Every time you win, you are reborn; when you lose, you die a little. Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one. The definition of the good is purely formal. It simply states that a person’s good is determined by the rational plan of life that one would choose with deliberative rationality from the maximal class of plans. Although the notion of deliberative rationality and the principles of rational choice rely upon concepts of considerable complexity, we still cannot derive from the definition of rational plans alone what sorts of ends these plans are likely to encourage. In order to draw conclusions about these ends, it is necessary to take note of certain general facts. First of all, there are the broad features of human desires and needs, their relative urgency and cycles of recurrence, and their phases of development as affected by physiological and other circumstances. Second, plans must fit the requirements of human capacities and abilities, their trends of maturation and growth, and how they are best trained and educated for this or that purpose. Moreover, I shall postulate a basic principle of motivation which I shall refer to as the Aristotelian Principle. Finally, the general facts of social interdependency must be reckoned with. The basic structure of society is bound to encourage and support certain kinds of plans more than others by rewarding its members for contributing to the common good in ways consistent with justice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Taking account of these contingencies narrows down the alternative plans so that the problem of decision becomes, in some cases anyway, reasonably definite. To be sure, as we shall see, a certain arbitrariness still remains, but the priority of right limits it in such a way that it is no longer a problem from the standpoint of justice. Taking account of these contingencies narrows down the alterative plans so that the problem of decision becomes, in some cases anyway, reasonably definite. To be sure, as we shall see, a certain arbitrariness still remains, but the priority of right limits it in such a way that it is no longer a problem from the standpoint of justice. The general facts about human needs and abilities are perhaps clear enough and I shall assume that common sense knowledge suffices for our purpose here. Before taking up the Aristotelian Principle, however, I should comment briefly on the human goods (as I shall call them) and the constraints of justice. Given the definition of a rational plan, if not a central place in our life, we may think of these goods as those activities and ends that have the features whatever they are that suit them for an important. Since in the full theory rational plans must be consistent with the principles of justice, the human goods are similarly constrained. Thus the familiar values of personal affection and friendship, meaningful work and social cooperation, the pursuit of knowledge and the fashioning and contemplation of beautiful objects, are not only prominent in our rational plans but they can for the most part be advanced in a manner which justice permits. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Admittedly to attain and to preserve these values, we are often tempted to act unjustly; but achieving these ends involves no inherent injustice. In contrast with the desire to cheat and to degrade others, doing something unjust is not included in the description of the human goods. The social interdependency of these values is shown in the fact that not only are they good for those who enjoy them but they are likely to enhance the good of others. In achieving these ends we generally contribute to the rational plans of our associates. In this sense, they are complementary goods, and this accounts for their being singled out for special commendation. For to commend something is to praise it, to recount the properties that make it good (rational to want) with emphasis and expressions of approval. These facts of interdependency are further reasons for including the recognized values in long-term plans. For assuming that we desire the respect and good will of other persons, or at least to avoid their hostility and contempt, those plans of life will tend to be preferable which further their aims as well as our own. Turning now to our present topic, it will be recalled that the Aristotelian Principle runs as follows: others things equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Aristotelian Principle denotes that enjoyment and pleasure are not always by any means the result of returning to a healthy or normal state, or of making up deficiencies; rather many kinds of pleasure and enjoyment arise when we exercise our faculties; and that the exercise of our natural power is a leading human good. Further, the idea that the more enjoyable activities and the more desirable and enduring pleasures spring from the exercise of greater abilities involving more complex discriminations is not only compatible with Aristotle’s conception of the natural order, but something like it usually fits the judgments of value he makes, even when it does not express his reasons. The intuitive idea here is that human beings take more pleasures in doing something as they become more proficient at it, and of two activities they do equally well, they prefer the one calling on a larger repertoire of more intricate and subtle discriminations. For example, chess is a more complicated and subtle game than checkers, and trigonometry is more intricate than algebra. Thus the principle say that someone who can do both generally prefers playing chess to playing checkers, and that one would rather study trigonometry than algebra. We need not explain here why the Aristotelian Principle is true. Presumably complex activities are more enjoyable because they satisfy the desire for variety and novelty of experience, and leave room for feats of ingenuity and invention. They also evoke the pleasures of anticipation and surprise, and often the overall form of the activity, its structural development, is fascinating and beautiful. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Moreover, simpler activities exclude the possibility of individual style and personal expression which complex activities permit or even require, for how could everyone do them in the same way? If we are to find our way at all, that we should follow our natural bent and the lessons of our past experience seems inevitable. Each of these features is well illustrated by chess, even to the point where grand masters have their characteristic style of play. Whether these considerations are explanations of the Aristotelian Principle or elaboration of its means, I shall leave aside. I believe that nothing essential for the theory of the good depends upon this question. It is evident that the Aristotelian Principle contains a variant of the principle of inclusiveness. Or at least the clearest cases of greater complexity are those in which one of the activities to be compared includes all the skills and discrimination of the other activity and some further ones in addition. Once again, we can establish but a partial order, since each of several activities may require abilities not used in the others. Such an ordering is the best that we can have until we possess some relatively precise theory and measure of complexity that enables us to analyze and compare seemingly disparate activities. I shall not, however, discuss this problem here, but assume instead that our intuitive notion of complexity will suffice for our purposes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
The Aristotelian Principle is a principle of motivation. It accounts for many of our major desires, and explains why we prefer to do some things and not others by constantly exerting an influence over the flow of our activity. Moreover, it expresses a psychological law governing changes in the pattern of our desires. Thus the principle implies that as a person’s capacities increase over time (brought about by physiological and biological maturation, for example, the development of the nervous system in a young child), and as one trains these capacities and learns how to exercise them, one will in due course come to prefer the more complex activities that one can now engage in which call upon one’s newly realized abilities. The simpler things one enjoyed before are no longer sufficiently interesting or attractive. If we ask why we are willing to undergo the stresses of practice and learning, the reason may be (if we leave out of account external rewards and penalties) that having had some success at learning things in the past, and experiencing the present enjoyments of the activity, we are led to expect even greater satisfaction once we acquire a greater repertoire of skills. As we witness the exercise of well-trained abilities by others, these displays are enjoyed by us and arouse a desire that we should be able to do the same things ourselves. We want to be like those persons who can exercise the abilities that we find latent in our nature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Thus it would appear that how much we learn and how far we educate our innate capacities depends upon how great these capacities are and how difficult is the effort of realizing them. There is a race so to speak, between the increasing satisfaction of exercising greater realized ability and the increasing strains of learning as the activity becomes more strenuous and difficult. Assuming that natural talents have an upper bound, whereas the hardships of training can be made more severe without limit, there must be some level of achieved ability beyond which the gains from a further increase in this level are just offset by the burdens of the further practice and study necessary to bring it abut and to maintain it. Equilibrium is reached when these two forces balance one another, and at this point the effort to achieve greater realized capacity ceases. It follows that if the pleasures of the activity increase too slowly with rising ability (an index let us suppose of a lower level of innate ability), then the correspondingly greater efforts of learning will lead us to give up sooner. In this case we will never engage in certain more complex activities not acquire desires by taking part in them. When we combine the effects of decisional stress with sensory and cognitive overload, we produce several common forms of individual maladaptation. For example, one widespread response to high-speed change is outright denial. The Denier’s strategy is to “block out” unwelcome reality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
When the demand for decisions reaches crescendo, one flatly refuses to take in new information. Like the disaster victim whose face registers total disbelief, Th Denier, too, cannot accept the evidence of one’s senses. Thus one concludes that things really are the same, and that all evidences of change are merely superficial. One finds comfort in such cliches as “young people were always rebellious” or “there is nothing new on the face of the Earth,” or “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” An unknowing victim of future shock, The Denier sets oneself up for personal catastrophe. One’s strategy for coping increases the likelihood that wen one finally is forced to adapt, one’s encounter with change will come in the form of a single massive life crisis, rather than a sequence of manageable problems. A second strategy of the future shock victim is specialism. The Specialist does not block out all novel ideas or information. Instead, one energetically attempts to keep pace with change—but only in a specific narrow sector of life. Thus we witness the spectacle of the physician or financier who makes use of all the latest innovations in one’s profession, but remains rigidly closed to any suggestion for social, political, or economic innovation. The more universities undergo paroxysms of protest, the more ghettos go up in flames, the less one wants to know about them, and the more closely one narrows the slits through which one sees the World. Superficially, one copes well. However, one, too, is running the odds against oneself. One may awake one morning to find one’s specialty obsolete or else transformed beyond recognition by events exploding outside one’s field of vision. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
A third common response to future shock is obsessive reversion to previously successful adaptive routines that are now irrelevant and inappropriate. The Reversionist sticks to one’s previously programmed decisions and habits with strict doctrines and covenants desperately. The more change threatens from without, the more meticulously one repeats past modes of action. One’s social outlook is regressive. Shocked by the arrival of the future, one offers hysterical support for the not-so-status quo, or one demands, in one masked form or another, a return to the glories of yesteryear. The Barry Goldwaters and George Wallaces of the World appeal to one’s quivering gut through the politics of nostalgia. Police maintained order in the past; hence, to maintain order, we need only supply more police. Authoritarian treatment of children worked in the past; hence, the troubles of the present spring from permissiveness. The middle-aged, right-wing reversionst yearns for simple, ordered society of the small town—the slow-paced social environment in which one’s old routines were appropriate. Instead of adapting to the new, one continues automatically to apply the old solutions, growing more and more divorced from reality as one does so. If the older reversionist dreams of reinstating a small-town past, the youthful, left-wing reversionst dreams of reviving an even older social system. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
This accounts for some of the fascination with rural communes, the bucolic romanticism that fills the posters and the poetry of the hippie and post-hippie subcultures, the deification of Che Guevara (identified with mountains and jungles, not with urban or post-urban environments), the exaggerated veneration of pre-technological societies and the exaggerated contempt for science and technology. For all their fiery demands for change, at least some sectors of the left share with the Wallacites and Goldwaterites a secret passion for the past. Just as their Indian headbands, their Edwardian capes, their Deerslayer boots and gold-rimmed glasses mimic various eras of the past, so, too, their ideas. Turn-of-the-century terrorism and quaint Black Flag anarchy are suddenly back in vogue. The Rousseauian cult of the noble savage flourishes anew. Antique Marxist ideas, applicable at best to yesterday’s industrialism, are hauled out as knee-jerk answers for the problems of tomorrow’s super-industrialism. Reversionism masquerades as revolution. Finally, we have the Super-Simplifier. With old heroes and institutions toppling, with strikes, riots, and demonstrations stabbing at one’s consciousness, one seeks a single neat equation that will explain all the complex novelties threatening to engulf one. Grasping erratically at this idea or that, one becomes a temporary true believer. This helps account for the rampant intellectual faddism that already threatens to outpace the rate of turnover in fashion. McLuhan? Prophet of the electric age? Levi-Strauss? Wow! Marcuse? Now I see it all! The Maharishi of Whatchmacallit? Fantastic! Astrology? Insight of the ages! #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
The Super-Simplifer, groping desperately, invests every idea one comes across with universal relevance—often to the embarrassment of its author. Alas, no idea, not even mine or thine, is omni-insightful. However, for the Super-Simplifer nothing less than total relevance suffices. Maximization of profits explains America. The Communist conspiracy explains race riots. Participatory democracy is the answers. Permissiveness (or Dr. Spock) are the root of all evil. This search for a unitary solution at the intellectual level has its parallels in action. Thus the bewildered, anxious student, pressured by parents, uncertain of one’s draft status, nagged at by an educational system whose obsolescence is more strikingly revealed every day, forced to decide on a career, a set of values, and a worthwhile life style, searches wildly for a way to simplify one’s existence. By turning on to LSD, Methedrine or heroin, one performs an illegal act that has, at least, the virtue of consolidating one’s miseries, but that will only make them worse and lead to jail, addiction, and possibly death. One trades a host of painful and seemingly insoluble troubles for one big problem, thus radically, if temporarily, simplifying existence. The teenage girl who cannot cope with the daily mounting tangle of stresses may choose another dramatic act of super-simplification: running for homecoming queen. Like drug abuse, being homecoming queen may vastly complicate her life later, but it immediately plunges all her other problems into relative insignificance. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Violence, too, offers a “simple” way out of burgeoning complexity of choice and general overstimulation. For the older generation and the political establishment, police truncheons and military bayonets loom as attractive remedies, a way to end dissent once and for all. Many political extremists and racial vigilantes both employ violence to narrow their choices and clarify their lives. For those who lack an intelligent, comprehensive program, who cannot cope with the novelties and complexities of blinding change, terrorism substitutes for thought. Terrorism may not topple regimes, but it removes doubts. Most of us can quickly spot these patterns of behaviour in others—even in ourselves—without, at the same time, understanding their causes. Yet information scientists will instantly recognize denial, specialization, reversion and super-simplification as classical techniques for coping with overload. All of the dangerously evade the rich complexity of reality. They generate distorted images of reality. The more the individual denies, the more one specializes at the expense of wider interests, the more mechanically one reverts to past habits and policies, the more desperately one’s super-simplifies, the more inept one’s responses to the novelty and choice flooding into one’s life. The more one relies on these strategies, the more one’s behaviour exhibits wild erratic swings and general instability. Every information scientist recognizes that some of these strategies may, indeed, be necessary in overload situations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Yet, unless the individual begins with a clear grasp of relevant reality, and unless one begins with cleanly defined values and priorities, one’s reliance on such techniques will only deepen one’s adaptive difficulties. These preconditions, however, are increasingly difficult to meet. Thus the future shock victim who does employ these strategies experiences a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Caught in the turbulent flow of change, called upon to make significant, rapid-fire life decisions, one feels not simply intellectual bewilderment, but disorientation at the level of personal values. As the pace of change quickens, this confusion is tinged with self-doubt, anxiety and fear. One grows tense, tires easily. One may fall ill. As the pressures relentlessly mount, tension shades into irritability, anger, and sometimes, senseless violence. Little events trigger enormous responses; large events bring inadequate responses. Pavlov many years ago referred to this phenomenon as the “paradoxical phase” in the breakdown of the dogs on whom he conducted his conditioning experiments. Subsequent research has shown that humans, too, pass through this stage under the impact of overstimulation, and it may explain why riots sometimes occur even in the absence of serious provocation, why, as though for no reason, thousands of teenagers at a resort will suddenly go on the rampage, smashing windows, heaving rocks and bottles, wrecking cars. It may explain why pointless vandalism is a problem in all of the techno-societies, to the degree that an editorialist in the Japan Times passionately reported: “We have never before seen anything like the extensive scope that these psychopathic acts are indulged in today.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
And finally, the confusion and uncertainty wrought by transience, novelty and diversity may explain the profound apathy that de-socializes millions, old, and young alike. This is not the studied, temporary withdrawal of the sensible person who needs to unwind or slow down before coping anew with one’s problems. It is total surrender before the strain of decision-making in conditions of uncertainty and overchoice. Affluence makes it possible, for the first time in history, for large numbers of people to make their withdrawal a full-time proposition. The family man who retreats into his evening with the help of a few martinis and allows televised fantasy to narcotize him, at least works during the day, performing a social function upon which others are dependent. One’s is a part-time withdrawal. However, for some (not all) hippie dropouts, for many of the surfers and lotus-eaters, withdrawal is full-time and total. A check from an indulgent parent may be the only remaining link with the larger society. On the beach at Matala, a tiny sun-drenched village in Crete, are forty or fifty caves occupied by runaway American troglodytes, young men and women who, for the most part, have given up any further effort to cope with the exploding high-speed complexities of life. Here decisions are few and time plentiful. Here the choices are narrowed. No problem of overstimulation. No need to comprehend or even to feel. A reporter visiting them in 1968 brought them news of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Their response: silence. “No shock, no rage, no tears. Is this the new phenomenon? Running away from America and running away from emotion? I understand uninvolvement, disenchantment, even noncommitment. But where has all the feeling gone?” #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
If he understood the impact of overstimulation, the apathy of COVID-19 and guerrilla wars going on in American cities, the blank face of the disaster victim the intellectual and emotional withdrawal of the culture shock victim, the reporter might understand where all the feeling has gone. For these young people, and millions of others—the confused, the violent, and the apathetic—already evince the symptoms of future shock. They are its earliest victims. In order to free the fiction of the sovereign State—in other words, the whims of the chieftains who manipulate it—from every wholesome restriction, all sociopolitical movements tending in this direction invariably try to cut the ground from under religion. For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, one’s dependence on anything else must be taken from one. Religion means dependence on and submission to the irrational facts of experience. These do not refer directly to social and physical conditions; they concern far more individual’s psychic attitude. However, it is possible to have an attitude to the external conditions of life only when there is a point of reference outside them. Religion gives, or claims to give, such a standpoint, thereby enabling the individual to exercise one’s judgment and one’s power of decision. It builds up a reserve, as it were, against the obvious and inevitable force of circumstances to which everyone is exposed who lives only in the outer World and has no other ground under one’s feet except the pavement. If statistical reality is the only one, then that is the sole authority. There is then only one condition, and since no contrary condition exists, judgment and decision are not only superfluous but impossible. Then the individual is bound to be a function of statistics and hence a function of the State or whatever the abstract principle of order may be called. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
Religion, however, teaches another authority opposed to that of the “World.” The doctrine of the individual’s dependence on God makes just as high a claim upon one as the World does. It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges one from the World in the same way as one is estranged from oneself when one succumbs to the collective mentality. One can forfeit one’s judgment and power of decision in the former case (for the sake of religious doctrine) quite as much as in the latter. This is the goal which religion openly aspires to unless it compromises with the State. When it does do, I prefer to call it not “religion” but a “creed.” A creed gives expression to a definite collective belief, whereas the word religion expresses a subjective relationship to a certain metaphysical, extramundane factors. A creed is a confession of faith intended chiefly for the World at large and is thus an intermundane affair, while the meaning and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation (Buddhism). From this basic fact all ethics is derived, which without the individual’s responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality. Since they are compromises with mundane reality, the creed have accordingly seen themselves obliged to undertake a progressive codification of their views, doctrines, and customs, and in so doing have externalized themselves to such an extend that the authentic religious element in them—the living relationship to and direct confrontation with their extramundane point of reference—has been thrust into the background. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
The denominational standpoint measures the worth and importance of the subjective religious relationship by the yardstick of traditional doctrine, and where this is not so frequent, as in Protestantism, one immediately hears talk of pietism, sectarianism, eccentricity, and so forth, as soon as anyone claims to be guided by God’s will. A creed coincides with the established Church or, at any rate, forms a public institution whose members include not only true believers but vast numbers of people who can only be described as “indifferent” in matters of religion and who belong to it simply by force of habit. Here the difference between a creed and a religion becomes palpable. Let no one imagine that contact with the Overself is a kind of dreamy reverie or peasant, fanciful state. It is a vital relationship with a current of peace, power, and goodwill flowing endlessly from the invisible center to the visible self. Although it is true that the Overself is the real guardian angel of every human being, we should not be so foolish as to suppose its immediate intervention in every trivial affair. On the contrary, its care is general rather than particular, in the determination of long-term phases rather than day-by-day events. Its intervention, if that does occur, will be occasion by or will precipitate a crisis. There is a knowing element in man, the real knower which makes intellectual knowing possible and which is Consciousness-by-itself. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
It is that part of man which is fundamental, real, undying, and truly knowing. This is the element in the human being that is covered with mystery, which is why, to some extent, the ancient pagan religious secret or semi-secret organized institutional attempts to penetrate it were titled “The Mysteries.” What could be closer to a human than one’s own be-ing? What could be more inward than the core of one’s self-awareness? Knowledge of law, language, or history can be collected and becomes a possession but knowledge of the Overself is not at all the same. It is something one must be: it owns us, we do not have it. Stillness is both a sign that sense and thought, body and intellect, have been transcended and a symbol of the consciousness of the presence of the Overself. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” reports Jesus Christ. This commandment is a central law of the Kingdom. This law of the Kingdom is what motivates Christians to serve the good of society. Certainly it motivated Christians of the nineteenth center when they spearheaded most of our nation’s significant works of mercy and moral betterment. They founded hospitals, colleges, and schools; they organized social choice programs and fed the hungry; they campaigned to end abuses ranging from dueling to slavery. Though much of this work has now been taken over by government agencies, Christians provided the original impetus. Today, Christians still contribute the bulk of resources for private charities of compassion. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
This is not to say that all good deed are done by Christians or that all Christians do good deeds. Sacrificial deeds are often done for other than religious motives, of course. However, in those instances the actions depend on the individual’s personal reasons. Motive is crucial. In one instance it is an individual choice—a choice that often wavers or falters. For the Christian it is a matter of obedience to God’s commandments; it is not choice, but necessity. It is, in fact, their dual citizenship that should, as Augustine believes, make Christians the best of citizens. Not because they are more patriotic or civic-minded, but because they do out of obedience to God that which others do if they choose or if they are forced. And their very presence in society means the presence of a community of people who live by the Law behind the law. Even as unreligious a figure as modern educator John Dewey recognized that “the church-going classes, those who have come under the influence of evangelical Christianity form the backbone of philanthropic and social interest, of social reform through political action, of passivism, of popular education. They embody and express the spirit of kindly good will towards [those] in economic disadvantage.” A study shows that forty-six percent of those in the United States of America who describe themselves as “highly spiritually committed” work among the poor, the infirm, or the elderly—twice as many as those describing themselves as “highly uncommitted” spiritually. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
The Holy Ghost was called by Origen “the active force of God.” This is its mystery, that seeing all, it is itself seen by none. Whatever humans may say about it will not be enough to describe it properly, justly, accurately. All such efforts will be clumsy but they will not be useless. They will be suggestive, offer clues perhaps, each in its own way. What is its consciousness like? If we use our ordinary faculties only, we may ponder this problem for a lifetime without discerning its solution for it is evident that we enter a realm where the very questioner oneself must disappear as soon as one crosses the frontier. The personal “I” must be like a mere wave in such an ocean, a finite center in incomprehensible infinitude. It would be impossible to realize what mind-in-itself is so long as we narrow down the focus of attention to the personal “I”-thought. For it would be like a wave vainly trying to collect and cram the whole ocean within itself, while refusing to expand its attention beyond its own finite form. All that one knows and experiences are things in this World of five senses. The Overself is not within their sphere of operation and therefore not to be known and experienced in the same way. This is why the first real entry into it must necessarily be an entry into no-thing-ness. The mystical phenomena and mystical raptures happen merely on the journey to this Void. It is a consciousness where the “here” is universal and the “now” is everlasting. There is a sense of the total absence of time, a feeling of the unending character of one’s inner being. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
The being which one finds at the end of this inner search is an anonymous one. One may ask for a name but one will not get one. One must be satisfied with the obscure response: “I Am That I Am!” The Overself is there, but it is hidden within our conscious being. Only there, in this deep atmosphere, do we come upon the mirage-free Truth, the illusion-free Reality. There are deep places in human’s hearts and minds into which they rarely venture. And yet treasures are hidden there—flashes of intuition, important revelations, extra strengths, and above all a peace out of this World. It is Conscious Silence. The Knowing or Self-awareness of the Overself is never absent; it is always seeing. Yes, your guardian angel is always present and always the secret witness and recorder of your thoughts and deeds. Whether you go down into the black depths of hell or ascend to the radiant heights of Heaven, you do not walk alone. “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.16. To accomplish works of mercy and justice, however, Christians do not rely on government, but on their own penetration of society as “salt and light.” This too is in obedience to a command of God that orders them to be the “salt of the Earth” and “light of the World”—the great cultural commission of the Kingdom. In Hebrew times salt was rubbed into meat to prevent it from spoiling. In the same way the citizen of the Kingdom is “rubbed in” to society as its preservative. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
Citizens of the Kingdom, therefore, form what Edmund Burke called “the little platoons,” mediating structures between the individual and government that carry out works of justice, mercy, and charity. The presence of Christians in society also helps break the endless cycle of evil and violence in the World. For example, the generations-old conflicts of Northern Ireland and the Middle East and American thrive on fake news, hatred and bigotry, the basest of human instincts, which in turn beget violence, which begets more violence. Only forgiveness and love can break this cycle, and only the Kingdom of God orders its citizens to take such radical steps. God commands His people to forgive those who hurt or wrong hem and to love their enemies. Though “turning the other cheek” may sound like weakness, or impractical idealism, in reality, it takes raw courage and is the most powerful weapon for restoring civil tranquility—far surpassing any bayonet or legislation. No conquering army can destroy evil; at best it can suppress it. However, when men and women are reconciled by the Law of the Kingdom, evil is defeated. Wherever they happen to be, in wide-scattered countries, widely different climates, and far-apart centuries, humans have experienced this divine presence. What does this show? That it is not dependent on place and hour, not subject to the laws of space-time. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Deep down in the mind and feeling of humans is the mysterious Godlike Essence seemingly too deep—alas!—for the ordinary human, who therefore lets oneself be content with hearing from others about it and thus only at second hand. If we believe in or know of the reality of the Overself, we must also believe or know that our everyday, transient life is actively rooted in its timeless being. It is the life-giving, body-healing, or occult-power-bestowing force in humans. It is not a theoretical conception but a quickening, transforming power. Thee I invoke, the Bornless one. Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens: Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day. Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light. Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no human has seen at any time. Thou art Jabas. Thou art Japos: Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust. Thou didst make the Female and the Male. Thou didst produce the Seed and the Fruit. Thou didst form Men to love one another, and to hate one another. I am Mosheh Thy Prophet, unto Whom Thou didst commit Thy Mysteries, the Ceremonies of Ishrael: Thou didst produce the moist and the dry, and that which nourisheth all created Life. Hear Thou Me, for I am the Angel Paphro Osorronophris: this is Thy True Name, handed down to the Prophets of Ishrael. Hear Me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me: so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether; upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land and in the Water: of Whirling Air, and of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God may be obedient unto Me. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
I invoke Thee, the Almighty and Invisible God: Who dwellest in the Void Place of the Spirit:–the Lord is my strength and my song, there is not a part of Thou not rich in offering: each eye a fest, your grace a banquet, you blessings soft rubies in the night. For those who wish to stare back in time and gaze upon the earliest moments of the Universe, I say, look no father than God to witness all the marvels unfolding in creation. For in the Heaven are embodied bits of the floating soul like galactic wonder in brief eclipse, and God has become my salvation. Hark! Rejoicing and triumph in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right had of the Lord doeth valiantly.” I shall not die, but live, and recount the works of the Lord. The Lord hath indeed chastened me, but He hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of victory; I will enter them; I will give thanks unto the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter it. I will give thanks unto Thee, for Thou hast answered me and art become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected is become the chief cornerstone. By the grace of the Lord has this been done; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; on it we will rejoice and be glad. We beseech Thee, Lord, do Thou save us! We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou save us! We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou prosper us! We beseech Thee, O Lord, do Thou prosper us! Blessed be one that comes in the name of the Lord; we bless you from the house of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
CRESLEIGH HOMES AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Ranch is now selling! Register to join our interest list and stay up to date with all the latest information. Plumas Ranch offers three distinct communities to choose from: Riverside, Meadows, and Bluffs. Home sizes range from 1,740 to over 3,400 square feet with up to five bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms, and three-car garages available. Like all Cresleigh floorplans, their layouts are creative, versatile, and envisioned to maximize every available foot of space.
Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Additional game rooms, bedroom space and three-car garages provide other custom possibilities.
Gain the freedom of large home sites and the extra space and flexibility with Cresleigh Riverside. Homeowners will love the convenient commuter access to nearly Sacramento and Yuba City.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Go. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/
The Cresleigh Homes Plumas Ranch Collection includes award-winning single-family home designs featuring warm, modern styling. Choose from a variety of flexible floor plans built with Cresleigh’ commitment to quality, value, and sophisticated architecture.
Randolph Harris II International 