You are afraid. You do not stand en garde against fear. You do not understand the danger of fear itself. We will know these answers when we find those who can tell us, those who have possessed knowledge for centuries, for however long creatures such as ourselves have walked the Earth. That knowledge was our birthright, and he deprived us. Although mass society is a political as well as a cultural phenomenon, many of its critics, among them Ortega y Gasset and T. S. Eliot, have concentrated their attack chiefly against what they regard as its vulgar values, its sameness, its threat to high culture. While one may share their concern about the danger of standardized tastes, or about the threat which mass behavior in politics or in culture poses for individual expression, there is far more to the problem than this—indeed, far more than many aristocratically inclined critics of mass society (and of democracy) want to see. For it is not only beings of sensibility who feel crushed by the sheer weight of mass society and its values. In short, what is alienating in mass society is not merely the corruption of art, or the power of the multitudes—a power often exaggerated—but more importantly, the atomization of individuals who make up the mass. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

In that society, there is a tendency for the aggregates of individuals [to be] related to one another only by way of their relation to a common authority, especially the state. That is, individuals are not directly related to one another in a variety of independent groups. A population in this condition is not insulated in any way from the ruling group, not yet from elements within itself. In time the many secondary groups, associations and publics which beings had formed in earlier age tend to lose their role as intermediaries between state (or media) and individual. This tendency was particularly notable in Nazi Germany, which set out to build an elaborate system of mass control through terror and bureaucracy but it is also apparent in our own society, despite our reputation for being a nation of joiners (the fact is that most of our citizens are not joiners). Mass society weakens or destroys traditional human groupings, thus leaving the individual at the mercy of impersonal communication, such as newspapers and radio and fake new media broadcasted on the television. In addition, the process of communication itself, presumably a two-way system, tends to become a one-way street with individuals more on the receiving or taking end than on the giving end. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

How does one talk back to a TV screen? Well, with the invention of social media and hashtags, it is now possible, so the TV could become two-way communication with a two-way street in the future. However, I doubt people want the TV watching them, as it would be a huge invasion of privacy because you did not consent to them entering your home and private life. Nonetheless, as things are now, the formation of opinion is facilitated for those who control the channels of communication—whether they be propagandists in a military dictatorship or the advertising industry or even a political party in our society; the stage is set for manipulation of tastes and opinions as obstacles to mass persuasion are removed. A manipulated mass is alienated to the extent that it is powerless to withstand these pressures. Here we can see why it is not the masses, those dumb beasts who threaten individual excellence, but a powerful elite which monopolizes the means of communication, thereby weakening primary human relations and creating obedient multitudes. However, just because they consider themselves elite and powerful, it does not negate the fact that they may be savages or are immune to prosecution. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

In fact, no one, even politicians, is above the law. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Scranton Mayor William L. Courtright, age 61, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, plead guilt on 2 July 2019 to a criminal information charging him with three felony public corruption offenses. According to United States Attorney David J. Freed, the criminal information charges Mayor William L. Courtright with engaging in a multi-year conspiracy with unidentified individuals to take bribes from vendors who did business with the City. The information also alleges that other objectives of the conspiracy were to commit the offenses of attempted extortion under color of official right and extortion through use of fear or of economic hard. The undercover investigation by the FBI revealed that the former mayor accepted cash payments from vendors doing business with the city in a pay-to-play scheme. “In this County, in this Commonwealth, in the Country—our elected officials work for us, not the only way around. Using public office for personal financial gain is a crime, plain and simple. All citizens, not just those in law enforcement, should demand that our public officials scrupulously follow the law. And when they do not, no matter how difficult the investigations may be, or how long they may take, the United States Department of Justice and our laws enforcement partners will home them to account,” reports U.S. Attorney Freed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

“Bill Courtright used the city of Scranton. He traded on his office in exchange for money and other valuable favors. He wielded his official powers for his own benefit, when he should’ve been focused on his community. The FBI will never stop seeking to bring to justice corrupt public officials who so badly betray the public trust. To that end, we and our partners at the Pennsylvania State Police and the IRS have launched a task force specifically to take on public corruption in the northeast Pennsylvania region. We’re working on behalf of the people, who expect—and deserve—honest services from all their elected officials,” reports Michael T. Harpster, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. Bill Courtright did plead guilty and faces a maximum penalty under federal law for this offense of 35 years imprisonment, and a term of supervised release following imprisonment, and a fine. Therefore, no one is above the law. Nonetheless, on every side, they [the media audience] feel themselves the object of manipulation. They see themselves as the target for ingenious methods of control, through advertising which cajoles, promises, terrorizes; through propaganda that, utilizing available techniques, guides the unwitting audience into opinions which may or may not coincide with the best interests of themselves or their affiliates; through cumulatively subtle methods of salesmanship which may simulate values common to both salesperson and client for private and self-interested motives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

In the place a sense of Gemeinschaft—genuine community of values—there intrudes pseudo-Gemeinschaft—the feigning of personal concern with the other fellow in order to manipulate one the better. No wonder that in this most alienated of societies the slogan “togetherness” was first promoted by an advertiser. If many are persuaded to accept the spurious values handed down to them, a dissenting few can always be depended on to reject them. In this rejection can be seen still another major form of alienation, reflected at one extreme in the revolt of artists and intellectuals against what they consider the uncongenial and materialistic standards of bourgeois society. Personifying this revolt in their art, as well as in their lives, are writers like Baudelarie (an internal emigrant who longed to escape anywhere out of this World); Rimbaud (who did escape and whose self-imposed exile became a model for many artistic rebels following him) and Dostoyevsky (who regarded the freedom of the atheistic individual, his loneliness and isolation as the greatest evils; and in whose works the twin themes of the atomization of society and self-alienation receive their supreme expression). #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

We are dealing with more than mere disenchantment. The modern Word debases. It debases the state; it debases men. It debases love; it debases women. It debases the race; it debases the child. It debases the nation; it debases the family. It even has succeeded in debasing what is perhaps most difficult in the World to debase—because this is something which has in itself, as in its texture, a particular kind of dignity, like a singular incapacity for degradation—it debased death. The two attitudes we have toward the clock indicate two ways of timing—the one as being timed, the other as timing for the next hour, for today and tomorrow. What does the clock tell you? Does it point to the hour of rising and working and eating and talking and going to sleep? Does it point to the next appointment and the next project? Or does it show that another day, another week have passed, that we have become older, that better timing is needed to use our last years for the fulfillment of our plans, for planting and building and finishing before it is too late? Or does the clock make us anticipate the moment in which its voice does not speak any more for us? Have we, the beings of the information age, the beings who are timing every hour from day to day, the courage and the imagination of the Preacher who looks back at all his time and all timing and calls it vanity? And if so, what about our timing? Does it not lose meaning? #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Must we say with the Preacher that it is good for beings to enjoy life as it is given to them from hour to hour, but that it is better not to be born at all? There is another answer to the question of human existence, to the question of timing and being timed. It is summed up in the words of Jesus: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.” In these words, God’s timing breaks into our human timing. Something new appears, answering the question of the Preacher as well as the question of the business person. We ask with all generations of thinking beings: What is the meaning of the flux of time and the passing away of everything in it? When the end of all our work is the same, what is the meaning of our toiling and planning? Vanity? And this is the answer we get: Within this our time something happens that is not of our time but out of eternity, and this times our time! Here the secrets that have endured the passage of time, which many have only dimly begun to understand. When Jesus says that the right hour has come, that the kingdom of God is at hand, he pronounces the victory over the law of vanity. This hour is not subject to the circle of life and death and all the other circles of vanity. When God himself appears in a moment of time, when God subjects himself to the flux of time, the flux of time is conquered. And if this happens in one moment of time, then all moments of time receive another significance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

When the finger of the clock turns around; not one vain moment is replaced by another vain moment, but each moment says to us: The eternal is at and in this moment. The moment passes, the eternal remains. Whatever in this moment, in this hour, on this day and in this short or long life-time happens has infinite significance. Our timing from moment to moment, our planning today for tomorrow, the toil of our lifetime is not lost. Its deepest meaning lies not ahead where vanity swallows it, but it lies above where eternity affirms it. This is the seriousness of time and timing. “With their wicked words they will try to hold you down. No this is not our fate, the lives in which they are bound.  And  there is something more we know it has to be found. I know the World will not wait, the tide is turning around, and there is not enough time. And no there is not enough time, In the fallout of the wasted, in the half light I stand before you in the last dance of an old life. Now the cool wind is blowing and we cannot stay, but it is alright. When the night is gone, I will still be here,” reports Emma Hewitt (Not Enough Time). #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

This idea of time stirred my soul as if it were a pool of water longing to be still. I was mesmerized, enchanted. The faces of humans passed me like candle flames in the night dancing on dark waves. I was sinking into darkness. I was weary of longing. I was turning around and around and around in the street, looking at the stars and thinking. Through our timing God times the coming of his kingdom; through out timing God elevates the time of vanity into the time of fulfillment. The activist who is timing with shrewdness and intuition what one has to do in one’s time and for one’s time, and for our whole activististic civilization cannot give us the answer. And the Preacher, who himself once was a most successful activist, knows that this is not an answer; he knows that vanity of our timing. And let us be honest, the spirit of the Preacher is strong today in our minds. His mood fills our philosophy and poetry. The vanity of human existence is described powerfully by those who call themselves philosopher or poets of existence. They are the children of the Preacher, this great existentialist of his period. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

However, neither they nor the Preacher knows an answer. They know more than people of mere acting. They know the vanity of acting and timing. They know that we are timed. However, they do not know the answer either. Certainly we must act; we cannot help it. We have to time our lives from day to day. Let us do it as clearly and successfully as the Preacher when he still followed the example of King Solomon. However, let us follow him also when he saw through all this and realized its vanity. Then, and then alone, are we prepared for the message of the eternal appearing in time and elevating time to eternity. Then we see in the movement of the clock not only passing of one moment after the other, but also the eternal at hand, threatening, demanding, promising. Then we are able to say: “In spite”! In spite of the fact that the Preacher and all his pessimistic followers today and everywhere and at all times are right, I say yes to time and to toil and to acting. I know the infinite significance of every moment. However, again in saying so we should not relapse into the attitude of the activist, not even of the Christian activist—and there are many of them, men and women in Christendom. The message of the fulfillment of time is not a green light for a new, an assumedly Christian activism. However, it makes us say with Paul: “Through our outer nature is wasting away our inner nature is renewed every day—because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things are unseen. For the thing that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

In these words the message of the Preacher and the message of Jesus are untied. All is vanity but through this vanity eternity shines into us, comes near to us, draws us to itself. When eternity calls in time, then activism vanished. When eternity calls in time, then pessimism vanishes. When eternity times us, then time becomes a vessel of eternity. Then we become vessel of that which is eternal. However, who was to make this revelation when the sky and sea become indistinguishable and neither any longer was chaos? God? Or Satan? It struck me suddenly what consolation it would be to know Satan, to look upon his face, no matter how terrible that countenance was, to know that I belonged to him totally, and thus put to rest forever the torment of this ignorance. To step through some veil that would forever separate me from all that I called human nature. However, even in these moments, when all the World was sleeping, neither Heaven nor Hell seemed more than a tormenting fancy. To know, to believe, in one or the other that was perhaps that only salvation for which I could dream. Any psychology that aims to understand the reality underlying all human beings in crisis is bound to be a bewildering one. Part of the problem, however, rests with us existentialist ourselves. Although we have made valiant theoretical and therapeutic contributions, we have yet to cohesively integrate them for practical, clinical use. We have also spent much of our energy in the reactive rather than proactive mode of discourse, especially in the area of psychotherapy. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

Because there would be no rest in damnation, could be no rest; and what was this torment compared to the restless fires of hell? Us living beneath those constant stars—those stars themselves—what has this to do with Satan? And those images which sound so static to us in childhood when we are all so take up with mortal frenzy that we can scarce imagine them desirable: seraphim gazing forever upon the face of God—and the face of God itself—this was rest eternal, of which this gentle, cradling planet was only the faintest promise. The implications of this promise is revolutionary, indeed, for it signals a revised conception of existence. The streets are full of enlightened people. All beings have the possibility of attaining enlightenment because all have the divine self hidden under their narcissism. Each of us is linked with God, the Mover of all this moving Universe. This link must be brought into our field of awareness. There is possessed the highest fulfilment of our lives. The individual consciousness is not alone. It is fathered by a universal consciousness. Between the two there is this link. To awaken one day and discover (in several cases, rediscover) it will be a being’s most satisfying experience. The World-Mind is omnipresent. There is a point where every being touches it. When one attains awareness of this point, one is at last attending the true Holy Communion service. The little centre of consciousness that is myself rests in and lives by the infinite ocean of consciousness that is God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

The first momentary discovery of this relationship constitutes genuine religious experience, and its expansion into a final, full disclosure constitutes a philosophic one. If God is everywhere, as he must be, then God is in beings too. This fact makes possible one’s discover, under certain conditions, of a diviner element in one’s being which is ordinarily obscured. In the end, no being can miss being in the presence of, or confronted by, the divine power. It is a fact which, whether one accepts or denies the idea of its existence, one must one day reckon with it. This is because one has never really been separated from it, never been aware of any thing or thought expect by virtue of consciousness derived from it. What we know through sense as forms points to the existence of the mind. What we know through the intellect as thoughts points to the mind. What does the individual mind itself point to? We can find the answer by plunging deep into its core, deeper and ever deeper in the practice of contemplation until we come to its ultimate source. There, where the World vanishes and the id is stilled, we become one with the infinite and eternal Mind behind the Universe. Ordinarily beings cannot directly penetrate that layer of the mind which is continuous with, and contiguous to, God. However, during the deepest state of prayer one may do so. The human mind, finite and limited though it be, can become an inlet to the universal Mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

Such a happening is attended by blissful yet tranquil feelings. This little being that is me merges into larger consciousness that is pure infinite Being—until the body calls me back. Must beings take formal vows in order to discipline themselves? Can one not be loyal to one’s ideal, which in the end is self-chosen or one would not have turned one’s back upon the World, without making promises and uttering pledges which it may not be possible to redeem? Are the tonsured head and the coarse robe essential to ensure the practice of self-control in act and thought? If one is to persevere in the purification of character, is it not enough that one one’s self wants it? If one chooses to do so, one is free to live in the normal human relationships, to follow a career in the World, to marry and beget children. Of course this will necessarily entail certain disciplinary conditions. However, one will not be obliged to flee from all possessions into jungles, monasteries, or the like. “Therefore repent ye, repent ye, lest by knowing these things and not doing them ye shall suffer yourselves to come under condemnation, and ye are brought down unto this second death,” reports Helaman 14.19. Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15