A tyrant will always find a pretext for his or her tyranny.  Europe, the youngest child of humanity, culturally speaking, developed such wealth and such weapons that it became the master of the rest of the World for several hundred years. However, again, in the middle of the twentieth century, a drastic change is occurring, a change as great as ever occurred in the past. The new techniques replace the use of the physical energy of animals and mortals by that of steam, oil and electricity; they create means of communication which transform the Earth into the size of one continent, and the human race into one society where the fate of one group is the fate of all; they create marvels of devices which permit the best of art, literature and music to be brought to every member of society; they create productive forces which will permit everybody to have a dignified material existence, and reduces work to such dimension that it will fill only a fraction of the day. Yet today, when mortals seem to have reached the beginning of a new, richer, happier human era, their existence and that of the generations to follow is more threatened then ever. How is this possible? “Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every mortal to become a law unto oneself; it invites anarchy,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Mortals had won their freedom from clerical and secular authorities, they stood alone with their reason and their conscience as one’s only judges, but they were afraid of the newly won freedom; mortals had achieved freedom to—to be oneself, to be productive, to be fully awake. Thus they tried to escape from freedom. One’s  very achievement, the mastery over nature, opened up the avenues for one’s escape. “Most things worth doing in the World had been declared impossible before they were done,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandies. However, in building the new industrial machine, mortals become so absorbed in the new task that it became the paramount goal of one’s life. One’s energies, which once were devoted to the search for God and salvation, were now directed toward the domination of nature and ever-increasing material comfort. People ceased to use production as a means for a better life, but hypostatized it instead to an end in itself, and end to which life was subordinated. In this process of an ever-increasing division of labor, ever-increasing mechanization of work, and an ever-increasing size of social agglomerations, mortals themselves became part of the machines, rather than its master. People experiences themselves as a commodity, as an investment; their aim became to be a success, that is, to sell oneself as profitably as possible on the market. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The valued of a mortal became possessed in one’s stability, not in human qualities of love, reason, or in one’s artistic capacities. Happiness became identical with consumption of newer and better commodities, the drinking in of music, screen plays, fun, pleasures of the flesh, cranberry juice, and medications of various kinds. Not having a sense of self expect the one which conformity with the majority can give, one is insecure, anxious, depending on approval. One is alienated from oneself, worships the product of one’s own hands, the leaders of one’s own making, as if they were above him or her, rather than made by the individual. People are in a sense back where they were before the great human evolution began in the second millennium B.C. Society is incapable to love and to use their reason, to make decisions, in fact incapable to appreciate life and thus ready and even willing to destroy everything. “Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. People feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free people from the bondage of irrational fears,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Modern society started out with the vision as its ideal the harmony between the individual and social needs, the end of the conflict between human nature and the social order. One believed one would arrive at this goal in two ways; by the increased productive techniques which permitted feeding everybody satisfactorily, and by a rational, objective picture of mortals and of their real needs. Putting it differently, the aim of the efforts of modern mortals is to create a sane society. More specifically, this means a society whose members have developed their reason to that point of objectivity which permits them to see themselves, others, nature, in their true reality, and not distorted by infantile omniscience or paranoid hate. It means a society, whose members have developed to a point of independence where they know the differences between good and evil, where they make their own choices, where they have convictions rather than opinions, faith rather than superstitions or nebulous hopes. It means a society whose members have developed the capacity to love their children, their neighbors, all mortal, themselves, all of nature; who can feel one with all, yet retain their sense of individuality and integrity; who transcend nature by creating, not by destroying. “The most important political office is that of the private citizen,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Will the majority be converted to sanity—or will it use the greatest discoveries of human reason for its own purposes of unreason and insanity? Will we be able to create a vision of the good, sane life, which will stir the life forces of those afraid of marching forward? This time, humankind is at one crossroad where the wrong step could be the last step. The United States of America and her allies are wealthier; their standard of living is higher, their interest in comfort and pleasure is greater than that of their rivals. The Western World is free to express ideas critical of the existing system. Hence, the Western World carries within itself the possibility for peaceful progressive transformation, and the life of the individual is free from the terror of imprisonment, torture or death. Indeed, life in the Western World has been, and is even now sometimes as rich and joyous as it has ever been anywhere in human history. However, we still need to acknowledge these blessings are part of our free Capitalistic system. Our system is based on industrialization, technology, and information, our goal is ever-increasing economic efficient and wealth. The system is ran by a managerial class, and by professional politicians. Our society is thoroughly materialistic in its outlook with an essence of Christian ideology. We are all organized in a centralized system, large factories and corporations, political mass parties. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Everybody is a cog in the machine, and has to function smoothly. This is achieved by a method of psychological conditioning, mass suggestion, monetary rewards. However, as Justice Louis D. Brandies and Samuel D. Warren wrote in one of the most famous articles in American History The Right to Privacy, published in December 1980 in the Harvard Law Review, which was later echoed in the Supreme Court case of Olmstead v. United States (1928), in which he argued that the creators of the United States Constitution, as evidence of their effort “to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and sensation conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most values by civilized mortals.” A statute of limitations is a law which forbids prosecutors from charging someone with a crime that was committed more than a specified number of years ago. One of the main reasons why states have criminal statutes of limitation is to prevent delays in the filing of charges and to ensure that convictions are based on evidence (physical or eyewitness) that has not deteriorated with time. Another reason is so the government cannot act as a bounty hunter and track its citizens indefinitely. It is also illegal to does not keep a citizen under surveillance and try to entrap them indefinitely. In fact, the police can only keep someone under surveillance for three years, without court proceedings have been started, and that can only be extended an additional two years by the orders of a judge. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

These laws are to protect citizens and to keep the system from trying to manufacture criminals and make sure that tax dollars are best used to protect our country. “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk inside the insidious encroachment by people of zeal. If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectful,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Although our inhabitants are well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes which cannot be satisfied; automatons, who follow without force, who are guided without leaders, who make machines which act like mortals and produce mortals who act like machines; mortals, whose reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping mortals with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it. This alienation and automatization leads to an ever-increasing insanity. Life has no meaning, there is no joy, no faith, no reality. Everybody is happy—except that one does not feel, foes not reason, does not love. The danger of the past was that mortals became slaves. The danger of the future is that mortals may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. However, given mortal’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become Golems, they will destroy their World and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

Our danger are war and robotism. What is the alternative? To get out of the rut in which we are moving, and to take the next step in the birth and self-realization of humanity. The first condition is the abolishment of the war threat hanging over all of us now and paralyzing faith and initiative. We must take the responsibility for the life of all mortals, and develop on an international scale what all great countries have developed internally, a relative sharing of wealth and a new and more just division of economic resources. This must lead eventually to forms of international economic cooperation and planning, to forms of World government. In the economic sphere we need co-management of all who work in an enterprise, to permit their active and responsible participation. A cultural renaissance must also combine work education for the young, adult education and a new system of poplar art and secular ritual throughout the whole nation. Income must also be increased so that everybody has the material basis for a dignified life, even though we will still have economic differences and various social classes. Mortals must be restored to their supreme place in society, never a means, never a thing to be used by others or by oneself. Mortal’s used by mortal must end, and economy must become the servant for the development of mortals. Capital must serve labor, things must serve life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

No change must be brought about by force, it must be a simultaneous one in the economic, political and cultural sphere. Changes restricted to one sphere are destructive of every change. Primitive mortals were helpless before natural forces. They saw a large, bright object move across the sky. It has a profound effect upon their bodies. While it was there, they felt warm, and they could see. In its absence, the World became dark and cold. As time passed, those first human beings saw trees drop their leaves and die. Then, magically, the trees came back to life in brilliant colors and alluring smells. Finally, those trees produced an object that was good to eat. Then the trees appeared to die, only to return to give birth again and again. Try to imagine how awed early people must have been by these simple events. The first humans were becoming aware. However, they had no word-symbols to express that awareness in thought or speech. In most primitive cultures even today, people assume that they have little choice in their own destiny, because it is controlled by good and evil spirits of fate. Therefore, some modern mortals remain helpless before the social and economic forces created by oneself. Many worship the works of their own hands, bowing to the new idols, yet swearing by the name of the God who commanded them to destroy all idols. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Mortals can protect themselves from the consequences of their own madness only by creating a sane society which conforms with the needs of mortals, needs which are rooted in the very conditions of their existence. A society in which mortals relate to people lovingly, in which one is rotted in bonds of humanness and solidarity, rather than the ties of blood and soil; a society which gives people the possibility of transcending nature by creating rather than by conformity, in which a system of orientation and devotion exists without mortal’s needing to distort reality and who worship idols. Building such a society means taking it to the next level; it is the next step which means the end of humanoid history, the phase in which mortals had not become fully human. It does not mean the end of days, the completion, the state of perfect harmony in which no conflicts or problems confront mortals. On the contrary, it means mortal’s fate that one’s existence is beset by contradictions, which one has to solve without ever solving them. When one has overcome the primitive state of human sacrifice, be in it in the ritualistic form in the Aztecs, Hollywood, the fake news media, or in the secular form of way, when one has been able to regulate their relationship with nature reasonably instead of blindly, when things have truly become their servants rather than their idols, mortals will be confronted with the truly human conflicts and problems. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

People will have to become adventuresome, courageous, imaginative, capable of suffering and of joy, but their powers will be in the service of life, and not in the service of death. If it comes to pass, the new phase of human history will be a new beginning, not and end. Mortals today are confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism or Communism, but the between robotism (of both the capitalistic and the communist variety), or Humanistic Capitalism. Most facts seem to indicate that one is choosing robotism, and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. However, all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in mortal’s reason, good will and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope. However, indeed, the shadows are lengthening; the voices of insanity are becoming louder. We are in reach of achieving a state of humanity which corresponds to the vision of our great teachers; yet we are in danger of the destruction of all civilization, or of robotization. A small tribe was told thousands of years ago: “I put before you life and death, blessing and curse—and you chose life.” This is our choice too. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

However many blessings we expect from God, his infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts. In the correlation between the subject and the object of faith, God can do exceedingly great things. There is no criterion by which faith can be judged from outside the correlation of faith. However, something else can happen: The faithful can ask oneself or be asked by someone else whether the medium through which one experiences ultimate concern expresses real ultimacy. This question is the dynamic force in the history of religion, revolutionizing the sacramental type of faith and driving faith beyond in different directions. As followers of Christ, we often suffer not because we are out of God’s will but because we are in it, not because we lack faith but because we have faith. We suffer not because we need to be filled with the Spirit but because we already are. Stronger faith does not mean less suffering, but more suffering means stronger faith. Far from calling our faith into question, our afflictions result in our becoming more and more like Christ himself. Nothing is sacred except in the correlation of faith. Even the saints are saints only because the source of all holiness is transparent through. The interest of mystical faith is not to reject the concrete, sacramental ways of faith, but to go beyond them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Mystical faith is the end of a long way from the most concrete forms of faith to the point in which all concreteness disappears in the abyss of pure divinity. Mysticism is not irrational. Some of the greatest mystics in Europe and Asia were, at the same time, some of the great philosophers, outstanding in clarity, consistency, and rationality. However, they realized that the true content of faith in an ultimate concern can neither be identified with a piece of reality, as sacramental faith desire, nor be expressed in terms of a rational system. It is a matter of ecstatic experience, and one can only speak of the ultimate in a language which as the same times denies the possibility of speaking about it. This is the only way in which mystical faith can express itself. Moral conscience, the heritage of the Juaeo-Christian tradition, and intellectual conscience, the heritage of the Greek tradition, fused and brought about a flowering of human creation as mortals have hardly ever known it before. There is a place where the ultimate is present within the finite World, namely, the depth of the human soul. This depth is the point of contact between the finite and the and the infinite. In order to go into it, mortals must empty oneself of all the finite contents of one’s ordinary life; one must surrender all preliminary concerns for the sake of the ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

In adversity we usually want God to do a removing job when he wants to do an improving job. One must go beyond the pieces of reality in which sacramental faith experiences the ultimate. The ultimate is beyond this division, and one who wants to reach the ultimate must overcome this division for oneself by mediation, contemplation, and ecstasy. Faith, within this movement of the soul, is in a state of oscillation between having and not having the content of ultimate concern. It moves in degrees of approximation, in relapses and sudden fulfillment. The mystical faith does not despise or reject the sacramental faith. It goes beyond it to that which is present in every act of sacramental faith, yet hidden under the concrete objects in which it is embodies. Theologians sometimes have contrasted faith and mystical experience. They say the distance between faith and the ultimate can never be bridged. Mysticism tries to merge the mind with the content of its unconditional concern, with the ground of being and meaning. However, this contrast has only limited validity. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

The mystic is aware of the infinite distance between the infinite and the finite, and accepts a life of preliminary stages of union with the infinite, interrupted only rarely, and perhaps never, in this life by the final ecstasy. And the faithful can have faith only if one is grasped by the content of one’s ultimate concern. Like sacramentalism, mysticism is a type of faith; and there is a mystical as well as a sacramental element in every type of faith. This is true even of the humanist kind of the ontological type of faith. A consideration of this kind of faith is especially important, because humanism is often identified with unbelief and contrasted with faith. This is possible only if faith is defined as belief in the existence and actions of divine beings. However, if faith is understood as the state of being ultimately concerned about the ultimate, humanism implies faith. Humanism is the attitude which makes mortals the measure of one’s own spiritual life, in art and philosophy, in science and politics, in social relations and personal ethics. For humanism the divine is manifest in the human; the ultimate concern of mortal is mortal. All this, of course, refers to mortal in their essence: the true mortal, the mortal of the idea, not the actual mortal, nor the mortal in estrangement from one’s true nature. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

If, in this sense, the humanist declares the one’s ultimate concern is mortals, one sees mortal as the ultimate in a piece of reality or as mystical faith finds in the depth of mortal the place of the infinite. For those who seek, allow, and live for it, the dawn of faith, sometimes gradually, will come or can return. The difference is that the sacramental and mystical types transcend the limits of humanity and try to reach the ultimate itself beyond mortal and one’s World, while the humanists remains within these limits. For this reason the humanist faith is called secular, in contrast to the two types of faith which are called religious. Secular means, belonging to the ordinary process of events, not going beside it or beyond it into a sanctuary. In Latin and some derived languages one speaks of profanity in the sense of being before the doors of the temple. Profane in this sense is the same as secular. Often people say that they are secular, that they live outside the doors of the temple, and consequently that they are without faith! However, if one asks them whether they are without an ultimate concern, without something which they take as unconditionally serious, they would strongly deny this. And in denying that they are without an ultimate concern, they affirm that they are in a state of faith. They represent the humanist type of faith which itself is full of varieties; the fact that they are secular does not exclude them from the community of faith. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Attempt to be creative, even if the results are modest. Creativity can engender a spirit of gratitude for life and for what the Lord has woven into your being. If you choose wisely, it does not have to absorb a lot of time. It is an almost infinite task to describe the manifold forms in which the humanist type of faith has expressed itself and is alive in large sections of the Western World and in the Asiatic cultures. If we apply to it the distinction we have applied to the religious types of faith, the distinction between the ontological and the mortal type, we can say that the ontological type of secular faith is romantic-conservative, the moral type is progressive-utopian. The word “romantic,” in this context, points to the experience of the infinite in the finite, as it is given in nature and history. The word “conservative” in connection with romantic emphasizes the experience of the presence of the ultimate in the existing forms of nature and history. If a mortal sees the holy in the flower as it grows, in the animal as it moves, in mortals as one represents a unique individuality, in a special nation, a special culture, a special social system, one is romantic-conservative. For one the given is holy and is the content of one’s ultimate concern. The analogy of this kind of faith to the sacramental faith is obvious. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The romantic-conservative type of humanist faith is secularized sacramental faith: the divine is given here and now. All cultural and political conservatism is derived from this type of secular faith. It is faith, but it hides the dimension of the ultimate which it presupposes. Its weakness and its danger is that it may become empty. History has shown this weakness and final emptiness of all merely secular cultures. It has turned them back again and again to the religious forms of faith from which they came. All things denote there is a God. When we desire and seek it, the light will come. Being patient and obedient to God’s commandment and being open to God’s grace and healing and covenants is a faith that is demonstrated, and which God can see. Although we cannot love ourselves enough to say ourselves, Heavenly Father loves us more and know us better than we love or know ourselves. We can trust the Lord and lean not unto our own understanding. “People long for an afterlife in which there is nothing to do but delight in Heaven’s pleasures,” reports Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Can God see your faith? Are you doing anything to demonstrate your trust? The action you take does not have to be something big. It could be just a small step that activates God’s favor. However, when you take time to honor God, he is moved by your faith. Your faith is opening the door for the extraordinary. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18