My brother was the athlete. I was always in training to be president. America is not the cultural center of the World, but the business and administrative center of human culture. Traditionally, hedonism is interpreted in one of two ways: either as the contention that the sole intrinsic good is pleasurable feeling, or as the psychological thesis that the only thing individuals strive for is pleasure. However, I shall understand hedonism in a third way, namely, as trying to carry through the dominant-end conception of deliberation. It attempts to show how a rational choice is always possible, at least in principle. Although this effort fails, I shall examine it briefly for the light it throws upon the contrast between utilitarianism and the contract doctrine. I imagine the hedonist to reason as follows. First one thinks that is human life is to be guided by reason, there must exist a dominant end. There is no rational way to balance our competing aims against one another except as means to some higher end. Second, one interprets pleasure narrowly as agreeable feeling. Pleasantness as an attribute of feeling and sensation is though to be the only plausible candidate for the role of the dominant end, and therefore it is the only thing good in itself. That, so conceived, pleasure alone is good is not postulated straightway as a first principle and then held to accord with our considered judgments of value. Rather pleasure is arrived at as the dominant end by a process of elimination. Granting that rational choices are possible, such and end must exist. At the same time this end cannot be happiness or any objective goal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

To avoid the circularity of the one and the inhumanity and fanaticism of the other, the hedonist turns inwards. One finds the ultimate end in some definite quality of sensation or feeling identifiable by introspection. We can suppose, if we like, that pleasantness can be ostensively defined as that attribute which is common to the feelings and experiences toward which we have a favourable attitude and wish to prolong, other things equal. Thus, for purposes of illustration, one might say that pleasantness is that feature which is common to the experience of smelling roses, of tasting chocolate, of requited affection, and so on, and analogously for the opposite attribute of painfulness. The hedonist maintains, then, that a rational agent knows exactly how to proceed in determining one’s good: one is to ascertain which of the plans open to one promises the greatest net balance of pleasure over pain. This plan defines one’s rational choice, the best way to order one’s competing aims. The counting principles now apply trivially, since all good things are homogenous and therefore comparable as means to the one end of pleasure. Of course these assessments are plagued by uncertainties and lack of information, and normally only the crudest estimates can be made. Yet for hedonism this is not a real difficulty: what counts is that the maximum of pleasure provides a clear idea of the good. We are now said to know the one thing the pursuit of which gives rational form to our life. Largely for these reasons pleasure must be the single rational end that is to guide deliberation. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

It is important to note two points. First, when pleasure is regarded as a definite measure on which calculations can be based. By reckoning in terms of the intensity and duration of pleasant experiences, the necessary computations can theoretically be made. The method of hedonism provides a first-person procedure of choice as the standard of happiness does not. Second, taking pleasure as the dominant end does not imply that we have any particular objective goals. We find pleasure in the most varied activities and in the quest for any number of things. Therefore aiming to maximize pleasurable feeling seems at least to avoid the appearance of fanaticism and inhumanity while still defining a rational method for first-person choice. Furthermore, the two traditional interpretations of hedonism are now easily accounted for. If pleasure is indeed the only end the pursuit of which enables us to identify rational plans, then surely pleasure would appear to be the sole intrinsic good, and so we would have arrived at the principle of hedonism by an argument from the conditions of rational deliberation. A variant of psychological hedonism also follows: for although it is going too far to say that rational conduct would always consciously aim at pleasure, it would in any case be regulated by a schedule of activities designed to maximize the net balance of pleasurable feeling. Since it leads to the more familiar interpretations, the thesis that the pursuit of pleasure provides the only rational method of deliberation seems to be the fundamental idea of hedonism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

It seems obvious that hedonism fails to define a reasonable dominant end. We need only note that once pleasure is conceived, at it must be, in a sufficiently definite way so that its intensity and duration can enter into the agent’s calculations, then it is no longer plausible that it should be taken as the sole rational aim. Surely the preference for a certain attribute of feeling or sensation above all else is as unbalanced and inhuman as an overriding desire to maximize one’s power over other or one’s material wealth. No doubt it is for this reason that ne is reluctant to grant that pleasantness is a particular quality of feeling; yet one must concede this if pleasure is to serve, as one wants it to, as the ultimate criterion to weigh ideal values such as knowledge, beauty, and friendship against one another. One may deny that pleasure is a measurable quality of feeling independent of its relation from volition. This is the view of some writer, but one cannot accept it. Pleasure is defined “as a feeling which, wen experienced by intelligent beings, is at least apprehended as desirable or—in cases of comparisons—preferable.” It would seem that the view one here rejects is the one one relies upon later as the final criterion to introduce coherence among ends. Otherwise the hedonist method of choice no longer provides instructions that can be followed. And then too there is the fact that there are different sorts of agreeable feelings themselves incomparable, as well as the quantitative dimensions of pleasure, intensity and duration. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

How are we to balance these when they conflict? Are we to choose a brief but intense but long pleasant experience of another? Aristotle says of necessary, the good human lays down one’s life for one’s friends, since one prefers a short period of intense pleasure to a long one of mild enjoyment, a twelvemonth of noble life to many years of humdrum existence. However, how does one decide this? Further, we must settle the relative worth of pleasure and pain. The saying “a thousand pleasures are not worth one pain,” is a standard for comparing them and is more basic than either. The person oneself must take this decision, taking into account the full range of one’s inclinations and desires, present and future. Clearly we have made no advance beyond deliberative rationality. The problem of a plurality of ends arises all over again within the class of subjective feelings. It may be objected that in economics and decision theory these problems are overcome. However, this contention is based on a misunderstanding. In the theory of demand, for example, it is assumed that the consumer’s preferences satisfy various postulates: they define a complete ordering over the set of alternatives and exhibit the properties of convexity and continuity, and the like. Given these assumptions, if and only if the value of the selected alternative is greater, it can be shown that a utility function exists which matches these preferences in the sense that one alternative is chosen over another. This function characterizes the individual’s choices, what one is in fact prefers, granted that one’s preferences meet certain stipulations. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

It asserts noting at all about how a persons arranges one’s decisions in such a coherent order to begin with, nor clearly can it claim to be a first-person procedure of choice that someone might reasonably follow, since it only records the outcome of one’s deliberations. When we make our decisions, at best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider. However, so understood, these criteria are just the principles of rational choice (or their analogues) and we are back once again with deliberative rationality. Thus to the objections that price theory must fail because it seems to predict the unpredictable, the decision of persons with free will, actually, we have never attempted to predict decisions made under conditions of perfect freedom; we have only tried to express the effects of such decisions in terms of mathematic. In theory each trader may be assumed to determine one’s utility or want curves as one pleases. It seems indisputable, then, that there is no dominant end the pursuit of which accords with our considered judgments of value. The inclusive end of realizing a rational plan of life is an entirely different thing. However, the failure of hedonism to provide a rational procedure of choice should occasion no surprise. It is a mistake to postulate certain special experiences to explain how we distinguish memories from imaginings, beliefs from suppositions, and so one for other mental acts. Similarly, it is antecedently unlikely that certain kinds of agreeable feeling can define a unit of account the use of which explains the possibility of rational deliberation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Neither pleasure nor any other determinate end can play the role that the hedonist would assign it. Pleasure cannot be an impression; for no impression could have the consequences of pleasure. Now philosopher have supposed that characteristic experiences exist and guide our mental life for many different reasons. So while it seems a simple matter to show that hedonism gets us nowhere, the important thing is to see why one might be driven to resort to such a desperate expedient. One possible reason has already been noted: the desire to narrow down the scope of purely preferential choice in determining our good. In a teleological theory any vagueness or ambiguity in the conception of the good is transferred to that of right. Hence if the good of individuals is something that, so to speak, is just up to them to decide as individuals, so likewise within certain limits that which is right. However, it is natural to think that what is right is not a matter of mere preference, and therefore one tires to find a definite conception of the good. There is, however, another reason: a teleological theory needs a way to compare the diverse goods of different individuals so that the total good can be maximize. How can these assessments be made? Even if certain ends serve to organize the plans of the individuals taken singly, they do not suffice to define a conception of right. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

It would appear, then, that the turn inwards to the stand, then, that the turn inwards to the standard of agreeable feeling is an attempt to find a common denominator among the plurality of persons, an interpersonal currency as it were, by means of which the social ordering can be specified. And if it is already maintained that this standard is the aim of each person to the extent that one is rational, this suggestion is all the more compelling. By way of conclusion, I should not say that a teleological doctrine is necessarily driven to some form of hedonism in order to define a coherent theory. Yet it does seem that the tendency in this direction has a certain naturalness. Hedonism is, one might say, the symptomatic drift of teleological theories insofar as they try to formulate a clear and applicable method of moral reasoning. The weakness of hedonism reflects the impossibility of defining an appropriate definite end to be maximized. And this suggests that the structure of teleological doctrines is radically misconceived: from the start they relate the right and the good in the wrong way. We should not attempt to give form to our life by first looking to the good independently defined. It is not our aims that primarily reveal our nature but rather the principles that we would acknowledge to govern the background conditions under which these aims are to be formed and the manner in which they are to be pursued. For the self is prior to the ends which are affirmed by it; even a dominant end must be chosen from among numerous possibilities. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

There is no way to get beyond deliberative rationality. We should therefore reverse the relation between the right and the good proposed by teleological doctrines and view the right as prior. The moral theory is then developed by working in the opposite direction. Through Christ’s redeeming work the government of God stands justified. The Omnipotent One is made known as the God of love. Satan’s charges are refuted, and his character unveiled. Rebellions can never again arise. Since can never again enter the Universe. Through eternal ages all are secure from apostasy. By love’s self-sacrifice, the inhabitants of Earth and Heaven are bound to their Creator in the bonds of indissoluble union. The work of redemption will be complete. In the place where sin abounded, God’s grace much more abounds. The Earth itself, the very field that Satan claims as his, is to be not only ransomed but exalted. Our little World, under the curse of sin the one dark blot in God’s glorious creation, will be honoured above all other Worlds in the Universe of God. Here, where the Son of God tabernacled in humanity: where the King of glory loved and suffered and died—here, when He shall make all things new, the tabernacle of God shall be with humans, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And through endless ages as the redeemed walk in the light of the Lord, they will praise Him for His unspeakable Gift—God with us. Time after time the greatest monarchs have been led to proclaim the supremacy of God. Their prosperity depended upon their obedience to God. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

However, with too many people obedience was not prompted by love. The motive was selfish. They rendered outward service to God as the means of attaining to national greatness. They did not become the light of the World, but shut themselves away from the World in order to escape temptation to idolatry. Human agencies became corrupted. During the captivity, many of the people had received heathen ideas and customs, and these were brought into their religious service. In many things they conformed to the practices of idolaters. And they departed from God and lost sight of the teaching of ritual service. The priests and rabbis multiplied requirements of their own; and the more rigid they grew, they less of the love of God was manifested. They measure their holiness by the multitude of their ceremonies, while their hearts were filled with pride and hypocrisy. Thus Satan worked to discourage the people, to loser their conception of the character of God, and to bring the faith of American into contempt. He hoped to establish the claim put forth when he rebelled in Heaven—that the requirements of God were unjust and could not be obeyed. Even America, he declared, did not keep the law. Greed and violence, distrust and spiritual apathy have been eating out the very heart of the nation. The people, in their darkness and oppression, and the rulers, thirsting for power, long for the coming of One who will vanquish their enemies and restore the Kingdom to America. They have studied the prophecies, but without spiritual insight. Thus they overlooked those scriptures that point to the humiliation of Christ’s first advent, and misapplied those that speak of the glory of His second coming. Pride obscured their vision. They interpreted prophecy n accordance with their selfish desires. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

While the light of truth seems to have departed from among humans, there are souls who are filled with perplexity and sorrow. They are thirsting for a knowledge of the living God for some assurance of life beyond the grave. That which humans build humans destroy, but the city of God is built by God and cannot be destroyed by humans. Unrest over civil rights and bottled-up bitterness sometimes explode into widespread rioting that the government believes can be quelled only by a military presence. Citizens sometimes pay dearly just by going about their daily business. Federal agencies declare that the cities and states are incapable of handling their own affairs and want to cut off funding or impose direct rule; since there tends to be so many unsolved crimes and so much property damage. However, the only thing that matters is that we trust the Lord and never give the Devil a victory. In the Christian Bible, the Book of Job explains that Job’s soul was a battleground without his knowledge. Could this be the reason for suffering today? In all cases, God is supreme and just. The Devil functions within God’s purpose. “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him. You will lie down, and no one will make you afraid.” What must ask God to show us what we can do to honour his name. One of the things we can do is be the best citizens in our troubled nations and show the love of Christ to soldiers, as we already do with children, students, and other groups. That love is desperately needed. It is also important that we pray for the grace to handle what we find daily. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

We must pray that the Lord remembers us when we come into His Kingdom. Jesus Christ is a man who had had a crown of thorns thrust into His head. He was a man who was spat upon, stripped, beaten, whipped, and so disfigured He was unrecognizable. Does that look like a Lord to you? We must accept Christ as Lord. We need to turn away from our sins and believe that He died for them. And we need to confess Him as Lord to others. “One who comes to me I will in no wise cast out,” reports John 6.37. If we come to Christ, He will never let us go. Remember these words, if we come to Christ, He will never let us go. Do not allow situations to evoke centuries of bitterness. There is a God. Life makes no sense without Him. Do not throw eternity away, like countless others who are prepared to do evil. When people accept the Lord’s children as people, and not faceless enemies, a new vigour and certainty about God’s miraculous power in situations humanly impossible to resolve is bestowed. The first step is to stop walking the way of the World and the way of Jesus at the same time. It is impossible to walk both; one must override the other. One has to choose. When an individual reached the crossroads of life, take the way of Jesus Christ. There will be the rest that is being sought. Things will become clearer in one’s mind. The Christian Bible will no longer be a book, but the way to God. One will begin to realize that God loves one and one loves God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

A truly Christian person is a beam of light in the darkness that engulfs this land. With people of God here, we are not beyond hope. Feel the cloud lifting from your spirit. Leave your old self in the past. Be finally ready to submit entirely to God, to pray with conviction, “Thy will be done.” One will notice the beauty of the countryside, and sometimes this will cause a wave of sadness to sweep over us. For people are dying together rather than living together to enjoy the land that God has given us all. We must be ready to be a force for reconciliation, and seek bold ways to show it. Unity can be found in Christ. Christ will teach us how to forgive and seek reconciliation rather than plot revenge. We must pray for victim of trouble as many Christians feel a special responsibility for their suffering. We ask that God heal these victims. Not ours, Lord, but Thy will be done. It is to the glory of God that all life is possible. “And I tell you most solemnly. Whoever keeps My Word will never see death,” reports John 8.51. In your own mind you can see life as a gift from God. Fathers knows best. Surely the peace of Christ will be with us. God is changing hearts of all living being to only have hope for World peace. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Lord, please make us instruments of your peace. For God is the only one who can show us how to love again. Every time someone seeks peace rather than war, forgiveness rather than retribution, love rather than hate the Holy Ghost showers us with blessings. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

What is the answer to the troubles of the World? Nothing in its chaotic history suggest there are political answers. Politically speaking, there is no answer how to fix the World. However, when every political effort of humans and their institutions have been frustrated, when the kingdoms of humans are utterly important, it is then that the power of the Kingdom of God, in all its glory, breaks into the dark stream of history. An it is the citizens of the Kingdom of God who carry that light into the darkness—which cannot overcome it. Thus these Christians of the World—and many others—continue to the witness of the indestructible Kingdom in the midst of their nation’s chaos. Politics cannot bring any lasting solutions. The only thing that will make any lasting peace, the only things that will bridge the gulf between Christians and the rest of the World is for people to give up violence and learn forgiveness. The only way that can possibly happen is through Jesus Christ. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” reports John 1.5. Millions live under the repression of South Africa’s apartheid, which strips Black and Whites and other races of their dignity. Political opinions promise only more chaos, and when the seething cauldron of bitterness boils over, Communist revolutionaries will be standing by, ready to offer collectivists salvation for a tired and turbulent land.  #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Over half the World lives under the ultimate result of such “salvation.” Millions in this century have been condemned to live—bound, gagged, and tortured—and die n the gulag. And today’s much heralded glasnost is little more than a public-relations campaign; the deadly face of Communism remains the same. However, in the other half of the World, which lives ostensibly in freedom, millions are enslaved by more subtle rulers. In the inner cities of America, a generation is in bondage to the rule of drugs and poverty; many see crime as their only way out and end up in the wasteland of American’s prisons. Meanwhile more affluent Americans embrace the false gods of materialism, hedonism, egoism. And human’s basest passions have unleashed plagues, which now holds billions hostage. And hovering over all the planet Earth is the mushroom cloud, the same gray ghost Douglas MacArthur saw that day in 1945 when he warned the World it had but one last chance. The cloud seems darker and more ominous when tanks roll in America, Eastern Europe or Central America, in Southeast Asia, or Africa, when vessels in the Persian Gulf patrol at full alert. At others times it seems to recede. Yet it is always a heartbeat away. In this first quarter of the twenty first century, a great irony persists. Technology has given humans power they have never known before; giant institutions offer panaceas for all human ills. However, never have humans seemed less able to devise political strategies to produce order and harmony among people. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

The more powerful the institution appears, the more important it is. The proudest pretensions of the strongest nations are mocked by a single bomb-laden terrorist truck. New York, Belfast, Beirut, Central America, South America, Cambodia, Korea, Chad, and forty other places like them are but open sores on the body politic, reminding us that even in this age of technological wonders, modern governments have devised nothing to cure the unbridled passions of humans. Is there no hope? Were Churchill’s dying words the epitaph for our age? Ultimate peace and harmony can be achieved through human efforts. However, that utopian illusion is shattered by the splintered history of the human race. Governments rise; even the most powerful fall. The battle for people’s hearts and minds will continue. Where then is hope? It is in the fact that the Kingdom of God has come to Earth—the Kingdom announced by Jesus Christ in that obscure Nazareth synagogue two thousand years ago. It is a Kingdom that comes not in a temporary takeover of political structures, but in the lasting takeover of the human heart by the rule of a holy God. Certainly, the fact that God reigns can be manifest through political means, whenever the citizens of the Kingdom of God brings His light to bear on the institutions of the kingdoms of man. However, God’s rule is even more powerfully evident in ordinary, individual lives, in the breaking of cycles of violence and evil, in the paradoxical power of forgiveness, in the actions of those little platoons who live by the transcendent values of the Kingdom of God in the midst of the kingdoms of this World, loving their neighbour. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Thus in the midst of the dark and habitual chaos of Earth, a light penetrates the darkness. It cannot be extinguished; it is the light of the Kingdom of God. His Kingdom has come, in His people today, and it is yet to come as well, in the great consummation of human history. While the battle rages on planet Earth, we can take heart—not in the feeling fortunes of humans or nations, but rather in the promise so beautifully captured in Handel’s Messiah. Stop, look, and listen. Over the din of the conflict, if you listen carefully, you will hear the chorus echoing in the distance: “The kingdom of this World has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.” Listen. For in that glorious refrain is human’s one hope. Le us the rejoice that we see around us at every hand the decay of the institutions and instruments of power, see intimations of empires falling to pieces, money in total disarray, dictators and parliamentarians alike nonplussed by the confusion and conflicts which encompass them. For it is precisely when every Earthly hope has been explored and found wanting, when every possibility of help from Earthly sources has been sought and is not forthcoming, when every recourse this World offers, moral as well as material, has been explored to no effect, when in the shivering cold the last faggot has been thrown on the fire and in the gathering darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered out, it is then that Christ’s hand reaches out, sure and firm. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Then Christ’s words bring their inexpressible comfort, then His light shines brightest, abolishing the darkness forever. So finding in everything only deception and nothingness, the soul is constrained to have recourse to God Himself and to rest content with Him. My prayer is that in some way, we will contribute to Christ’s heroic struggle to defend religious values in Western Culture. And may readers be aroused mind to develop a desire to know more of the philosophical undercurrents of this century. May people be inspired to go deeper into the complex and crucial issues of church, state, and the Kingdom of God. In the World’s literatures there are records left by persons who have had this glimpse, but each has interpreted in one’s own way, each has reacted within the frame of one’s personal background. These are sudden and unpredictable emergences from the ignorance and confusion of ordinary consciousness. These visitations of grace are intimations of reality. These moments of true consciousness free from the illusion unavoidable in ordinary experience are memorable. It is to experience while still in the flesh what some other will not experience until they are in the spirit. At such times one becomes aroused from the sleep of ignorance to the Overself’s constant presence. Put it into words as much as you can, this “Touch of the Untouch,” but you will get nothing that is anything more than a whispered hint, a vague clue. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Those strange visitations, when one is suddenly aware of a presence—close, powerful, yet immaterial—are not easily explicable. These are the moments which inspire a human, renew one’s dedication, strengthen one’s will, and give one integrity. The years of spiritual fulfillment may be far off still, but presages and tokens may come momentarily to hearten one at times. This is the scared interlude when humans transcend one’s isolation and feels the Universe supporting one. It is the highest possible form of self-recognition. It is the discovery of who and what we really are. Now talking God with your feet, I walk. I walk with your limbs; I carry forth your body. For me your mind thinks. Your voice speaks for me. Beauty is before me and beauty is behind me. Above and below me hover the beautiful. I am surrounded by it. I am immersed in it. I am immersed in it. In my youth I am aware of it. And in old age I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail. Who may be compared to Thee, Father of mercy, who in love rememberest Thy creatures unto life? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to life everlasting. Holy art Thou and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Thou Holy King. We will revere Thee and sanctify Thee in the mystic utterance of the holy seraphim who hallow Thy name in the sanctuary as described in the vision of Thy prophet: And the seraphim called unto one another saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of His glory. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.

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 Google Mini to help connect everything together!

Cresleigh Ranch is a single-family home community located in the prestigious town of Rancho Cordova and Plumas Lake, California. Offering spacious estate home designs with two-story foyers, two-story family rooms, luxurious primary bedroom suites, and 3-car garages. Located just minutes from a commuter train station. Here, you will enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of a blend of country and city living with superior schools, excellent shopping, and a wide choice of cultural events close to home.

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