We are here because we made a promise. We have made other promises in other parts of the World. We must learn to live with frustration, interference, irritation, disappointment, and criticism, as long as one can be sure they do not contribute to failure. Out of these hardships, we will grow and become some of the finest people the World has ever seen. Whether humans are prepared to cope with the increased choice of material and cultural wares available to them is, however, a totally different question. For there comes a time when choice, rather than freeing the individual, becomes so complex, difficult and costly, that it turns into its opposite. There comes a time, in short, when choice turns into overchoice and freedom into un-freedom. To understand why, we must go beyond this examination of our expanding material and cultural choice. We must look at what is happening to social choice as well. The proliferation of subcults is evident in the World of work. Many subcults spring up around occupational specialties. Thus, as the society moves around toward greater specialization, it generates more and more subcultural variety. The scientific community, for example, is splitting into finer and finer fragments. It is crisscrossed with formal organizations and associations whose specialized journals, conferences and meetings are rapidly multiplying in number. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

However, these “open” distinctions according to subject matter are matched by “hidden” distinctions as well. It is not simply that cancer researchers and astronomers do different things; they talk different languages, tend to have different personality types; they think, dress and live differently. (So marked are these distinctions that they often interfere with interpersonal relationships. Says a woman scientist: “My husband is a microbiologist and I am a theoretical physicist, and sometimes I wonder if we mutually exist.”) Scientists within a specialty tend to hand together with their own kind, forming themselves into tight little subcultural cells, to which they turn for approval and prestige, as well as for guidance about such things as dress, political opinions, and life style. As science expands and the scientific population grows, new specialties spring up, fostering more and still more diversity at this “hidden” or informal level. In short specialization breeds subcults. This process of cellular division within a profession is dramatically marked in finance. Wall Street was once a relatively homogeneous community. “It used to be,” says one prominent sociological observer of the money people, “that you came down here from St. Paul’s and you made a lot of money and belonged to the Racquet Club and you had an estate on the North Shore, and your daughters were debutantes. You did it all by selling bonds to your ex-classmates.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The remark is perhaps slightly exaggerated, but Wall Street was, in fact, one big White Anglo-Saxon Protestant subcult, and its members did tend to go to the same schools, join the same clubs, engage in the same churches (Presbyterian and Episcopalian), and vote for the same party (Republican). Anybody who still thinks of Wall Street in these terms, however, is getting one’s ideas from the novels of Auchincloss or Marquand rather than from the new, fast-changing reality. Today, Wall Street has splintered, and a young man entering the business has a choice of a whole clutch of competing subcultural affiliations. In investment banking the old conservative WASP grouping still lingers on. There are still some old-line “white shoe” firms, but they are diverse. Also, in the mutual fund field is becoming more diverse, and have many star employees of various backgrounds. Here the entire style of life, the implicit values of the group, are quite different. Mutual fund people are a separate tribe. “Now everyone even wants to be a WASP anymore,” says a leading financial writer. Indeed, many young, aggressive Wall Streeters, even when they do happen to be WASP in origin, reject the classical Wall Street subcult and identify themselves instead with one or more of the pluralistic social groupings that now swarm and sometimes collide in the canyons of Lower Manhattan. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

As specialization continues, as research extends into new fields and probes more deeply into old ones, as the economy continues to create new technologies and services, subcults will continue to multiply. Those social critics who inveigh against “mass society” in one breath and denounce “over-specialization” in the next are simply flapping their tongues. Specialization means a movement away from sameness. Despite much loose talk about the need for “generalists,” there is little evidence that the technology of tomorrow can be run without the armies of highly trained specialists. We are rapidly changing the types of expertise needed. We are demanding more “multi-specialists” (humans who know one field deeply, but who can cross over into another as well) rather than ridged, “mono-specialists.” However, we shall continue to need and breed ever more refined work specialists as the technical base of society increases in complexity. For this reason alone, we must expect the variety and number of subcults in the society to increase. Even if technology were to free millions of people from the need to work in the future, we would find the same push toward diversity operating among those who are left free to play. For we are already producing large numbers of “fun specialists.” We are rapidly multiplying not merely types of work, but types of play as well. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

The number of acceptable pastimes, hobbies, games, sports and entertainments is climbing rapidly, and the growth of a distinct subcult built around surfing, for example, demonstrates, that at least for some, a leisure-time commitment can also serve as the basis for an entire life style. The surfing subcult is a signpost pointing to the future. “Surfing has already developed a kind of symbolism that gives it the character of a secret fraternity of a religious order,” write Remi Nadeau. “The identifying sign is a shark’s tooth, St. Christopher medal, or Maltese cross hung loosely about one’s neck. For a long time, the most accepted form of transportation has been a wood-paneled Ford truck.” Surfers display sores and nodules on their knees and feet as proud proof of their involvement. Suntan is de rigeur. Hair is styled in a distinctive way. Members of the tribe spend endless hours debating the prowess of such in-group heroes as J. J. Moon, and his followers buy J. J Moon T-shirts, surfboards, and fan club memberships. Surfers are only one of many such play-based sub-cults. Among skydivers, for example, the name J. J. Moon is virtually unknown, and so are the peculiar rituals and fashions of the wave-cresters. Skydivers talk, instead, about the feat of Rod Pack, who not long ago jumped from an airplane without a parachute, was handed one by a companion in mid-air, put it on, opened it, and landed safely. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Skydivers have their own little World, as do glider enthusiasts, scuba-diver, hot rodders, drag racers and motorcyclists. Each of these represents a leisure-based subcult organized arounds a technological device. As the new technology makes new sports possible, we can anticipate the formation of highly varied new play cults. Leisure-time pursuits will become an increasingly important basis for differences between people, as the society itself shifts from a work orientation toward greater involvement in leisure. In the United States of America, since the turn of the over the past one hundred and twenty years, the society’s measurable commitment to work has plummeted by nearly a third. This is a massive redevelopment of society’s time and energy. As this commitment declines further, we shall advance into an era of breathtaking fun specialism—much of it based on sophisticated technology. We can anticipate the formation of subcults built around space activity, holography, mind-control, deep-sea diving, submarining, computer gaming and the like. We can even see on the horizon the creation of certain anti-social leisure cults—tightly organized groups of people who will disrupt the workings of society not for material gain, but for the sheer port of “beating the system,” like Game Stop did to Wall Street. This development was foreshadowed in such films as Duffy and The Thomas Crown Affair. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Such groups may attempt to tamper with governmental or corporate computer programs, re-route mail (as we saw demonstrated in the election), intercept and alter radio and television broadcasts, perform elaborately theatrical hoaxes, tinker with the stock market, corrupt the rando samples upon which political or other polls are based, and even, perhaps, commit complexly plotted robberies and assassinations. Novelist Thomas Pynchon in The Crying of Lot 49 describes a fictional underground group who have organized their own private postal system and maintained it for generations. Science fiction writer Robert Sheckley has gone so far as to propose, in a terrifying short story called The Seventh Victim, the possibility that society might legalize murder among certain “players” who hunt one another and are, in turn, hunted. This ultimate game would permit those who are dangerously violent to work off their aggressions within a managed framework. Bizarre as some of this may sound, it would be well not to rule out the seemingly improbable, for the realm of leisure, unlike that of work, is little constrained by practical considerations. Here imagination has free play, and the mind of humans can conjure up incredible variety of “fun.” Given enough time, money and, for some of these, technical skill, the humans of tomorrow will be capable of playing in ways never dreamed before. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The people of the future may have atypical games for pleasure. They will play games with the mind. They will play games with society. And in so doing, by choosing among the unimaginably broad options, they will form subcults and further set themselves off from one another. Subcults are multiplying—the society is cracking along age lines, too. We are becoming “age specialists” as well as work and play specialists. There was a time when people were divided roughly into children, “young persons,” and adults. It was not until the forties that the loosely defined term “young persons” began to be replaced by the more restrictive term “teenager,” referring specifically to the years thirteen to nineteen. (In fact, the word was virtually unknow in England until after World War II.) Robbed of adult heroes or role models other than their own parents, children of streamlined, nuclear families are increasingly flung into the arms of the only other people available to them—other children. They spend more time with one another, and they become more responsive to the influences of peers than ever before. Rather than idolizing an uncle, they idolize Darke or Britney Spears or whomever else the peer group holds up for a life style model. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Thus we see not only from college students, but of pre-teens and teenagers, each with its own peculiar tribal chrematistics, its own fads, fashions, heroes and villains. We are simultaneously segmenting the adult population along age lines, too. There are suburbs occupied largely by young married couples with small children, or by middle-age couples with teenagers, or by older couples whose children have already left home. We have specially-designed “retirement communities” for retirees. “There may come a day,” Professor Lofland warns, “when some cities will find that their politics revolve around the voting strength of various age categories, in the same way that Chicago politics has long revolved around ethnic and racial enclaves.” This emergence of age-based subcultures can now be seen as part of a stunning historical shift in the basis of social differentiation. Time is become more important as a source of differences among humans; space is becoming less so. Thus communications theorists James W. Carey of the University of Illinois, points out that “among primitive societies and in the earlier stages of western history, relatively small discontinuities in space led to vast differences in culture. Tribal societies separated by a hundred miles could have grossly dissimilar systems of expressive symbolism, myth and ritual.” Within these same societies, however, there was “great continuity over generations, vast differences between societies but relatively little variation between generations within a given society.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Today, he continues, space “progressively disappears as a differentiating factor.” However, if there has been some reduction in regional variation, Dr. Carey takes pains to point out, “one must not assume that differences between groups being obliterated…as some mass society theorists [suggest].” Rather, Dr. Carey points out, “the axis of diversity shifts from a spatial to a temporal or generation dimension.” Thus we get jagged breaks between the generations—and Mario Savio summed it up with the revolutionary slogan, “Do not trust anyone over thirty!” In on previous society could such a slogan have caught on so quickly. Dr. Carey explains this shift from spatial to temporal differentiation by calling attention to the advance of communications and transportation technology which spans great distances, and, in effect, conquers space. Yet there is another, easily overlooked factor at work: the acceleration of change. For as the pace of the inner differences between young and old become necessarily more marked. In fact, the pace of change is already so blinding that even a few years can make a great difference in the life experience of the individual. This is why some brothers and sisters, separated in age by a mere three or four years, subjectively feel themselves to be members of quite different “generations.” It is why among those radicals who participated in the strike at Columbia University, seniors spoke of the “generation gap” that separated them from the sophomores. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

The problem of what factors are conducive to the development of sadism is too complicated to find in adequate answer in this paper, but it is possible that it has a lot to do with division. One point, however, must be clear from the beginning: there is no simple relationship between environment and character. This is because the individual character is determined by such individual factors as constitutionally given dispositions, idiosyncrasies of family life, exceptional events in a person’s life. Not only do these individual factors play a role; environmental factors are also much more complex than is generally assumed. Society is not a society. A society is a highly complex system; the old and the new lower middle classes, the new middle classes, the upper classes, decaying elites, groups with or without religious or philosophical-moral traditions, small town and big cities—these are only some of the factors that have to be taken into account; no single isolated factor can account for the understanding of character structure as well as the structure of the society. Therefore, if one wishes to correlate social structure and sadism, nothing short of a thorough empirical analysis of all factors will do. However, at the same time it must be added that the power through which one group exploits and keeps down another tends to generate sadism in the controlling group, even though there will be many individual exceptions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Hence sadism will disappear (except as an individual sickness) only when exploitative control of any class, gender, or marginalized group has been done away with. With the exception of a few small societies this has not yet happened anywhere in history. Nevertheless, the establishment of an order based on law and preventing the most arbitrary use of power has been a step in this direction, even though this development has recently been rested in many parts of the World where it once existed and is threatened even in the United States in the name of “law and order.” A society based on exploitative control also exhibits other predictable features. It tends to weaken the independence, integrity, critical thinking, and productivity of those submitted to it. This does not mean that it does not feed the with all sorts of amusements and stimulations, but only those that restrict the development of personality rather than further it. The Roman Caesars offered public spectacles, mainly of the sadistic nature. Contemporary society offers similar spectacles in the form of newspaper and television reports on crimes, war atrocities; where the contents are not gruesome, they are as unnourishing as the breakfast cereals that are promoted by the same mass media to the detriment of children’s health. This cultural food does not offer activating stimuli, but promotes passivity and sloth. At best it offers fun and thrills, but almost no joy; for joy requires freedom, the loosening of the tight reins of control, which is precisely what is so difficult for the anal-sadistic type to do. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

As to sadism in the individual, it corresponds to the social average, with individual deviations above and below. Individual factors enhancing sadism are all those conditions that tend to make the child or the grownup feel empty and important (If new circumstances occur, a nonsadistic child may become a sadistic adolescent or adult). Among such conditions are those the produce fright, such as terroristic punishment. By this I mean the kind of punishment that is not strictly limited in intensity, related to specific and stated misbehaviour but that is arbitrary, fed by the punisher’s sadism, and of fright-producing intensity. Depending on the temperament of the child, the fear of such punishment can become a dominant motive in one’s life, one’s sense of integrity may be slowly broken down, one’s self-respect lowered, and eventually one may have betrayed oneself so often that one has no more sense of identity, that one is no longer “he” or “she.” The other condition for the generation of vital powerlessness is a situation of psychic scarcity. If there is no stimulation, nothing that awakens the faculties of a child, if there is an atmosphere of dullness and joylessness, the child frees up; there is nothing upon which one can make a dent, nobody who responds or even listens, the child is left with a sense of powerlessness and impotence. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Such a powerlessness does not necessarily result in the formation of the sadistic character; whether or not it does, depends on many other factors. Yet it is one of the main sources that contribute to the development of sadism, both individually and socially. When the individual character deviated from the social character, the social group tends to reinforce all those character elements that correspond to it, while the opposite elements become dormant. If, for instance, a sadistic person lives within a group where the majority are nonsadistic and where sadistic person lives within a group where the majority are nonsadistic and where sadistic behaviour is considered undesirable and unpleasant, the sadistic individua will not necessarily change one’s character, but one will not act upon it; one’s sadism will not disappear, but will “dry up,” as it were, for lack of being fed. Life in the kibbutzim and other intentional communities offers many examples of this, although there are also instances where the new atmosphere produce a real change of character. A person whose character is sadistic will be essentially harmless in an antisadistic society; one will be considered to be suffering from an illness. One will never be popular and will have little, if any, access to positions in which one can have any social influence. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

 If it is asked what makes the sadism of a person so intense, one must not think only of constitutional, biological factors, but of the psychic atmosphere that is largely responsible not only for the generation of social sadism but also for the vicissitudes of individual generated, idiosyncratic sadism. It is for this reason that the development of an individual can never be fully understood on the basis of one’s constitution and one’s family background alone. Unless we know the location of the person and one’s family within the social system, and the spirit of this system, we are barred from understanding why certain traits are so persistent and deep-seated. At one time, faithfulness to Christ’s announcement of His Kingdom led to persecution and double-edged sarcasm. An enraged mob in Thessalonica threatened Paul and Silas, shouting, “These men who have caused trouble all over the World are defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” During the early centuries Christians were martyred not for religious reasons—Rome, after all, was a land of many gods—but because they refused to worship the emperor. Because they would not say, “We have no king but Caesar,” the Roman government saw them as political subversives. Christians who refused to offer incense before the state of the emperor were flogged, stoned, imprisoned, condemned to the mines. Later, when Christianity was officially outlawed, they were tortured mercilessly and fed to the lions, to the delight of bloodthirsty crowds. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

In the second half of the second century, Christians were systematically persecuted. This account of a massacre in the Rhone Valley is not atypical: “Many Christians were tortured in the stocks or in cells. Sanctus, a deacon from Vienna, had red-hot plates applied to his testicles—his poor body was one whole wound and bruise having lost the outward form of a man. Christians who were Roman citizens were beheaded. Others were force through a gauntlet of whips into the amphitheater and then given to the beasts. Severed heads and limbs of Christians were displayed, guarded for six days, then burned, the ashes being thrown into the Rhone. One lady, Blandina, was the worst treated of all, tortured from dawn until evening till her torturers were exhausted and marveled that the breath was still in her body. She was then scoured, roasted in the frying pan and finally put in the basket to be tossed to death by wild bulls,” reports Paul Johnson, History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1979), 72-73. Many Christians went to their death praising their King, and such martyrdom became the church’s most potent witness. Pagan Romans were convinced that Christ has taken away their pains. As has often been said, the church was built on the martyr’s blood. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

With the conversion of Constantine, however, Christianity was legalized in A.D. 313. This marked the end of persecution and ushered in a second phase in church-state relations. “Historians have questioned Constantine’s motives. Some believe it was an effort to say a dying empire, though one contemporary historian has come to a different conclusion. Christianity was practiced only by a small minority. Its universality, the message of Christ Himself, the reliability of written revelation as opposed to myths, began to attract pagan masses, reports Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1986). In A.D. 381 Christianity became the official religion of Rome, and in an ironic turnabout, church leaders began exploiting their new-found power. “Christian leaders exploited the influential favour they enjoyed even when it meant subordinating the cause of justice to the apparent interest of their religion. They were inclined to allow secular power too much control in church affairs. Where church leaders were able to exercise political as well as spiritual authority, they did not enjoy any marked immunity from the universally corrupting tendency of power,” reports historian F. F. Bruce. Even Augustine, the great church father who provided the classic definition of the roles of the City of God and the city f man, was beguiled by the lure of temporal power; after a wrenching internal struggle he endorsed the suppression of heretics by the state. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Through succeeding centuries the church relied increasingly on the state to punish heresy. By the time of the Byzantine empire in the East, the state had become a theocracy with the church serving as its department of spiritual affairs. In the West both church and state jockeyed for control in an uneasy alliance. In the thirteenth century, for example, Frederick II, the king of Sicily, was first excommunicated for not going on a crusade, then excommunicated for going on one without the Pope’s permission. The state conquered territory, but the Pope distributed the land to the more faithful crusaders. The consequences of this alliance were mixed. Certainly Christianity provided a civilizing influence on Western culture through art, music, literature, morality, and ultimately in government. One eminent historian concluded that “society developed only so fast as religion enlarged its sphere.” One the darker side, however, the excesses of the politicized church created horrors Augustine could not have imagined. The church turned to military conquest through a series of “holy wars” that became more radical than religious. Jews, Muslims, and dark-skinned Christian were massacred alike. The goal was not to convert the populace, but to conquer it. Jesus likened the Kingdom of Heaven to a grain of mustard seed, which was a simile among the Jews for anything exceedingly small. Why did he do so? Because, in its first onset, the Kingdom is not an experience but an intuition—and the latter beings as an exceedingly faint and tiny leading. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Whereas we can reach the intellect only through thinking, we can reach the spirit only through intuition. The practice of prayer is simply deepening, broadening, and strengthening of intuition. A spiritual experience is simply a prolonged intuition. The prettily vauge and poetically general statements of spiritual truth, the woolly, sentimental, or foggy revelations and communications, are heard or intuited only in the outer courts. When the neophyte approaches the central inner court, what one receives is very precise clear and exact. This is so until one reaches the inmost shrine, the holy of holies itself. Here, words must come to an end for here one must “Be still and know that I am God.” It is important that the feeling of “inward drawing” which comes to one at times be at once followed up, whenever possible, by a withdrawal from external affairs for a few minutes and a concentration on what the feeling leads to. This practice is like a thread which, if followed up, will lead to a cord, that to a rope, and so on. Thus one will benefit by the grace which is being shed upon one, and not turn away unheedingly. However, the mind, at the beginning, leaves this intuitional plane all too quickly, so extreme vigilance is called for to bring it back there. What is more private, more intimate, than intuition? It is the only means they possess wherefrom to start to get mystical experience, glimpses, true enlightenment. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Yet, people insist on seeking among those who stand outside them, among the teachers, for that which must be searched after and felt inside themselves. In the dark hour that thou shalt find thy true self, follow God and one will be thy true self, follow God and He will be thy genius, for God holds the secret of thy existence. The teaching that is most worthwhile comes directly from one’s own inner being, not for another’s. To develop these brief intuitions and bring them to maturity in lengthier moods, is one’s task. That which guides one to the God within one’s own being, that slender thread of intuitive feeling and intelligence, may at first appear and disappear at intervals. At first intuition is like a frail thread, almost impalpable, of which one is just faintly aware; but if one heeds it, rivets attention stubbornly to it, the visitations come more and more often. If one follows the thread to its source, the message becomes clearer, stronger precise. If you can attentively trance this subtle feeling back to its own root, you will get a reward immeasurably greater than it seemed to promise. It is only by constant use that intuition can mature into mystical enlightenment. If one learns to cultivate these brief intuitive moments aright, there can develop out of them in time mystical moods of much longer duration and much deeper intensity. Still later, there could come to maturity the ripe fruit of all these moods—an ecstatic experience wherein grace descends with life-changing results. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

If, out of the Silent Mind, words come forth to affirm the consciousness of Consciousness, let it be known that the truth never dies but springs back to life again. We should be glad, enormously happy, that it is so. “And blessed are ye when people shall revile you and persecute, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; for ye shall have great joy and be exceedingly glad, for great shall be your reward in Heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you,” reports 3 Nephi 12.10-12. Dear Lord in Heaven, with your soothing grace, please wipe away the lines that worries have etched on our faces. Please surround us with calm, please let us rest in the glow of peace, as if we were encircled with the Moon’s own light. Please let our concerns and tensions drain away from us, pouring as water into your Earth. Please accept our troubles and please transform them into wonders. Thou causest the wind to blow and the rain to fall. Thou sustainest the living with lovingkindness, and in great mercy callest the departed to everlasting life. Thou upholdest the falling, healest the sick, settest free those in bondage, and keepest faith with those that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Almighty King, who decreest death and life and bringest forth salvation? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to life everlasting. Holy art Thou and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

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Featuring the unique opportunity to personalize, Mills Station Residence 2 is one of Cresleigh’s home communities in in Rancho Cordova, California.

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Residence Two at Mills Station is a two story home that has all the conveniences of a single story! At 2,317 square feet, this home features the Owner’s suite on the first floor with two secondary bedrooms on the “pop top” second story. Take advantage of the vaulted ceilings offered in this plan! The open floor plan includes three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, Home Hub, Loft and more! Walk into the great room and feel the height of the ceilings and all the light brought in from the high windows.

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This home is designed with Universal Design concepts meaning that its well equipped for life’s transitions and aging in place. Learn more about this unique feature by speaking with a sales associate today! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/