Randolph Harris II International

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Father God, I am at Peace Today Because I Know You are in Control!

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We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon. God desires to dwell in the midst of His redeemed people on His own terms and His own grounds. That is, Divine holiness having dealt with human’s sinfulness. “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. However, just as one who called you is holy, be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘By holy, because I am holy,’” reports 1 Peter 1.14-15. The same giant wedge that split producer from consumer in Second Wave societies also split work into two kinds. This had an enormous impact on family life, gender roles, and on our inner live as individuals. One of he most common gender stereotypes in industrial society defines men as “objective” in orientation, and women as “subjective.” If there is a kernel of truth here, it probably lies not in some fixed biological reality but in the psychological effects of the invisible wedge. In Firs Wave societies most work was performed in the fields or in the home, with the entire household toiling together as an economic unit and with most production destined for consumption within the village or manor. Work life and home life were fused and intermingled. And since each village was largely self-sufficient, the success of the peasants in one place was not dependent upon what happened in another. Even within the production unit most workers performed a variety of tasks, swapping and shifting roles as demanded by the season, by sickness, or by choice. The preindustrial division of labour was very primitive. As a result, work in First Wave agricultural societies was characterize by low levels of interdependency. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26

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The Second Wave, washing across Britain, France, Germany, and other countries, shifted work from field and home to factory, and introduced a much higher level of interdependency. Work now demanded collective effort, division of labour, coordination, the integration of many different skills. Its success depended upon the carefully scheduled cooperative behaviour of thousands of far-flung people, many of whom never laid eyes on one another. The failure of a major steel mill or glass factory to deliver needed supplies to an auto plant could, under certain circumstances, send repercussions throughout a whole industry or regional economy. The collision of low- and high-interdependency work produced severe conflict over roles, responsibilities, and rewards. The early factory owners, for example, complained that their workers were irresponsible—that they cared little about the efficiency of the factory, that they went fishing when most needed, engaged in horseplay, or turned up drunk and could not pony up their rent money because they blew it at the tavern. In fact, most of the early industrial workers were rural folk who were accustomed to law interdependency, and had little or no understanding of their own role in the overall production process or of the failures, breakdowns, and malfunctions occasioned by their “irresponsibility.” Moreover, since most of them earned pitiful wages, they had little incentive to care. However, Mrs. Winchester, at the time, paid her workers triple the market rate, and provided them housing, not in the main mansion, but in other Victorian farm houses located on the original 768 acres she owned. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26

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In the clash between these two work systems, the new forms of work seemed to triumph. More and more production was transferred to the factory and office. The countryside was stripped of population. Millions of workers became part of high-interdependence networks. Second Wave work overshadowed the old backward form associated with the First Wave. This victory of interdependence over self-sufficiency, however, was never fully consummated. In one place the older form of work stubbornly held on. This place was the home. Each home remained a decentralized unit engaged in biological reproduction, in child-rearing, and in cultural transmission. If one family failed to reproduce, or did a poor job of rearing it children and preparing them for life in the work system, its failures did not necessarily endanger the accomplishment of those tasks by the family next door. Housework remained, in other words, a low-interdependency activity. The housewife continued, as always, to perform a set of crucial economic functions. She “produced.” However, she produced for Sector A—for the use of her own family—not for the market. As the husband, by and large, marched off to do the direct economic work, the wife generally stayed behind to do the indirect more advanced form of work; the woman was left behind to take care of the other, more backward form of work. He moved, as it were, into the future; she remained in the past. This division produced a split in personality and inner life. The public or collective nature of factory and office, the need for coordination and integration, brought with it an emphasis on objective analysis and objective relationships. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26

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Men, prepared from boyhood for their role in the shop, where they would move in a World of interdependencies, were encouraged to become “objective.” Women, prepared from birth for the tasks of reproduction, childrearing; and household drudgery, performed to a considerable degree in social isolation, were taught to be “subjective”—and were frequently regarded as incapable of the kind of rational, analytic thought that supposedly went with objectivity. Not surprisingly, women who did leave the relative isolation of the household to engage in interdependent production were often accused of having been defeminized, of having grown cold, tough, and—objective. Gender differences and gender role stereotypes, moreover, were sharpened by misleading indemnification of men with production and woman with consumption, even though men also consumed and women also produced. In short, while women were oppressed long before the Second Wave began to roll across the Earth, the modern “war of the roses” can be traced in large measure to the conflict between two work-styles, and beyond that to the divorce of production and consumption. The split economy deepened the gender split as well. What we have seen so far, therefore, is that once the invisible wedge was hammered into place, separating producer from consumer, a number of profound changes followed: A market had to be formed or expanded to connect the two; new political and social conflicts sprang up; new gender roles were defined. However, the split implied far more than this. It also meant that all Second Wave societies would have to operate in similar fashion—that they would have to meet certain basic requirements. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26

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Whether the object of production was profit or not, whether the “means of production” were public or private, whether the market was “free” or “planned,” whether the rhetoric was capitalist or socialist made no difference. So long as production was intended for exchange, instead of use, so long as it has to flow through the economic switchboard or market, certain Second Wave principles had to be followed. Once these principles are identified, the hidden dynamics of all industrial societies are laid bare. Moreover, we can anticipate how Second Wave people typically think. For these principles added up to the basic rules, the behaviour code book, of Second Wave civilization. It is difficult to fully understand the tremendous importance of the electric streetcar to the development of American suburbs. The electric streetcar literally changed the physical shape of metropolitan areas. It also contributed mightily to the modern residential pattern where one’s area of residence tells a great deal about one’s socioeconomic status. Electric streetcars permitted the construction of economically and socially homogenous suburbs. There had been numerous attempts to build an electric streetcar, but the first successful—that is, reliable—system was put into operation in Richmond, Virginia USA, in 1888. The system was designed by Frank Sprague, an inventor and electrical engineer who had earlier worked under Thomas Edison. Dr. Frank Sprague’s system was relatively straightforward. Electric current was transferred from an overhead line to the electric motor powering the wheels by means of a troller, or trolley, that was held against the overhead line by means of a spring. However, when Dr. Sprague signed the Richmond contract in 1887, much of the necessary equipment had yet to be designed, much less built and tested.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 26

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Moreover, Dr. Sprague’s contract specified that unless he could build a fully working system within a year that was acceptable to the Richmond officials, they would pay nothing. Dr. Sprague assumed the full cost of designing and building the entire system. To the delight of the city fathers and mothers, the system worked as specified. Dr. Sprague’s design was clearly superior to any of the experimental systems that had been tested elsewhere and found unreliable. Dr. Sprague’s system proved to be both safe and reliable. Within a year twenty other cities had brought Dr. Sprague’s system and he was both a famous and rich man. Dr. Sprague’s new electric streetcars were adopted in city after city with remarkable speed. Horse-drawn car lines, which accounted for two-third of all streetcar lines in 1890, the remainder being mostly cable system, had virtually vanished a mere decades later. Seldom has any invention so completely replaced its predecessors in such a short period. Electric streetcars had clear advantage over the earlier cable and horse-drawn systems. Electric streetcars could average 15 miles per hour, which was a least double and sometimes triple the speed of its cable and horse-drawn competitors. Moreover, the trolleys had over three times the carrying capacity of the horse-drawn cars without any of the pollution. The electric systems also cost far less to build and operate than cable systems. By 1902 electric trolleys accounted for 97 percent of all streetcar milage, with 2 percent still operated by cable care lines and only 1 percent of horse cars. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26

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The electric streetcars, which provided comparatively high-speed transit for a modest 5-cent fare, changed the way urban-area dwellers lived. There no longer was any necessity for middle-class families to live within walking distance of their place of work. Industrialization was making residence near one’s work less attractive, while the streetcar meant it was not possible for middle-class employees to live in suburbs (Municipal Statistic Areas) as far as 10 or even 12 miles from the central business district and commute both rapidly and inexpensively. Within a short period, new middle-class residential suburbs were being constructed along the right-of-way of the streetcar lines. The burgeoning streetcar suburbs made it possible for the middle class to live in new housing areas on the city’s fringe while still being able to commute within thirty minutes to downtown offices and even shop at downtown department stores. From 1890 to 1920, the streetcar dominated metropolitan transport. The very shape of the metropolitan area changed. Previously, outer growth had occurred more or less everywhere on the periphery where growth was not constrained by geography. The electric streetcar, by contrast, restricted growth to narrow, fingerlike development along the streetcar tracks. Real estate developers built homes paralleling the tracks, but only to a depth of a few blocks on either side. The interstitial areas remained undeveloped. The special configuration of the American city changed from that of a compact city to that of a star-shaped metropolitan area. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26

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The streetcar lines, which opened up outlying sites for development, often also made the existing city homes of the well to do and the upper-middle class living along major city thoroughfares less desirable. Living along an electric streetcar line was extremely noisy. Streetcars, in those days, made a great deal of clamour with squealing wheels and changing bells, and their constant passage created major noise pollution for those living in homes adjacent to the trolly line. On a hot summer’s night, with all the windows open, the jarring sound of screeching metal on metal made sleep difficult. Once-quiet residential streets became noisy streetcar lines. As a consequence, those who could afford to move o quieter and more sedate surroundings—usually further out. Because a location along the streetcar line was good for business, retail stores frequently opened stores in what were previously residences. A common pattern was for a storefront extension to be built out to the sidewalk on what was originally the front yard of a home. This pattern consisting of a shop in front with the original house behind can still be seen in many older cities today. Middle-class residents of turn-of-the-century streetcar suburbs also found that their new homes had practical advantages beyond that of fast transportation to the city. Sewer lines, water lines, and gas lines tended to be installed along the street right-of-way, while electric and telephone poles paralleled the tracks. This was comparatively inexpensive for the utilities (usually private companies) to do, since it did not involve ripping up already-paved streets. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26

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Suburbanites, being well-off, were also ideal customers from the business standpoint. Thus, outlying streetcar suburbs often received the services of the new utilities well before hey came to working-class areas of the city. Outer areas built at the turn of the century had from their time of construction “modern” advantages such as toilets and electricity. By contrast, some poor city neighbourhoods still had to use outhouses and light their homes with kerosene. At the time of World War I, three-quarters of American homes still did not have electric service. Even more important than the physical and quality-of-life differences between the city and the suburbs were the emerging social differences. Simply put, the suburban trolley lines allowed the upper-middle and middle class to move out. The technology of the steam railroad had allowed the well-to-do of earlier decades to separate their place of work from their place of residence. Now the technology of the streetcar allowed the middle class to do the same. The new suburban areas were almost exclusively middle class. The poor were excluded from the new subdivisions. Homogeneous economic and social communities replaced the more mixed pattern of the earlier walking city. Segregation of population as well as of land uses was becoming the norm. By providing the means for the middle class to move out of the city, the trolley provided a physical inheritance of housing type and distribution that we can still see throughout North America. Newer and more affluent homes on larger lots were built in outlying areas. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26

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As one would ride the streetcar from center to suburb, there would be a clear upgrading in the size and quality of residences. When traveling the old street car routes, even over a century later, the patterns can still be clearly through the cities of the east coast and middle west today. Many of what were new middle-class neighbourhoods at the turn of the century became residences of the metropolis’ working class and poor, but now they are becoming the neighbourhoods of the affluent due to expanding businesses and economic growth, and a lot of people are dying to get their hands on old building, Brownstones, Victorians and redevelop them or find land near the city to copy these designs. Essentially the pattern of an inverse relationship between the centrality of residence and socioeconomic status of those occupying the property reverted to its original target group. While the electric streetcar lines certainly did not invent social and economic exclusivity, the trolleys did facilitate the separation of the city into homogenous socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial enclaves.  The suburbs, in addition to being heavily middle class, also differed in ethic composition from the central city. The turn of the century was the high tide of southern and eastern European immigration to the United States of America. Ellis Island received over a million immigrants a year during the first decade to the twentieth century. The industrial cities of the east and Midwest were the principal destinations of these Italian, Polish, Slavic, and Jewish immigrants. As of 1900, over three-quarters of the population of cities such as New York, Boston, Cleveland, and Chicago were listed by the Bureau of the Census as being of foreign stock. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26

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That is, the census listed the cities as being foreign because most of their population was born outside of the United States of America, or their parents were born outside of the United States of America. Suburbs, by contrast, were overwhelmingly WASP (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant). The new suburbs allowed those who feared the menace of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion” to escape to segregated neighbourhoods. Those who were uncomfortable living in a city teeming with foreign immigrants now had a convenient and comfortable alternative. Additionally, the suburbs offered middle-class WASPs the opportunity to remove themselves and their families from both the taxes and immigrant-dominated political machines of the city. Suburban enclaves were essentially homogeneous in social, economic, and ethnic composition. By the time of World War I, the pattern of a segregated urban area had become the norm. The poor and ethic working class lived in the central city, while the affluent and middle-class nonethnics increasingly commuted from out-city and suburban areas. However, in capital cities like Sacramento, California USA, some politicians built mansions near and around the state capitol so they could walk to work. Developers also created apartment buildings on N Street and a senator’s hotel on 15th street for political to live in. Were we to want to suppose a savage human as skilled in the art of thinking as our philosophers make one out to be; were we, following their example, to make one full-fledged philosophers, discovering by oneself the most subline truths, and, by chains of terribly abstract reasoning, forming for oneself maxims of justice and reason drawn from the love of order in general or from the known will of one’s Creator. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26

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In a word, we were to supposed there was in one’s mind as much intelligence and enlightenment as one needs, and is in fact found to have dullness and stupidity, what use would the species have for all that metaphysic, which could not be communicated and which would perish with the individual who would have invented it? What progress could the human race make, scattered in the woods among animals? And to what extent could humans mutually perfect and enlighten one another, when, with neither a fixed dwelling nor any need for one another, they would hardly encounter one another twice in their lives, without knowing or talking to one another. Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much grammar trains and facilitates the operations of the mind. And let us think of the inconceivable difficulties and the infinite amount of time that the first invention of languages must have cost. Let us join their reflections to the preceding ones, and we will be in a position to judge how many thousands of centuries would have been necessary to develop successively in the human mind the operations of which it was capable. May I be permitted to consider for a moment the obstacles to the origin of languages. First of all, how could have languages become necessary; for since humans had no communication among themselves nor any need for it, I fail to see either the necessity of this invention or its possibility, if it were not indispensable. I might well say, as do many other, that languages were born in the domestic intercourse among fathers, mothers, and children. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26

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However, aside from the fact that this would not resolve the difficulties, it would make the mistake of those who, reasoning about the state of nature, intrude into it ideas taken from society. They always see the family gathered in one and the same dwelling, with its members maintaining among themselves a union as intimate and permanent as exists among us, where so many common interests unite them. However, the fact of the matter is that in that primitive state, since nobody had houses or huts or property of any kind, each one bedded down in some random spot and often for only one night. Males and females came together fortuitously as a result of chance encounters, occasion, and desire, without there being any great need for words to express what they had to say to one another. They left one another with the same nonchalance. The mother at first nursed her children for her own need; then, with habit having endeared them to her, she later nourished the for their own need. Once they had the strength to look for their food, they did not hesitate to leave the mother herself. And since there was practically no other way of finding one another than not to lose sight of one another, they were soon at the point of not even recognizing one another. It should also be noted that, since the child had all one’s needs to explain and consequently more things to the mother than the mother to the child, it is the child who must make the greatest effort toward inventing a language, and that the language one uses should in large part be of one’s own making, which multiplies languages as many times as there are individuals to speak them. This tendency was abetted by a nomadic and vagabond life, which does not give any idiom time to gain a foothold. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26

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For claiming that the mother teaches her child the words one ought to use in asking her for this or that is a good way of showing how already formed languages are taught, but it does not tell us how languages are formed. Let us suppose this first difficulty has been overcome. Let us disregard for a moment the immense space that there must have been between the pure state of nature and the need for languages. And, on the supposition that they are necessary, let us inquire how they might have begun to be established. Here we come to a new difficulty, worse still than the preceding one. For if human needed speech in order to learn to think, they had a still greater need for knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speaking. And even if it were understood how vocal sounds had been taken for the conventional expression of our ideas, it would still remain for us to determine what could have been conventional expressions for ideas that, not having a sensible object, could not be indicated either by gesture or by voice. Thus we scarcely able to form tenable conjectures regarding the birth of this art of communicating thought and establishing intercourse between minds, a sublime art which is already quite far from its origin, but which the philosopher sill sees at so prodigious a distance from is perfection that there is no human so foolhardy as to claim that it will ever achieve it, even if the sequences of change that time necessarily brings were suspended in its favour, even if prejudices were to be barred from the academies or be silent before them, and even if they were able to occupy themselves with that thorny problem for whole centuries without interruption. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26

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Human’s first language, the most universal, the most energetic and the only language one needed before it was necessary to persuade humans assembled together, is the cry of nature. Since this cry was elicited only by a kind of instinct in pressing circumstances, to beg for help in great dangers, or for relief of violent ills, it was not used very much in the ordinary courses of life, where more moderate feelings prevail. When the ideas of human begin to spread and multiply, and closer communication was established among them, they sought more numerous signs and a more extensive language. They multiplied vocal inflections and combined them with gestures, which by their nature, are more expressive, and whose meaning is less dependent on a prior determination. They therefore signified visible and mobile objects by means of gestures, and audible ones by imitative sounds. However, since a gesture indicates hardly anything more than present or easily described objects and visible actions; since its use is not universal, because darkness or the interposition of a body renders it useless; and since it requires rather than stimulates attention, humans finally thought of replacing them with vocal articulations, which, while not having the same relationship to certain ideas, were better suited to represent all ideas as conventional signs. Such a substitution could only be made by a common consent and in a way rather difficult to practice for humans whose crude organs had as yet no exercise, and still more difficult to conceive in itself, since that unanimous agreement had to have had a motive, and speech appears to have been necessary in order to establish the use of speech. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26

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Research on the “theory of mind” began with David Premack and Guy Woodruff’s 1978 description of animals that understand the minds of other animals. Theory of mind refers to an animal’s (or a person’s) ability to respond not just to another’s behaviour but also according to what it assumes about the other’s beliefs and desires. As a species’ brain cortex volume increases, so does its ability to read minds—to infer others’ mental states—and even to deceive others and to invent tools. For example, the psychologists Andre Whiten and Richard Byrne repeatedly saw one young baboon pretending to have been attacked by another as a tactic to get its mother to drive the other baboon away from its food. When observing monkey-human similarities in abilities such as mind reading, it becomes tempting to say that humans are therefore “nothing but” complex primates, and to ignore the distinctiveness of the ethical, moral, and religious aspects of human though and behaviour. However, primate abilities, including primates’ mind-reading capacity, may get overplayed. Dr. Byrne notes: “It is tempting, but may be utterly wrong, to assume that an animal….has some idea of the effect its behaviour is having on the mind of another.” Actually, one warns, the explanation may be simpler: “Rapid learning in social circumstances, a good memory for individuals and their different characteristics, and some simple genetic tendencies are capable of explaining much that has impressed observers as intelligent in simian primates.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 26

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Dr. Frans de Waal similarly cautions against exaggerated claims: “Even if animals other than ourselves act in ways tantamount to moral behaviour, their behaviour does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we engage in. It is hard to believe that animals weigh their own interests against the rights of others, that they develop a view of the greater good of society or that they feel lifelong guilt about something they should not have done….To communicate intentions and feelings is one thing; and to clarify what is right, and why, and what is wrong, and why, is quite something else. Animals are no moral philosophers.” Despite the concern of some Christian about apparently narrowing gap between ourselves and nonhuman primates, we see no great issues at stake in this research. We welcome developments in evolutionary psychology. As Dr. Byrne and Dr. de Waal illustrate, scholars are often dismayed by the excited interpretations of their findings in the popular media. If Christians are more discerning, they will be able to glimpse fresh pointers to the Creator’s greatness in the wonders of creation. They will also be able to draw on the findings of evolutionary psychology as they exercise stewardship for the creation and compassion for humanity. Research on theory of mind, for example, has expanded our understanding of autistic children, who have difficulty in reading others’ minds and therefore in responding appropriately. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26

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When I think about London, I usually see a mental picture of Euston Street. However, when I think (as I do) that London has several million inhabitants, I do not mean that there are several million images of people contained in my image of Euston Station. Nor do I mean that several millions of real people live in the real Euston Station. In fact though I have the image while I am thinking about London, what I think or say is not about that image, and would be manifest nonsense if it were. It makes sense because it is not about my own mental pictures but about the real London, outside my imagination, of which no one can have an adequate mental picture at all. Or again, when we say that the Sun is ninety-odd million miles away, we understand perfectly clear what we mean by this number; we can divide and multiply it by other numbers and we can work out how long it would take to travel that distance at any given speed. However, this clear thinking is accompanied by imagining which is ludicrously false to what we know that the reality must be. To think, then, is one thing, and to imagine is another. What we think or say can be, and usually is, quite different from what we imagine or picture; and what we mean may be true when the mental images that accompany it are entirely false. It is, indeed, doubtful whether anyone except an extreme visualist who is also a trained artist ever has mental images which are particularly like the things one is thinking about. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26

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In these examples the mental image is not only unlike the reality but is known to be unlike it, at least after a moment’s reflection. I know that London is not merely Euston Station. Let us now go on to a slightly different predicament. I once heard a lady tell her young daughter that you would die if you are too many tablets of aspirin. “But why?” asked the child, “it is not poisonous.” “How do you know it is not poisonous?” said the mother. “Because,” said the child, “when you crush an aspirin tablet you do not find horrid red things inside it.” Clearly, when this child though of poison she had a mental picture of Horrid Red Things, just as I have a picture of Euston when I think of London. The difference is that whereas I know my image to be very unlike the real London, the child through that poison was really red. To that extent she was mistaken. However, this does not mean that everything she thought or said about poison was necessarily nonsensical. She knew perfectly well that a poison was something which killed you or made you ill if you swallowed it; and she knew, to some extent, which of the substances in her mother’s house were poisonous. If a visitor to that house had been warned by the child, “Do not thin that. Mother says it is poison” he would have been ill advised to neglect the warning on the ground that “This child has a primitive idea of poison as Horrid Red Things, which my adult scientific knowledge has long since refuted.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 26

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Thinking may be sound in certain respect where is it accompanied not only by false images but by false images mistake for true ones. What the Old Testament writers called the shekinah is a sacred and luminous appearance. More than a hundred years ago, Konko Daijin founded a new religion in Japan. Called Konkokyo, “the religion of the golden light,” it enjoined its followers to live in dependence on “the God of Heaven’s brightness.” One of the states of samadhi in Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism is called “Pure Light.” One of the Attained Ones in this religion is Amita, or Amitabha, the “Buddha of Boundlessly Diffused Light.” That there is actually a light emitted by the divine World of being is indicated by the following excerpt from, I believe, a Mahayana Buddhist: “There are four successive stages of piercing in reality, identical in sleep and dying. The first, ‘Revelation,’ is experienced in the earliest period of sleep, and appears as a moonlit cloudless sky. The drowsiness deepens and ‘Augmentation’ is reached. It appears as brilliant clear sunlight. Few can go beyond this into the third stage, ‘Immediate Attainment.’ Here there is total darkness. It vanishes when sleep gets deeper still; then the Void is penetrated, called ‘Innate Light,’ the first clear radiance. The student thus passes into Reality and Enlightenment, whether in the nightly death of sleep or the end of human life.” The Quakers believe that what they call the Inner Light is a supernatural thing. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26

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Saint Brendan saw, while at ceremonial prayer in the presence of other celebrated ancient Irish holy men, a bright flame-like light rising above his head and continuing until the end of the ceremony. If God is to be seen, then it must happen in a Light, as God Himself is Light. LIGHT: The seventeenth-century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan expressed the same idea in his lines: I saw Eternity the other night, like a great Ring of pure and endless light. If the grains, fruits, cereals, and vegetables which we eat are themselves undernourished because the soil in which they grow is deficient in minerals or otherwise exhausted then we in turn will not really receive from our food the proper nourishment we believe it is giving nor will the cattle pastured on such depleted soil. Nor is this all If the foods derived from unbalanced soil are our mainstay for a lengthy period of years, the unbalance will be reflected in our body as some kind of sickness or malfunction. Wherever and whenever people are properly nourished and housed in safe and clean locations, as the rule, and not the rarity that it is today for a certain segment of the population, we may expect violence and crime to abate markedly. The change our to proper nourishment creates in some cases a feeling of bodily weakness. This will be limited to the transition period only, which may be a matter of days or months, depending on the individual. Such persons should make the changeover gradually. Many others have made the change quite abruptly without any fatigue or any hard. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26

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The person who is afraid to alter one’s living habits, and especially one’s eating and drinking habits, because one is afraid that other persons may regard one as queer, eccentric, or fanatic forgets that the ownership of one’s body, the responsibility for its well-being, belongs to one, not them. Theory left unapplied is only one-third of knowledge. A surgeon knew and taught that anger would raise the pressure of the blood and strain the heart in proportion to its severity. Yet it was anger that eventually killed him. The influence of body on mind is shown by the efficacy—in his case at least—of Socrates’ method of smiling at himself when counterattacking a negative emotion while it was ye in is slender beginning. There is a corrective purpose in the existence of disease. Any cure which removed the symptoms but fails to correct the inner mental or physical cause of them is merely a temporary expedient, not a real cure. It serves the ego’s present convenience. However, the future must necessarily be menaced by a reappearance of the same disease, or of a different one which will also express the cause. And this may happen either in the same lifetime or in the next. A disease whose origin is physical will not need more than a physical remedy to cure it. However, one of a physical, mental, or moral nature can be reached and overcome only by corresponding means. The long walk which might fatigue your strength and become difficult drudgery becomes easy and endurable if, at the dame time, your mind is deeply absorbed in concentration on some lofty matter. Why? Because you are not then thinking of your ego. Such is the power of mind over the body. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26

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If one lives only and wholly in an optimistic harmonious feeling, if one consistently rejects all negative and destructive ones, the result must certainly be that ne will enjoy better health in the body as one already enjoys the best in mind. Shun the madding crowd. Turn a deaf ear to the histories of the World. Whether original works or just condensation, they crow out our knowledge of the World of the spirit. And the vanity in these volumes—a light dusting at first, but before you know it, it is snowing soot! Many is the time I wish I had not gone outside the walls. All I did was talk. I yammered and listened to the yammerings of others, but when it was time to return to the realm of silence, my ears were battered the colour of plum. Tittlers and tattlers I suppose we all are when it comes to our bruised hearts; talk helps, and someone needs to listen. However, why is it that jokes and japes are so good a relieving the stress, the depression? Well, it must be the magpies in us, and though I hesitate to say it, it is not so bad every now and then to give them voice to jabber and to chatter and to tell you what the matter is with you. These klatches outside the walls, they are such a pain! At best, in vain. At worst, inane. They are for exterior consolation only, for they clash with the very consolation that is interior and divine. Inside the walls we Devouts must watch and pray, as the Gospel of Matthew urges us (26.41), that none of our time is spent idly. However, if we have to speak and to have the permission, we should do so but only about bonda fide Edifables; St. Paul would have the Ephesians do just that (4.29). Otherwise, abuse of this rule in particular and negligence of our own spiritual progress in general will lead us to lose control of our tongue. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26

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Nevertheless, because you are in a religious community devoted to the Lord, conversational topics related to spiritual progress should come up from time to time. As Joseph and Oliver worked together on the translation of the golden plates, they learned many things. They were much interested in what was written about baptism for the remission of sins. They talked about it, studied about it from the Bible, and desired very much to be baptized as Christ taught in the golden book. One day they went into the woods to pray, asking God to explain baptism to them. It was a beautiful spring day, May 15, 1829. As they prayed near the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, an Angel came to them in a cloud of light saying he was John the Baptist of whom they had read in the New Testament. He said that he had been sent Saints Peter, James, and John, who has been apostles with Jesus when He lived on Earth. The Angel laid his hands upon them, saying, “Upon you, my fellow servants, in the name of Jesus, I confer the priesthood of Aaron, and his shall never again be taken from the Earth until the son of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” The Angel explained that humans having the Aaronic priesthood may do much of the work in the church. He told them, however, that the Aaronic priesthood does not carry the authority for laving on of hands for the gift of the Holy Spirit. This power should be given to them later. Then he said, “God and be baptized.” Joseph and Oliver went into the water of the Susquehanna River. Joseph firs baptized Oliver, and then Oliver baptized Joseph. Then the Angel told them to ordain each other. As the two came out of the water they were so filled with the power of the Holy Spirit that they understood things they had been unable to understand previously, and many things were shown them about the Lord’s work which they were to do. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26

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It is a wonderful experience for these two young men to hear the voice of an Angel speaking the words of the Lord. With great joy they returned to their work of translating. They old some of the family and closest friends about this wonderful experience and what God was about to do. Samuel and Hyrum Smith, two of Joseph’s brothers, believed and were baptized. Hyrum, the older brother, was a quiet and gentle man who loved Joseph very much. He was very happy about the wonderful message of Jesus, and he wanted to go out at once to tell everyone about it. Though he understood little about the things he heard and saw, he wanted to preach to the World. However, it was not the right time for men to preach, for the work of translating the golden plates had not been finished, and no one fully understood the teaching of Christ. Jesus Christ spoke by revelation through Joseph telling Hyrum to wait a little longer, then he could preach. The words of the Lord to Hyrum were: “Behold, I say unto you, Keep my commandments, and seek to bring forth and established the cause of Zion. Seek not for riches, but for wisdom. Put thy trust in that Spirit which leadeth to do good; yea, to do justly, to walk humbly, to judge righteously; and this is my Spirit. I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy. By this shall you know all things whatsoever you desire of me. You need not suppose that you are called to preach until you are called. Wait a little longer, until you shall have my word, my rock, my church, and my gospel, that you may know of a surety my doctrine. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26

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“Then, behold, according to your desires, yea, even according to your faith, shall it be done unto you. However, now hold your peace; study my word which has gone forth among the children of humans, and also study my word which shall come forth among the children of humans, or that which is now translating. Treasure up in your hearts until the time which is in my wisdom that you shall go forth.” With these instructions the men continued their study and work so they might bring to all people the wonderful message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Earth, adored with heights and gentle slopes and plains, bears plants and herbs of various healing powers. May she spread wide for us, afford us joy! On whom are ocean, river, and all waters, on whom have sprung up food and ploughman’s crops, on whom moves all that breaths and stirs aboard—Earth, may she grant to us the long first draught! Whatever I dig up of you, O Earth, may you have quick replenishment! O purifying One, may my thrust never reach right into your vital points, your heart! O Earth, O Mother, dispose my lot in gracious fashion that I may be at ease, and in harmony with your powers. God’s glory pervades the Universe; His ministering Angels inquire of one another: Where is the place of His glory? In response they give praise. Praised be the glory of the Lord from His Heavenly abode. From His Heavenly abode may He turn in mercy and bestow grace unto the people who, reciting in the Shema evening and morning, twice daily, proclaim in love the unity of His name, saying: Hear, O America: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. He is our God; He is our Father, our Sovereign and our Deliverer. In His mercy He will again make known in the presence of all the living that He will be your God. “I am the Lord your God. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26

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