When the human mind is made obsolete by advancing technology, the soul may not be far behind. The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. In the quickening race to put humans and machines on the planets, tremendous recourses are devoted to making possible a “soft landing.” Every sub-system of the landing craft is exquisitely designed to withstand the shock of arrival. Armies of engineers, geologists, physicists, metallurgists and other specialists concentrate years of work on the problem of landing impact. Failure of any sub-system to function after touch-down could destroy human lives, not to mention billions of dollars worth of apparatus and tens of thousands of human-years of labour. Today over seven billion human beings, the total population of technology-rich nations, are speeding toward a rendezvous with the super-age of information. Must we experience mass future shock? Or can we, too, achieve a “soft landing?” We are rapidly accelerating our approach. The craggy outlines of the new society are emerging from the mists of tomorrow. Yet even as we speed closer, evidence mounts that one of our most critical sub-systems—education—is dangerously malfunctioning. What passes for education today, even in our “best” school and colleges, is hopeless anachronism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Parents look to education to fit their children for life in the future. Teachers warn that lack of an education will cripple a child’s chances in the World of tomorrow. Government ministries, churches, the mass media—all exhort young people to stay in school, insisting that now, as never before, one’s future is almost wholly dependent upon educations. Yet for all this rhetoric about the future, our schools face backward toward a dying system, rather than forward to the emerging new society. Their vast energies are applied to cranking out people who focus on information technology tooled for survival in a system that will long out live most people. The Information Age is the ideal that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of this current era in human civilization. The Information Age, also called the Computer Age, The Digital Age, and the New Media Age, is coupled tightly with the advent of personal computers. Companies whose businesses are built on digitized information have become valuable and powerful in a relatively short period of time. Just as land owners held the wealthy and wielded power in the Agrarian Age and manufacturers such as Henry For and Cyrus McCormick accumulated fortunes in the Industrial Age, the current Information Age has spawned its own breed of wealthy influential brokers, from Microsoft’s Bill Gates, John Tu and David Sun who are the founders of Kingston Technology, Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of NantWorks, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, and of course Jeff Bezos, co-founder and CEO of Amazon. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

To help avert future shock, we must create a super-age of information educational system. And to do this, we must search for our objectives and methods in the future, rather than in the past. Every society has its own characteristic attitude toward past, present and future. This time-bias, formed in response to the rate of change, is one of the least noticed, yet most powerful determinants of social behaviour, and it is clearly reflected in the way the society prepares its young for adulthood. In stagnant societies, the past crept forward into the present and repeated itself in the future. In such a society, the most sensible way to prepare a child was to arm one with the skills of the past—for these were precisely the same skills one would need in the future. “With the ancient is wisdom,” the Bible admonished. Thus farther handed down to son all sorts of practical techniques along with a clearly defined, highly tradition set of values. Knowledge was transmitted not by specialist concentrated in schools, but through the family, religious institutions, and apprenticeships. Learner and teacher were dispersed throughout the entire community. The key to the system, however, was its absolute devotion to yesterday. The curriculum of the past was the past. The mechanical age smashed all this, for industrialism required a new kind of human. It demanded skills that neither family nor church could, by themselves, provide. It forced an upheaval in the value system. Above all, it required that humans develop a new sense of time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

Mass education was the ingenious machines constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adult it needed. The problem was inordinately complex. How to pre-adapt children for a new World—a World of cognitive kills such as conducting independent research, assessing information for credibility, applying concepts to new situations, and self-critiquing one’s own abilities are central to our success in today’s working World—and, more important, to our lives as human beings. People have to get used to machines, computers, crowded living conditions, collective discipline, a World in which time is to be regulated not by the cycle of sun and moon, but by the computer and the clock. The solution is an educational system that, in its very structure, simulates this new World. This system did not emerge instantly. Even today it retains throwback elements from pre-industrial society. Yet the whole idea of assembling masses of stents (raw material) to be processed by teachers (workers) in a centrally located school (factory) is a stoke of industrial genius. Although this is the age of information, many of the same concepts in industrialism apply. The whole administrative hierarchy of education, as it has grown up, follows the model of industrial bureaucracy. The very organization of knowledge into permanent disciplines is grounded on the drive to learn, for its own sake. Bells ring to announce the change of time, but schools are not bound by bells and walls. The inner life of the school thus becomes an anticipatory mirror, a perfect introduction to the age of information. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

The most criticized features of education today—the regimentation, lack of individualization, the rigid systems of seating, grouping, grading, and marking, the authoritarian role of the teacher—are precisely those that made the mass public education so effective an instrument of adaptation for its place and time. Young people passing through this educational machine emerge into an adult society whose structure of jobs, roles, and institutions resemble that of the school itself. The schoolchild does not simply learn facts that one could use later on; one lives, as well as learns, a new way of life modeled after one one would lead in the future. The primary goal is now to help one incorporate the computer into K-12 curriculum. To this extent the book cannot be taken in isolation. The ideas and skills have changed to engage the latest digital technologies. The method of distribution is now a blend between face-to-face and some other combination of virtual interfaces, and a text-plus-multimedia based learning. Thus the focus of education itself has begun to shift, ever so slowly, away from the past and toward the present. An educated workforce can help lift people out of poverty, recue premature mortality, strengthen gender equality, and promote civic participation. Works need breadth of skills such as literacy and numeracy as well as the ability to think critically and to solve problem collaboratively. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

In the digital age, citizens must be prepared to respond to the challenges presented by globalization, climate change, health epidemics, and economic uncertainty. Employers will be seeking out a workforce of possessing analytical skills and interpersonal skills. For example, children will no longer be asked why does it rain, but expected to memorize and recite a series of steps for ow precipitation occurs. As our planet speeds toward 10 billion people (likely 9.5 billion or so by 2050), it is not hard to believe that all life will look differently. We will likely see a lot more new food based programs and recycling degrees, and we will also see 1 in 6 adults on our planet over the age of 65. So, medicine and health degrees will be even more valuable than today, especially when you include the administration of new systems that do truly personalize medicine and connect patients to care anywhere. Most campuses will be commuter campuses as 90 percent of people will use the Internet to obtain their classes. You will likely see schools in places unseen today, like the Harvard office suite atop a London office building or a Michigan State food science degree on a farm in Iowa. There will still be some campuses, but the idea is already being practiced. When we went to study abroad in China, we took our own professors and had our classes in hotel conference rooms, as well as in classes Beijing Language and Culture University, as well as at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics because we were travelling while in China. #Randolphharris 6 of 23

Students will also go to corporation colleges to get their education. Like the University of BMW or Samsung college for the promise of a job upon graduation. The landscape will look different than it does today, and hopefully everyone will be ready for the changes. Education is perhaps one of the most ingredients to a happy, successful, and constructive life. In fact, having access to a good education during childhood and your early adulthood can make a real difference in your later life. Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the World. The technology of tomorrow requires millions of lightly lettered humans, ready to work in unison at endlessly repetitious jobs, it requires not humans who take orders in unblinking fashion, aware that the price of bread is mechanical submission to authority, but humans who can make critical judgments, who can weave their way through novel environments, who are quick to spot new relationships in the rapidly changing reality. It requires people who have the future in their bones. Education’s lesson is clear: its prime objective must be to increase the individual’s “cope-ability”—the speed and economy with which one can adapt to continual change. And the faster the rate of change, the more attention must be devoted to discerning the pattern of future events. It is no longer sufficient for Johnny to understand the past. It is not even enough for him to understand the present, for the here-and-now environment will soon vanish. Johnny must learn t anticipate the direction and rate of change. He must, to put it technically learn to make repeated, probabilistic, increasingly long-range assumptions about the future. And so must Johnny’s teachers. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

It is only by projecting what will be in demand 50 years in the future, the kind of vocations that may be needed, assumptions about the kind of family forms and human relationships that will prevail; the kinds of ethical and moral problems that will arise; the kind of technology that will surround us and the organizational structures with which we must mesh that successful people will survive the accelerative thrusts. We must create a “Council of the Future” in every school and community: Teams of men and women devoted to probing the future in the interests of the present. By projecting “assumed futures,” be defining coherent educational responses to them, by opening these alternatives to activate public debate, such councils—similar in some ways to the “prognostic cells” advocated by Robert Jungk of the Technische Hochschule in Berlin—could have a powerful impact on education. The creation of future-oriented, future-shaping task forces in education could revolutionize the revolution of the young. For those educators who recognize the bankruptcy of the present system, but remain uncertain about next steps, the council movement could provide purpose as well as power, through alliance with, rather than hostility toward, youth. And by attracting community and parental participation—business people, trade unionists, scientists, and others—the movement could build broad political support for digital age revolution in education. It would be a mistake to assume that the present-day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

However, much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it every more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals. The rest is a kind of Brownian motion, self-canceling, incoherent, directionless. What has been lacking is a consistent direction and a logical starting point. The council movement could supply both. The direction is the super age of information. The starting point: the future. As we become acquainted with truth in good sources of all kinds, we are better prepared to work in the World and serve in the kingdom of God. The Lord revealed, “The Glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 93.36. All truth comes from Heavenly Father and is designed for the good of His children. God wants us to educate our minds, improve our skills, and perfect our abilities so we can be a better influence for good in the World, provide for ourselves, our family, and those in need, and build God’s Kingdom. All truth, whether religious or secular, is included in God’s plan for our salvation and happiness. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life, one will have s much the advantage in the World to come.” The Lord has given each of us gifts and encourages us to improve upon them and seek other gifts. He has also instructed us to seek learning, even by study and also by faith. Work for an education. Get all the training you can. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Who is to day religion and politics should not mix? Whose Bible are they reading? There is an implication that Christians are immune to corruption. Of course not. While Christians know that their faith requires high standards of righteousness, they are human and often capitulate to the same temptations as anyone else. In fact, Christians may well face more problems than others when they become involved in the political process. How does a Christian deal with the inherent divided loyalties: duty to God and duty to the national interest? Can a Christian successfully avoid the subtle snares of power? Can a Christian make the compromises necessary for the everyday business of politics? What about the question of candor, for example? At times national security may well require not only concealing the true, but lying. When in the White House, politicians often go through elaborate lengths to conceal essential secret negotiations. Henry Kissinger had a bad cold when he visited Pakistan in 1971—or so the press was told. Actually he had been flown to Beijing to conduct clandestine meetings in preparation for Mr. Nixon’s historic visit to China. Or take the day Nixon announced a major troop withdrawal in Vietnam. He immediately ordered Kissinger to bring Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin to a secret meeting room in the White House basement. “Henry,” he roared, “You shake him up. Tell him not to believe these news stories. We are only pulling out a few troop—and if the Russians do not back off in sending supplies to Hanoi, we will bomb the daylights out of that city. Tell him the president is uncontrollable, a madman—that he will do anything. Let us keep them off balance.” That such meetings took place was flatly denied in order to protect the lives of the withdrawing troops. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

President Regan did that same thing in 1983. When reporters asked about a rumored invasion of Grenada, official White House spokesmen dismissed such questions as “preposterous.” Actually, troops were at that moment disembarking on the island’s beaches. A “no comment” to the press, however, would have been tantamount to a “yes”—an admission that would have endangered lives. In these days of delicate international tensions and the instant communications ability of an almost omnipresent press, such deceit is a common instrument of foreign policy. The press even accepts it. In a 1987 Newsweek interview, crack ABC interviewer Ted Koppel acknowledge that government official must be “prepared to mislead and sometimes even to lie.” Deliberate lies, the corruption of power, compromise with ideological opponents, temptations on all dies—these appear to be the mechanism of modern government. Should the Christian circumvent the messy business of politics altogether? The answer must be an emphatic no. As Robert L. Dabney wrote, “Every Christian…whether law-maker or law executor or voter, should carry one’s Christian conscience, enlightened by God’s Word, into one’s political duty. We must ask less what party caucuses and leaders dictate, and more what duty dictates.” There are at least three compelling reasons Christians must be involved in politics and government. First, as citizens of the nation-state, Christians have the same civic duties all citizens have: to serve on juries, to pay taxes, to vote, to support candidates they think are best qualified. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Christians are commanded to pray and respect governing authorities. (For years many Christian fundamentalists shunned the “sinful” political process, even to the extent of not voting. Whatever else may be said about it, the Moral Majority performed a valuable public service in bringing these citizens back into the mainstream.) Second, as citizens of the Kingdom of God they are to bring God’s standards of righteousness and justice to bear on the kingdom of this World. This is the cultural commission. As former Michigan state senator and college professor Stephan Monsma says, Christian political involvement has the “potential to move the political system away from the brokering of the self-interest of powerful persons and groups into a renewed concern for the public interest.” Third, Christians have an obligation to being transcendent moral values into public debate. All law implicitly involves morality; the popular idea that “you cannot legislate morality” is a myth. Morality is legislated every day from the vantage point of one value system or another. The question is not whether we will legislate morality, but whose morality we will legislate. Law is but a body of rules regulating human behaviour; it establishes, from the view of the state, the rightness or wrongness of human behaviour. Most laws, therefore, have moral implications. The more you know who you are in God, the easier it is to manifest the truth about yourself! #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

Statutes prohibiting murder, mandates for seat belts, or regulations for industrial safety are all designed to protect human life—a reflection of the particular moral view that values the dignity and worth of human life. And efficacy does not affect morality If in American we have more homicides per capita than any other country, it is not reason t repeal the laws making murder a crime. The common argument against the legislation of morality is Prohibition, which conjures up such caricatures as Billy Sunday waving a chair over his head and Carrie Nation chopping up whiskey barrels. The church has taken an undeserved bad rap for this. No one entity imposed Prohibition; it was voted in by a clear majority after a lengthy national debate. Admittedly, over the years of its existence Prohibition became increasingly difficult to enforce; it encouraged organized crime and ultimately led to widespread disrespect for the law. Eventually the costs outweighed the benefits. However, was it morally justified? Certainly one’s personal decision to drink alcohol is a private matter. When millions do it to such excess that public safety is endangered, however, it becomes a public concern. That was the case in the pre-Prohibition era. Thousands reported to their factory jobs under the influence and were maimed or killed by heavy industrial machines then being introduced in the American economy. The tavern trade spawned harlotry rings at a time, like today, when there was no cure for the raging epidemic of certain contagious and socially transmitted viral deception was being transmitted. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Though many write off Prohibition as a complete failure, the facts are that industrial safety improved dramatically as per capita drinking, particular among working people, dropped precipitously, and the VD epidemic slowed. Not until 1970 did per capita consumption of alcohol again reach pre-Prohibition levels. Everyday, 29 people in the United States of America die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This is one death every 50 minutes. The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $44 billion. And with the majority of crimes being committed by people under the influence of drugs or alcohol, can anyone really argue realistically today that moral issues are not matter of public interest? The real issue for Christians is not whether they should be involved in politics or contend for laws that affect moral behaviour. The question is how. The greatest relationship you will ever have is with God! There is nothing like it! There is a further aspect of moral attitudes that I have noted in the sketch of the development of the sense of justice, namely, their connection with certain natural attitudes. Thus in examining a moral feeling we should ask: what if any are the natural attitudes to which it is related? Now there are two questions here, one the converse of the other. The first asks about the natural attitudes that are sown to be absent when a person fail to have certain moral feelings. Where as the second asks which natural attitudes are evidences to be present when someone experiences a moral emotion. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The first asks about the natural attitudes that are shown to be absent when a person fails to have certain moral feelings. Whereas the second askes which natural attitudes are evidenced to be present when someone experiences a moral emotion. In context of the authority situation, the child’s natural attitudes of love and trust for those in authority lead to feelings of (authority) guilt when one violates the injunctions addressed to one. The absence of these moral feelings would evidence a lack of these natural ties. Similarly, within the framework of the morality of association, the natural attitudes of friendship and mutual trust give rise to feelings of guilt for not fulfilling the duties and obligations recognized by the group. The absence of these feelings would imply the absence of these attachments. These propositions must not be mistaken for their converses, for while feelings of indignation and guilt, say, can often be taken as evidence for such affections, there may be other explanations. In general, moral principles are affirmed for various reasons and their acceptance is normally sufficient for the moral feelings. To be sure, on the contract theory principles of right and justice have a certain content, and as we have just seen, there is a sense in which acting in accordance with them can be interpreted as acting from a concern for humankind, of for the good of other persons. Whether this fact shows that one acts in part from certain natural attitudes, especially as these involve attachments to particular individuals, and not simply from the general forms of sympathy and benevolence, is a question I shall leave aside here. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

Certainly the preceding account of the development of morality supposes that affection for particular persons plays an essential part in the acquisition of morality. However, how far these attitudes are required for later moral motivation can be left open, although it would, I think, be surprising if these attachments were not to some degree necessary. Now the connection between the natural attitudes and the moral sentiments may be expressed as it follows: these sentiments and attitudes are both ordered families of characteristic dispositions, and these families overlap in such a manner that the absence of certain moral feelings evidences the absence of certain natural ties. Or alternatively, the presence of certain natural attachments gives rise to a liability to certain moral emotions once the requisite moral development has taken place. We can see how this is so by an example. If A cares for B, then failing a special explanation A is afraid for B when B is in danger and tries to come t B’s assistance. Again, if C plans to treat B unjustly, A is indignant with C and attempts to prevent one’s plans from succeeding. In bot cases, A is disposed to protect B’s interests. Further, unless there are special circumstances, A is joyful when together with B, and when B suffers injury or dies. A is stricken with grief. If the injury to B is A’s responsibility, A will feel remorse. Love is a sentiment, a hierarchy of dispositions to experience and to manifest these primary emptions as the occasion elicits and to act in the appropriate way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

To confirm the connection between the natural attitudes and the moral sentiments one simply notes that the disposition on A’s part to feel remorse when one injures B, or guilt when one violates B’s legitimate claims, or A’s disposition to feel indignation when C seeks to deny B’s right, are as closely related psychologically with the natural attitudes of love as the disposition to be joyful in other’s presence, or two feel sorrow when one suffers. The moral sentiments are in some ways more complex. In their complete form they presupposed an understanding and an ability to judge in accordance with them. However, assuming these things, the liability to moral feelings seems to be as much a part of the natural sentiments as the tendency to be joyful, or the liability to grief. Love sometimes expresses itself in sorrow, at other times indignation. Either one without the other would be equally unusual. The content of rational moral principles is such as to render these connections intelligible. Now one main consequence of this doctrine is that the moral feelings are a normal feature of human life. We could not do away with them without at the same time eliminating certain natural attitudes. Among persons who ever acted in accordance with their duty of justice except as reasons of self-interest and expediency dictated there would be no bonds of friendship and mutual trust. For when these attachments exist, other reasons are acknowledged for acting fairly. This much seems reasonably obvious. However, it also follows from what has been said that, barring self-deception, egoists are incapable off feeling resentment and indignation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

If either of two egoists deceives the other and this is found out, neither of them has a ground for complaint. They do not accept the principles of justice, or any other conception that is reasonable from the standpoint of the original position; nor do they experience any inhibition from guilt feelings for breaches of their duties. As we have seen, resentment and indignation are moral feelings and therefore they presuppose an explanation by reference to an acceptance of the principles of right and justice. However, by hypothesis the appropriate explanations cannot be given. To deny that self-interested persons are incapable of resentment and indignation is not of course to say that they cannot be angry and annoyed with one another. A person without a sense of justice may be enraged at someone who fails to act fairly. However, anger and annoyance are distinct from indignation and resentment; they are not, as the latter are, moral emotions. Nor should it be denied that egoists may want others to recognize the bonds of friendship and to treat them in a friendly way. However, these desires are not to be mistaken for ties of affection that lead one to make sacrifices for one’s friends. No doubt there are difficulties in distinguishing between resentment and anger, and between apparent and real friendship. Certainly the overt manifestations and actions may seem the same when viewing a limited span of conduct. Yet in the longer run the difference can usually be made out. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

One may say, then, that a person who lacks a sense of justice, and who would never act as justice requires except as self-interest and expediency prompt, not only is without ties of friendship, and affection, and mutual trust, but is incapable of experiencing resentment and indignation. One lacks certain natural attitudes and moral feelings of a particularly elementary kind. Put another way, one who lacks a sense of justice lacks certain fundamental attitudes and capacities included under the notion of humanity. Now the moral feelings are admittedly unpleasant, in some extended sense of unpleasant; but there is no way for us to avoid a liability to them without disfiguring ourselves. This liability is the price of love and trust of friendship and affection, and of a devotion to institutions and traditions from which we have benefited and which serve the general interests of humankind. Further, assuming that persons are possessed of interests and aspirations of their own, and that they are prepared in the pursuit of their own ends and ideals to press their claims on one another—that is, so long as the conditions giving rise to questions of justice obtain among them—it is inevitable that, given temptation and passion, this liability will be realized. And since being moved by ends and ideals of excellence implies a liability to humiliation and shame, and an absence of liability of a liability to humiliation and shame a lack of ends and such ideals, one can say of shame and humiliation also that they are a part of the notion of humanity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

Now that fact that one who lacks a sense of justice, and thereby a liability to guilt, lacks certain fundamental attitudes and capacities is not to be taken as a reason for acting as justice dictates. However, it has this significance: by understanding what it would be to lack part of our humanity too—we are led to accept our having this sentiment. It follows that the moral sentiments are a normal part of human life. One cannot do away with them without at e same time dismantling the natural attitude as well. And we have also seen that the moral sentiments are continuous with these attitudes in the sense that the love of humankind and the desire to uphold the common good include the principle of right and justice as necessary to define their objective. None of this is to deny that our existing moral feelings may be in many respects irrational and injurious to our good. Dr. Freud is right in his view that these attitudes are harsher aspects of the authority situation in which they were first acquired. Resentment and indignation, feelings of guilt and remorse, a sense of duty and the censure of others, often take perverse and destructive forms, but blunt without reason human spontaneity and enjoyment. When I say that moral attitudes are part of our humanity, I mean those attitudes that appeal to sound principles of right and justice in their explanation. The reasonableness of the underlying ethical conception is a necessary condition; and so the appropriateness of moral sentiments to our nature is determined by the principles that would be consented to in the original positions. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

These principles regulate moral education and the expression of moral approval and disapproval, just as they govern the design of institutions. Yet even if the sense of justice is the normal outgrowth of natural human attitudes within a well-ordered society, it is still true that our present moral feelings are liable to be unreasonable and capricious. However, one of the virtues of a well-ordered society is that, since arbitrary authority has disappeared, its members suffer much less from the burdens of oppressive conscience. It is reason which helps to get beyond the trivialities of our daily life. We become concerned about all that is happening, with all the questions that beset our times. It makes us participate in the World and feel personally what is happening on Earth. Our happiness or unhappiness is not determined by what happens to us in everyday life. However favourable our circumstances, however successful our enterprises, however much envied we are by our fellow humans, we still may not be happy. For peace alone is the source of happiness. The more our reasoning throws us unto the turmoil of life’s problems, the more we yearn for peace. We are led up to the mountains until the glaciers begin to glitter before us. Then reasoning bids us climb still higher, still further into the light, still further into peace and quietude. The older we grow the more we realize that true power and happiness come to us only from those who spiritually mean something to us. Whether they are near or far, still alive or dead, we need them if we are to find our way through life. Only when they are near to us in spirit can the good we bear within us can be turned into life and action. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

What tremendous inner power exists in spiritual communion with another human! How pitiable and destitute humans are when they are spiritually alone, when they have no one to understand and encourage them. If they do not even feel the need for it, doubly pitiable. Blessed the Lord who is to be praised. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who didst choose us from among all the peoples by giving us Thy Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who in giving us a Torah of truth, hast planted everlasting life within us. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who in bestowing good upon humans beyond their deserving, hast dealt graciously with me. May He, who hath dealt graciously with you, continue to bestow His favour upon you. We recognize that our identity is inextricably entwined with lives beyond our own. This sense of expanded identity goes beyond human relationships. We depend upon trees, trees depend upon grasses, grasses depend upon animals, mountains depend upon oceans, the dolphin depends upon the farther star. Physically and spiritually, we all are woven into the living process of the Earth. We take part in—as science now tells us—a planet-sized living system. Our breathing, our acting, our thinking arise in interaction with our shared World. Our own hearts constantly beat out the cosmic rhythm within us. We cannot escape our involvement any more than we can escape breathing the air that has traveled from plants thousands of miles away. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

There is only one Overself for the whole race, but the point of contact with it is special and unique, and constitutes human’s higher individuality. The mountains, I become part of it. The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it. The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering water, I become part of it. When we ground our spiritual awareness in this ecological context, then the strength and wisdom of the living Earth, in all its manifestations, flows through us. Our Earth Prayer becomes a means of acting upon ourselves. It helps us to empty the self and to open our hearts to be filled with empathy and creativity. The ecological self, like any notion of selfhood, is simply a metaphor, but it is a dynamic one. It involves our choice. We can choose at different moments to identify with different aspects of our interrelated existence—be they hunted whales, or humans without a home, or the planet itself. The prayers we recite remind us of this deep kinship—our boundedness with all of creation. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bund on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

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