Television in our country is, even more than movies, the American Dream made visible, and that is what makes it more desirable. Almost everyone I know dreams of owning a beautiful house. To be “between styles” or “between subcults” is a life crisis, and the people of the future spend more time in this condition, searching for styles, than do the people of the past or present. Altering one’s identity as one goes, super-age of information humans traces a private trajectory through a World of colliding subcults. This is the social mobility of the future: not simply movement from one economic class to another, but from one tribal grouping to another. Restless movement from subcult to ephemeral subcult describes the arc of one’s life. There are plenty of reasons for this restlessness. It is not merely that the individual’s psychological needs change more often than in the past; the subcults also change. For these and other reasons, as subcult membership becomes ever more unstable, the search for a personal style will become increasingly intense, even frenetic in the decades to come. Again and again, we shall find ourselves bitter or bored, vaguely dissatisfied with “the way things are”—upset, in other words, with our present style. At that moment, we begin once more to search for a new principle around which to organize our choices. We arrive again at the moment of super-decision. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

At this moment, if anyone studied our behaviour closely, one would find a sharp increase in what might be called the Transience Index. The rate of turnover of things, places, people, organizational and informational relationship spurts upward. We get rid of that Roberto Cavalli “Perfume” dress or that Stefano Ricci men’s handmade pleated silk tie the old 74” Tiffany Oriental Poppy floor lamp, that magnificent Victorian Swarovski claw foot bath, and the GemLookdesign Rock crystal sink—all those symbols of our links with the subcult of the past. We begin, bit by bit, to replace them with new items emblematic of our new identification. The same process occurs in our social lives—the through-put of people speeds up. We begin to reject ideas we have held (or to explain them or rationalize them in new ways). We are suddenly free of all the constraints that our subcult or style impose on us. A Transience Index would prove a sensitive indicator of those moments in our lives when we are most free—but, at the same time, most lost. It is in this interval that we exhibit the wild oscillation engineers call “searching behaviour.” We are most vulnerable now to the messages of new subcults, to the claims and counterclaims that rend the air. We lean this way and hat. A powerful new friend, a new fad or idea, a new political movement, some new hero rising from the depths of the mass media—all these strike us with particular force at such a moment. We are more “open,” more uncertain, more ready for someone or some group to tell us what to do, how to behave. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Decisions—even little ones—come harder. This is not accidental. To cope with the press of daily life we need more information about far more trivial matters than when we were locked into a firm life style. And so we feel anxious, pressured, alone, and we move on. We choose or allow ourselves to be sucked into a new subcult. We put on a new style. As we rush toward super-industrialism, therefore, we find people adopting and discarding life styles at a rate that would have staggered the members of any previous generation. For the life style itself has become a throw-away item. This is no small or easy matter. It accounts for the much lamented “loss of commitment” that is so characteristic of our time. As people shift from subcult to subcult, from style to style, they are conditioned to guard themselves against the inevitable pain of disaffiliation. They learn to armour themselves against the sweet sorrow of parting. The extremely devout Catholic who throws over one’s religion and plunges into the life of a New Left activist, then throws oneself into some other cause or movement or subcult, cannot go on doing so forever. One becomes, to adapt Graham Greene’s terms, a “burnt out case.” One learns from past disappointment never to lay too much of this old self on the line. And so, even when one seemingly adopts a subcult or style, one withholds some part of oneself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

One conforms to the group’s demands and revels in the belongingness that it gives one. However, this belongingness is never the same as it once was, and secretly one remains ready to defect at a moment’s notice. What this means is that even when one seems most firmly plugged in to one’s group or tribe, one listens, in the dark of night, to the short-wave signals of competing tribes. In this sense, one’s membership in the group is shallow. One remains constantly in a posture of non-commitment, and without strong commitment to the values and styles of some group one lacks the explicit set of criteria that one needs to pick one’s way through the burgeoning jungle of overchoice. The super-age of information revolution, consequently, forces the whole problem of overchoice to a qualitatively new level. It forces us now to make choices not merely among lamps and lampshades, but among lives, not among life style components, but among whole life styles. This intensification of the problem of overchoice presses us toward revels of self-examination, soul-searching and introversion. It confronts us with that most popular of contemporary illness, the “identity crisis.” Never before have masses of humans faced a more complex set of choices. The hunt for identity arises not out of the supposed choicelessness of “mass society,” but precisely from the plenitude and complexity of our choices. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Each time we make a style choice, a super-decision, each time we link up with some particular subcultural group or groups, we make some change in our self-image. We become, in some sense, a different persons, and we perceive ourselves as different. Our old friends, those who knew us in some previous incarnation, raise their eyebrows. They have a harder and harder time recognizing us, and, in fact, we experience increasing difficulty in identifying with, or even sympathizing with, our own past selves. The hippie becomes the straight-arrow executive, the executive becomes the skydiver without noting the exact steps of transition. In the process, one discards not only the externals of one’s style, but many of one’s underlying attitudes as well. And one day the question hits one like a splash of cold water in a sleep-sodden face: “What remains?” What is there of “self” or “personality” in the sense of a continuous, durable internal structure? For some, the answer is very little. For they are no longer dealing in “self” but in what might be called “serials selves.” The Super-age of information Revolution this requires a basic change in human’s conception of oneself, a new theory of personality that takes into account the discontinuities in human’s lives, as well as the continuities. The Super-age of information Revolution also demands a new conception of freedom—a recognition that freedom, pressed to its ultimate, negates itself. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Society’s leap to a new level of differentiation necessarily brings with it new opportunities for individuation, and the new technology, the new temporary organizational forms, cry out for a new breed of human. This is why, despite “backlash” and temporary reversals, the line of social advance carries us toward a wider tolerance, a more easy acceptance of the more and more diverse human types. The sudden popularity of the slogan “do you thing” is a reflection of this historic movement. For the more fragmented or differentiated the society, the greater the number of varied life styles it promotes. And the more socially accepted life style models put forth by the society, the closer that society approaches a condition in which, in fact, each human does one’s own, unique thing. Thus, despite all the anti-technological rhetoric of the Elluls and Fromms, the Mumfords and Marcuses, it is precisely the super-industrial society, the most advanced technological society ever, that extends the range of freedom. The people of the future enjoy greater opportunities for self-realization than any previous group in history. The new society offers few roots in the sense of truly enduring relationships. However, it does offer more varied life niches, more freedom to move in and out of these niches, and more opportunity to create one’s own niche, than all earlier societies put together. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

This new found freedom also offers the supreme exhilaration of riding change, cresting it, changing and growing with it—a process infinitely more exciting than riding the surf, wrestling steers, playing “knock hubcaps,” or having a “sideshow” on an eight-lane speedway, or the pursuit of pharmaceutical kicks. It presents the individual with a contest that requires self-mastery, and high intelligence. For the individual who comes armed with these, and who makes the necessary effort to understand the fast-emerging super-age of informational social structure, for the person who finds the “right” life pace, the “right” sequence of subcults to join and life style models to emulate, the triumph is exquisite. Undeniably, these grand words do not apply to the majority of humans. Most people of the past and present remain imprisoned in life niches they have neither made nor have much hope, under present conditions, of ever escaping. For most human beings, the options remain excruciatingly few. This imprisonment must—and will—be broken. Yet it will not be broken by tirades against technology. It will not be broken by calls for a return to passivity, mysticism and irrationality. It will not be broken by “feeling” or “intuiting” our way into the future while derogating empirical study, analysis, and rational effort. Rather than lashing out, Luddite-fashion, against the machine, those who genuinely wish to break the prison-hold of the past and present would so well to hasten the controlled—selective—arrival of tomorrow’s technologies. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

To accomplish this, however, intuition and “mystical insights” are hardly enough. It will take exact scientific knowledge, expertly applied to the crucial, most sensitive points of social control. Nor does it help to offer the principle of the maximization of choice as the key to freedom. We must consider the possibility, suggested here, that choice may become overchoice, and freedom unfreedom. The goal of massive bureaucracies is to preside over the death of God; their system for achieving it is most often called Marxist Leninism. It carries out its policies with surgical efficiency, as millions of Christians and Jews who have passed through Communist gulagas would testify. If they could. However, sometimes the system performs with comic clumsiness. We had the experience one evening of going to the Kirov Ballet for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The Kirov is the crown jewel of Leningrad. The Soviets spared nothing to repair the heavy damage the building suffered during World War II, restoring its nineteenth-century elegance. During the renovation, which was completed in 1970, nearly nine hundred pounds of gold were used to gild the interior walls where give tiers of balconies sweep around the huge horseshoe-shaped hall like elegant ivory and gold rings, glistening in the blaze of massive crystal chandeliers. The sight took our breath away. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Our escort, a veteran U.S. Consulate officer, seemed pleased as we were shown to our orchestra center seats—thick, plush, sapphire-velvet chairs. Sure enough, when the light dimmed and the velvet curtain rose, it was not the opening strains of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece we heard, but the strident opening strident chords of Creation of the World. I have seen it six times. I watched the faces of the surrounding audience. Not a murmur, not a single expression of displeasure. Seventeen hundred people sat stoically in their seats. It was a dreary evening indeed. The ballet was a parody on the Garden of Eden, where a buffoonlike character, God, contested with a vital, vigorous figure, Satan, for the soul of man, In the closing scene God retreated lamely, vanquished, leaving self-sufficient man living happily ever after in his Earthy paradise. The architect of this Earthly paradise was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the son of Christian parents, known to history as Lenin. Lenin, a single-minded radical, became the most successful revolutionary of the twentieth century. With the “will to power,” he pursued and eliminated his enemies ruthlessly—liberals and socialists, rival Marxists, reluctant peasants and skeptical military officers, monarchists and capitalists, Jews and various other “class enemies.” Above all, Lenin pursued and murdered Christians. He hated them. “There can be nothing more abominable than religion,” he wrote. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Lenin particular hated seriously committed Christians. Weak Christians he could manage, but serious Christians meant nothing but trouble for a Marxist-Leninist regime. They owed allegiance to the one power greater than the totalitarian Communist state. History has borne Lenin out on this point, if not on others. The pattern of Communist persecution of Jews and Christians is remarkably ecumenical. It has fallen on orthodox believers and Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine; Roman Catholics in the Baltic Republics, Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Vietnam, and Nicaragua; Lutherans in East Germany and Czechoslovakia; Reformed Christians in Hungary and Czechoslovakia; Pentecostals, Baptists, and other evangelicals in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia; house church believers in China. In 1980 twenty-eight Marxist regimes around the World were committed to a policy of atheism, repressing and persecuting Christianity to some degree. These nations contained approximately 250 million Christians—almost one of every five Christians in the World. Those twenty-eight nations, at the time, had a total population of 1.48 billion—which was more than 33 percent of the World’s people. Consider just a few representative reports of that persecution around the World: In Vietnam seventeen evangelical pastors were in jail. From 1975-1995, some 200 churches had been closed. #RandolphHrris 10 of 19

In the Soviet Union criminal charges were filed against Nedezhda Mativkhina for allowing a group of Christians to meet in her home. Mativkhina, a double amputee, had already served two terms in the gulag and faced a third. In Czechoslovakia and Hungary the police crack down on leaders of “basic communities” where Catholic adults and young people met for Bible study and prayer. In China authorities “liberalize” rules covering Christians by banning Protestant house churches, restricting religious gatherings to licensed church buildings, and forbidding evangelism. In Nicaragua dozens of Moravian pastors serving impoverished Miskito Indians on the country’s Atlantic Coast are imprisoned and killed. Moravian communities are uprooted. In the Soviet Union dissident Anatoly Shcaransky was given 130 days in solitary for refusing to surrender his book of Psalms. The Soviet Union has set the course that virtually all Marxist governments have followed. Before the 1917 revolution 83.4 percent of the people living in what is now the Soviet Union were identified as Christians—three quarters of them Russian Orthodox. Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians have suffered violent persecution since the revolution, except for a brief period during World War II when the regime needed the support of the churches. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Since 1917, some 60 million Soviet citizens have been killed and 66 million have been sent to labour camps or imprisoned. At least half of these have been Christians. Activist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once described Communism as “an organized evil which spears terror and cruelty through the World. And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great writer who came to faith while in prison, explains why Communist are so determined to destroy Christianity: “They flee from Christ like devils from the sight of the cross.” However, before leaving His disciples, Jesus Christ gave them a new commandment—to love one another, not as in times past with the qualification “as you love yourself,” but “as I have loved you,” reports John 13.34. It may well be that only those who undergo suffering can fully empathize with the suffering soul. Only those who go down into the depths of humility with a broken heart and a contrite spirit can fully understand the Master and the path he trod. Therefore, in times of suffering perhaps it is faith we need, rather than rational understanding. Perhaps our prayers should be for the strength to bear up under the burden rather than to have the burden removed. “And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, I know of the covenant which ye made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

“And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witness for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions. And now it came t pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit,” reports Mosiah 24.13-15.  Perhaps the road we may have to tread through suffering leads ultimately to important discoveries of the soul. In the interior Word, the words are clearly formed and not to be mistake though not heard by the body’s ear. A mystical phenomenon which may develop out of this communion with one’s “holy ghost” is that of inspired writings. Helpful teachings that will be addressed to humanity in general or to the few seekers in particular may come through one’s pen. Or guidance in one’s personal life and instruction in one’s spiritual life may be addressed to the writer oneself through occasional notes. In most cases the words will be impressed spontaneously upon one’s mind as though telepathically received from the dictation of one’s unseen but much-felt other self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

In some cases, however, one’s hand and pen may move across the paper by automatic compulsions at a high speed, one’s mind being forced to move as quickly. One will then distinctly feel that one is merely an instrument which is being used to produce this inspirational script. It would be a dangerous blunder for anyone to confuse this last phenomenon with the automatic writing of spiritualism and psychism. The similarities are only external ones. For in the one case there is the clear consciousness of a divine exalting ennobling presence whereas in other the other there is, at beast, only a blind submission to an unknown entity, usually purporting to be another human if discarnated, being. The words spoken by this unseen but much-felt presence are not heard by the physical ears yet they are strongly impressed upon the mind. They do not come from the spirits of deceased persons but from the holy spirit of one’s own diviner self, from a deep mystical source, not a shallow “astral” one. This is the same phenomenon which Emmanuel Swedenborg experienced and described and called “internal speech with the Lord.” The experience of the Interior Word brings with it, or is heard in, an intensely concentrated state. With it there is a beneficial feeling of being the assured master of one’s mind, emotions, and body. What is amounts to is that the Interior Word becomes in effect the Inner Teacher and prayer itself the gateway to an inner school where instruction is regularly obtained. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

It is the great Silence, yes, but also through the Interior Word it is to us humans the ever-speaking higher Self. To hear the Voice of the Silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the Hall of Learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. For when the disciple is ready, the Master is ready also. It is a process of inner dialogue, of mental conversation with the other self and of emotional communion with it, following under one’s thoughts to and fro. Interior Word: And in the deep silence the mysterious event will occur which will prove that the way has been found. Call it by what name you will, it is a voice that speaks where there is none to speak—it is a messenger that comes, a messenger without form or substance; for it is the flower of the soul that has opened. If God’s messages are to be heard aright (interior Word), the instrument of reception must be accurately tuned. To bring others a message which elevates them and a truth which inspire them, the Interior Word will speak through one as one. When it happens, this is a wonderful phenomenon. The Interior Word must not be mistaken for any of the psychic voices cultivated by spiritists and mediums. The two are on entirely different planes, even though they are both within. For Interior Word draw on my own experiences in 1918 when I also heard it for many months. The Interior Word did not speak to me for myself alone, to prepare, teach, and direct me. It spoke also for others. It requires me to write down its messages for them even more than for me. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

There is a wisdom deep deep within a huma but alas! it finds no voice until one turns from oneself and calls on the higher power. Then, from within, it—the deputy of that Power—when the conditions are right, can make itself heard and therefore speaks. Let one humbly acknowledge that one does not have the wisdom and purity to know what is right for one to have and what is right to do. Let one turn in silent waiting to the Interior Word, and listen for it to tell one these answers. When one has travelled to this stage of one’s journey; when one can close the door of one’s chamber, lie down, and listen to the Interior Voice; when the silence within becomes audible with clearly formulated instructions, then only is one ready to speak to others or write for others, and teach them. Until then one is a deaf mute, unable to hear and untrained to speak the sacred language. Now the Pentecostal power has descended on one and one is able not only to see the truth through the surrounding darkness but also to give it to those among one’s people who can take it. When our converts “come alive”—and they need nourishment—in the gospel, they soon come alive as students, as parents, in their professions, and as citizens. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

We look on the times of the past and often see our most memorable, satisfying, and blessed periods of our lives. That time is still rewarding us with rich experiences and blessings. The Lord has said to missionaries, “And if it so be that you should labour all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with Him in the kingdom of my Father!” reports Doctrine and Covenants 18.15. This promise stands like a beacon to every missionary, but as if that were not enough, there are other blessings from missionary work, and they are many and varied. Some are immediate; others come only with time. The spiritual self, the Overself, has never been lost. What has happened is that its being has not been recognized, covered over as it is with a multitude of thoughts, desires, and egocentricities. The day will inexorably come when this pen shall move on more and I wish therefore to leave on record, for the benefit of those who shall come after, a sacred and solemn testimony that I know that I am not this pen which scribes these lines—that a being, benign, wise, protective, and divine, whom humans call the Soul, whom I call the Overself, truly exists in the hearts of all. A day will break surely when every human will have to bend the knee to that unknown self and abandon every cell of one’s brain, every flowing molecule of one’s heart, one’s blood, into its waiting hands. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Though one will fear to do so, though one will fear to give up those ancient idols who had held one in bond so long and have given one so little in return, though one will tremble to loose one’s moorings and let one’s soul drift slowly from them with sails set for that mysterious region whose longitude few humans know and whose shores most humans shun, yet one will do so all the same. For the presence of human’s own innermost divinity is the guarantee that one must inescapably seek and find it. Whoever has been lead into the cave of timeless life will poise one’s pen in a futile attempt to find words which will accurately measures this sublime experience. One rises renewed from the exquisite embrace of such a contemplation. One learns in those shining hours. That which one has been seeking so ardently has been within oneself all the time. For there at the core of one’s being, hidden away underneath all the weakness, passion, pettiness, fear, and ignorance, dwells light, love, peace, and truth. The windows of one’s heart open on eternity, only one has kept them closed! One is as near the sacred spirit of God as one ever shall be, but one must open one’s eyes to see it. Human’s divine estate is there deep within oneself. However, one must claim it. In the divine estate, we are one with God, and He gives us spiritual nourishment as part of Himself. We also notice the coincidence of inbuilt patterns with correspondences in the outside World and it seems as a “holding situation.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

God places His grace just where we are ready to create, and at the right moment. God works with us to confirm it. Then we see ample opportunities follow this union. It almost seems like whatever we want appears as soon as it is thought is or wished for.  For a moment we need this complicated way of saying that we have created the object or opportunity, but it is God. The most satisfying experience I have is to see what this gospel does for people. It gives them a new outlook on life. It gives them a perspective that they have never felt before. It raises their sights to things noble and divine. Something happens to them that is miraculous to behold. They look to Christ and come alive. Their lives and the lives of their posterity are changed forever. Spirits of God, please accept this offering from one who wishes only to be at peace with You. Today I am your host and I give you a host’s gift. Tomorrow the turn may fall to you and you will be the host. Please remember that I have acted as hospitality requires, and please reciprocate when You feel the time is right. May God help us always to do only that which is right. O Lord, please guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile, and to those who slander me, please let me give no heed. May my soul be humble and forgiving unto all. Please open Thou my heart, O Lord, unto Thy sacred Law, that Thy statutes I may know and all Thy truths pursue. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, we want our kitchen to be this one over at #Riverside#Residence 1. 😍

Residence One is the smallest of the floor plans offered at Cresleigh Riverside but at 2,293 square feet, there is plenty of space in this single story home. With three bedrooms, two bathrooms, den, great room, and dining room, there is enough room for all members of the family to have their corner of the house.

The two car garage boasts ample storage and a covered patio comes included in the home. If needed, the den can easily be transformed into a fourth bedroom.

Enjoy the luxuries included in a Cresleigh Home such as hand set tiles in entry way, kitchen and wet areas, large eat-in kitchen island, ample storage, and All-Ready Smart Home package.

Take a closer look at #PlumasRanch over at our website, home range in size from 1,740 to 3,400 square feet. Click the link. #CresleighHomes