Oh, if only I could give you some peace of mind. I wish I could. Please, please wait for her to call you, and do not think about her anymore. A final consequence and evidence of the loss of our conviction of the worth and dignity of the person is that we have lost the sense of the tragic significance of human life. For the sense of tragedy is simply the other side of one’s belief in the importance of the human individual. Tragedy implies a profound respect for the human being and a devotion to one’s rights and destiny—otherwise it just does not matter whether Orestes or Lear or you or I fall or stand in our struggles. Arthur Miller, in the preface to his play The Death of a Salesman, makes some telling comments on the lack of tragedy in our day. The tragic character, he writes, is one “who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing—his sense of personal dignity.” And “the tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself.” These conditions obtained in the periods in Western history when great tragedy was written. One has only to look at fifth-century Greece, when Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote the mighty tragedies of Oedipus, Agamemnon and Orestes, or at Elizabethan England when Shakespeare gave us Lear and Hamlet and Macbeth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

However, in our age of emptiness, tragedies are relative and rare. Or if they are written, the tragic aspect is the very fact that human life is so empty, as in Eugene O’Neill’s drama, The Iceman Cometh. This play is set in a saloon, and its dramatis personae—alcoholics, comfort men and women, and, as the chief character, a mortal who in the course of the play goes psychotic—can dimly recall the periods in their lives when they did believe in something. It is this echo of human dignity in a great void of emptiness that gives this drama the power to elicit the emotions of pity and terror of classical tragedy. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which we have mentioned earlier, is itself one of the few real tragedies about the common people—neither alcoholics nor psychotics—who make up the social situation in this country out of which most of us have sprung. (In the movie version of this drama, Willie Loman, the salesman, is unfortunately made to look pathetic—those who saw only the movie may have to imagine Willie in a broader context to appreciate his real tragic import.) He was a man who took seriously the teachings of his society, that success should attend hard, energetic work, that economic progress is a reality and that if one has the right contacts achievements and salvation should follow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

It is easy enough from our later perspective to see through Willie’s illusions, and to poke fun at his unsound go-getter values. However, that is not the point.  The one thing that matters is that Willie believed; he took seriously his own existence and what he had been taught he could rightly expect from life. “I don’t say he is a great man,” says his wide in describing Willie’s disintegration to their sons, “but he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.” The tragic fact is not that Willie is a man of the grandeur of Lear or the inward richness of Hamlet; “he’s only a little boat looking for a harbor,” as his wife also says. However, it is the tragedy of a historical period—if one multiplies Willie by the hundreds of thousands of fathers and brothers who also believed what they were taught but found in the changing times that it did not work, one has enough to shake one with pity and fear as in the tragedies of old. “He never knew who he was,” and he was one who took seriously his right to know. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

“The flaw, or crack in the tragic character,” Miller writes, “I really nothing—and need be nothing—but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are ‘flawless.’ Most of us are in that category.” Miller goes on to point out that the quality in a tragedy which shakes us “derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this World. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was.” Let no one assume we are advocating a pessimistic view we mourn the loss of the tragic sense. On the contrary, as Miller also notes, “Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinion of the human animal.” For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously mortal’s freedom and one’s need to realize oneself; it demonstrates our belief in the indestructible will of mortals to achieve one’s humanity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

The knowledge of human nature and the insights into mortal’s unconscious conflicts which are disclosed in psychotherapy give new ground for believing in the tragic aspects of human life. The psychotherapist, privileged to be an intimate witness to some persons’ inner wrestling and their often grave and bitter struggles with themselves and with external forces which challenge their dignity, gains a new respect for these persons and a new realization of the potential dignity of the human being. Countless times a week, furthermore, one receives proof in one’s consulting work that when mortals at last accept the fact that they cannot successfully lie to themselves, and at last learn to take themselves seriously, they discover previously unknown and often remarkable recuperative powers within themselves. The picture of the roots of the malady of our time given in this essay adds up to a bleak diagnosis. However, it does not necessarily imply a bleak prognosis. For the beneficial side is that we have no choice but to move ahead. We are like people part way through psychoanalysis whose defenses and illusions are broken through, and their only choice is to push on to something better. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

We—and by we I mean everyone, however old or young, who is aware of the historical situation in which we live—are not the lost generation of the 1920’s. The term lost, when applied to members of that period of adolescent rebellion following the first World War, meant that one was temporarily away from home, and could go back again whenever one became too frightened at being on one’s own. However, we are, rather, the generation which cannot turn back. We in the middle of the twentieth century are like pilots in the transatlantic flight who have passed the point of no return, who do not have fuel enough to go back but must push on regardless of storms or other dangers. What, then, is the task before us? The implications are clear in the above analysis: we must rediscover the sources of strength and integrity within ourselves. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the discovery and affirmation of values in ourselves and in our society which will serve as the core of unity. However, no values are effective, in a person or a society, except as there exists in the person the prior capacity to do the valuing, that is, the capacity actively to choose and affirm the values by which one lives. This the individual must do, and in this way one will help lay the groundwork for the new constructive society which will eventually come out of this disturbed times, as the Renaissance came out of the disintegration of the Middles Ages. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Those who are concerned with making the World more healthy had best start with themselves. We could go father and point out that finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow mortals. It is said that when the fisher people in the sea around Norway see their boat heading for a maelstrom, one reaches ahead to try to throw an oar into the boiling whirlpool; if one can do so, the maelstrom quiets down, and one and one’s boat go safely though. Just so, one person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him or her. This is what our society needs—not new ideas and inventions, important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen and superwomen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves. It is our task to find the sources of this inner strength. Students in the having mode of existence will listen to a lecture, hearing the words and understanding their logical structure and their meaning and, as best they can, will write down every word in their loose-leaf notebooks—so that, later on, they can memorize their notes and this pass an examination. However, the content does not become part of their own individual system of thought, enriching and widening it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Instead, with the information being consumed, they transform the words they hear into fixed clusters of thought, or whole theories, which they store up. The students and the content of the lectures remain strangers to each other, expect that each student has become the owner of a collection of statements made by somebody else (who has either created them or taken them over from another source). Students in the having mode have but one aim: to hold onto what they learned, either by entrusting it firmly to their memories or by carefully guarding their notes. They do not have to produce or create something new. In fact, the having type of individual feel rather disturbed by new thoughts or ideas about a subject, because the new puts into question the fixed sum of information they have. Indeed, to one for whom having is the main form of relatedness to the World, ideas that cannot easily be pinned down (or penned down) are frightening—like everything else that grows and changes, and thus is not controllable. The process of learning has an entirely different quality for students in the being mode of relatedness to the World. To being with, they do not go to the course lectures, even to the first one in a course, as tabulae rasae. They have thought beforehand about the problems the lectures will be dealing with and have in mind certain questions and problems of their own. They have been occupied with the topic and it interests them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

When people are interest and eager to learn, instead of being passive receptacles of words and idea, they listen, they hear, and most important, they receive and they respond in an active, productive way. New questions, new ideas, new perspectives arise in their minds. Their listening is an alive process. They listen with interest, hear what the lecturer says, and spontaneously come to life in response to what they receive. They do not simply acquire knowledge that they can take home and memorize. Each student has been affected and has changed: each is different after the lecture than he or she was before it. Of course, this mode of learning can prevail only if the lectures offers stimulating material. Empty talk cannot be responded to in the being mode, and in such circumstances, students in the being mode find it best not to listen at all, but to concentrate on their own thought processes. To undertake this venture of becoming aware of ourselves, and to discover the sources of inner strength and security which are the rewards of such a venture, let us start at the beginning by asking, What is this person, this sense of selfhood we seek? #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

We want to experience ourselves as an identity who is separated from our parents and can stand against them if need be. This remarkable emergence is the birth of the human creature into a person.  This consciousness of the self, this capacity to see one’s self as though from the outside, is the distinctive characteristic of mortals. Our consciousness of ourselves is the source of our highest qualities. It underlies our ability to distinguish between I and the World. It gives us the capacity to keep time, which is simply the ability to stand outside the present and to imagine oneself back in yesterday or ahead in the day after tomorrow. Thus human beings can learn from the past and plan for the future. And thus mortals are the historical mammal in that one can stand outside and look at one’s history; and thereby one can influence one’s own development as a person, and to a minor extent one can influence the march of history in one’s nation and society as a whole. The capacity for consciousness of self also underlies mortal’s ability to use symbols, which is a way of disengaging something from what it is, such as the two sounds which make up the word “table,” and agreeing that these sounds will stand for a whole class of things. Thus mortals can think in abstractions like “beauty,” “reason,” and “goodness.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

This capacity for consciousness of ourselves gives us the ability to see ourselves as others see us and to have empathy with others. It underlies our remarkable capacity to transport ourselves into someone else’s parlor where we will be in reality next week, and then in imagination to think and plan how we will act. And it enables us to imagine ourselves in someone else’s place, and to ask how we would feel and what we would do if we were this other person. No matter how poorly we use or fail to use or even abuse these capacities, they are the rudiments of our ability to begin to love our neighbor, to have ethical sensitivity, so see truth, to create beauty, to devote ourselves to ideals, and to die for them if need be. To fulfill these potentialities is to be a person. That is what is meant when it is stated in the Hebrew-Christian religious tradition tat mortals are created in the image of God. However, these gifts come only at a high price, the price of anxiety and inward crises. The birth of the self is so simple and easy matter. For the child now faces the frightful prospect of being out on one’s own, alone, and without the full protection of the decisions of one’s parents. It is no wonder that when one begins to feel oneself an identity in one’s own right, one may feel terribly powerless in comparison with the great and strong adults around one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

The healthy child, who is loved and supported but not coddled by one’s parents, will proceed in one’s development despite this anxiety and the crises that face him or her. And there may be no particular external signs of trauma or special rebelliousness. However, when one’s parents consciously or unconsciously exploit one from their own ends or pleasure, or hate or reject one, so that one cannot be sure of minimal support when one tries out one’s new independence, the child will cling to the parents and will use one’s capacity for independence only in the forms of negativity and stubbornness. If, when one first begins tentative to say “No,” one’s parents beat one down rather than love and encourage one, one thereafter will say “No” not as a form of true independent strength but as a mere rebellion. Of if, as in the majority of cases in the present day, the parents themselves are anxious and bewildered in the tumultuous seas of the changing times, unsure of themselves and beset by self-doubts, their anxiety will carry over and lead the child to feel that one lives in a World in which it is dangerous to venture into becoming one’s self. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

This brief sketch is schematic, to be sure, and it is meant to give us as adults a kind of retrospective picture in the light of which we can better understand how one fails to achieve selfhood. Most of the data for these conflicts of childhood come from adults who are struggling, in dreams, memories or in present-day relations, to overcome what in their past lives originally blocked them in becoming fully born as persons. Almost every adult is, in greater or lesser degree, still struggling on the long journey to achieve selfhood on the basis of the patterns which were set in one’s early experiences in the family. Nor do we for a moment over look the fact that selfhood is always born in a social context. Genetically, Auden is quite right: for the ego is a dream till a neighbor’s need by name create it. Or, as we put it above, the self is always born and grows in interpersonal relationships. However, no ego moves on into responsible selfhood if it remains chiefly the reflection of the social context around it. It our particular World in which conformity is the great destroyer of selfhood—in our society in which fitting the pattern tends to be accepted as the norm, and being well liked is the alleged ticket to salvation—what needs to be emphasized is not only the admitted fact that we are to some extent created by each other but also our capacity to experience, and create, ourselves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Humans first emerged from the animal World as a freak of nature. Having lost most of the instinctive equipment which regulates the animal’s activities, one was more helpless, less well equipped for the fight for survival, than most beings. Yet mortals had developed a capacity for thought, imagination, and self-awareness, which was the basis for transforming nature and oneself. For many thousands of generations mortals lived by food gathering and hunting. One was still tied to nature, and afraid of being cast out from her. One identified oneself with other terrestrial beings and worshipped these representatives of nature as one’s gods. After a long period of slow development, mortal began to cultivate the soil, to create a new social and religious order based on agriculture and animal husbandry. During this period one worshipped goddesses as the bearers of natural fertility, experiences oneself as the child dependent on the fertility of the Earth, on the life-giving productivity of mother. At a time some four thousand years ago, a decisive turn in mortal’s history took place. One took a new step in the long-drawn-out process of one’s emergence from nature. Mortals severed ties with nature and with Mother, and set oneself a new goal, that of being fully born, of being fully awake of being fully human; of being free. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

 Reason and conscience became the principles which were to guide one; one’s aim was society bound by the bonds of humanly love, justice and truth, a new and truly human home to take the place of the irretrievably lost home in nature.  We have inherited a plentiful amount of physical wealth—but almost nothing of those values, and the moths and symbols from which they come, which are the basis for responsible choice. What did we do when we unchained this Earth from its Sun? There is a disorder of the will and not of the motor apparatus, and this indicates that the catatonic, in one’s pathological World, is caught in the same inner deadlock as we are in our World of reality. The catatonic’s problem hinges on values and will, and one’s immobility is one expression of the contradiction one experiences. It is now clear that we must take into account what the environment does to an organism not only before but after it responds. Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. I believe that the sequence and timing of our actions over years can help us to see one united and compressive work and not just a series of independent and discrete initiatives. God has revealed a pattern of society progress for individuals and families through ordinances, teaching, programs, and activities. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

I pray that we can recognize the Lord’s work as one great Worldwide work that is becoming ever more home centered. I know and testify that the Lord is revealing and will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God. I promise that increased perspective, purpose, and power will be evident in our learning and living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ as we strive to gather together in one al things in Christ—even in him. All opportunities and blessings of eternal consequence originate in, are possible and have purpose because of, and endure through the Lord Jesus Christ. And in him we find the assurance of peace in this World, and eternal life in the World to some. The holy is first of all experiences as present. It I here and now, and this means it encounters us in a thing, in a person, in an event. Faith sees in a concrete piece of reality the ultimate ground and meaning of all reality. No piece of reality is excluded from the possibility of becoming a bearer of the holy; and almost every kind of reality has actually been considered as holy by acts of faith in groups and individuals. Faith in God produces awe, fascination, and adoration. The assertion that life has sacred character is meaningful for possessing faith. The purpose of God’s plan is to give his children the opportunity to choose eternal life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16