The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. Negative thinking, rather than underlying conflicts or a reduction in positive rewards, lies at the heart of depression. Maladaptive attitudes, a cognitive triad, errors in thinking, and automatic thoughts combine to produce unipolar depression. Some people develop maladaptive attitudes as children, such as “My general worth is tied to every task I perform” or “If I fail, others will feel repelled by me.” The attitudes result from their own experiences, their family relationships, and the judgments of the people around them. Many failures are inevitable in a full, active life, so such attitudes are inaccurate and self-defeating. The attitudes become schemas, or abstract principles, against which the child evaluates every experience. The negative schemas of these persons may lie dormant for years. However, later in life, upsetting situations can trigger an extended round of negative thinking. The thinking typically takes three forms, which are called the cognitive triad: the individuals repeatedly interpret their experiences, themselves, and their futures in negative ways that lead them to feel depressed. That is, depressed people interpret their experiences as burdens that repeatedly defeat or deprive them. They view themselves as undesirable, worthless, and inadequate. And they regularly see the future as bleak. The cognitive triad is at work in the thinking of this depressed person: “I cannot bear it. I cannot stand the humiliating fact that I am the only woman in the World who cannot take care of her family, take her place as a real wife and mother, and be respected in her community. When I speak to my young son Billy, I know I cannot let him down, but I feel so ill-equipped to take care of him; that is what frightens me. I do not know what to do or where to turn; the whole thing is too overwhelming…I must be a laughing stock. It is more than I can do to go out and meet people and have the fact pointed up to me so clearly.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Depressed people also make errors in their thinking. In one common error of logic, they draw arbitrary inferences—negative conclusions based on little evidence. A man walking through the park, for example, passes a woman who is looking at nearby flowers, and he concludes, “She is avoiding look at me.” Similarly, depressed people often minimize the significance of positive experiences or magnify that of negative ones. A college student receives an A on a difficult English exam, for example, but concludes that the grade reflects the professor’s generosity rather than her own ability (minimization). Later in the week the same student must miss an English class and is convinced that she will be unable to keep up the rest of the semester (magnification). Other errors of logic commonly displayed by depressed people are selective abstraction, in which persons focus on one negative detail of a situation while ignoring the larger context; overgeneralization, in which they draw a broad conclusion from a single, often insignificant event; and personalization, in which they incorrectly point to themselves as the cause of negative events. A father is displaying personalization, for example, when he responds to a sudden rainstorm in the middle of a panic by blaming himself for picking the wrong day for a family outing. Finally, depressed people experience automatic thoughts, a steady train of unpleasant thoughts that keep suggesting to them that they are inadequate and that their situation is hopeless. These thoughts are “automatic” because they seem to just happen, as if by reflex. In the course of only a few hours, depressed people may be visited by hundreds of such thoughts: “I am worthless…I will never amount to anything…I let everyone down…Everyone hates me…My responsibilities are overwhelming….I have failed as a parent…I am stupid….Everything is difficult for me…I have caused problems for my friends…Things will never change.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

One therapist said of a depressed client, “By the end of the day, she is worn out, she has lived a thousand painful accidents, participated in a thousand deaths, mourned a thousand mistakes.” Numerous studies have produced evidence that depressed people hold maladaptive attitudes, and the more of these maladaptive attitudes they hold, the more depressed they tend to be. Still other research has found the cognitive triad at work in depressed people. In various studies, depressed subjects seem to recall unpleasant experiences more readily than positive one, rate their performances on laboratory tasks lower than nondepressed subjects do, and select pessimistic statements in storytelling test (for example, “I expect my plans will fail”). In one study, female subjects—some depressed, some not—were asked to read and interpret paragraphs about women in difficult situations. Depressed subjects made more errors in logic (such as arbitrary inference) in their interpretations than nondepressed women did. In another study, elementary school children who were depressed scored significantly higher on the Children’s Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire than those who were not depressed. People who generally lack confidence and doubt themselves cannot even take pleasure in their achievements. In a study at Ohio State University, self-doubting freshmen felt uncomfortable when asked to list successes in their lives. The more successes they were asked to list, the greater their drop in self-esteem. Confident freshmen, in contrast, welcome the opportunity to make such a list—the more items requested, the better. Still, automatic thoughts are tied to depression. In several studies, nondepressed subjects who are manipulated into reading negative automatic-thought-like statements about themselves become more and more depressed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Related investigations have revealed that people who consistently make ruminative responses during their depressed moods—that is, repeatedly dwell mentally upon their mood without acting to change it—experience depressed moods for longer periods and are more likely to develop a clinical depression that people who are able to avoid such thoughts. This body of research shows that negative thinking is indeed linked to depression, but it fails to show that such patterns of thought are the cause and core of unipolar depression. It could be that a central mood problem leads to thinking difficulties that then take a further toll on mood, behaviour, and physiology. Some studies have tried to establish that negative thinking does indeed precede the negative mood of depressed people. In one, investigators followed the progress of 15 severely depressed women and interviewed them after their depressive symptoms had improved to determine whether they still held maladaptive attitudes. The researchers found that the women who continued to hold such attitudes were more likely to develop depressive symptoms again six months later. That is, their negative schemas remained in place even during periods of improved mood, possibly setting the stage for renewed depression later. Dysfunctional in pleasures of the flesh may actually serve two purposes for couples that are similar to function of somatoform disorders: They may temporarily deflect attention away from serious or chronic problems in a marriage, particularly when attention to these problems becomes a threat; and they may serve a signal function, enabling spouses to communicate distress indirectly. Admittedly, a dysfunction in pleasures of the flesh itself can become a serious problem for marriage. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

However, despite its seriousness, it may allow members of a couple to draw their attention away from a long-standing conflict that they are otherwise frustrated with and/or exhausted by, and express unhappiness without doing so openly. Consider, for example, a husband and wife who cannot agree on whether or not they would like to have more children. If they both feel strongly, and are truly at odds and unable to come to a resolution of this issues, a dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh takes attention away from the more abstract and philosophical disagreement, and gives the couple a more immediate focus of attention; can covertly sustain the position of the partner who does not want more children; and can be a means of expressing distress and dissatisfaction with each other without having to rehash the actual conflict about family size. Problems involving pleasures of the flesh have proven to be a reliable barometer of more general marital satisfaction or distress. In one study of couples seeking treatment for problems dealing with pleasures of the flesh, researchers found that the incidence of dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh was actually fairly low, but that couples generally had more general interpersonal problems. Apparently for some couples, seeking treatment for a problem involving pleasures of the flesh substitutes for addressing more general relational problems, when it may be these problems that are causing the dysfunction. Viewed this way, they are seeking help for the symptom, not the cause, of the condition. One interpersonal problem to emerge frequently in the literature on dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh is marital conflict. Pleasures of the flesh relationships sometimes get transformed into power struggles, and may be depreciated by unexpressed anger between partners. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Research shows that subjects who experience dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh are more likely to experience increased conflict in their marriage or close relationships, compared to their more functional counterparts. In a unique comparison of couples with dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh and couples in which one partner had been convicted of a criminal offense involving pleasures of the flesh (referred to as “sex offender couples,”) had couple complete a measure of relationship quality and the Styles of Conflict Inventor, which measures respondents’ appraisals of and styles for handling marital conflicts. In terms of both relationship quality and effective conflict management, satisfied couples scored the highest, followed by those with dysfunctions in pleasures of the flesh, and then the “sex offender couples.” In terms of the intensity of conflict experienced, “the sex offender couples’” and dysfunctional couples did not differ from each other, and both were higher than satisfied controls. The couples with dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh were also less likely to attribute blame for the conflict to the self, showed more problems with assertion and aggression, and perceived more verbal aggression in their partners than satisfied controls. Members of the general population, as well as those seeking treatment for dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh exhibit similar pattens of association between relational conflict and dysfunctions involving pleasures of the flesh. The heightened relational conflict in a couple with a dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh is not merely conflict about the dysfunction itself; it is obviously more broad-based. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The effect of unresolved, poorly resolved, or poorly handled conflict corrode the sense of intimacy that should be inherent in a close relationship. One way in which this is manifested is in disrupted pleasures of the flesh, often to the point of bona fide dysfunction. Of course, a dysfunction involving pleasures of the flesh itself may propagate conflict in many cases. However, there is a reason to believe that the conflict prevalent among couples with such dysfunction is not isolated to matters of sexuality. In the vision of the Church fathers, the accent moves from eschatology to proctology, in other words, from the way things will be at the end, in the Heavenly America, to the way they were at the beginning, in the Earthly paradise. The virgin’s model and goal, rather than to live “as children of the resurrection,” becomes to live a life free from concupiscence, as before the fall. Rather than an anticipation of the final Kingdom, virginity is seen as a return to paradise. Or rather, the life of the end times is itself conceived on the model of how things were at the beginning, as a “restoration” (apokatastasis) of the original state. There is also mention of “the angelic life” (bios angelikos) or “angel-like life,” but more in reference to the non-material nature of the angels as pure spirits, rather than in the sense of immortal human beings as Jesus understood it (Matthew 22.30). This same fact can be observed in the case of nearly all the Christian virtues with reference to obedience. The kerygmatic motive, based on the imitation of Christ, is replaced by one derived from Greek ethics, based on the principle of “right reason.” Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the soul which “follows reason and remains a virgin.” We would have preferred it had he said: “follows Christ’s invitation and remains a virgin,” but for a long time Christian authors felt the need to find a more universal foundation for virtue, less contingent and historic than the one constituted by the word and example of Christ and the Paschal Mystery. Such a foundation is, or seems to have been, “right reason.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

In order to free Christian virginity from the sand-banks where it has on occasion run aground, now that its implied opposition to marriage is no longer accepted, we need to rediscover the simple, natural, biblical motivation that shines out in the very lives of the people of the New Testament: in Jesus, in Mary, in Paul, and in John—as well as in the words we have so far examined. All too often the objection is raised that many of the apostles, like Peter, were married men. People forget that, if they were married the sacrifice which the Lord required of them was even greater: to leave wife, children, and homes for the sake of the Kingdom. Peter said: “Look, we left all we had to follow You.” Ad Jesus replied: “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has left his hose or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the Kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this present age and, in the coming age, life eternal,” reports Luke 18.28-30. In ancient Rome, once prostituted, a woman could never reclaim the status accorded decent women. The law forbade Roman men to marry even repentant, retired prostitutes, who were considered eternally dishonoured. For their entire lifetime, all prostitutes were forced to distinguish themselves from their chaste sisters by appearing in the street in togas, strictly men’s wear, instead of the stolica or stole. However, in contrast, one woman was considered to be doing too much. She sat about preparing herself to be the bride of Christ through strict fast and interminable prayer, though she prudently concealed her intentions from her family. A priest, however, became aware of Helia’s vocation and connived to provide sacred books she could study in secret. At last, her mother must have noticed that Helia was too thin, too beautiful, too secretive, too withdrawn from Worldly concerns. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Helia’s mother began to snoop and perhaps caught Helia with the illicit books or overheard a fervent prayer for eternal virginity. Whichever it was, she confronted Helia, who revealed her unnatural plans for her future. Helia’s mother was frantic. However, she was a dignified woman who handled her problem in style. After a while there was a battle over if Helia was allowed to remain chaste or if she would be forced to marry. The argument raged. And the dismayed mother conceded defeat and took her case to court, hauling her stubborn daughter in front of a blustering, bullying judge, and demanding he grant permission to have Helia “seized as a wife.” How, the mother must have wondered grimly, could she lose this round against her recalcitrant daughter? Helia’s interrogation was a hellish experience, a public spectacle “watched by the World of angels and men.” It was believed that when a woman accepts a spouse, she is called away from the house of God; a virgin remains joined with Christ. Marriage is in Adam; virginity is in Christ. Marriage is death; virginity grants salvation. Marriage is pain; virginity is virginity is benediction. Marriage fills the Earth; but Heaven is filled with virginity. However, despite Helia’s powerful exposition, the debate—for what it was—ended inconclusively. “No woman may be saved unless it is by bearing children. Either do what Scripture says, or be judged a violator of sacred laws,” said the judge in a thunderous finale. Never, Helia retorted, still utterly committed to the perpetual chastity of marriage to Christ. Unless a virgin had personal means, how was she to live? Waged work was out of the question, for pagan society had no truck with bachelor women other than priestesses and refused all dealings with traveling women or those attempting to work without benefit of family associations. If their parents accepted their decision and agreed to support them, Christian virgins had it marginally easier. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

On the other hand, the Church itself had a motive, quite apart from the theology, to encourage virgins to remain celibate forever and devote themselves to religion. By the third century, congregations were heavily female. This had financial implications. True, poor virgins either remained relentlessly poor or became a drain on the increasingly prosperous Church. However, rich virgins and celibate widows who inherited property were a commodity not to be sniffed at, because they often willed their own Worldly goods to the Church. “By idealizing virginity and frowning on second married,” Robin Lane Fox concludes, “the Church was to become a force without equal in the race for inheritance.” The women recast the misogynist, bachelor World of the Church Fathers into a splendid, challenge one where virgins were honorable and could also be powerful, and where God’s love empowered the humblest woman. We, men and women, as individuals, therefore, must concern ourselves with the survival and welfare of the group as well as the pursuit of personal security and happiness. All groups make rules that limit individual behaviour. These limitations are deemed necessary by the group to secure its survival. That survival then depends on the ability of the group to enforce its rules. So begins morality. The individual lives within many groups, and the morality issuing from the observance of one set of rules, may differ from, and conflict with, the morality generated by another. The rules that shape our lives defend the interests of the holders of power. In matter of conscience, warriors instruct priests. The draft resister claims a higher authority, but the state sends him to jail. “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

How you treat other people has a great impact on the degree of blessings and favour of God you will experience in your life. Are you good to people? Are you kind and considerate? Do you speak and act with love in your heart and regard other people as valuable and special? Friend, you cannot treat people poorly and expect to live in success. The Bible says, “See that none of you repays another with evil for evil, but always aim to show kindness and seek to do good to one another and to everybody,” reports 1 Thessalonians 5.15. Notice the words aim and seek in this verse. God is saying we must be proactive. We should be on the lookout to share His mercy and kindness, and goodness with people. Moreover, we need to be kind and do good to people even when they do not deserve it. We need to walk in love and be courteous even when somebody is unkind to us. When that coworker walks by you and does not give you the time of day, God expects you to go the extra mile and be friendly to him anyway. If you are on the phone and somebody speaks harshly or is discourteous to you, it is easy to think, I will just tell her off and then hang up. She does not know me. She is never going to see me. However, God expects us to be kinder and more considerate than that. When that employee at the grocery store checkout counter is curt with you, your initial response may be to act rudely in return. That is the easy way; anybody can do that. However, God wants us to live by higher standards. The Bible says, “We are to love our enemies. We are to do good to them that spitefully use us,” see Luke 6.27-31. If somebody flies off the handle at you, instead of retaliating and giving them a piece of your mind, why not show them some of God’s grace and mercy? Aim for kindness and give them a word of encouragement. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

After all, you do not know what they may be going through. That person’s child may be in the hospital. His or her mate may have just waled out; they may be living in hell on Earth. If you return their venom with more vitriol, you could escalate the conflict, or your response could be the final straw that causes them to give up and sink into utter despair. Neither scenario is pleasing to God. When somebody does not treat you right, you have a golden opportunity to help heal a wounded heart. Keep in mind, hurting people often hurt the other people as a result of their own pain. If somebody is inconsiderate, you can almost be certain that they have some unresolved issues inside. They have some major problem, anger, resentment, or heartache they are trying to cope with or overcome. The last thing they need is for you to make matters worse by responding angrily. Evil s never overcome by more evil. If you mistreat people who are mistreating you, you will make matters worse. When you express anger to someone who ha been angry with you, it is like adding fuel to a fire. No, we overcome evil with good. When someone hurts you, the only way you can overcome it is by showing them mercy, forgiving them, and doing what is right. Today, take the high road and be kind and courteous to everyone you meet. God will see what you are doing, and He will make sure your actions and attitude will overcome that evil. If you will keep doing the right thing, you will come out far ahead of where you would have been had you fought fire with fire. The Christian Bible and Book of Mormon teaches that God is our vindicator. He will not let you lose out. You make think you are getting the short end of the sick, but when it is all said and done, God will make sure that you do not lose anything truly valuable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Moreover, God will make sure you get your just reward. Your responsibility is to remain calm and peaceable even when those around you are not. With You love in me, Dear Father in Heaven, I know I can express kindness even to someone who is not kind to me. Please help me to respond lovingly and with compassion to the people who may be having a bad day and are in need of some encouragement. O Sweetest and Loveliest of Friends, Lord Jesus, I now desire to receive You as a Devout should. You know the infirmity and necessity that I suffer; into how many evils and vices I hurl myself; how often I have sinned gravely, been tempted, disoriented, debauched. For a remedy I come to You. For consolation and sublimation I pray to You. I know to whom I am speaking, the One who knows everything. All my thoughts are an open book to Him. Unfortunately for me, You are the only One who can really console and help me. You know, my Lordly Friend, the sort of things I need and the sort I do not, although whenever I do my spiritual inventory, I seem to come up short in anything labeled “Virtue.” Behold, I stand before You, poor and bare, yet demanding grace and imploring mercy. Please give me Your mewling mendicant something to eat, something to wear, the fire of Your love to warm my heart. Brighten my eyes with the glare of Your Presence. Sour my tastes for all Terrenals; change my Gravities and Contrarieties into patience; make me condemn and forget all the creaturely things I like. Please raise up my heart to You in Heaven, and do not let me drag my bod all over the World. What do I learn from this? That You alone are the Great Refectioner until the end of time. You alone are the Food and Drink. You along are the Love and Joy. You alone are the Sweetness and Goodness of my life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Would that You could ignite my wood, whip it to flame, and transmute me into Yourself. I want to be one in spirit with You, through the grace of internal union and the melting of burning love, as Paul described it in First Corinthians (6.17). Do not allow me, fasting and thirsting, to recede from You. Work with me mercifully as You have so often worked wonders with Your Saints. Would it not be a wonder if You were the Internal and indeed the Eternal Flame, as Augustine out it in his Confessions (10.29), and I, a mere ember of my former self! That is to say, Love purifying the heart and lighting the intellect. The present widespread concern about education is only superficially a part of fears of war, the need to match the scientists of other developed and undeveloped nations. For in the discussions, pretty soon it becomes clear that people are uneasy about, ashamed of, the World that they have given the children to grow up in. That World is not brave enough, it is not earnest enough; a grownup may be cynical (or resigned) about one’s convenient adjustments, but one is by no means willing to see one’s children robbed of a worthwhile society. With regard to the next generation, everybody always has a higher standard than the one one is used to. The standard is ceasing to be one of money and status and is becoming a standard of the worth of life. However, like happiness, comes from a bona-fide activity and achievement. The young really need a more worthwhile World in order to grow up at all, and I confront this real need with the World that they have been getting. This is the source of their problems. Our problem is to remedy the disproportion. We can. Our inheritance, our immense productivity, has been pre-emoted and parceled out in a kind of domanial system; but this grandiose and seemingly impregnable feudalism is vulnerable to an earnest attack. One has the persistent thought that if ten thousand people in all walks of life will stand up on their two feet and talk our and insist, we shall get back our country. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Though they are the best known, the transnational corporations are not the only new forces on the global stage. We are witnessing, for example, the rise of transnational trade union groupings—the mirror image, as it were, of the corporations. We are also seeing a growth of religious, cultural, and ethnic movements that flow across national lines and link up with one another. We observe an antinuclear movement whose demonstrations in Europe draw protesters together from several counties at a time. We also are witnessing the emergence of transnational political party groupings. Thus Christian Democrats and Socialists alike speak of forming themselves into “Europarties” that transcend individual national boundaries—a move accelerated by the creation of the European Parliament. Paralleling these developments, meanwhile, is a rapid proliferation of nongovernmental transnational associations. Such groups devote themselves to everything from education to ocean exploration, sports to science, horticulture to disaster relief. They range from the Oceania Football Confederation or the Latin American Odonatological Federation to the International Red Cross, the International Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Commercial Enterprises, and the International Federation of Women Lawyers. In aggregate, such “umbrella” organizations or federations represent millions of members and tens of thousands of branches in many countries. They reflect every conceivable shade of political interests or lack of interest. In 1963 some 1,3000 such organizations operated across national lines. By the mid-1970s the number had doubled to 2,600. The total is approximately 12,000 in 2021—with a new one springing up every three days. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

These organizations appear to have little in common. They are public and private, national and international, profit-making and charitable, religious and secular, civil and military, and, depending on one’s perspective, benign and nefarious. Yet they do share three characteristics. First, each is a relatively large, hierarchically organized, centrally directed bureaucracy. Second, each performs a set of relatively limited specialized, and, in some sense, technical functions: gathering intelligence, investing money, transmitting messages, promoting sales, producing copper, delivering bombs, saving souls. Third, each organization performs its functions across one or more international boundaries, and insofar as is possible, in relative disregard of those boundaries. They are in sort, transnational organizations, and the activities in which they are engaged in are transnational operations. Such organizations have existed before in history. Armies and navies, churches, and joint stock companies, as well as other types of organizations have been involved in transnational operations in the past. If the United Nations is the “World organization,” these less visible groups form, in effect, a “second World organization.” Their aggregate budgets in 2021 amounted to a mere $6.37 billion—but this is only a tiny fraction of the resources control by their subordinate units. They have their own “trade association”—the Brussels-based Union of International Associations. They relate to one another vertically, with local, regional, national, and other groupings coming together under the transnational organization. They also relate horizontally through a dense mesh of consortia, working groups, interorganizational committees, and task forces. So dense are these transnational ties that, according to a study by the Union of International Associations, there are an estimated 84,037 identifiable, interlocking relationships and cross-linkages among 5,749 such groups in 2021. And this number is soaring upward, too. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Literally thousands of transnational meetings, conferences, and symposia bring the members of these different groupings into contact with one another. Though still relatively underdeveloped, this fast-growing transnational network (or T-Net) adds yet another dimension to the emerging Third Wave World system. Even this does not complete the picture, however. The nation-state’s role is still further diminished as nations themselves are forced to create supranational agencies. Nation-states fight to retain as much sovereignty and freedom of action as they can. However, they are being driven, step by step, to accept new constraints on their independence. European countries for example, grudgingly but inevitably have been driven to create a Common Market, a European parliament, a European monetary system, and specialized agencies like CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Paolo Gentiloni, the Common Market’s tax commissioner, brings pressure to bear on member nations to alter their domestic tax policies. Agriculture and industrial policies once determined in London or Paris are hammered out in Brussels. Members of the European Parliament actually ram through budget of $199.16 billion for 2022 over the objections of their national government. The Common Market is perhaps the prime example of the gravitation of power to a supranational agency. However, it is not the only example. We are, in fact, seeing a population explosion of such inter-governmental organizations (or IGOs)—groupings or consortia of three are more nations. They range from the World Metrological Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency to the International Coffee Organization or the Latin American Free Trade Association, not to mention OPEC. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Today such agencies are needed to coordinate global transport, communications, patents, and work in dozens of other fields from rice to rubber. And the number of such IGOs has also doubled, shooting up from 139 in 1960 to 262 in 1977 and 561 in 2021. Through these IGOs, the nation-state seek to cope with larger than national problems, while retaining maximum decisional control at the national level. Bit by bit, however, a steady gravitational shift occurs as more decisions are transferred to—or constrained by—these larger than national organizational entities. From the rise of the transnational corporation to the population explosion of transnational associations to the creation of all these IGOs, we see a set of developments all moving in the same direction. Nations are less and less able to take independent action—they are losing much of their sovereignty. What we are creating is a new multilayered global game in which not merely nations but corporations and trade unions, political, ethnic, and cultural groupings, transnational associations and supranational agencies are all players. The nation-state, already threatened by pressures from below, finds its freedom of action constrained, its power displaced or diminished, as a radically new global system takes form. However, the California Communists cannot be regarded as sane, normal people; they are mentally in a psychopathic condition. Consequently they leave themselves open to submoral influences, and that they fully absorb these influences we may judge from the fact that they do indeed come to believe that the end justifies any means, however, evil. It is a sophistry common alike to criminal gangster and to totalitarian dictators that the sacrifice of ethical restraints and the aggressive use of brutal methods are quite justified by the achievement of success in their aims. Such callous belief, however, has a hundred times been proven worthless by history. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Any totalitarian or revolutionary regime which, dead, to humanitarian impulses, would brutally bring death and suffering to millions and misery to millions now alive in order to bring prosperity and comfort and power to fortunate millions yet unborn, which would deny pity and peace to those in its midst in order to bestow them on those who are remote and unseen, is trying to purchase a possibility at such a tragically high present cost that it is not worth having. This is why philosophy says that the same change which, when naturally evolved tomorrow will be right and successful, may be arbitrary, premature, and disastrous today if it can be got only by violence and brutality on a vast scale. The terrible human cost of these totalitarian and brutalitarian changes is at least equally as important as the economic costs. The resulting success or failure of these changes must be measured by broken hearts, and broken bodies as much as by flaunting figures and astronomical statistics. To say that what the World needs today is only a new economic system is as fanatical and unbalanced as to say that it needs only a new dietetic outlook. It does need both of these things, and needs them brought into reciprocal balance as well, but it certainly needs something else even more—a new spiritual outlook. The moment we have the understanding or courage to lift our public, economic, political, and social difficulties to the higher levels of religious, mystical, or philosophic insight and thus meet them with full consciousness, that moment they will all be solved. After all, the best laws people can obey are not the dried parchments of written statutes but the living ethical forces of justice, goodwill, truth, and service. A country which has such a real ethical foundation will get all the social economic and political reforms it needs as when it needs them; no murderous revolution will be necessary whenever change must be made to adapt itself to new condition. Back of the state laws there will then always be unwritten laws shaping them automatically and naturally. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

The regimentation of the masses on a solely materialistic basis would enslave them in a different and, to some misguided people, more bearable form than the capitalistic order has already; but still it would enslave them. Any system which forcibly regimented the masses in order to guarantee their basic necessities could be doubtless succeed in doing so. However, if it would fill their stomachs, it might still leave their souls empty. When the inner life of human kind suffers from acute starvation it becomes inevitable, under the law that governs thought, that one’s outer life will, in time, also suffer acute starvation. There is this difference: that whereas the inner hunger, being spiritual, is unconscious, the outer hunger, being physical, is conscious. If civilization is dying because of the War; the War merely accelerated the process which started in prewar day. The storm is upon us and there is no shelter from it. How many mystics live on the memory of those rare long-gone moments; how much of their reputation depends on the glory of an illumination which did not last longer than a few minutes or hours, which produced their frame but did not preserve their capacity to be inspired again. Bless Thee, O Lord, for the living arc of the sky over me this morning. Bless Thee, O Lord, for the companionship of night mist far above the skyscraper peaks I saw when I woke once during the night. Bless Thee, O Lord, for the miracle of light to my eyes and the mystery of it ever changing. Bless Thee, O Lord, for the laws Thou hast ordained holding fast these tall oblongs of stone and steel, holding fast the planet Earth in its course and farther beyond the cycle of the Sun. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honoured by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Lincoln, CA | from the mid $600s

Now Selling!

No appointment needed! Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,489 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!

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Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. Palo Verde Park, is just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/