotony, because we are doing the same thing over and over again, it is not necessarily boring. The sterile World of suburban life depicted in Frank Gohlke’s photograph Housing Development South of Fort Worth, Texas is, precisely, the image of such monotony, as the eye travels down a street where the house after house is the same. Nevertheless, when the same or like elements—shapes, colors, or a regular pattern of any kind—are repeated over and over again in a composition, a certain visual rhythm will result. The suburbs are an effort to capture the beauty and consistency in everyday life, by producing a unified community where people feel safe and at peace. It is a representation of the American Dream and a neat form of art. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Music as a form of personal communication is not always appreciated, but many people have been captivated when they see the beauty of the craft. It is stuff people want. It touches the spot. For example, the singer Aaliyah, her music wanted publishing, it contains essence. People pay money for it. She went on to compose many tunes including We Need a Resolution and What If, which were ground breaking tunes that communicated information about relationship, political and personal, and it allowed people do discover that Rhythm and Blues had much more appear than some originally thought. Not only was she singing about a lover who had left her, but her ballads talked about the experience of people who are just not communicating in politics and how if Republicans did some of the things Democrats did, it would not be tolerated. Some could say these two particular songs foreshadowed and reflect how many feel about the current government shutdown. As the “Princess of Rhythm and Blues,” Aaliyah recorded extensively in the 1990s and early 2000s. Her creativity was exceptional and inspired many musicians who developed and performed their music based on her style and image. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

Clearly, painting, photographs, architecture and music are just some of the sensitive spokespersons in the society, as well as to other societies and other historical periods. However, we find in some modern art and modern music a language which does not communicate. If most people, even intelligent ones, look at modern art without knowing the esoteric key, they can understand practically nothing. They are greeted by every kind of style—impressionism, expressionism, cubism, Harlemism abstractionism, representationalism, nonobjective painting, until Mondrian gives his message only in squares and rectangles, and Jackson Pollock, in a kind of reductio ad absurdum, spatters paint almost accidental forms on large broads and entitles the work simply the date on which it was completed. I of course imply no criticism of these artists, both of whom happen to give me pleasure. However, does it not imply something very significant about our society that talented artists can communicate only in such limited language? If you visit the Art Students League in New York, NY USA—which has perhaps the largest group of outstanding American artists as teachers and the most representative body of students—you will be surprised to find the classes in practically every studio painting in a distinctly different style, and you will have to shift emotional gears every twenty steps.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

In the Renaissance a common mortal could look at the paintings of Raphael or Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo and feel that the picture was telling one something which one could understand about life in general and one’s own inner life in particular. However, if an untutored mortal walked through the galleries on 57^th Street in New York City today and saw, let us say, exhibits by Picasso, Dali and Marin, one might well agree that something important was being communicated but one would no doubt aver that only God and the artist knew what it was. For one’s own part one would probably be bewilder, and possibly somewhat irritated. A person is to be known by one’s own style, that is, by the unique pattern which gives underlying unity and distinctiveness to one’s activities. The same is partly true about a culture. However, when we ask what is the style of our day, we find that there is no style which can be called modern. The one thing these many modern different movements in art have in common, beginning with the great work of Cezanne and Van Gogh, is that they all are trying desperately to break through the hypocrisy and sentimentality of nineteenth-century art. Consciously or unconsciously, the seek to speak in their painting from some solid reality in the self experiencing the World. However, beyond this desperate search for honesty, which is much like that of Freud and Ibsen in their respective fields, there is only a potpourri of styles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

Making all necessary qualifications for the fact the time has not yet done its sifting for the modern period as it has, say, for the Renaissance, it is still true tat this potpourri is a revealing picture of the disunity of our times. The pictures that are discordant and empty, as are so many in modern art, are thus honest portrayals of the condition of our time. It is as though every genuine artist were frantically trying different languages to see which one would communicate the music of form and color to one’s fellow beings, but there is no common language. We find a giant like Picasso shifting in his own lifetime from style to style, partly as a reflection of the shifting character of the last four decades in Western society, and partly like a mortal dialing a ship’s radio on the ocean, trying to find the wave length on which one can talk to one’s follow mortals. However, the artists, and the rest of us too, remain spiritually isolated and at sea, and so we cover up our loneliness by chattering with other people about the things we do have language for—the World series, business affairs, the latest news reports. Our deeper emotional experiences are pushed further away, and we tend, thus, to become emptier and lonelier. The attitude inherent in consumerism is that of swallowing the whole World. The consumer is the eternal suckling crying for the bottle. This is obvious in pathological phenomena, such as alcoholism and drug addiction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

We apparently single out alcoholism and drug addiction because their effects interfere with the addicted person’s social obligations. Compulsive smoking is not thus censured because, while not less of an addiction, it does not interfere with the smokers’ social functions, but possibly only with their life spans. Further attention is given to the many forms of everyday consumerism later on. I might only remark here that as far as leisure time is concerned, automobiles, television, travel, and pleasures of the flesh are the main objects of present-day consumerism, and while we speak of them as leisure-time activities, we would do better to call them leisure-time passivities. To sum up, to consume is one form of having, and perhaps the most important one for today’s affluent industrial societies. Consuming has ambiguous qualities: It relieves anxiety, because what one has cannot be taken away; but it also requires one to consume ever more, because previous consumption soon loses its satisfactory character. Modern consumers may identify themselves by the formula: I am = what I have and what I consume. Because the society we live in is devoted to acquiring property and making a profit, we rarely see any evidence of the being mode of existence and most people see the having mode as natural mode of existence, even the only acceptable way of life. All of which makes it especially difficult for people to comprehend the nature of the being mode, and even to understand that having is only one possible orientation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

Nevertheless, these two concepts, being and having, are rooted in human experience. Neither one should be, or can be, examined in an abstract, purely cerebral way; both are reflected in our daily life and must be dealt with concretely. The following simple examples of how having and being are demonstrated in everyday life may help people to understand these two alternative modes of existence. No social or political arrangement can do more than further or hinder the realization of certain values and ideals. The ideas of the Judaeo-Christian tradition cannot possibly become realities in a materialistic civilization whose structure is centered around production, consumption and success on the market. On the other hand, no society could fulfill the goal of brotherliness, justice and individualism unless its ideas are capable of filling the hearts of mortals with a new spirit. We do not need new ideals or new spiritual goals. The great teachers of the human race have postulated the norms for sane living. To be sure, they have spoken in different languages, have emphasized different aspects and have had different views on certain subjects. However, altogether, these differences were small; the fact that the great religions and ethical systems have so often fought against each other, and emphasized their mutual differences rather than their basic similarities, was due to the influence of those who built churches, hierarchies, political organization upon the simple foundations of truth laid down by the mortals of the spirit. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

Since the human race made the decisive turn away from rootedness in nature and animal existence, to find a new home in conscience and brotherly solidarity, since it conceived first the idea of the unity of the human race and its destiny to become fully born—the ideas and ideals have been the same. In every center of culture, and largely without any mutual influence, the same insights were discovered, the same ideals were preached. We, today, who have easy access to all these ideas, who are still the immediate heirs to the great humanistic teachings, we are not in need of new knowledge of how to live sanely—but in bitter need of taking seriously what we believe, what we preach and teach. The revolution of our hearts does not require new wisdom—but new seriousness and dedication. The task of impressing on people the guiding ideals and norms of our civilization is, first of all, that of education. However, how woefully inadequate is our educational system for this task. Its aim is primarily to give the individual the knowledge one needs in order to function in an industrialized civilization in the age of information, and to form one’s character into the mold which is needed: ambitious and competitive, yet cooperative within certain limits; respectful of authority, yet desirably independent, as some report cards have it; friendly, yet not deeply attached to anybody or anything. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

Our high schools and colleges continue with the task of providing their students with the knowledge they must have to fulfill their practical tasks in life, and with the character traits wanted on the personality market. Very little, indeed, do they succeed in imbuing them with the faculty of critical thought, or with character traits which correspond to the professed ideas of our civilization. Surely there is no need to elaborate on this point, and to repeat a criticism which has been made so competently by Robert Hutchins and others. There is only one point I want to emphasize where: the necessity of doing away with the harmful separation between theoretical and practical knowledge. This very separation is part of the alienation of work and thought. It tends to separate theory from practice, and to make it more difficult, rather than easier, for the individual to participate meaningfully in the work one is doing. If work is to become an activity based on one’s knowledge and on the understanding of what one is doing, then indeed there must be a drastic change in our method of education, in the sense that from the very beginning theoretical instruction and practical work should be secondary to theoretical instruction; for people beyond school age, it should be the reverse; but at no age of development would the two sphere be separated from each other. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

No youngster should graduate from school unless one has learned some kind of handicraft in a satisfactory and meaningful manner; no primary education would be considered finished before the student has a grasp of the fundamental technical process of our industry. Certainly high school ought to combine practical work of a handicraft and of modern industrial techniques with theoretical instruction. The fact that we aim primarily at the usefulness of our citizens for the purposes of the social machine, and not at their human development is apparent in the fact that we consider education necessary only up to the age of fourteen, eighteen, or at most, the early twenties. Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age? Actually, as Alvin Johnson has pointed out so convincingly, the age between six and eighteen is not by far as suitable for leaning as is generally assumed. It is, of course, the best age to learn the three R’s, and languages, but undoubtedly the understanding of history, philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, etcetera, is limited at this early age, and in fact, even around twenty, at which age these subjects are taught in college, is not ideal. In many instances to really understand the problems in these fields, a person must have had a great deal more experience in living than one has had at college age. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

For many people the age of thirty or forty is much more appropriate for learning—in the sense of understanding rather than of memorizing—than school or collage age, and in many instances the general interest is also greater at the later age than at the stormy period of youth. It is around this age also at which a person should be free to change one’s occupation completely, and hence to have a chance to study again, the same chance which today we permit only to youngsters. A sane society must provide possibilities for adult education, must as it provides today for the schooling of children. This principle find expression today in the increasing number of adult-education courses, but all these private arrangements encompass only a small segment of the population, and the principle needs to be applied to the population as a whole. Schooling, be it transmission of knowledge or formation of character, it only one part, and perhaps not the most important part of education; using education here in its literal and most fundamental sense of e-ducere = to being out, that which is within mortals. Even if mortals have knowledge, even if one performs one’s work well, if one is decent, honest, and has no worries with regard to one’s material needs—one is not and cannot be satisfied. “I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end,” reports Moroni 8.3. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13