I have guests here! Where exactly did you come from? It is once in a blue moon a boat ties up at my dock. However, you are most welcome. We are very private here, you understand, I cannot invite you to stay. If a person’s freedom were entirely and literally taken away, what would happen to the individual? One evening a king of a far land was standing at his window, vaguely listening to some music drifting down the corridor from the reception room in the other wing of the palace. The king was wearied from the diplomatic reception he had just attended, and he looked out of the window pondering about the ways of the World in general and nothing in particular. Hos eye feel upon a man in the square below—apparently an average man, walking to the corner to take the tram home, who had taken that same route five nights a week for many years. The king followed this man in his imagination—pictured him arriving home, perfunctorily kissing his wife, eating his late meal, inquiring whether everything was right with the children, reading the paper, going to bed, perhaps engaging in the love act with his wife or perhaps not, sleeping, and getting u and going off to work again the next day. And a sudden curiosity seized the king which for a moment banished his fatigue, “I wonder what would happen if a man were kept in a cage, like the animals at the zoo?” #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

So the next day the king called in a psychologist, told him of his idea, and invited him to observe the experiment. Then the king caused a cage to be brought from the zoo, and the average man was brought and placed therein. At first the man was simply bewildered, and he kept saying to the psychologist who stood outside the cage, “I have to catch the tram, I have to get to work, look what time it is, I will be late for work!” However, later on in the afternoon the man began soberly to realize what was up, and then he protested vehemently, “The king cannot do this to me! It is unjust, and against the laws.” His voice was strong, and his eyes full of anger. During the rest of the week the man continued his vehement protests. When the king would walk by the cage, as he did every day, the man made his protests directly to the monarch. However, the king would answer, “Look here, you get plenty of food, you have a good bed, and you do not have to work. We take good care of you—so why are you objecting?” Then after some days the man’s protests lessened and then ceased. He was silent in his cage, refusing generally to talk, but the psychologist could see hatred glowing like a deep fire in his eyes. However, after several weeks the psychologist noticed that more and more it now seemed as if the man were pausing a moment after the king’s daily reminder to him that he was being taken good care of—for a second the hatred was postponed from returning to his eyes—as though he were asking himself what the king said were possibly true? #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

And after a few weeks more, the man began to discuss with the psychologist how it was a useful thing if a mortal were given food and shelter, and that mortal has to live by one’s fate in any case and the part of wisdom was to accept one’s date. So when a group of professors and graduate student came in one day to observe the man in the cage, he was friendly toward them and explained to them that he had chosen this way of life, that there are great values in security and being taken care of, that they would of course see how sensible his course was, and so on. “How strange!” thought the psychologist, and how pathetic—why is it he struggles so hard to get them to approve of his way of life? In the succeeding days when the would walk through the courtyard, the mortal would fawn upon him from being the bars in his cage and thank him for the food and shelter. However, when the king was not in the yard and the man was not aware that the psychologist was present, his expression was quite different—sullen and morose. When his food was handed to him through the bars by the keeper, the man would often drop the dishes or dump over the water and then be embarrassed because of his stupidity and clumsiness. His conversation because increasingly one-tracked: and instead of the involved philosophical theories about the value of being taken care of, he had gotten down to simple sentences like “It is fate,” which he would say over and over again, or just mumble to himself, “It is.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

It was hard to say just when the last phase set in. However, the psychologist became aware that the mortal’s face seemed to have no particular expression: his smile was no longer fawning, but simply empty and meaningless, like the grimace a baby makes when there is gas on its stomach. The man ate his good, and exchanged a few sentences with the psychologist from time to time; his eyes were distant and vague, and though he looked at the psychologist, it seemed that he never really saw him. And not the man, in his destiny conversations, never used the word “I” any more. He had accepted the cage. He had no anger, no hate, no rationalization. However, he was not insane. That night the psychologist sat in his parlor trying to write a concluding report. However, it was very difficult for him to summon up works, for he felt within himself a great emptiness. He kept trying to reassure himself with the words, “They say that nothing is ever lost, that matter is merely changed to energy and back again.” However, he could not help feeling something had been lost, something had been taken out of the Universe in the experiment, and there was left only a void. Hatred surges up in a person when one realizes on is captive. The fact that such a great amount of hatred is generated when people have to give up their freedom proves how essential a value freedom is for them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

Often the person in actual life who has had to surrender much of one’s freedom, usually in one’s childhood when one can do nothing about, and to give up some of one’s right and room to exist as a human being, may seem on the surface to have accepted the situation and adjusted to the surrender. However, we do not need to penetrate far under the surface to discover that something else has come in to fill the vacuum—namely hatred and resentment of those who have forced the individual to give up his or her freedom. And usually this smoldering hatred is in direct proportion to the degree in which the person’s right to exist as a human being has been taken away from one. To be sure that hatred is repressed; for the person enslaved is not permitted to express hating thoughts toward the masters; but it is there nonetheless, and may come out, the cases of children for example, in symptoms like the child’s failing in school, or excessive physical sickness, or bed-wetting prolonged beyond the early years, and so on. Indeed it is not possible for a human being to give up one’s freedom without something coming in to restore the inner balance—something arising from inner freedom when one’s outer freedom is denied—and this something is hatred for one’s conqueror. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

Hating or resenting is often the person’s only way from committing psychological or spiritual suicide. It has the function of preserving some dignity, some feeling of one’s own identity, as though the person—or persons, in the case of nations—were to be saying silently to their conquerors, “You have conquered me, but I reserve the right to hate you.” In cases of severe neurotics or psychotics, it often exceedingly clear that the person, driven to the wall by earlier unfortunate conditions, has kept in one’s hatred an inner citadel, a last vestige of dignity and pride. Such contempt for the conquerors keeps the person still an identity in one’s own right even though outward conditions deny one the essential rights of the human being. In cases in therapy, furthermore, where a person who has been drastically curtailed in the exercise of one’s powers as a human being is unable, after a period of time, to feel or bring out one’s hatred and resentment, prognosis is less good. Just at the capacity of the little child to stand over against one’s parents was essential to one’s being born as a free person, so the harmed person’s capacity eventually to hate of feel anger is a mark of one’s inner potentialities for standing against one’s oppressors. Another proof of the fact that s people surrender their freedom they must hate is seen in fact that totalitarian governments must provide for their people some object for the hatred which is generated by the government’s having take away their freedom. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

As shown so vividly in the novel 1984, if a government sets out to take away people’s freedom, it must siphon off their hatred and direct it towards outside groups—otherwise the people would revolt, or go into collective psychosis, or become psychologically dead and inert, no good as people or as a fighting force. One way to deal with intense anger, pain, suffering, and hatred is to drown it out by focusing on something that in individual feels will help their life to progress, while they are enduring the situation. Many people turn to religion, psychology, writing, or some other hobby that will increase their understanding and tolerance. It might also be helpful to study human beings and human behavior to see that many people in society are fractured and are not really who they are they are. As long as one is becoming educated or learning a skill, they are growing, and that is surely productive. The tendency to grow in terms of one’s own nature is common to all living beings. Hence we resist any attempt to prevent our growing in the ways determined by our structure. In order to break this resistance, whether it is conscious or not, physical or mental force is necessary. Inanimate objects resist control of their physical composition in various degrees through the energy inherent in their atomic and molecular structures. However, they do not fight against being used. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

The use of heteronomous force with living beings (for instance, the force that tends to bend us in directions contrary to our given structure and that is detrimental to our growth) arouses resistance. This resistance can take all forms, from overt, effective, direct, active resistance to indirect, ineffectual, and, very often, unconscious resistance. We cannot regress, we can only move forward. Only the achievement of inner independence is conducive to freedom and ends the need for fruitless rebellion. Human beings have a specific structure—like any other species—and can grow only in terms of this structure. Freedom does not mean freedom from all guiding principles. It means the freedom to grow according to the laws of the structure of human existence (autonomous restrictions). It means obedience to the laws that govern optimal human development. Any authority that future this goal is rational authority when this furtherance is achieved by way of by helping to mobilize one’s activity, critical thinking, and faith in life. It is irrational authority when it imposes on one’s heteronomous norms that serve the purpose of authority, but not the purposes of the individual’s specific structure. The having mode of existence, the attitude centered on property and profit, necessarily produce the desire—indeed the need—for power. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

To control other living human beings we need to use power to break their resistance. To maintain control over private property we need to use power to protect it from those would take it from us because they, like us, can never have enough. We cannot always sense the will and intent of other people, no matter how charming they may seem to be. We cannot predict the future and it is best to get to know a person. Will and intentionality are intimately bound up with the future. Both meanings—simple future, something will happen; and personal resolve, I will make it happen—are present in varying degrees in each statement of intentionality. “I will come to New York in September” may have very little resolve and be almost entirely a simple statement of the future. However, “I will get married” or “I will write a poem” are much less a comment on the future and mostly a statement of resolve. The future does not consist of simply a state of time which is going to occur, but contains that the element, “I will make it so.” Power is potentiality, and potentiality points toward the future: it is something to be realized. The future is the tense in which we promise ourselves, we give a promissory note, we put ourselves in line. Humans are the only beings that can make promises, and this gives us the ability to put ourselves in the future. We are saying, “Let it be so.”  #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

The community of faith constitutes itself through ritual symbol and interprets itself in mythical symbols. The hopelessness of many patients, which may be expressed in depression, despair, feelings of “I can’t,” and related helplessness, can be usefully seen, from one point of view, as the inability to see or construct a future. Love is an implication of faith, namely, we are putting hope and trust into the future. And to digress for a moment, after studying sociology, it becomes clear why so many people are hard on law enforcement, whether it is fair or not. Nonetheless, people, especially those who have been victims of crimes realize if this person, as they are usually guilty of many crimes, had been caught, then the individual and their families would have never been a victim of a crime. Some people really just seem to slip through the system no matter how hard the system is working to contain them. Then, there is another side of it, people feel like if they were doing the things that these criminally oriented people were doing that they would have been caught, which may or may not be true. It also could be that some people have a higher sense of righteousness and their conscience would not allow them to engage in certain behaviors, but it is also clear that the threshold of punishment is higher for some for whatever reasons. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

However, just keep in mind people are people no matter what they look like and take things slowly. It may not be a good idea to be so eager to meet new people. Enjoy the friends you have, make the best of life. Sometimes it is very hard to shake a person, even after just hanging out with the person once, and you do not want them feeling like they have a lifetime pass to access your life. It can be hard to escape from people, much more difficult than one can imagine. Thank God for the battle verses in the Bible. We go into the unknown every day of our lives, outwardly and inwardly in the unseen life of the spirit, which is often by far the sternest battlefield for our souls. Either way, the Lord your God goes before you. He shall fight for you. One of the most powerful ways to pray is to find a promise in the Scripture and remind God what he said about you. If you present your case before God, the good news is that Jesus is called our Advocate. Another word for advocate is lawyer. In the courtroom of Heaven, imagine Jesus is our lawyer. God is the judge. Do not tell God why you cannot be successful. Present your cause based on God’s Word and you cannot lose. He will be faithful and true to his Word. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11