It seems to me that the soul stands, above all, for the enlightened and rational notion that human beings are improved by the acquisition of knowledge and information and that no desire should be placed in it way, for the soul stores the energy that fuels life. It opens up the windows to the World and inspires us to explore and achieve, and contribute to improving our quality of life. A belief in God can change lives for the better. Though the increasing complexity of the World, with burdensome social issues and shifting economic demands makes the work more difficult than ever before, for those like you who choose to hold steadfast in your faith and dedicates yourself to doing it well, the rewards make the journey worthwhile. You quietly get the job done, and you do it with incredible dedication, perseverance, and dignity in an environment of steadily diminishing resources and escalating criticism of humanity. Why do you keep trying? I believe the answer is very simple. You love the community. You want to help give others the best possible opportunity at life. The task of the enlightened is to balance the difficult juggling act of becoming vitally, vigorously, creatively, energetically, and inspiringly successful. One is wide enough in one’s outlook to look a contradictory ideas and things with equal calm. For they all melt in the Pure Mind. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

It should already be obvious that sacrifice and scapegoating are taking immense areas in human relations; when we think in these terms, we already feel quickened in our thoughts and our pulse—we know we are onto something big. I have lingered on guilt, sacrifice, heroism, and immortality because they are the key concepts for the science of humans in society that is emerging in our time. And the keys works for these concepts have already been written, which is good news in the life of any aspiring science; they only rub is that the scientific community itself has not realized this good news, and so we have been painfully slow in forging an agreed science of humans. The application of the ideas of guilt and sacrifice to modern sociology has been done largely by a few beings—notably Kenneth Burke and Hugh Dalziel Duncan. Let us dwell on this critical chapter in the evolution of an authentic science of beings. One can recognize that guilt and expiation are fundamental categories of sociological explanation, and it is reasonable to propose a simple formula: guilt must be canceled in society, and it is absolved by “victimage.” So universal and regular is the dynamic that one many wonder whether human society could possibly cohere without symbolic victims which the individual members of the group share in common. We can witness the civic enactment of redemption through the sacrificial victim, as the center of human’s social motivation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

We are led to the central idea of victimage and redemption through Greek tragedy and Christianity; we see that this fundamentally religious notion is a basic characteristic of any social order. Again we are brought back to the idea that all culture is in essence sacred—supernatural. The miraculousness of creation is after all magnified in social life; it is contained in person and given color, form, drama. The natural mystery of birth, growth, consciousness, and death is taken over by society; and this interweaving of social form and natural terror becomes an inextricable mystification; the individual can only gape in awe and guilt. This religious guilt, then, is also a characteristic of so-called secular societies; and anyone who would lead a society must provide for some form of sacred absolution, regardless of the particular historical disguise that this absolution may wear. Otherwise society is not possible. Above all Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Obama understood this and acted on it. If there is one thing that the tragic wars of our time have taught us, it is that the enemy has a ritual role to play, by means of which evil is redeemed. All wars are conducted as holy wars in a double sense then—as a revelation of fate, a testing of divine favor, and as a means of purging evil from the World at the same time. This explains why we are dedicated to war precisely in its most horrifying aspects: it is a passion of human purgation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Whoever is dissatisfied with oneself is always ready to revenge oneself therefore; we others will be their victims. However, the irony is that beings are always dissatisfied and guilty in small and large ways, and this is what drives them to a search for purity where all dissatisfaction can come to a head and be wiped away. Beings try to qualify for eternalization by being clean and by cleansing the World around them of the evil, the dirty; in this way they show that they are on the side of purity, even if they themselves are impure. The striving for perfection reflects being’s effort to get some human grip on one’s eligibility for immortality. And one can only know if one is good if the authorities tell one so; this is why it is so vital for one emotionally to know whether one is liked or disliked, why one will do anything the group wants in order to meet its standards of “good”: one’s eternal life depends on it. Good and bad relate to strength and weakness, to self-perpetuation, to indefinite duration. And so we can understand that all ideology is about one’s qualification for eternity; and so are all disputes about who really is dirty. The target of one’s righteous hatred is always called “dirt”; in our day the short-hairs call the long-hairs “filthy” and are called in turn “pigs.” Since everyone feels dissatisfied with oneself (dirty), victimage is a universal human need. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

 And the highest heroism is the stamping out of those who are tainted. The logic is terrifying. The psychoanalytic group of guilt, anality, and sadism is translatable in this way to the highest levels of human striving and to the age-old problem of good and evil. From which we have to conclude that humans have been the midwives of horror on this planet because this horror alone gave them peace of mind, made them “right” with the World. No wonder Nietzsche would talk about “the disease of the World called humans.” It seems perverse when we put it so blatantly, yet here is a being who needs the spectacle of death in order to pen oneself to love. As humans wound and kill their enemy in the field and slaughter their women and children in their homes, our love for each other deepens. We become comrades in arms; our hatred of each other is being purged in the sufferings of our enemy. And even more relentlessly: We need to socialize in hate and death, as well as in joy and love. We do not know how to have friends without, at the same time, creating victims whom we must wound, torture, and kill. Our love rests on hate. If we talk again and shockingly about human baseness, it is not out of cynicism; it is only to better get some kind of factual purchase on our fate. However, it is only an illusion that we have to fear; and we have to take a full look at the worst in order to begin to get rid of illusions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

Realism, even brutal, is not cynicism. We cannot become humane until we understand our need to visit suffering and death on others. The sociology of our time must begin in [such an] anguished awareness. From the point of view of such a sociology, the great scientific problems of our time have been the successful and grand social cohesions, especially of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Today we still gape in unbelief that the holocaust was possible in our civilized World, refusing to see how true it was to human’s nature and to their ambitions to transcend that nature. Hitler’s rise to power was based on one’s understanding of what people wanted and needed most of all, and so one promised them, above everything else, heroic victory over evil; and one gave them the living possibility of ridding themselves temporarily of their real guilt. As many die-hard rightists in the United States of America today realize better than anyone else, the tragedy of the lack of affordable housing and homelessness had loaded the Americans with a huge burden of unresolvable guilt and it as not been an easy truth to bare. The nation that represents victory and immortality or it has no mandate to exist. It must give tangible, straightforward victories of its credit is dissipated in the hearts of all its citizens. Yet, there is no immortality without guiltless victory. On these matters, rightists have always been a candid barometer of basic human urges. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

It took Stalin’s purge trials to show us that the highest humanistic ideals of socialist revolutionaries also have to be played out in a religious drama of victimage and redemption—if one is t have a pure and cohesive socialists society at all. The Russians exiled religious expiation but could not exile their own human nature, and so they had to conjure up a secular caricature of religious expiation. And they are still doing it: the magician-priests who give absolution to the clean communist masses now wear the white coats of hospital psychiatrist who transform dirty dissident victims with the latest techniques of “secular” science. It is grotesque, but we are warned always to watch for the “secular equivalents” of the theological formula of victimage and redemption; the scapegoat is not a “necessary illusion of savages, children, and the masses,” but now an achievement of the most advanced socialist society. China is reliving the idea of the primitive group soul which is a sacred fount of regeneration on which the whole community can draw so long as it remains pure. If one imagines these analogies far-fetched, one see how firmly they rest on a now well-founded tradition of social and psychological analysis. Persons who have a particular stigma tend to have similar learning experiences regarding their plight, and similar changes in conception of self—a similar moral career that is both cause and effect of commitment to a similar sequence of personal adjustments. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

One phase of this socialization process is that through which the stigmatized person learns and incorporates the standpoint of the normal, acquiring thereby the identity beliefs of the wider society and a general idea of what it would be like to possess a particular stigma. Another phase is that through which one learns that one possesses a particular stigma and, this time in detail, the consequences of possessing it. The timing and interplay of these two initial phases of the moral career from important patterns, establishing the foundation for later development, and providing a means of distinguishing among the moral careers available to the stigmatized. Four such patterns may be mentioned. One pattern involves those with an inborn stigma who become socialized into their disadvantageous situation even while they are learning and incorporating the standards against which they fall short. For example, an orphan learns that children naturally and normally have parents, even while one is learning what it means not to have any. After spending the first sixteen years of one’s life in the institution, one can still feel that one naturally knows how to be a father to his son. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

A second pattern derives from the capacity of a family, and to a much lesser extent a local neighborhood, to constitute itself a protective capsule for its young. Within such a capsule a congenitally stigmatized child can be carefully sustained by means of information control. Self-belittling definition of one are prevented from entering the charmed circle, while broad access is given to other conceptions held in the wider society, ones that lead the encapsulated child to see oneself as a fully qualified ordinary human being, of normal identity in terms of such basic matters as age and gender. The point in the protected individual’s life when the domestic circle can no longer protect one will vary by social class, place of residence, and type of stigma, but in each case will give rise to a moral experience when it occurs. Thus, public school entrance is often reported as the occasion of stigma learning, the experience sometimes coming very precipitously on the first day of school, with taunts, teasing, ostracism, and fights. Interestingly, the more the child is disabled the more likely one is to be sent to a special school for persons of his or her kind, and the more abruptly one will have to face the view which the public at large takes of one. One will be told that one will have an easier time of it among one’s own, and this learn that the own one thought he or she possessed was the wrong one, and that this lesser own is really his or hers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

It should be added that where the infantilely stigmatized manages to get through one’s early school years with some illusions left, the onset of dating or job-getting will often introduce the moment of truth. In some cases, merely an increased likelihood of incidental disclosure is involved. “I think the first realization of my situation, and the first intense grief resulting from this realization, came one day, very casually, when a group of us in our early teens had gone to the beach for the day. I was lying on the sand, and I guess the fellows and girls thought I was asleep. One of the fellows said, ‘I like Domenica very much, but I would never go out with a blind girl.’ I cannot think of any prejudice which so completely rejects you.” In other cases, something close to a systematic exposure is involved, as a cerebral palsy victim suggests: “With one extremely painful exception, as long as I was in the protective custody of family life or college schedules and lived without exercising my rights as an adult citizen, the forces of society were kindly and unruffling. It was after college, business school, and innumerable stretches as a volunteer worker on community projects that I was often bogged down by the medieval prejudices and superstitions of the business World. Looking for a job was like standing before a firing squad. Employers were shocked that I had the gall to apply for a job.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

A third pattern of socialization is illustrated by one who becomes stigmatized late in life, or learns late in life that one has always been discreditable—the first involving no radical reorganization of one’s view of one’s past, the second involving this factor. Such an individual has thoroughly learned about the normal and the stigmatized long before one must see oneself as deficient. Presumably one will have a special problem in reidentifying oneself, and a special likelihood of developing disapproval of self: “When I smelled the odor on the bus or subway before the colostomy I used to feel very annoyed. I would think that the people were awful, that they did not take a bath or that they should have gone to the bathroom before traveling. I used to think that they might have odors from what they ate. I used to be terribly annoyed; to me it seemed that they were filthy, dirty. Of course, at least opportunity I used to change my seat and if I could not it used to go against my grain. So naturally, I believed the young people feel the same way about me if I smell.” While there are certainly cases of individuals discovering only in adult life that they belong to a stigmatized tribal group or that their parents have a contagious moral blemish, the usual case here is that of physical handicaps that strike late in life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

“But suddenly I woke up one morning, and found that I could not stand. I had had polio, and polio was as simple as that. I was like a very young child who had been dropped into a big, black hole, and the only thing I was certain of was that I could not get out unless someone helped me. The education, the lectures, and the parental training which I had received for twenty-four years did not seem to make me the person who could do anything for me now. I was like everyone else—normal, quarrelsome, gay, full of plans, and all of a sudden something happened! Something happened and I became a stranger. I was a greater stranger to myself than to anyone. Even my dreams did not know me. They did not know what they ought to let me do—and when I went to dances or to parties in them, there was always an odd provision or limitation—bot spoken of or mentioned, but there just the same. I suddenly had the very confusing mental and emotional conflict of a lady leading a double life. It was unreal and it puzzled me, and I could not help dwelling on it.” Here the medical profession is likely to have the special job of informing the infirm who one is going to have to be. A fourth pattern is illustrated by those who are initially socialized in an alien community, whether inside or outside the geographical boundaries of the normal society, and who then must learn a second way of being that is felt by those around them to be the real and valid one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

It should be added that when an individual acquires a new stigmatized self late in life, the uneasiness one feels about new associates may slowly give way to uneasiness felt concerning old ones. Post-stigma acquaintances may see one simply as a faulted person; pre-stigma acquaintances, being attached to a conception of what one once was, may be unable to treat one either with formal tact or with familiar full acceptance. “My task [as a blind writer interviewing prospective clients for his literary product] was to put the men I had come to see at their ease—the reverse of the usual situation. Curiously, I found it much easier to do with me I had never met before. Perhaps this was because with strangers there was no body of reminiscences to cover before business could be gotten down to and so there was no unpleasant contrast with the present.” Regardless of which general pattern the moral career of the stigmatized individual illustrates, the phase of experience during which one learns that one possesses a stigma will be especially interesting, for at this time one is likely to be thrown into a new relationship to others who possess the stigma too. In some cases, the only contact the individual will have with one’s own is a fleeting one, but sufficient nonetheless to show one that others like oneself exist. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

“When Tommy came to the clinic for the first time, there were two other little boys there, each with a congenital absence of an ear. When Tommy saw them, one’s right hand went slowly to one’s own defective ear, and he turned with wide eyes to his father and said, ‘There is another boy with an ear like mine.’” In the case of the individual who has recently become physically disabled, fellow-sufferers more advanced than oneself in dealing with the failing are likely to make one a special series of visits to welcome one to the club and to instruct one in how to manage oneself physically and psychically: “Almost my first awareness that there are mechanics of adjustment came to me with the comparison of two fellow patients I had at the Eye and Ear Infirmary. They used to visit me as I lay abed and I came to know them fairly well. Both had been blind for seven years. They were about the same age—a little past thirty—and both had college educations.” When we interact with other people, there is generally an authentic way, where one has been genuine in one’s transactions with people and true to one’s projects; and the counterfeit way, which seems to be the common, or all-American, way. And we can speak of the involved way—as in the case of one deeply committed to various projects—and the detached, uninvolved way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

There is the personal way of the person of the being who enters into dialogue with one’s fellows; and there is the anonymous way of the one who neither knows, nor is ever known by, any single human being. All these ways are possible, and each can be viewed as a response to an invitation, a response that yields consequences for well or ill. A neurotic person, for example, may be seen as one who has chosen a rigid, encapsulated existence. It is safe, but it happens also to be suffocating. One chose to be this way, not only to feel safe, but also to hang on to the love of one’s parents or spouse. However, one pays a price for one’s choice. Of a sexually impotent person, we may say his mother invited him by word or gesture to follow the eunuchoid way. He accepted the invitations, and was rewarded with his mother’s approval. Some reward! Some price! But one must pay for everything in this World. If a person’s present being is the outcome of one’s acceptance of an invitation to be in some way, we can ask, “What do we know about invitation? Under what conditions is an invitation accepted or declined? Who extends the effective invitations? And who are the ones who respond to them?” We actually know a great deal about invitation, though the knowledge appears under other rubrics. We know a great deal about the psychology of suggestion, or persuasion, of hypnosis, and of leadership. Anything written under those headings seems to be relevant to a psychology of invitation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

A good psychotherapist or a good nurse, teacher, leader, or hypnotist—even a good sales person—all these are experts at extending invitations or challenges that will be accepted. An invitation to someone carries with it the implication that the other has the power to carry it out. It is a form of the attribution of power. The successful inviters invite others to change some aspects of their being. They invite a person to change one’s ways of valuing, construing, striving, behaving, or buying; and the person accepts the invitation. The therapist invites one’s pupil to abandon ignorance, one’s present ways of thinking and believing, and to expose oneself to new experiences. The leader invites or challenges one’s follower to carry out a mission that the follower never imagined one could accomplish. The hypnotist invites one’s subject to recover previously inaccessible memories, and the subject does. The nurse or doctor invited a patient to take a pill or an operation, and the patient does. Therefore, remember the teachers who see something special in you and make a connection, those who plant those cherished memories and good feelings that continue to live within you wherever you are or whatever you have become. The Spirit of God now calls his people to live from an adequate basis for character transformation, resulting in obedience to and abundance in Christ. This really is something different. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

The present moment is not an occasion to keep on doing the same things Christians have been doing in the recent past—except now really meaning it. It is time to change our focus, individually and in our Christian groupings. If we as Christ’s people genuinely enter Christ’s Way of the Heart, individuals will find a sure path toward becoming the persons they were meant to be: thoroughly good and godly persons, yet purged of arrogance, insensitivity, and self-sufficiency. Christian assemblies will become what they have been in many periods of the past and what the World desperately calls for today: incomparable schools of life-life that is eternal in quality now, as well as unending in quantity. This is possible because the spirit and inner being of the human, as well as the process of its renovation in Christ, is an orderly realm where, even in the disorder of its brokenness, God has provided a methodical path of recovery. Grace does not rule out method, nor method grace. Grace thrives on method and method on grace. Spiritual formation in Christ is therefore not a mysterious, irrational—possibly hysterical—process: something that strikes like lightening, whenever and wherever it will, if at all. Or something that is magically conferred upon us as we dwell in the midst of curious rituals and antique practices. Spiritual experiences do not constitute spiritual formation, tough they could be a meaningful part therefor and sometimes are. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

This, I freely admit, is contrary to a view of grace as passivity that is widely held now. However, the God-ordained order of the soul under grace must be discovered, respected, and cooperated with, if its God-intended results for spiritual growth are to be attained. Spiritual formation is something we human beings can and must undertake—as individuals and in fellowship with other apprentices of Jesus. While I is simultaneously a profound manifestation of God’s gracious action through his Word and Spirit, it is also something we are responsible for before God and can set about achieving in a sensible, systematic manner. Grant, we beseech Thee, O our God that Thy family, which has been saved by the Nativity of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, may also quietly repose on Him as a perpetual Redeemer, Who with Thee gives correct teachings about the quest and necessary warnings about its pitfalls, and teaches us how to live life with proper care and respect. Almighty and everlasting God, Who by Thine Only-begotten Son hast made us to be a new creation for Thyself, preserve the works of Thy mercy, and cleanse us from all our ancient stains; that by the assistance of Thy grace we may be found in His form, in Whom in our substance dwells with Thee, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “We know that they are blessed, for they have gone to dwell with their God,” Alma 24.22. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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