Life experiences become acting experience which in turn become life experience. Even if I were to grant all that I have thus far refuted, the supports of despotism would no be any better off. There will always be a great difference between subduing a multitude and ruling a society. If scattered humans, however many they may be, were successively enslaved by a single individual, I see nothing there but a master and slaves; I do not see a people and its leader. It is, if you will, an aggregation, but not an association. There is neither public good nor a body politic there. Even if that man had enslaved half the World, one is always a private individual. One’s interest, separated from that of others, is never anything but a private interest. If this same man is about to die, after one’s passing one’s empire remains scattered and disunited, just as an oak tree dissolves and falls into a pile of ashes after fire has consumed it. A people, say, Grotius, can give itself to a king. According to Grotius, therefore, a people is a people before it gives itself to a king. This gift itself is a civil act; it presupposed a public deliberation. Thus, before examining the act whereby a people is a people. For since this act is necessarily prior to the other, it is the true foundation of society. In fact, if there were no prior convention, then, unless the vote were unanimous, what would become of the minority’s obligation to submit to the majority’s choice, and where do one hundred who want a master get the right to vote for ten who do not? The law of majority rule is itself an established convention, and presupposes unanimity on at least one occasion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

I suppose that humans have reached the point where obstacles that are harmful to their maintenance in the state of nature gain the upper hand by their resistance to the forces that each individual can bring to bear to maintain oneself in that state. Such being the case, that original state cannot subsist any longer, and the human race would perish if it did not alter its mode of existence. For since humans cannot engender new forces, but merely unite and direct existing ones, they have no other means of maintaining themselves but o form by aggregation a sum of forces that could gain the upper hand over the resistance, so that their forces are directed by means of a single moving power and made to act in concert. This sum of forces cannot come into being without the cooperation of many. However, since each human’s force and liberty are the primary instruments of one’s maintenance, how is one going to engage them without hurting oneself and without neglecting the care that one owes oneself? This difficulty, seen in terms of my subject, can be stated in the following terms: “Find a form of association which defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and by means of which each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only oneself and remains as free as before.” This is the fundamental problem for which the social contract provides the solution. The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the least modification renders them vain and ineffectual, that, although perhaps they have never been formally promulgated, they are everywhere the same, and everywhere tacitly accepted and acknowledged. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Once the social compact is violated, each person then regains one’s first rights and resumes one’s natural liberty, while losing the conventional liberty for which one renounced it. These clauses, properly understood, are all reducible to a single one, namely the total alienation of each associate, together with all of one’s rights, to the entire community. For first of all, since each person gives oneself whole and entire, the condition is equal for everyone; and since the condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for the others. Moreover, since the alienation is made without reservation, the union is as perfect as possible, and no associate has anything further to demand. For if some rights remained with private individuals, in the absence of any common superior who could decide between them and the public, each person would eventually claim to be one’s own judge in all things, since one is on some point one’s own judge. The state of nature would subsist and the association would necessarily become tyrannical or hollow. Finally, in giving oneself to all, each person gives oneself to no one. And since there is no associate over whom one does not acquire the same right that one would grant others over oneself, one gains the equivalent of everything one loses, along with a greater amount of force to preserve what one has. If, therefore, one eliminates from the social compact whatever is no essential to it, one will find that it is reducible to the following terms. Each of us places one’s person and all one’s power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and as one we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

At once, in place of the individual person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body composed of as many members as there are voices in the assembly, which receives from this same act its unity, its common self, its life and its will. This public person, formed thus by union of all the others formerly took the name city, and at present takes the name republic or body politic, which is called state by its members when it is passive, sovereign when it is active, power when compared to others like itself. The true meaning of the word city is almost entirely lost on modern humans. Most of them mistake a town for a city and a townsman for a citizen. They do not know that houses make a town but citizens make a city. Once this mistake cost the Carthaginians dearly. I have not found in my reading that the title of citizen has ever been given to the subjects of a prince, not even in ancient times to the Macedonians or in our own time to the English, although they are closer to liberty than all the others. Only the French adopt this name citizen with complete familiarity, since they have no true idea of its meaning, as can be seen from their dictionaries. If this were not the case, they would become guilty of treason for using it. For them, this name expresses a virtue and not a right. When Bodin wanted to speak about our citizens and townsmen, he committed a terrible blunder when he mistook the one group for the other. M. d’Alembert was not in error, and in his article entitles Geneva he has carefully distinguished the four orders of humans (even five, counting ordinary foreigners) who are in our owns, and of whom only two make up the republic. No other French author I am aware of has grasped the true meaning of the word citizen. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

As to the associates, they collectively take the name people; individually they are called citizens, insofar as participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects, insofar as they are subjected to the laws of the state. However, these terms are often confused and mistaken for one another. It is enough to know how to distinguish them when they are used with absolute precision. This formula shows that the act of association includes a reciprocal commitment between the public and private individuals, and that each individual, contracting, as it were, with oneself, finds oneself under a twofold commitment: namely as a member of the sovereign. However, the maxim of civil law that no one is held to commitments made to oneself cannot be applied here, for there is a considerable difference between being obligated to oneself, or to a whole of which one is a part. It must be further noted that the public deliberation that can obligate all the subjects to the sovereign, owing to the two different relationships in which each of them is viewed, cannot, for the opposite reason, obligate the sovereign to itself, and that consequently it is contrary to the nature of the body politic that the sovereign impose upon itself a law it could not break. Since the sovereign can be considered under but one single relationship, it is then in the position of a private individual contracting with oneself. Whence it is apparent that there neither is nor can be any type of fundamental law that is obligatory for the people as a body, not even the social contract. This does not mean that the whole body cannot perfectly well commit itself to another body with respect to things that do not infringe on this contract. For in regard to the foreigner, it becomes a simple being, an individual. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

However, since the body politic or the sovereign derives its being exclusively from the sanctity of the contract, it can never obligate itself, not even to another power, to do anything that derogates from the original act, such as alienating some portion of itself or submitting to another sovereign. Violation of the act whereby it exists would be self-annihilation, and whatever is nothing produces nothing. As soon as this multitude is thus united in a body, once cannot hard one of the members without attacking the whole body. It is even less likely that the body can be harmed without the members feeling it. Thus duty and interest equally obligate the two parties to come to one another’s assistance, and the same humans should seek to combine in this two-fold relationship all the advantages that result from it. For since the sovereign is formed entirely from the private individuals who make it up, it neither has nor could have an interest contrary to theirs. Hence, the sovereign power has no need to offer a guarantee to its subjects, since it is impossible for a body to want to harm all of its members, and, as we will see later, it cannot harm any one of them in particular. The sovereign, by the mere fact that it exists, is always all that it should be. However, the same thing cannot be said of the subjects in relation to the sovereign, for which, despite their common interest, their commitments would be without substance if it did not find ways of being assured of their fidelity. In fact, each individual can, as a human, have a private will contrary to or different from the general will that one has as a citizen. One’s private interest can speak to one in an entirely different manner than the common interest. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Once’s absolute and naturally independent existence can cause one to envisage what one owes the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, the loss of which will be less harmful to others than its payment is burdensome to one. And in viewing the moral person which constitutes the state as a being of reason because it is not a man, one would enjoy the rights of a citizen without wanting to fulfill the duties of a subject, an injustice whose growth would bring about the ruin of the body politic. Thus, in order for the social compact to avoid being an empty formula, it tacitly entails the commitment—which alone can give force to others—that whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body. This means merely that one will be forced to be free. For this is the sort of condition that, by giving each citizen to the homeland, guarantees one against all personal dependence—a condition that produces the skill and the performance of the political machine, and which alone bestows legitimacy upon civil commitments. Without it such commitments would be absurd, tyrannical and subject to the worst abuses. The general personal relationships of depressed people are characterized by dissatisfaction, lower influence and intimacy, and reduced activity and involvement. Some evidence indicates that the quality of social interaction with other is more strongly associated with depression than the sheer quantity. As might be expected, the availability of a confidant with whom one can self-disclose and engage in rewarding conversation is negatively associated with depression. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

It is the case, however, that many depressed people lack an intimate relationship altogether. This finding is particularly important, in that the lack of a close and confiding relationship appears to create a heightened vulnerability to experiencing depression. Research on the personal relationship of depressed persons leads one to question he worth of their relational partners. For instance depressed participants complain of dissatisfaction and anger with their dating/romantic partners, as well as increased quarreling relative to nondepressed participants. These same respondents reported being hurt or upset by their romantic partners more frequently than did nondepressed controls, despite (or perhaps as a cause of) their greater desire for more love in the relationship. Depressed people also perceive their intimae partners as more hostile than nondepressed persons do. One recently studied group of depressed women reported that they received less social support from heir confidants than did a group of nondepressed controls. The confidants of these depressed women exhibited more depressogenic speech (exempli gratia, “I cannot do anything right anymore,” “I am never going to find a job”) than confidants of either nondepressed or psychiatric controls. One might speculate that these friends may actually contribute to the depressed person’s aversive psychological experience. Findings such as these are one illustration of how being in dysfunctional, hostile, and unsupportive relationships that are wanting in intimacy may precipitate depression and other undesirable affective states. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

 If it is the case that depressed persons typically find themselves in low-quality interpersonal relationships, it is necessary at least to contemplate the extent to which the relationship may actually be better than the depressed persons make them out to be. Depressed people have a tendency to be overly negative in evaluating their interpersonal relationships and in estimating the frequency with which negative interpersonal events occur. In addition, depression is associated with perfectionist standards. Both self-oriented perfectionism (excessive motivation to attain perfection) and socially prescribed perfectionism (the belief that others expect perfection from the self) are positively correlated with symptoms of depression. Depressed people may therefore hold negative views of personal relationships either because they may fall short of unrealistically high self-oriented perfectionist standards of their relational partners. Undoubtedly, many depressed people are in truly dysfunctional or dissatisfying interpersonal relationships. However, there is reason to suspect that at least some of the variance in these reports of aversive and dissatisfying interpersonal relationships is due to the depressed person’s general tendency toward negatively biased assessments of such relationships, and the tendency to hold perfectionist standards. In addition to the experience of disrupted personal relationships, depression is also associated with problems in marital interactions and relationships. Repeatedly, this research has shown that depression and marital distress go hand in hand. For instance, estimates indicate that 50 percent of all women in distressed marriages are depressed, and 50 percent of all depressed women are in distressed marriages. As depressive symptoms worsen or improve, so too does relationship quality with the spouse. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The communication between depressed people and their spouses is often negative in tone and tends to generate more negative affect in each spouse than the communication of nondepressed could does. This negative affect often takes the form of anger and hostility. Depressed persons and their spouses often find themselves in dysfunctional vicious cycles of interaction. Their findings indicate that depressed persons are often “rewarded” by their spouses for emitting depressive behaviours, in that the depressive behaviours tend to inhibit the spouses’ hostile and irritable behaviours. Over the course of a marital interaction, the verbal behaviour of depressed wives become increasingly negative. It is therefore not surprising that this study demonstrates the depressed persons and their spouses viewed their marital interactions as more hostile and less friendly than did the nondepressed couples. Investigations reveal that depressed persons exhibit distorted patterns of responsiveness, such that there is a lack of synchrony between them and their spouses. This is evident through increased self-focus and decreased responsiveness to the nondepressed spouses’ states and opinions. In addition, depressed people tend to be most expressive with their spouses when they are discussing issues that are negative in nature. It is interesting to note that in one study, acute depression in one spouse was associated with a tendency to control and influence the other spouse. Findings such as these indicate that the marital interactions of depressed persons are not always withdrawn and avoidant; they can take on a hostile and manipulative tone as well. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

A recent sequential analysis of depressive marital communication has documented a number of caustic communication processes that unfold over time in such marriages. For both husbands and wives, a history of depression is associated with less positive reciprocity in martial interaction. In other words, depressed spouses are less likely to follow their partners’ positive communication with positive messages of their own. Depressed husbands’ positive contribution to conversations actually suppressed their wives’ positivity and increased their wives’ negativity. That is, when depressed husbands make positive contributions to conversations, their wives respond with negativity. Consistent with the assumptions of systems theory, this pattern illustrates how all members of an interpersonal system may contribute to and maintain a member’s depression. There are two potential explanations for these differential husband-wife effects. First, it is possible that depressed men may make their positive comments with less conviction than depressed wives do. The men may have a difficult time making positive comments clearly and convincingly. Second, wives may be less responsive to their depressed husbands’ efforts to create positivity in the interaction. Wives may get exhausted by their husbands’ depression, and after repeated interactions, they may be more guarded in their reactions to the husbands’ positivity. If they doubt positive comments, or are simply overwhelmed and exhausted by their husbands’ depression, they may not respond with positive remarks. This may be a long-terms relationship patterns for some couples with depressed husbands. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Other investigations of marital interaction find depression to be associated with poor communication during problem-solving interactions, negative self-evaluations and statements of negative well-being, verbal aggressiveness, and problems in establishing intimacy. Given all of these negative communication behaviours and marital problems, it is easy to understand why depression and martial distress are so powerfully related. Some evidence indicates that these communication problems may be more the results of marital distress than of depression per se. However, the similarity of these findings to those on depressed persons’ other personal relationships points to obvious and pervasive interpersonal problems across a variety of different relational contexts. In addition to the problems with social skills and negative reactions from others discussed earlier, another factor that may link depression with poor marital adjustment is the haste with which young depressed people marry. Results from this extensive longitudinal investigation reveal that depression among adolescents predicts higher rates of marriage among younger women, diminished material satisfaction, and increased marital disagreements. It is possible that depression may motivate young people to seek out marriage, perhaps indiscriminately, as a solution to problems. Not surprisingly, such marriages are often doomed to failure. The strong and well-documented association between depression and marital distress has led many to ask, “Which comes first: depression or marital distress?” The answer appears to depend on the gender of the married partner. In a longitudinal study of newlywed couples, wives’ depression appeared to follow a decrease in their marital satisfaction, whereas husbands’ initial levels of depression led to decreases in their marital satisfaction over time. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Thus women appear more vulnerable than men to symptoms of depression following declines in marital satisfaction. This pattern of findings is consistent with a recent meta-analysis showing that the association between depression and marital distress is stronger for women than it is for men. This suggests that wives’ psychological well-being may be more closely tied to the perceived quality of their marriages than their husbands’ well-being is. In newly weds once every 6 months for 4 years, it was found that trajectories from depression to declines in satisfaction are as strong as trajectories from low satisfaction to increases in depression. Again, these associations are slightly more powerful for wives than for husbands. The findings from both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies generally suggest that depression and marital dysfunction are reciprocal processes that unfold in parallel over time. Spouses of depressed persons experience significant burden, and often experience clinical levels of depression themselves. There is reason to believe that spouses’ distress may be manifested through expressed emotion (exempli gratia, intrusiveness, negative attitudes toward the illness, low tolerance) that could further perpetuate strained relations with their depressed partners. Living with a depressed person leads to profound family transformations, as spouses and other family members attempt to cope with and understand the symptoms of the disorder. A family systems perspective suggests that the effects of depression on spouses are no unidirectional. Rather, spouses may introduce issues of their own into the marriage that agitate or maintain the depression. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Family systems associated with depression can be characterized by a lock of coherence and agency and a general emotional dysregulation so that negative interactions are not repaired, disagreements are not resolved, negative affect becomes contagious, and there is little chance for negative affect to be transformed into positive affect. From this perspective, both depressed individual and one’s spouse are seen as active participants in creating a dysfunctional marriage, each acting on and reacting to the other. The faith of the lower ego in itself and the strength with which it clings to its own standpoint are almost terrifying to contemplate. The aspirant is often unconscious of its selfishness. However, if one can desert its standpoint, one shall then be in a position to perceive how large an element it has contributed in the making of one’s own troubles, how heavy is its responsibility for unpleasant evens which one has hitherto ascribed to outside sources. One shall see that one’s miserable fate derives large maladjustments. So suffering comes to open one’s eyes for one, to shock and shame one into belated awareness and eventual amendment. However, quite apart from its unfortunate results in personal fortunes, whenever the aspirant persists in taking the lower ego’s side and justifying its action, one merely displays a stupid resolve to hinder one’s own spiritual advancement. Behind a self-deceiving façade to pretexts, excuses, alibis, and rationalizations, the ego is forever seeking to gratify its unworthy feelings or to defend them. On the same principle as the pseudo-patriotism which prompted the Italians to follow Mussolini blindly throughout his Ethiopian adventure to its final disaster, the principle of “My country! right or wrong,” he follows the ego through all its operations just as blindly and as perversely, justifying its standpoints merely because they happen to be his own. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

However, the higher self accepts no rivals. The aspirant must choose between denying one’s ego’s aggressiveness or asserting it. The distance to be mentally travelled between these two steps is so long and so painful that it is understandable why few will ever finish it. It is only the exceptional student who will frankly admit one’s faults and earnestly work to correct them. It is only one whose self-criticizing detachment can gain the upper hand, who can also gain philosophy’s highest prize. To live in intellect and passion alone, unguided and unvivified by higher ideals, is to be unregenerate. How often in history there is a record of fierce, blind, and fanatic hatred directed against those of marked difference in race, caste, religion, class, custom, or habit. With time and strength it explodes into persecution, violence, or war. The root of his evil may be fear, suspicion, envy, greed, or unbalance; but all these find their roots in the ego, and can only be radically removed by transcending egoism. The root of all the trouble is not human’s wickedness or animality or cunning greedy mind. It is one’s very I-ness, for all those other evils grow out of it. It is one’s own ego. Here is the extraordinary and baffling self-contradiction of the human situation. It is human’s individual existence which brings one suffering and yet it is this very existence which one holds as dear as life to one! Either humans do not hear the interior message or else one does not want to hear it. That which causes one to be so deaf may be mere heedlessness, but it is more likely to be Worldly desire and personal conceit. What are the blockages which prevent the soul’s light, grace, peace, love, and healing from reaching us? There are many different kinds, but they are resolvable into the following: first, all negative; second, all egoistic; and third, all aggressive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

By “aggressive” I mean that we are intruding our personality and imposing our ideas all the time. If we would stop his endless aggression and be inwardly still for a while, we would be able to hear and receive what the Soul has to say and to give us. These are some of the negative traits of erring human character—undesirable for their own sake, as well as for the sake of their bad effects—hatred, irritability, jealousy, maliciousness, excessive criticism and suspicion, destructiveness and cruelty. It is not that they lack intelligence, but that they let their intelligence be guided by their baser qualities. When the results are pleasant for the moment, we like to deceive ourselves. We like to put a pretty makes on an ugly passion, for instance, or wear a magnificent cloak around a wretchedly selfish act. However, karma cannot so easily be deceived and works out its own results with time. And these depend not only on the appearance of what we are and do but also on the real character and hidden nature behind it. So what are depressions and sadness but the ego pitying itself, shedding silent tears over itself, loving itself, looking at itself and enwrapped in itself? What is a happy clam but a killing of such egoism? The complacence with which humans view themselves, the satisfaction with which they fit into their ego, acts as a barrier to the influx of spiritual influence and understanding. Identically the same facts will be used by different groups, parties, and persons to support widely or quite divergently varying conclusions! The ego, with its prejudices, passions, selfish motives, or desires, is the real cause of these difference. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Everything is used by the ego to affirm itself. Even the aspirations and practices and experiences of a quester are used to one’s own deception and to its profit. Many people are not reaching their full potential because their thinking patterns are defective. One cannot think negative thoughts and expect to live a beneficial life. One cannot think thoughts of failure and expect to succeed. Your life will follow your thoughts. If one is constantly seeing the worst in every situation, one may not realize it, but one’s own thinking is drawing in more negative input. Just like a magnet, one will attract what one continually thinks about. One will draw in negative friends and negative circumstances. Unfortunately, people tend to get exactly what they expect. Your life is not going to change until you first change your thinking. You may be in negative circumstances today; you may have unfair things happening to you. However, do not make the mistake of dwelling on those things. That sprawling mansion in the Supernatural City—it is quite a handsome structure really! Where every day is clear, and everyone can see forever! Where night is not dark, and the beacon of Truth burns with steady flame. Everybody is joyful and without a care in the World. And never ever again will anybody worry about having the Contraries to tea. Oh, how I wish that day had dawned already and all the peoples of the Earth had arrived at that Happy End! For the Saints that splendid day has already begun with clarity that never ends. As for us poor pilgrims, set your minds and keep them set on the higher things. The citizens of Heaven know how joyful it is there. However, we exiles of the children of Even, as the Marian prayer has it, and denizens of the Earth, know how mournful it can be here. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Days are fast and foul, full of sore spots and tight spots. Sin strolls the streets of Humankind. That is to say, the good are snared by passions, strung out by fears, distended by cares, distracted by curiosities, surrounded by errors, bruised by labours, flustered by temptations, enervated by delicacies, tortured by want. Every day, when you first get up, set your mind for success, set your mind for happiness, set your mind so you can enjoy that day. If you do not set your mind in the right direction, your mind will be full of discouragement. Dear Lord in Heaven, I want to align my thoughts with Your Word. Please help me to reject any thought that would lead me away from the truth, and all that You have for me. Today, I will let my mind dwell on the good things of God. Standing up on lifted, folded rock, looking out and down—the creek falls to a far valley. Hills beyond that facing, half-forested, dry—clear sky, strong wind in the stiff glittering needle clusters of the pine—their brown round trunk bodies straight, still; rustling, trembling limbs and twigs listen. This living flowing land is all there is, forever. We are it. It sings through us—we could live on this Earth without clothes or tools! The willow twigs are stuck three times, and through the leaves fall, nature will renew itself in the spring. So it is our confident hope that the stock of America will ever remain as the holy seed blessed by the Lord. Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; nourish and sustain them forever. And may my words of supplication before the Lord, be nigh unto the Lord our God, day and night, that He maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people America, as every day shall require; that all the people of the Earth may know that the Lord is God; there is none else. May it be Thy will, O Lord our God and God of our Fathers, who choosest prophets and their good teachings, to receive in mercy and favour our prayers and our processions. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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