You know how much I love you. Yes, you know how much I want you, and to slip away with you, away from anyone who could divide us, yes, you know. What are mortal lives to me after all? You have made your mortal life magnificent. You turned your soul inside out to do it. And that simply cannot be ignored. Ha! Ha! Ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality, say what you like, you will interpose with a chuckle. Since has succeeded in so far analyzing beings that we know already that choice and what is called freedom of will is nothing else than—stay gentlemen and ladies, I meant to begin with that. I confess, I was rather frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but I remembered the teaching of science…and pulled myself up. And here you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices—that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is, a real mathematical formula—then, mostly, beings will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, one will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rules? #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Besides, without free will, one will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a being without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? What do you think? Let us reckon the chances—can such a thing happen or not? H’m! you decide. Our choice is usually mistake from a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage. However, when all that is explained and worked out on paper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and senseless to suppose that some laws of nature beings will never understand), then certainly so-called desires will no longer exist. For if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be senseless in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice and reasoning can be really calculated—because there will some day be discovered the law of our so-called free will—so, joking apart, there may one day be something like a table constructed of them, so that we really shall choose in accordance with it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

If, for instance, someday they calculate and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not help making a long nose at one and that I had to do it in that particular way, what freedom is left me, especially is I am a learned being and have taken my degree somewhere? Then I should be able to calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do; anyway, we should have to understand that. And, in fact, we ought unwearyingly to repeat to ourselves that at such and such a time and in such and such a circumstance Nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to take her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even…to the chemical retort, there is no help for it, we must accept the retort  too, or else it will be accepted without our consent. Yes, but here I come to stop! Gentlemen and ladies, you must excuse me for being over-philosophical; it is the result of forty years underground! Allow me to indulge my fancy. You are, gentlemen and ladies, reason is an excellent thing, there is no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of being’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

nd although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one-twentieth of my capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what has succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; tis is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives. I suspect, gentlemen and ladies, that you are looking at me with compassion; you tell me again that an enlightened and developed being, such, in sort, as the future being will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous to oneself, that that can be proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree, it can—by mathematics. However, I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when beings may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to oneself, what is stupid, very stupid—simply in order to have the right to desire for oneself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen and ladies, more advantageous for us than anything else on Earth, especially in certain cases. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

And in particular it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our advantage—for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important—that is, our personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious thing for humankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept within bounds. It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. However, very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason…and…and…do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? Gentlemen and ladies, let us suppose that being are not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that if a being is stupid, then who is wise?) However, if one is not stupid, one is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of human being is the ungrateful biped. However, that is not all, that is not one’s worst defect; one’s worst defect is one’s perpetual moral obliquity—perpetual, from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

The image of beings that emerges from traditional experimental psychology is of a determined being, subject to the controlling influence of assorted variables. This is not at all an image of beings with which we can gladly identify. Indeed, one of the aims of a humanistic science of psychology is to liberate beings from the constraining or inciting pressures of determiners. A humanistic psychologist, like one’s less humanistic colleague, is concerned to identify factors that affect being’s experience and action; but one’s aim is not to render the being predictable to, and controllable by, somebody else. Rather, one’s aim is to understand how determining variables function in order that a being might be liberated from their impact as on pursues one’s own free projects. Ultimately, we come to know something of somebody if that being shows itself to us. If we are dealing with stones, animals, stars, or scientific experiments, the problem of knowing calls first for making contact with the object of study, then devising means of getting it to disclose its mysteries. Natural scientists have shown incredible ingenuity at this task. They have devised gadgets that reveal previously inaccessible accepts of the being of all kinds of phenomena: X-rays, telescopes and microscopes, transducers, and recorders of light, sound, and movement. Technological equipment has enabled scientists to find answers to questions they pose about being of things, objects, and processes in the World.  #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

To know the being of human is a different problem. Existentialists have said that humans are the beings whose being is in question, not fixed. Human choose their projects and thereby produce their own being. One chooses one’s way in the World, and upon how one has chosen to be will depend the aspects of one’s being that one will show to anyone who happens to be looking. One choice open to the individual is whether one will show oneself at all or whether one will choose to hide in a cave. Another option is whether one will aim to reveal one’s experience, one’s “being-for-oneself” to another person, or whether one will seek to conceal and misrepresent it. If a being chooses to be fully known, one will show oneself freely to another being, in all possible ways. One’s behavior, which is the “outside” of one’s being-for-oneself (one’s experience), is unintelligible, however, unless one provides the observer with the key. Behavior is actually a code, or better, a cipher, analogous to Etruscan writing or Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is the embodiment of a meaning assigned to it by the one who behaves. The observer can guess at this meaning, but the key rests with the behaver oneself. For one, the behavior carries out one’s intentions, one’s goals, one’s projects. It is the goal of the action that gives meaning to the action. Yet it is precisely aims and goals that people tend most strongly to conceal from others, fearing that if the intentions were known, the other person might interfere. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Machiavelli knew intentions could be manipulated when he advised his Prince to conceal his ultimate aims from his subjects. They were to be kept mystified. People will disclose their aims and the ways they construe the World only to those whom they have reason to trust. Without trust and goodwill, a person will conceal or misrepresent one’s experience, hoping thus to mystify the other and to get one to misconstrue the action that is visible. Suppose a young man is attracted to a pretty young lady. At first, she is indifferent to his display of manly charms. He then tries to change her experience of him, in the hope that she will ultimately change her behavior toward him. What one does before her is the expression of his intent: “I want her to tumble for me.” However, he does not directly say this to her. If he did, it might frighten her away. Instead, he pretends he has no such wishes. He tries to appear as the kind of young man in whose physical presence she will want to stay. Once he wins her attention, he may start the next stage of his secret project. He will speak of jazz and Bach, philosophy and baseball. Then, he may remark about her lovely complexion and hair. His hand, apparently by accident, brushes against her shoulder; and she does not pull away. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Next, the young man will suggest they go somewhere for a drink. There, he invites her to tell about herself; and he seems to listen to every word with rapt attention. If a third person watched this relationship develop, one would infer that the young man is “on the make.” This might be a possible meaning one could make of the sequence of one’s acts. Suppose the third person asks the young man point-blank, “Are you trying to seduce this young lady?” The young man would probably deny such crass motivation. If he denies it, then his behavior, no matter how accurately it has been observed and recorded, is at odds with his words. It only becomes intelligible when he reveals his intention. Without this disclosure, we have only a string of responses that could mean anything. If we wish to understand the action, we must know what it means to him. Viewed from an abstract perspective, this encounter between the boy and the girls is a mystifying one. He tries to mislead her as to his intentions. He is “one the make,” and he tries to manipulate her experience and action so that she will behave in the service of his goals, not her own. When a person is thus “on the make,” one will show aspects of oneself that aim at persuading or influencing the other. The other person has been reduced from the status of a person to the status of an object, a manipulandum, something to be used if it is useful and neutralized or changed if it is not. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

History in itself is nothing but applied psychology. Hence we must look to theoretical psychology to give us the clew to its true interpretation. Humans want what all organisms want: continuing experience, self—perpetuation as a living being. However, humans have a conscious that their lives come to an end here on Earth; and so they have to devise another way to continue their self-perpetuation, a way of transcending the World of flesh and blood, which is a perishable one. This they did by fixing on a World which was not perishable, by devising an invisible-project that would assure their immortality in a spiritual rather than physical way. This way of looking at things gives beings a direct key to the unlocking of history. We can see that what people want in any epoch is a way of transcending their physical fate, they want to guarantee some kind of indefinite duration, and culture provides them with the necessary immortality symbols or ideologies; societies can be seen as structure of immortality power. Life all boils down to the principle of immortality striving. It is a universal principle firmly anchored in each individual person, no matter who one is; it is present in each culture, no matter how varied its beliefs might seem, or how much humankind itself seems to change from epoch to epoch. Beliefs are not fixed and final realities; they vary from period to period, from one social form to another. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

What is fixed is the principle of a dominant immortality-ideology. In each historical period or social group, beings thought that they lived absolute truth because one’s social life gave expression to one’s deepest innate hunger. Every conflict over truth is in the last analysis just the same old struggle over immortality. If anyone doubts this, let one try to explain in any other way the life-and-death viciousness of all ideological disputes. Each person nourishes one’s immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which one gives one’s allegiance; this gives one’s life the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder beings go into a rage over fine points of belief: if your adversay wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, your life becomes fallible. History, then, can be understood as the succession of ideologies that console for death. Or, more momentously, all cultural forms are in essence sacred because they seek the perpetuation and redemption of the individual life. Culture means that which is supernatural; all culture has the basic mandate to transcend the physical, to permanently transcend it. All human ideologies, then, are affairs that deal directly with the sacredness of the individual or the group life, whether it seems that way or not, whether they admit it or not, whether the person knows it oneself or not. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

What does history look like viewed from this angle? We already have seen what the primitive World looked like. It was characterized by archaic beings and they attained immortality by assimilation into the fund of ancestral souls, out of which comes each generation and into which they return. This eternal cycle of rebirth was self-renewing if helped with the proper communal rituals. The group, then, guaranteed its own self-perpetuation. Its duty was to strengthen the life force by fulfilling ritual obligations. The group alone conferred immortality—which is why the individual immersed oneself so completely it its ideology, and why duty took precedence over everything else. Only in this way can we understand the willing self-denials of beings in society; one accepts the social limitations on one’s appetite of all, the hunger for the continuation of life. Why would human being put infants through the torture of lip plug, subject themselves to circumcisions and repeated subincisions, perforated nasal septums, neck rings, holes in the tongue, torn flesh, joint, muscles—why would they even willingly die—if not for the ultimate stake: immortality, the triumph over the extinction of the body and its insignificance. Humans were willing to barter their bodies for higher spiritual values, for more life, and it was abandoned, not because of fear of the fathers, but ironically because of love of life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

Besides, if the individual is willing to renounce life, to shrink back from it in order to preserve, then one would also need society to map out safe pleasures of the flesh for them. Primitive social organization did not so much restrict the individual pleasures of the flesh as actually make it possible for one to have pleasure of the flesh in that that one had already been neurotically ready to sacrifice for the same of one’s personal immortality. The primitive beings embraced the institution of kingship because it was equated with prosperity; from the beginning beings renounced some dimensions of life in order to open up others, and this is what made it easy for monolithic historical structures of power to take shape and to choke out life still more. All that these new structures had t do was to promise the same immortality, only now in different forms. The challenges you face in your own life experience will be trying to say the least. You may suffer through circumstances that make it seems as if the structure of your life has been hit with a freight train. All hope, and light will be restored as your faith grows. It is a great work that must become the focus. Do not be distracted by the torment. Do the work you know you need to do. This is to seek the face of God within. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

 Realize that all you view as you is nothing but an imposed definition of what society thinks you should be. It has nothing to do with your eternal self. What is being destroyed are merely the attachments and social predispositions that act as anchors for your personal weaknesses and limitations. Utilize the power gained through the exploration of your soul to hardness your will. This will ignite the divine light within. This will empower you beyond your imagination. You have made it this far. Do not stop a block before the finish line. It may seem impossible, but it is not. The wise do not make invidious comparisons between the great Prophets of God. Only the unenlightened attempt to show that one ranks higher than another in ethical reach. Such do not know that the teachers who give out religion to a people or race always consider the circumstances and mentality of the people before preaching their new doctrine. What is not releveled or taught is kept back because it is not needed at the time, never because it is unknown. If some enlightened souls are given a mission to stir the World to higher ideals, others feel no such duty and remain quiescent or even saturninely. “God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods,” reports Psalm 81.1. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14