Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself. Many of us have a vague “feeling” that things are moving faster. Doctors and executives alike complain that they cannot keep up with the latest developments in their fields. Hardly a meeting or conference takes place today without some ritualistic oratory about “the challenge of change.” Among many there is an uneasy mood—a suspicion that change is out of control. Not everyone, however, shares this anxiety. As if nothing has changed since the 1930s, millions sleepwalk their way through their lives as if nothing ever will change. As if it were possible to make rapid change go away by ignoring it, living in what is certainly one of the most exciting periods in human history, many people attempt to withdraw from it, to block it out. They seek a “separate peace,” a diplomatic immunity from the rushing river of change. One sees them everywhere: Senior citizens, resigned to living out their years, attempting to avoid, at any cost the intrusion of virtual assistant Artificial Intelligence technology, keyless cars, autonomous transportation, surveillance doorbells, video appointments with the doctor, music streaming service, mobile phones, stores with undergarments behind glass cases, and other intrusions of the new. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Several people who are in their thirties and forties feel like they are already senior citizens, they are nervous about riots in their communities, pleasures of the flesh, women wearing miniskirts, and are feverishly attempting to persuade themselves that, after all, youth was always rebellious, and what is happening today is no different from the past. Even among the high school and traditional college age students we find an incomprehension of change: individuals so unenlightened of the past that they see nothing unusual about the present. The disturbing fact is that the vas majority of people, including educated and otherwise sophisticated people, find the idea of change so threatening that they attempt to deny its existence. Even many people who understand intellectually that change is accelerating have no internalized that knowledge, do no takes this critical fac into account in planning their own personal lives. However, without time, change has no meaning. And without change, time would stop. Time can be conceived as the intervals during which events occur. Just as money permits us to place a value on both houses and cars, time permits us to compare unlike processes. When we say that it takes thee years to build a dam, we are really saying it takes three times as long as it takes the Earth to circle the Sun or 31,000,000 times as long as it takes to sharpen a pencil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

Time is the currency of exchange that makes it possible to compare the rates at which very different processes play themselves out. With the measurement of change, we are today far more advanced with respect to physical process than social processes. We know far better, for example, how to measure the rate at which blood flows through the body than the rate at which a rumor flows through society. Until this century, social change was so slow that it would pass unnoticed in one person’s lifetime. That is no longer so. The rate of change has increased so much that our imagination cannot keep up. In 1850 only four cities on the face of the Earth had a population of 100,000 or more. By 1900 the number had increased to nineteen. By 1960, there were 141, and today there are 467 cities with populations between 1 and 5 million. The Earth’s population is doubling every 49 years, and is projected to reach 8 billion by 2023. However, barring the unforeseen, the World’s population is expected to level off around 10 to 12 billion by 2100. When I was a kid, I did not understand gravity, I thought we lived inside of the Earth because if we lived on top of it, we would fly off. Many people think Elon Musk is unrealistic to build underground freeways, but it seems his idea and my childhood thought may be more realistic than we think. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

In the World’s increasingly overpopulated cities, planners are building down as well as up. French urban planners have been sketching subterranean cities—stores, museums, warehouses and factories to be built under the Earth. A Japanese architect has blueprinted a city to be built on stilts out over the ocean. Also, architects have developed several plans for deep Earthscrapers. One proposed for Mexico would have a depth of 100 meters, and its inverted-pyramid shape would allow in outdoor light. New York City has approved plans for the World’s first underground park to be built in an abandoned train tunnel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York USA. It will include an innovative system to allow sunlight t maintain a forest. The project will also test out new technologies that ensure high air quality and constant temperature. The one-acre park could become an excellent test cause for sustaining large communities underground. Beijing, China also has a modern subterranean World, though it is largely unused. Built in the 1970s, Dixia Cheng stretched across 30 square miles! It includes classrooms, barber shops, a roller rink, and even hold sites for growing sunless crops. It was originally constructed as a massive bomb shelter. However, underground cities are nothing new. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

In Cappadocia, Turkey the region has underground cities dating back to the 8^th century B.C. The largest, Derinkuyu, meaning “deep well,” is an18-story labyrinth of ventilation shafts, kitchens, wells, a winery, and living space for 20,000 residents. With the World to be thought of as being overpopulated at 5 billion people, we will need new innovations to accommodate the growing populations. That is why a wealth tax would be bad. Wealthy people may be what saves humanity. With rapid change, we have also gone through a massive amount of energy. Roughly speaking, half of all the energy consumed by humans in the past 2,000 years has been consumed in the last one hundred. Technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible. New scientific discoveries are made every day. These new ideas are put to work much more quickly than ever before. The delays between idea and application are almost unthinkable in modern times. Look how President Trump got a vaccine produced in less than a year, when it used to take 20 years. It is vital to understand, moreover, that technological innovation does not merely combine and recombine machines and techniques. Important new machines do more than suggest or compel changes in other machines—they suggest novel solutions to social, philosophical, even personal problems. They alter human’s total intellectual environment—the way one thinks and looks at the Word. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

We all learn from our environment, scanning it constantly—though perhaps unconsciously—for models to emulate. These models are not only other people. They are, increasingly machines. By their presence, we are subtly conditioned to think along certain lines. The computer has touched off a storm of fresh ideas about humans as an interacting part of larger systems, about their physiology, the way they learn, the way they remember, the way they make decisions. Virtually every intellectual discipline from political science to family psychology has been hit by a wave of imaginative hypotheses triggered by invention and diffusion of the computer. People cannot live without computers today, they are used for business, education, social, financial, medical, and even leisure activities—and its full impact has not yet struck. And so the innovative cycle, feeding on itself speeds up. Acceleration is one of the most important and least understood of all social forces. We see Discovery, Application, Impact, Discovery. This accelerative thrust has now reached a level which it can no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as “normal.” The normal institutions of industrial society can no longer contain it, and its impact is shaking up all our social institutions. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

For the acceleration of change is so rapid that it shortens the duration of many situations. Compared with life in a less rapidly changing society, more situations now follow through the channel in any given interval of time—and this implies profound changes in human psychology. For while we tend to focus on only one situation at a time, the increased rate at which situations flow past us vastly complicates the entire structure of life, multiplying the number of roles we must play and the number of choices we are forced to make. This, in turn, accounts for the strangling sense of complexity about contemporary life. Moreover, the seeded-up flow-through of situations demands much more work from the complex focusing mechanism by which we shift our attention from one situation to another. There is more switching back and forth, less time for extended, peaceful attention to one problem or situation at a time. This is what lies behind the vague feeling that “Things are moving faster.” They are. Around us. And through us. And when things start changing outside, you are going to have a parallel change taking place inside. The nature of these inner changes is so profound, however, that, as the accelerative thrust picks up speed, it will test our ability to live within the parameters that have until now defined humans and society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

In our society at present, the natural course of events is precisely that the rate of change should continue to accelerate up to as-yet-unreached limits of human and institutional adaptability. To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. One must search out total new ways to anchor oneself, for all the old roots—religion, nation, community, family, or profession—are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. Before one can do so, however, one must understand in greater detail how the effects of acceleration penetrate one’s personal life, creep into one’s behaviour and alter the quality of existence. One must, in other words, understand transience. Whether we call an intuition a “thought-feeling” or an “emotive thought,” it is still something that is deeper than thinking, different from ordinary feelings. There is a sacred oracle within, to which the problems of life and living can be carried in our calmer moments. Its laconic answers may or may not need interpretation. In this matter we mistake the common type for the normal type. The mystically minded person is not usually met with, but one is nearer true normality than the materially minded one. For one part of one’s human psyche—the intuitive—is at least functioning, whereas it is “dead” in the other human. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

When it sees it, there is a faculty in humans which knows truth, which needs no argument, reflection, or cogitation to attest or prove what it knows. There is another way of knowing beside the ordinary way, through the channels of eyes or thoughts, a way which can be found only by quietening the mind and stilling the emotions. Here is this wonderful potency in humans lying largely unused, this faculty of intuition that links one with a higher order of being However arguable one’s theories may be, the scientific facts which Dr. Freud produced are less debatable. And one must be praised for having included among them the important fact that highly complicated mental acts are sometimes performed unconsciously. An immense accumulation of facts and experience is contained within the deeper level of the mind as in a storehouse upon which we may unknowingly draw. When the existence of this deeper level is accepted, the possibility—nay, the certainly—of intuition becomes perfectly explicable. The successful transference of any of these facts or any lessons of these experiences from the hidden to the conscious region constitutes one particular form of what we call an intuition. The need for advancing individual is to go beyond the intellect, to draw from the intuition or to find inspiration. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

How many minds have pondered over life and searched for its meaning only to feel baffled in the end, and held back by their own limitations? For although the active intellect naturally asks such questions, only the intuition can answer them adequately. However, the latter is the least cultivated of all our facilities and the most torpid, and this is why we have no access to the answers, and why the question remain troublesome or even torturing. The same mind which humans use to understand that two added to three totals five cannot be used to understand that one who loses oneself finds oneself. We find spiritual fulfillment in reading the Scriptures, but the holy Word of God is intended to do much more than that: it is to satisfy the believer’s deepest hunger for knowledge about acceptable living and service for one’s sovereign king. The Christian Bible feeds the soul and disciplines lives. We know that obedience to the Scriptures without concern for the consequences is penetrating and painful. It demands that we recognize the sin in our lives and that we acknowledge and repent of that sin. This is the first major intersection on the spiritual pilgrimage. Many prefer to turn off at this point, or think they can live the Christian life on their own terms—that is, without the conversation in attitude and action that must follow the conversion of heart. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any one hears my voice, and opens that door, I will come in,” reports Revelation 3.20. You will live in Heaven forever. You may have lived the high life, but none of us have seen anything like Heaven. The image of Jesus knowing at the door is as compelling to a new Christian as it is to millions through the centuries; and so many people have begun to open that door, only to discover that doing so involves a choice. One must surrender oneself or close the door. However, repentance is much more than self-flagellation, more than regret, more than deep sorrow for past sins; and it applies to everyone. The biblical word for repentance is “metanoia” in the original Greek. Meta means “change” and noia means “mind,” so literally means “a change of mind.” One church scholar describes it as “that mighty change in mind, heart, and life, wrought by the spirit of God.” Thus, repentance is replete with radical implications, for a fundamental change of mind not only turns us from the sinful past, but transforms our life plan, values, ethics, and actions as we begin to see the World though God’s eyes rather than ours. That kind of transformation requires the ultimate surrender to self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Repentance is an inescapable consequence of regeneration, an indispensable part of the conversation process that takes place under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. However, repentance is also continuing state of mind. We are warned, for example, to repent before partaking of communion. Also, believers prove their repentance by their deeds. Without a continuing repentant attitude—a persistent desire to turn away from our own nature and seek God’s nature—Christina growth is impossible. Loving God is impossible. If all this is true, then, some may ask, why is repentance so seldom preached and so little understood? I believe there are three reasons. The appeal of modern evangelism is not for repentance but for enlistment. To be honest, some evangelists see converts as trophies in a big game hunt and measure their success by numbers; thus, they do not want to frighten off their prey. One Christian leader, asked why his pastor never mentioned repentance, and he smiled and replied, “Get ‘em first, let them see what Christianity is, and then they will see their need to repent.” Tragically, this attitude pervades the church not only because we are afraid the truth will scare newcomers, but because it might also drive a number of the nodding regular right out of their comfortable pews. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Repentance can be a threatening message—and rightly so. The Gospel must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the good news of redemption. Because the message is unpalatable for many middle-class congregations preoccupied with protecting their affluent lifestyles, many pastors endowed with a normal sense of self-preservation the Electric Slide and the Flamenco warily round the subject. And the phenomenal growth of the electronic church has only aggravated this trend, for while the Sunday morning pew-dweller is trapped, unable to escape gracefully when a tough subject like repentance comes up, the TV viewer has only to flip a switch or go out to the refrigerator. The result of all this is a watered-down message that, in large part, accounts for today’s epidemic spread of easy believism,  Christianity without costs, or “cheap grace” as German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so aptly labeled it a generation ago—grace in which “no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin…a denial of the living God, in fact, a denial of the incarnation. The second reason repentance is so ignored or misunderstood comes much closer to home, as I have discovered: often we are simply unwilling or unable to accept the reality of personal sin and therefore to accept put need for repentance. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

We always think we are better than old-style Gangsters like Mickey Harris Cohen, and our sins are not nearly as bad. People think most professors grade on a curve so God probably will, too. Why is it so hard for us to see our own sin? In our fallen state we have an infinite capacity for justifying whatever acts we commit. Psychologists call the “self-serving bias” because everyone thinks they are a good person in a bad World. And this leads us to the third reason for our shallow understanding of repentance: our culture has written sin out of existence. Even Christians who should understand the basic truth that all are heirs of Adam’s fall and thus all are sinners are influenced, often blinded, by humanist values. Humanism began in the Garden when the tempter invited Eve to be “like God.” Ever since it has encouraged us to believe what our sinful nature wants us to believe—that we are good, getting better through science and education, and can through our own efforts become perfect, maters of our own fate. We can be our own god. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

In recent decades popular political opinions and social beliefs have all but erased the reality of personal sin from our national consciousness. Take, for example, the passionately advanced argument that society, not the individual, is responsible for the evil in our midst: individuals commit crimes because they are forced to, not because they choose to. Poverty, racial oppression, slums, hunger—these are the real culprits; the wrong doer is in reality that victim. Many people also think wide spread looting and poverty is the cause of crime. However, a study conducted revealed that 75 percent who were arrested looting had jobs and only 10 percent were on welfare rolls. In most cases people stole things that did not need. That is why President Kennedy said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” He wanted people to wake up and take responsibility for “society,” and to help improve our country. It is time to teach people to be proud, God loving Americans again. It is okay to eat ham sandwiches in the cafeteria, it wonderful to salute and love the flag and your country. American cars are nice and cool once again, and McMansions are part of the American Dream and can be obtained through hard work, dedication, and saving. However, the desire to treat people with compassion is commendable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Not all people who are less affluent are criminals, so it is not a value theory to label their environment the main source of the problem. Sometimes it has to do with their upbring and because they are not taught proper values as youths.  If carried to the extreme, labeling people incompetent destroys individual accountability and encourages the very behaviour that is so offensive. Most politicians tell people what they want to hear, and people like to be told they are really “good.” So taking away personal accountability is a sure-fire way to get approval. However, good politics can make bad theology; and when we begin to believe our own press releases, we become victims of our own delusions. Whatever became of sin? The answer lies within each of us, but to find it we must come fact to face with who we really are. This is a difficult process. That hidden self is buried deep inside our hearts, and the human heart can be a deceitful thing. Confronting that true self is an excruciating discovery. The basic structure is regulated by a just constitution that secures the liberties of equal citizenship. Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought are taken for granted, and the fair value of political liberty is maintained. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

The political process is conducted, as far as circumstance permit, as a just procedure for choosing between governments and for enacting just legislation. There is also fair (as opposed to formal) equality of opportunity. In addition to maintaining the usual kinds of social overhead capital, the government tries to insure equal chances of education and culture for persons similarly endowed and motivated either by subsidizing private schools or by establishing a public school system. It also enforces and underwrite equality of opportunity in economic activities and in the free choice of occupation. This is achieved by policing the conduct of firms and private associations and by preventing the establishment of monopolistic restrictions and barriers to the more desirable positions Finally, the government guarantees a social minimum either by family allowances and special payments for sickness and employment, or more systematically be such devices as a graded income supplement (a so-called negative income tax). In establishing these background institutions, the government may be thought of as divided into four branches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Each of the four branches of the government consists of various agencies, or activities thereof, charged with preserving certain social and economic conditions. These divisions do not overlap with the usual organization of government but are to be understood as different functions. The allocation branch, for example, is to keep the price system workably competitive and to prevent the formation of unreasonable market power. Such power does not exist as long as market cannot be made more competitive consistent with the requirements of efficiency and the facts of geography and the preferences of households. The allocation branch is also charged with identifying and correcting, say by suitable taxes and subsidies and by changes in the definition of property rights, the more obvious departures from efficiency caused by the failure of prices to measure accurately social benefits and costs. To this end suitable taxes and subsidies may be used, or the scope and definition of property rights may be revised. The stabilization branch, on the other hand, strives to bring about reasonably full employment in the sense that those who want work can find it and the free choice of occupation and the deployment of finance are supported by strong effective demand. These two branches together are to maintain the efficiency of the market economy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

The social minimum is the responsibility of the transfer branch. There must be a division of labour between the parts of the social system in answering to common sense precepts of justice. Different institutions meet different claims. Competitive markets properly regulated secure free choice of occupation and lead to an efficient use of resources and allocation of commodities to households. They set a weight on the conventional precepts associated with wages and earnings, whereas the transfer branch guarantees a certain level of well-being and honours claims of need. It is clear that the justice of distributive shares depends on the background institutions and how they allocate total income, wages and other income plus transfers. There is with reason strong objection to the competitive determination of total income, since this ignores the claims of need and an appropriate standard of life. From the standpoint of the legislative stage it is rational to insure oneself and one’s descendants against these contingencies of the market. Indeed, the difference principle presumably requires this. However, once a suitable minimum is provided by transfers, it may be perfectly fair that the rest of total income be settled by the price system, assuming that it is moderately efficient and free from monopolistic restrictions, and unreasonable externalities have been eliminated. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Moreover, this way of dealing with the claims of need would appear to be more effective than trying to regulate income by minimum wage standards, and the like. It is better to assign to each branch only such tasks as are compatible with one another. Since the market is not suited to answer the claims of need, these should be met by a separate arrangement. Whether the principles of justice are satisfied, then, turns on whether the total income of the least advantaged (wage plus transfers) is such as to maximize their long-run expectations (consistent with the constraints of equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity). Finally, there is a distributive branch. Its task is to preserve an approximate justice in distributive shares by means of taxation and the necessary adjustments in the rights of property. Two aspects of this branch may be distinguished. First of all, it imposes a number of inheritance and gift taxes, and sets restrictions on the rights of bequest. The purpose of these levies and regulations is not to raise revenue (release resources to government) but gradually and continually to correct the distribution of wealth and to prevent concentration of power detrimental to the fair value of political liberty and fair opportunity. For example, the progressive principle might be applied at the beneficiary’s end. Doing this would encourage the wide dispersal of property which is a necessary condition, it seems, if the fair value of the equal liberties is to be maintained. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

The second part of the distribution branch is a scheme of taxation to raise the revenues that justice requires. Social resources must be released to the government so that it can provide for the public goods and make the transfer payments necessary to satisfy the difference principle. This problem belongs to the distribution branch since the burden of taxation is to be justly shared and its aims at establishing just arrangements. Sometimes this scheme will include measures and polices that a perfectly just system would reject. Two wrongs can make a right in the sense that the best available arrangement may contain a balance of imperfections, and adjustment of compensating injustices. God’s divine power, that has granted to us precious and magnificent promises, makes it possible for us to become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the World through excessive desire or lust. And how is this escape to come about? By putting forth your very best efforts—applying all diligence, to add to your faith, your confidence in Christ, moral excellence or virtue. That is, you train yourself to simply do what is good and right. Obviously, this is something we are to do, which will not be done for us. And then, in your virtue, add on knowledge of understanding. That is to come to know why the god and right you do is good and right. Operate from insight into the realities of it all. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

And then, in your self-control, add on perseverance (endurance, patience). This is the capacity to stick with the course, to stay with it over the long haul, regardless of how you may feel. And then, in your perseverance add on Godliness. Perhaps we can best think of this as dept and thoroughness of all the preceding attainments of grace. God is characterized by his inexhaustible resources of goodness. And then, in your Godliness add on the kindness and gentleness of care which one sees among siblings and true friends. The word here is “philadelphia.” That is, extended family feeling and action to those in your community. Just think of what that would mean to this wounded World. However, it is possible to do this superhuman thing only through the goodness and strength of Godliness. And then, in your humanly kindness add on agape love. This is the kind of love that characterizes God himself, and is spelled out in heart-rending detail on the cross of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 13. It goes far beyond philadelphia and into the very heart of God. We are not just to love as family, but as he loved us (John 13.34). Agape love is always presented, in the biblical descriptions of the children of light, as the ultimate move, which complete solidifies all of the other gains in spiritual progression (see Romans 5.5; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5.14; Ephesians 4.15-16; Colossians 3.14; 1 John 4.16; and so on). #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Saint Peter conclude his great progression by telling us that if we do what he here says, we will “never stumble” and that “entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you,” reports 2 Peter 1.10-11. Go your way to the land of the Ancestors, where they wait for you with open arms, there on the edge between this World and the next. See; there they stand. Ancestral spirit, welcome us to the place where we all must go. Praise ye God, all His Angels; praise ye God, all His hosts. Praise ye God, Sun and Moon; Praise God, all ye stars of light. Praise God, ye Heavens of Heavens, and ye waters that are above the Heavens. Le them praise the name of the Lord; for God commanded, and they were created. God has established them for ever and ever, making a decree which shall not be transgressed. Praise the Lord from the Earth, ye sea-monsters, and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind, fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged fowl; Kings of the Earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the Earth; both young men and maidens, senior citizens and children; let them all praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the Earth and Heaven. He hath given glory unto His people, praise to all His faithful ones, o the children of the United States of America, near unto God. Hallelujah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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