In Nature there are Neither Rewards Nor Punishments–there are Consequences!

We grew up in a World of stability with spasms of change. Today we live in a World of change with spasms of stability. There are large numbers of young people who are radical not just in their political demands but in another respect that is closely linked to the rejection of authoritarian morality. The rebellion is directed not solely at authority (all revolutions voice a protest against authority) but at the patriarchal principle and the morality rooted in that principle, a morality that calls obedience a virtue and disobedience a sin. If these youngsters do not do what they are supposed to do, a phenomenon of great significance that follows from this morality, is that, people develop guilt feelings. If the youth violate the patriarchal principle and the morality it is founded on, instead of doing what their own hearts, their own feelings, their own humanity tells them to do, they submit to an authoritarian order that punishes them with guilt. What characterizes a large number of young people and what makes them so likable for so many of the rest of us, myself included, is, I think that they have freed themselves from the guilt feelings imposed by authoritarian morality. They have, by and large, discarded the guilt that has been drilled into the New World humankind in the Judeo-Christian tradition for the last two thousand years and put aside the fear of acting outside the norms that have determined our behavior to such a great extent. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

However, in doing so they have not become immoral themselves. On the contrary, they are in search of new principles of morality. And here I have to mention another distinctive feature of this young generation: a new honesty. They do not feel the same compulsion that earlier generations did to make up excuses for themselves, to rationalize, to refuse to call a spade a spade. One result is that they sometimes use language that is of questionable taste and that puts off people raised in the old tradition. However, the key point is that they give expression to an honesty that is completely at odds with the dishonesty prevalent in bourgeois, patriarchal society, where we always have to hide what we feel guilt about and where we always have to act as if we were the very incarnation of all good qualities. We cannot admit that nothing human is alien to u, because such an admission would push us to the brink of disobedience. However, at the moment when we understand and acknowledge that the reality of a human includes both one’s best and one’s worst, at that moment we become fully human. Instead of feeling outraged over our negative potential, we have to experience that, too, as part of our humanity. Dr. Sigmund Freud contributed a great deal to the new honesty. Indeed, he opened up a wholly new dimension of honesty. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Before Dr. Freud we took it at face value when people assured us of their good intentions. However, now, after Dr. Freud’s discovery and systematic study of the unconscious, asseverations of good intentions will not do any more. We want to know what the unconscious motives behind those good intentions are. And we have come to the realization that it makes little difference whether someone is aware of one’s bad intentions or whether one is simply clever enough to rationalize them and so hide them both from others and oneself. Indeed, someone with truly evil intentions may have achieved greater honesty with oneself than someone who has repressed one’s evil intentions from one’s conscious mind and is therefore in an even better position to carry them out because one can package them in the guise of good and virtuous ideas. Ever since Dr. Freud, we have had to face the fact that we are responsible not only for our conscious minds and our good intentions but also for our unconscious. Our actions and not our words alone speak for us. It is even possible that our words mean nothing at all. However, Dr. Freud’s work is not the only reason we have for being suspicious o mere words. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

We have also had the experience of seeing human dishonesty lead us into wars in which hundreds of millions of people were killed or, for the sake of honor, voluntarily marched off to their deaths. All those deaths can be traced back to lies and empty slogans. We have good reason today to be less impressed than ever by what people say. Words and ideas come cheap and can be done up in all kinds of packages. That is why young people are less inclined to ask, “What did you think about all that?” and ask instead, “What did you do? What were your motives?” I think this effect of Dr. Freud’s work, the introduction of a new honesty into our lives, is of far more importance in the development of the New World than the revolution in the pleasures of the flesh that happened around 1925, if that is what you want to call it. Some people believe it would have come about even without Dr. Freud, but I think since he is so heavily referenced, even today, that pleasures of the flesh would still be repressed and hidden behind closed doors without his influence. Yet, the thought is that we cannot exhort people to obtain everything they need to satisfy their senses and at the same time urge abstinence of pleasures on the flesh on them. However, if no one came along encouraging people to express the passions of the flesh, perhaps our society would still be more Victorian because it would still be engrained in our culture, like religion. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Still, others believe that in a consumer society pleasures of the flesh will inevitably become a consumer article. A number of industries depend on that fact, and a lot of money is spent t maintain the attractiveness of the flesh. That represents a change from earlier times but, and so it is kind of a revolution. People are no longer wearing long dresses and covering every square inch of their flesh, they now make close to even expose parts that are traditionally hidden from the public. You have to call it a sexual revolution. Women are now spending a lot of money making up their faces to get men to focus on what is visible to the public and people just cannot seem to take no for an answer these days. The story on pleasures of the flesh is on shaky grounds. Because it is considered sinful, people who act upon them feel guilty and those who do not make be pressured and stigmatized by society for not, so they may feel guilty. All is not gold that glitters. Because of our consumer orientation, pleasures of the flesh are exploited increasingly to disguise a lack of intimacy. We use physical intimacy alone cannot emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy, a genuine harmony between two people, may well be inked with physical intimacy, may even begin with it, and can be confirmed again and again by it, but those two kinds of intimacy are not identical. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

At those moments when we lack emotional intimacy we are most likely to substitute physical intimacy for it. And if we are normally constituted both physically and mentally, that is quite easy to do. The younger generation, as I have said, rejects the patriarchal kind of consumerism, which is exemplified in young people’s use of drugs. Their parents buy cars, clothes, jewelry; the children take drugs. There are many reasons why they reach for drugs (partially because California and other states have legalized marijuana) and tend to develop an ever greater dependency on them, reasons that demand our careful consideration; but whatever else drug dependency is, it is also an expression of that same lazy, passive Homo consumens that the children criticize in their parents but that they themselves also represent in a different guise. The young people, too, are always waiting for something to come to them from the outside, waiting for the high of drugs, the high of pleasures of the flesh, the high of the rock rhythms that hypnotize them, carry them off, sweep them away. Those rhythms do not encourage activity. They transport the young into an orgiastic state, into a state like a drug high, in which they forget themselves and so are profoundly passive. An active human being does not forget oneself; one is oneself and is constantly becoming oneself. One becomes more mature, one becomes more adult, one grows. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

A passive person is, as I suggested before, an eternal suckling babe. What one consumes is ultimately of little consequence to one. One simply waits with open mouth, as it were, for whatever the bottle offers. Then one is gradually sated without having to do anything oneself. None of one’s psychic powers is called into play, and finally one grows tired and sleepy. The sleep one experiences is often a narcosis, an exhaustion induced by boredom, more than a sleep of healthy regeneration. Once again you may feel that I am exaggerating here, but estimates suggest that more people than we would imagine are having that kind of experience. And the media involved in producing our false needs keep reassuring us that it is our level of consumption that demonstrates the high level of our culture. The question we have to ask in our society of bad, superfluous affluence that no one can possibly digest and that contributes nothing to our vitality—the question we have to ask is whether we can still manage, in principle at least, to create a good affluence. Can we somehow make good, truly productive use of the overabundant production we are technologically capable of, a use that serves human beings and their growth? That should be possible if we will understand that what we have to do is encourage and satisfy those needs that makes people more active, livelier, freer, that they will not be driven by their feelings or simply react to stimuli but will be open and attentive and determined to realize their own potential, to enliven, enrich, and inspire themselves and others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

One prerequisite for accomplishing that is, of course, to reorganize not only our work but also our so-called leisure. Our free time is, for the most part, nothing but lazy time. It provides us with an illusion of power because we can bring the World into our living rooms by pressing a button on the TV set or because we can get behind the wheel of a car and fool ourselves into thinking the engine’s 1,400 horsepower is our own. We have truly “free time” only to the extent that we cultivate needs that are rooted in humans and that move one to become active. That is why work has to stop being monotonous and boring. And the central problem we face in organizing our work is: How can we make work interesting, exciting, lively? Here we come up against an even ore basic question: What is the point of our work? Is it to increase production and consumption? Or is it to promote the development and growth of human beings? It is usually claimed that the one cannot be separated from the other. What is good for industry is good for people, and vice versa. That sounds like the proclamation of some lovely, preordained harmony, but in fact it is an outright lie. It is easy to demonstrate that many things that were beneficial to industry were bad for people. And that is our dilemma today. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

If we continue on the path we are on, progress will be achieved only at the expense of human beings. And so we have to make a choice. To put it in biblical language, we have to choose between God and the Democrats. That may sound very dramatic, but if we are going to talk seriously about life, then thins do get dramatic. What I have in mind here is not only the question of life and death but also whether we will choose the increasing death in the life we see around us or will opt for lives of vitality and activity. The whole point of life is to become increasingly vital, more full of life. People deceive themselves about that. They live as if they have stopped living or as if they have never begun to live. Our folk wisdom tells us that everyone over forty is responsible for one’s own face. That means that our own life histories will reveal whether we have lived our lives rightly or wrongly (not rightly or wrongly in a moral sense but in terms of our own unique being). And the most glowing funeral orations with their lists of achievement cannot gloss over the crucial question that we must not avoid answering: Were we or are we truly alive? Do we live our own lives, or are they lived on someone else’s terms? I agree with thinkers like Marx and Disraeli, who were convinced that luxury is no less an evil than poverty. And by luxury they meant what we have been calling superfluous affluence here. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

However, if we want to make genuine abundance our goal instead, we will have to make some fundamental changes in our ways of living and thinking. I am, of course, fully aware of the great difficulties that are possessed in the way of effecting such changes. I think that the changes can be effected only if people feel a deep need for more life and less routine, only if they reject boredom and respond to needs that make them more vital and spontaneous, freer and happier. Many nations (mainly the underdeverloped ones) dream that they would be happy if they only had everything that Americans has. However, America is where more people than in any other country have learned that all our modern comforts do is tend to make us passive, impersonal, and manipulable rather than happy. It is no coincidence that our rebellious youth comes primarily from the middle and upper classes, in which superfluous affluence is most apparent. That kind affluence may make for happiness in our imaginations, in our fantasies, but it does not make us happy in our heart of hearts. It seems extremely important to me to grasp clearly a principle that is essential to formulating our strategies in the art of living. We will botch out lives if we pursue conflicting goals and do not realize that they are at odds with each other and are mutually exclusive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

Human beings will become physically ill if they pursue conflicting goals. They lose their equilibrium, their self-confidence, their powers of discrimination. They no longer know what is good for them. The first thing we have to do, the, is to ask ourselves in all honesty what the conflicting goals are that we are pursuing. Why are they incompatible? What damage is the conflict between them causing in us? These questions cannot be answered by speeches and certainly not by propaganda, which does nothing but make fanatics of people. Every single one of us should try to call oneself to account and think something along this line: “You will live only a short time. Who are you, and what is it you really want?” If we give ourselves up to the kind of affluence that is ultimately poverty, ultimately misery, we shall be squelching the richness that is ready to unfold and flourish within us; and on our decision for superfluity or abundance, for a good or bad affluence, depends no more nor less than the future of humankind. I strongly recommend the discipline of elevation. If you could not be who you are, who would you like to be? If I could not be who I am, I would most like to be…my wife’s second husband. A commitment to building up your wife is of greatest importance. Men, if you think what your wife does is less important than what you do, you are wrong, and you have big problems. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

Compliments on your wife’s kindness and her daily provisions should be commonplace, as should showing her respect. And I know men love golf, but if you love your wife, there must be times when you forsake the Heavenly green because you value her interests and simply love her. Years ago, in the Midwest, a farmer and his wife were lying in bed during a storm when the funnel of a tornado suddenly lifted the roof right off the house and sucked their bed away with them still in it. The wife began to cry, and the farmer called to her that it was no time to cry. She called back that she was so happy, she could not help it—it was the first time they had been out together in twenty years! One of the major “staying” factors that keeps couples together is time spent together. Make sure you maintain this priority. Your calendar reveals what is important to you, so write her calendar into yours. Schedule weekly ties together that do not just “happen.” Be creative. Date! Surprise her. Be extravagant. Men, when was the last time you opened the door for her…said “I love you” or complimented her, wrote her a loving note, sent her flowers, dated her, or gave her extraspecial attention? To keep a new marriage going, it requires careful attention, developed skill, and work. Men, are you working on the second most important relationship of your life (God is first)? Act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

O God, Who hast bestowed upon us the Paschal remedy, let Thy Heavenly gift accompany Thy people; that what is now the cause of their delight in time, may hereafter be their joy throughout eternity; through Jesus Christ our Lord anything is possible. Blot out, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the handwriting made by the law of sin, which Thou hast made void in us by the Paschal mystery, through the Ressurrection of Thy Son; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. “And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done,” reports Moroni 6.9. O Lord God, I pray not so much for graces as for the Spirit himself, because I feel his absence, and act by my own spirit in everything. Give me not weak desires but the power of his presence, for this is the surest way to have all his graces, and when I have the seal I have the impression also; He can heal, help, quicken, humble suddenly and easily, can work grace and life effectually, and being eternal he can give grace eternally. Save me from great hindrances, from being content with a little measure of the Spirit, from thinking thou wilt not give me more. When I feel my lack of Him, light up life and faith, for when I lose thee I am either in the dark and cannot see thee, or Satan and my natural abilities content me with a little light, so that I seek no further for the Spirit of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

Teach me then what to do. Should I merely humble myself and not stir up my heart? Should I meditate and use all means to bring him near, not being contented by one means, but trust Him to give me a blessing by the use of all, depending only upon, and waiting always for, thy light, by use of means? It is a duty or an error to pray and look for the fullness of the Spirit in me? Am I mistaken in feeling I am empty of the Spirit because I do not sense his presence within, when all the time I am most empty and could be more fully by faith in Christ? Was the fullness of the Spirit in the apostles chiefly a power, giving the subsistence outside themselves in Christ, in whom was their life and joy? Teach me to find and know fullness of the Spirit only in Jesus. We beseech Thee, O Lord, be pleased by the Paschal remedies to grant unto us that we may learn to scorn Earthly desires, and to long after things Heavenly; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, O merciful God, that in the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we may in very deed have our portion; through the same our Lord Who art in Heaven. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God that we who celebrate the Paschal solemnities may evermore live in Thy sanctifying grace; through out ever providing and guiding light, Jesus Christ, our Lord. O God, Who by the Paschal solemnity hast bestowed healing gifts on the Word, let Thy Heavenly bounty attend Thy people, that they may both attain to perfect freedom, and advance to everlasting life’ through Jesus Christ our Lord bless it be. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14

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