Where there is Official Censorship, it is a Sign that Speech is Serious!

Time is not the enemy. It is not an obstacle or an unfair restraint. The main thing is to keep the main thing the most important goal. While the physical scientist has not been able to dispense completely with the concept of the unexplainable or supernatural, one has at least managed to consign it to a corner of one’s mind where it does not greatly interfere with one’s day-to-day activities. One accepts as “given” the laws and particles of nature and spends little time worrying about the metaphysical problems associated with their origin. However, one accepts absolutely nothing else as given. One conceives of the World of physical and chemical phenomena with which one deals as a completely orderly and lawful World, with every detailed event, whether it be the formation of a new galaxy or the fall of a raindrop, being the effect of causes, which are themselves the effects of other causes, and so on, going back ultimately to the fundamental particles and the basic laws of the Universe. Even the existence among one’s laws of a principle of indeterminacy limiting the precision with which the future can be predicted does not permit the entry of caprice into the World of the physical scientist. Within a calculable and frequently very narrow range of uncertainty, the future is completely determined by the past. Given the laws and the particles, all else follows inexorably. It is a measure of how far the modern World has come that few who read the preceding paragraphs will find either strange or objectionable the ideas expressed there—as long as they are clearly understood to relate only to the properties of inanimate matter. However, when it comes to biological science, a different situation exists. There is by no means universal agreement on the extent to which living organisms resemble nonliving matter in having structure and properties determined entirely by the operation of immutable and unchanging laws. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Many are convinced that there is a basic difference between biological and physical phenomena in the degree of their ultimate scientific explainability. And even those who believe generally in the validity of natural law in biology may still feel that the laws applicable to living matter differ in profound essentials from those which control nonliving matter. In former periods it was not difficult, even for practicing scientists to employ entirely different philosophies when interpreting biological and physical phenomena. There were obviously vast differences between living creatures and inanimate objects. The overall properties of reproduction, growth, purposive behavior, adaptability, and the like just did not exist in the World of the physical scientist. And even when the structural and functional details of living organisms were investigated, the conspicuous features were found to be complex organs, nervous system, tissues, and cells that seemed to have nonbiological counterparts. Since the biologist possessed the normal human genetic endowment, one could not help looking for cause/effect relationships, or “natural laws,” to help explain the complexities with which one had to deal in terms of a smaller number of simpler concepts. In this one was partially successful, but one’s laws, dealing with such things as the response of living organisms or parts of living organisms to environmental change, had little resemblance the physicist was steadily establishing among his particles and forces. Biology and physics appeared to be entirely separate fields. The biologist, with subject matter incomparably more complex than that of the physicist, had an even greater need for recourse to the supernatural to bolster the underpinnings of one’s science. For the purpose the particles and laws of the physical scientists did not seem relevant. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

Instead, there appeared to exist underlying purposive and directive forces in living organisms of a quality lying completely beyond the reach or cause/effect considerations. The term “vital force” and “vitalism” were coined to represent the many aspects of the phenomena of life that, it was believed, would never be susceptible to scientific explanation. There was a certain tidiness about the clear cleavage between biology and physics, each possessing it own separate sphere of action and each governed by its own religious dogma. Such separation also has the great advantage of consistency with one of the most humanly compelling of all philosophic tenets—the anthropocentric notion placing humans above and beyond the workings of natural law designed for the regulation of an impersonal World. For the idea of the fundamental irreconcilability of life processes with the principles of physical science has always been a popular one almost automatically accepted as true, at least until proved false by overwhelming evidence. Nevertheless, with the growth of knowledge both in the physical and the life sciences, the neat separation between the fields became difficult to maintain. Despite the essential convictions of practicing scientists, biology and physics had a tendency to come together. In retrospect, it seems more than coincidental that the event generally considered to have launched biology as a true science—Harvey’s discovery in 1628 of the circulation of the blood—consisted of a demonstration that ordinary principles of hydraulic engineering could be successfully applied to explain a vital function of the human body. In the nearly 400 years since Harvey’s discovery one after another of the aspect of biology that were originally believed destined to be eternally dependent upon the mystery of vitalism for their explanation has been moved out of the realm of the supernatural by the application of the ordinary laws of physical science. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

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Not only the gross functions of the body organs but many of their details of structure and operation have been found amenable to explanation by the methods of the physicist and chemist. Even the substances that go into the composition of the tissues and cells of living organisms have been found to owe their architecture and properties to the operation of the same physical laws of atomic particles and forces that govern the chemistry of nonliving matter. In short, the coalescence of the physical and the life sciences has progressed so far that many scientists in both disciplines now suspect that there is no fundamental difference between them—that ultimately all aspects of the structure and behaviour of living matter will be explainable in terms of exactly the same fundamental particles and natural laws as those underlying the load carrying qualities of a bridge, the flight capabilities of a rocketship or the colour of the sun when it changes angles in the sky. According to this magnificently unifying concept, there is but one ultimate science, and that is the science of the physicist. However, if there is only one ultimate science, there must also be only one ultimate supernatural, and that mist consist in its totality of the postulate of the original existence of the fundamental particles and natural laws of physical science. All else in biology, as well as in physics and chemistry, must follow. Since living matter is only a different manifestation of the operation of the same particles and natural laws as those governing nonliving matter, there can be no “vital principle,” “vital force,” or “vitalism” that pertains to the one but not to the other. These thoughts, of course, are not new. The Greeks formulated many of them. However, there is something about the context in which they arise in the twenty-first century that is significantly different from that of previous eras. The thesis of the possible unity of all science emerges today, not just from the contemplative mind of the philosopher, but from the laboratory of the science. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

In the twenty-first century this is no longer merely one of many competing these, all similarly unverified and seemingly unverifiable. Instead, we are now confronted with an unbroken path of scientific discovery, extending back several hundred years, each successive step of which moves closer to what had for some time seemed to many to be an inevitable ultimate conclusion. What was once Greek philosophy has become a scientific hypothesis worthy of objective consideration and treatment by the techniques of the scientific method. When it comes to matters related to the probable unity of science, in terms of the loose categories that we popularly apply to the functions of higher animals, the subject matter there treated was “mental” rather than “physical.” In that area it seemed that the evidence was rather convincing that all aspects of complex behaviour and intellectual activity will ultimately find satisfactory explanations in terms of the purely physical laws of nature. Although it was harder to do, I though it was even possible to reconcile the subjective phenomena of personal awareness with the concept of the reign of the natural laws of physical science in the domain of human experience. Obviously, even if it has been entirely convincing, the earlier treatment could not have been considered complete demonstration of the ultimate identity of biology and physics. For it remained to be shown that the so-called physical properties of living organisms could also be expected to arise by the normal workings of the laws of physics. There is the accumulated evidence for the essential continuity between nonliving matter and living organisms. Insofar as the evidence is convincing, the age-old “mystery of life” is indeed exposed as a clever, but essentially nonmagical, trick of the ordinary laws of physics. The establishment of values and their relationships presupposes a valuating subject, and the question arises: how can values that are relative to a valuating individual or group (exempli gratia pleasure values) be separated from values that are valid by their very nature regardless of personal or social attitudes? #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

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If there are such “absolute values” (absolute in the same sense of being independent of a valuating subject), what is the source of their absoluteness, how can they be discovered, how are they related to reality, and what is their ontological standing? These questions led unavoidably to a situation that the value theory by its very nature tries to avoid—namely, a doctrine of being, an ontology. For only if they are rooted in reality, then the values have reality. Their validity is an expression of their ontological foundation. Being precedes value, but value fulfills being. Therefor, the vale theory, in its search for absolute values, is thrown back upon the ontological question of the source of values in being. A third way in which the religious dimension of the moral imperative is questioned can be described as the attempt, with the help of psychological and sociological explanations, to deny the unconditional character of the moral altogether. The psychological impact of realities like the demanding and threatening parents, or doctrines like that of the commanding pushing God, evokes the feeling of something unconditionally serious from which there is no escape and with which there can be no compromise. The same argument can be strengthened by sociological considerations. For example, one can derive, like Nietzsche, the shaping of the conscience of the masses from centuries of pressure exercised by the ruling groups, who did not hesitate to employ all, even the most cruel, tools of suppression—military, legal, education, psychological. From generation to generation this pressure produced an increasing internalization of commands, namely, the sense of standing under an inner unconditional command, an absolute moral imperative. This type of argument seems convincing. However, it is circular because it presupposes what it tries to prove—the identity of two qualitatively different structures. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

In the one case, persons and groups are bound by traditions, conventions, and authorities, subjection to which is demanded by the conscience, which may be weak or strong, compromising or insistent, healthy or compulsory, reasonable of fanatic. Psychological or sociological explanations of such states of mind are fully justified. Nothing that happens in the mind should be exempt from psychological or sociological exploration and explanation. However, within this structure of causation, another is manifest—what we might call the “structure of meaning” or, to use a famous medieval terms revived by modern phenomenology, the structure of “intentionality” or the noetic structure (from nous, “mind”). This structure would be evident, for example, should a mathematician, psychologically and sociologically conditioned like everyone else, discover a new mathematical proposition. The validity of this proposition is independent of the series of conditions which made the discovery possible. In a similar way, the meaning of the unconditional in being and in what ought-to-be appears within the psychological and sociological processes which make its appearance possible. However, its validity is not dependent on the structure in which it appears. Psychological and sociological pressures may provide occasion for the appearance of such structures; but they cannot produce the meaning of the unconditional. However strong the pressures be, they are themselves conditioned, and it is possible to contradict them and to be liberated from them, as, for example, from the father-image or from the socially produced conscience. This is not possible with regard to the unconditional character of the moral imperative. One can, of course, discard every particular content for the sake of another, but one cannot discard every particular content for the sake of another, but one can discard the moral imperative itself without the self-destruction of one’s essential nature and one’s eternal relationship. For these reasons, the attempts to undercut the unconditional character of the moral imperative by psychological and sociological arguments must fail. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

There is, however, a more fundamental question, raised and thoroughly discussed by the ancient ethical philosophers, namely, the question of the moral aim. We have called it “becoming a person within a community of persons,” and we have indicated that the centered person is the bearer of the spirit, its creativity, and its self-transcendence. Insofar as it is the moral aim to constitute and preserve the person with these potentialities, we can say tht the moral imperative demands the actualization of human’s created potentiality. However, now the question arises: is this an unconditional demand? The answer depends on the idea of human’s intrinsic aim, of the telos for which one is created. If the aim implies something above finitude and transitoriness, the fulfillment of this aim is infinitely significant, or unconditional in its seriousness. The Jesuit fathers who had joined the Spanish military conquerors were shocked and distressed. Incan maidens, they complained, were quite unlike their counterparts in Europe. There, virginity was highly prized in brides, but in the far-flung Incan empire of the Andes, young women were as free to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh dalliances as young men. The priests, metaphorically wringing their hands, deplored this behaviour. “Women are considered of less value while they are virgins,” lamented Jesuit father Costa, “and thus, whenever possible, they give themselves to the first man they find.” Given the Incas’ pragmatic approach to sexuality, so different from the Europeans’, the divinely inspired institution of the acllas—chosen women—is all the more intriguing. At first, these cloistered virgins seem like the Incan version of the vestals. The reality was different. The acllas—chosen women—is all the more intriguing. At first, these cloistered virgins seem like the Incan version of the vestals. The reality was different. The acllas’ religious role did parallel that of the vestals, but unlike them, the acllas also had significant political impact. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

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By 1532, when Pizarro and his conquistador arrived and crushed the Incas into defeat, the Incan empire extended from what is today Quito, Ecuador, down to central Chile. As imperialists ruling a patchwork territory of defeated enemies, the Incas faced constant opposition, ranging from sullen subterfuge to outright rebellion. Their genius was to devise a multifaceted administrative apparatus that melded the diverse conquered cultures into a cohesive political structure and made them governable. The Inca himself, absolutely ruler and descendant of the Sun God, was at the apex of the Incan pyramid. Underneath were his officials, privileged and educated nobles whose positions were hereditary and whose children were sent off to Cuzco, the administrative capital, for formal training. These curacas were highly paid and, unlike the millions of toiling peasants, did not pay taxes. The cleverness of this system was how it co-opted the intellectual elite and former rulers of the conquered peoples. Most curacas belonged to vanquished peoples, so Incas bestowed on them the enviable status of Inca-by-privilege, which was not noticeably different from Inca-by-birth. The more talented and loyal they were, the more gifts and promotions they could expect. Through this rigidly hierarchical structure, the Incan bureaucracy imposed its imperial standards and demands—heavy taxes, for example—on millions of Indian peasants. It certainly did not eliminate dissension, but it greatly facilitated the work—and the rewards—of empire. The parallels between the imperial function of the curacas and the acllas are striking, except the acllas derived their power from the very different sphere of religion. Religion suffused Incan life. Ritual was paramount, for ceremonies and sacrifices ensured the fecundity of crops and animals and the health of the humans who tended them. The Incan pantheon was crowded, but Inti the Sun God, founder of the Incan dynasty, was among the most important deities. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

As the Sun God’s Earthly descendant, the Inca had unique needs. Unlike other men, for example, he required virgin wives. With typical Incan brilliance, he sent his agent to locate the most beautiful virgins in every province of his dominion. Because Andean women had no predilection for chastity, the girls chosen far, far were too young. These acllas were selected strictly for beauty, rank, and of course virginity. Once chosen, neither they nor their parents could object. Henceforth the new aclla was alienated from her community and belonged only to the Sun or Inca. The acllas went into training, sequestered in convents called acllawasis, under the guidance of mamaconas, older acllas promoted to this rank. One crucial lesson was that for the rest of their lives, they must remain virginal. Four or five years later, the Inca intervened, reserving some novices for wives. The he married, though exempted from virginity, were honored and held in awe and respect, and Indian men and women greatly venerated them. Most acllas, however, were ritually wed to the Sun, and as his wives, shared his divinity and were referred to as “sainted people.” Like the Inca’s wives, the acllas were revered throughout the empire. A popular myth even held that they were so spiritual, they subsisted only on the odor of certain fruit. Daily life in the acllawasi was structured and busy, as befitted the industrious Incas. The acllas learned both religious duties and womanly chores, though the latter were always performed in a religious context. The acllas spun and wove fine, brightly coloured cloth to adorn the idols, to burn in sacrifice, and for they Inca’s garments. They brewed chicha liquor and cooked, and at sunrise they said, “Sun, eat this food that your wives have cooked for you.” After sacrifices, this food nourished the Sun’s priests, attendants, Acllawasi guards, and the acllas themselves. Like the vestal virgins, they also tended the temple fire, feeding it special carved and painted wood. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Older acllas—the mamaconas—had even greater responsibilities. During a month devoted to special ceremonies, for example, they distributed vast quantities of balls of bred baked with the blood of animals sacrificed in religious ceremonies. They gave tiny bits to all the foreigners in Cuzo and sent larger portions to all the foreign temples through the kingdom and to various curacas, as a token of political bonds and their loyalty to the Sun and to the Inca. By this simple ritual with its powerful symbolism, the venerated mamaconas demonstrated what a valuable role they played in the Incan political strategy of strengthening the bonds between Cuzo and the provinces. Their virginity underlay the allas’ existence. The acllawais were heavily guarded and the acllas could leave them only to preform liturgical duties such as procession. However, longings for pleasures of the flesh sometime overpowered them, and the male gatekeepers, the custodians of the acllas’ virtue were sometimes the thieves who stile it. Once, for acllas had pleasures of the flesh relations with certain men who were posted to guard the acllawsi gates. When it was discovered they had broken their scared vows, the offending acllas and their lovers were arrested and the high priests sentenced them all to death. The acllas had been warned. They were the brides of the Sun, and their divine husband demanded perpetual celibacy. Still, it is said that, more than once, an Inca crept into acllawasi and had his way with a virginal aclla. After one such tryst, one of the elderly guards respectfully clasped the Inca’s robe as he sat in the Square of the Sun. “Inca,” he murmured, “last night you went into the House of the Sun and you were with one of his women.” “I sinned,” replied the Inca in a muted voice. The guard went away, satisfied he would not be executed for negligence for not defending the virtue of the acllas. Most acllas, however, fell victim to neither the Inca nor their own passions. These women shared “the life of great queens and ladies, and a life of tremendous pleasure and amusements, and they were highly regarded, esteemed, and loved by the Inca and by the Great Lords.” And as unwitting agents of imperil reconciliation and consolidations, the acllas were so effective that twice, when Cuzco was sacked, the conquerors spared only two places: the Temple of the Sun and the acllawasi, the home of the revered Incan virgins. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

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In legend at least, the acllas live on today. Peruvian descendants of the Incas tell this story. A young aclla and a peasant boy became lovers. The Inca learned the maiden had violated her vow of perpetual chastity. He condemned the young couple to a living burial, faceup in the ground. That night, the elements were so agitated that rivers dried up, stars shifted positions, and all the soil was contaminated, except the Earth where the lovers were interred. The priests were alarmed. They decided the bodies should be dug up and burned. However, instead of corpses, they found only two tubers lying side by side. These were the first potatoes. One of the World’s best-loved staple foods was the product of divine retribution against a sinning aclla and the lover with whom she had violated her sacred vow of perpetual virginity. Many psychodynamic theorists believe that suicide results from depression and from anger at others that is redirected toward oneself. This theory was first stated by Wilhem Stekel at a meeting in Vienna in 1910, when he proclaimed that “no one kills himself (or herself) who has not wanted to kill another or at least wished the death of another. Some years later Dr. Sigmund Freud (1920) wrote, “No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which one has not turned back upon himself (or herself) from murderous impulses against others.” Agreeing with this perspective, Karl Menninger called suicide “murder-in-the 180^th degree.” Dr. Freud and Abraham proposed tht when people experience the real or symbolic loss of a loved one, they come to “introject” the lost person; that is, they unconsciously incorporate the person into their own identity and feel toward themselves as they had felt toward the other. For a short while, negative feelings toward the lost loved one are experienced as self-hatred. Anger toward the loved one may turn into intense anger against oneself and finally into depression. Suicide is thought to be an extreme expression of this self-hatred. The following description of a suicidal patient demonstrates how such forces may operate: A 27-year-old conscientious and responsible woman took a knife to her wrists to punish herself for being tyrannical, unreliable, self-centered, and abusive. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

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She was perplexed and frightened by this uncharacteristic self-destructive episode and was enormously relieved when her therapist pointed out that her invective described her recently deceased father much better than it did herself. In support of Dr. Freud’s view, researchers have often found a relationship between childhood losses—real or symbolic—and later suicidal behaviours. One study of 200 family histories found that early parental loss was much more common among suicide attempters (48 percent) than among nonsuicidal controls subjects (24 percent). Common form of loss were death of the father and divorce of separation of the parents, especially during either the early years of life or late adolescence. Late in his career, Dr. Freud proposed that human beings have a basic “death instinct.” He called this instinct Thanatos, and said that it opposes the “life instinct.” According to Dr. Freud, while most people learn to redirect their death instinct, by aiming it towards others, suicidal people, caught in a web of self-anger, direct it squarely upon themselves. Sociological findings are consistent with this explanation of suicide. National suicides rates have been found to drop in times of war, when, one could argue, people are encouraged to direct their self-destructive energy against “the enemy.” In addition, societies with high rates of homicide tend to have low rates of suicide, and vice versa. However, research has failed to establish that suicidal people are in fact dominated by intense feelings of anger. Although hostility is an important element in some suicides, several studies find that other emotional states are even more prevalent. By the end of his career, Dr. Freud himself expressed dissatisfaction with his theory of suicide. Other psychodynamic theorists have also challenged his ideas over the year, yet themes of loss and self-direction aggression generally remain at the center of most psychodynamic explanations. In our times the usual principle of such speech is that the others, the delinquent boys, are not taken seriously as existing, as having, like oneself, real aims in a real World. They are not condemned; they are not accepted. Instead they are a “youth problem” and the emphasis is on their “background conditions,” which one can manipulate; they are said to be subject to “tensions” that one can alleviate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

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The aim is not to give human beings real goals that warrant beliefs, and task to share in, but to re-establish “belonging,” although this kind of speech and thought precisely calculated to avoid contact and so makes belong impossible. When such efforts do not work, one finally takes some of the boy seriously as existing and uses force to make them not exist. Let me give a childish but important illustration of how this works out. A boy ten or eleven has a few great adventures involving pleasures of the flesh—he thinks they are great—but then he has the bad lucky to get caught and get in trouble. They try to persuade him by punishment and other explanations that some different behaviour is much better, but he knows by the evidence of his senses that nothing could be better. If he lives on in a profound disbelief, a disbelief in their candor and a disbelief even of one’s own body feelings. However, if he persists and proves incorrigible, then the evidence of his senses is attached to what is socially punished, explained away; he may even be put away. The basic trouble here is that they do not really believe he has had the pleasures of the flesh experience. That objective factor is inconvenient for them; therefore it cannot exist. Instead, this is merely a case of insecure affection at home, slum housing, comic books, and naughty companions: tensions and conditions. My hunch, is that this kind of early pleasures of the flesh adventure and misadventure is fairly common in delinquency. It is called precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and so forth—an index of future delinquency. In my opinion that is rubbish, but be that as it may; what is important in a particular case is that there is a stubborn new fact. Attempting to nullify it makes further growth impossible (and creates the future delinquency). The sensible course would be to accept it as a valuable part of further growth. However, if this were done, they fear that the approved little hero would be a rotten apple to his peers, who now would suddenly all become precocious, abnormal, artificially stimulated, and prone to delinquency. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

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The plight with pleasures of the flesh of these children is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dresier, did not succeed this far. It is an eccentric opinion that an important part of the kids’ restiveness in school from the onset of puberty has to do with puberty? The teachers talk about it among themselves, all right. (In his school, Bertrand Russell thought it was better if they had no pleasures of the flesh, so they could give their undivided attention to mathematics, which was the main thing.) However, since this objective factor does not exist in our schools, the school itself begins to be irrelevant. The question here is not whether the pleasures of the flesh should be discouraged or encouraged. When existing facts are treated as though they do not exist, there is an important issue, far more important is that it is hard to grow up. For then there is no dialogue, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society. In American society we have perfected a remarkable form of censorship: to allow every one one’s political right to say what one believes, but to swamp his little boat with literally thousands of millions of newspaper, mass-circulation magazines, best-selling books, broadcasts, and public pronouncements that disregard what he says and give the official way of looking at things. Usually there is no conspiracy to do this; it is simply that what he says is not what people are talking about, it is not newsworthy. (There is no conspiracy, but it is not undeliberate. “If you mean to tell me,” said an editor to me, “that Esquire tries to have articles on important issues and treats them in such a way that nothing can come of it—who can deny it?” Try, also, if your view on the issues calls attention to an essential factor that is not being generally mentioned to get a letter printed in the New York Times.) Naturally, the more simply true a statement is in any issues about which everybody is quite confused, the less newsworthy it will be, the les it will be what everybody is talking about. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

When the child is the story said, But the Emperor has no clothes!” the newspaper and broadcasts surely devoted many columns to describing the beautiful new clothes and also mentioned the interesting psychological incident of the child. Instead of being proud of him, his parents were ashamed; but on the other hand they received $89,000 in sympathetic contributions towards his rehabilitation, for he was a newsworthy case. However, he had a block in reading. Where there is official censorship, it is a sign that speech is serious. That is why social media and congress teamed up to block President Trump out. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers. The proclaiming of morality by the state is so loud and so constant, becomes such a litany, that the leaders of a nation may hypnotize themselves, may come to believer their own public relations act. Concurrent with careful plotting for the annexation of the Philippine Islands, the American government advanced the fiction that the unpredictable fortunes of war were making America the unwilling and reluctant recipient and custodian of the islands. And when, later, the conquest achieved, a group of clergymen called upon President McKinley, he explained just how he had arrived at his decision: “I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you gentlemen that I went on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance more than one might. And one night it came to me this way—that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them. And by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died. And then I went to sleep and slept soundly.” Morality is not a vision of ends, however desirable, but a system of restraints in the pursuit of any end. States speak the language of morality without the intention of being limited by it. They behave as they see fit, and the way they see fit is then declared to be moral. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

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If they invade and take over a neighbouring state, it is at the “invitation” of that state to maintain order, liberty, justice, etcetera. Since there is no tribunal with the authority to disallow such claims, the state had the last word. And its last word is always a pious assertion of morality. When we condemn, as we often do, the action of a sovereign entity as wrong—the torture of political prisoners, for example—we do so on the basis of an individual morality that obtains within the collective. We extend those limits, rules, and restraints, and demand that the state itself observed them. And how does the challenged state respond? It says: “Like all civilized nations, we absolutely condemn the torture of political prisoners. Be assured it does not happen here.” When presented with names, dates, photographs: “There regrettable incidents were the unauthorized actions of certain guards, who will be apprehended and punished. “When it is demonstrated that the practice continues: “We do it only when absolutely necessary for national security.” When pressed further: “Other nations do it, too, including your own.” And finally: “Your visa is canceled. Go home.” So what then does it man when we condemn a state for evil acts? It means that we believe there should be limits, rules, to which the state is subject, however lofty the ends in view which might call for their suspensions, and that is it does not conform to thee limits, it should be forcibly restrained and punished. Which is to say, there should be a morality of sovereign states. And so perhaps there should. However, there is not. And should ever it come about, the states it restrained would no longer be sovereign. A double standard is unavoidably at work in the life of a strong and flourished state: Its citizens observe limits in their conduct with each other, whereas foe the state nothing is forbidden. If the individuals in the pursuit of their private aims were to consider themselves as free of limits as Machiavelli’s Prince in his conduct of the state, nothing being absolutely forbidden, then the actions of these individuals would immediately reduce society to chaos. The state would have been a mob; the Prince would have nothing to rule. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

The great Cuban crisis of 1962 resulted in a situation which brought about a postponement of the menace of World War III, but did not, fully and finally, avert it. All efforts to obtain peace may succeed or not succeed—the results are variable—but any effort to establish peace permanently cannot possibly do so fully and finally until the human race comes into a larger obedience to the higher spiritual laws. If philosophy can do nothing for the peace of the World, then it is worth nothing. However, it can do something. Indeed, if the politicians and militarists would recognize its inner worth, its private firsthand knowledge of the higher laws, it could redeem civilization from the evils and horrors of war. We may find any number of excellent arguments against war. We may demonstrate conclusively that was as a process for achieving national aggrandizement is now entirely unnecessary, because applied science has opened the way for every nation to increase its wealth many times. However, if arguments alone were sufficient to convince rulers, then war would have disappeared when the first flood of League propaganda was sluiced out on the World. The fact is that something more than appeal to reason is required, for humans contain passions, prejudices, greed, and fears also. One must batter down the barriers which wall in one’s view of life. One must stop thinking in terms of one’s own country alone. One must learn that the frontiers of England, of America, of India, lie far beyond England, beyond America, and beyond India. One must open out one’s philosophical horizon and bring one’s thinking up to date. Know that this century demands that the Indian peasant learn that one’s fate is inextricably bound up with the fate of the British factory worker, and both with that of the American trader. When chaos and disorder, violence and materialism become widespread, the spiritual forces reassert themselves, restate the truth, and inspire a renewal of faith, religion, and mysticism. A society which is based on a hierarchy of wealth, position, appearance, and Worldly skill is unbalanced and cannot function properly or healthily of fully. It must look deeper and add inner spiritual correspondences to these things. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

The political conferences to prevent or end war appear ridiculous; they are foredoomed from the start: selfishness and insincerity render them futile. The hope for a lasting peace—so often unrealized—can become satisfied but only by looking for it in a new direction—within. The World situation is very unpromising. Humanity has not learned as much as it ought to have learned from its terrible sufferings of recent years. Or, as in certain countries, it has even learned the wrong lessons and become more selfish, more brutal and violent, and more unco-operative. There is no escape, no new shortcut through political or economical change out of the chaos in which the nations find themselves, other than the oldest one in history—which is to avoid evil, to do good, to believe in God and the moral laws. The helmet of salvation—“And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints,” reports Galatians 5.17-18. Praying always with all prayer. The Word of God praying. Paul is talking about prayer armour. Part of that armour is the helmet of salvation. The word salvation means “deliverance, preservation, healing, and soundness.” “All those ideas are present in the word salvation and they all belong to us. David said, “Let the redeemed of the Lord says so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy,” reports Psalms 107.2. Many people are not walking in the full provision of salvation because they are not saying it. They remain in the hand of the enemy,” reports 2 Timothy 2.24-26. Deliverance, healing, preservation, and soundness belong to us. Jesus Christ paid for it! (Isaiah 53: 4-5.) Why do so many thousands of apparently intelligent, seemingly successful people allow themselves to be sucked into the myriad cults sprouting today in the widening cracks of the Fourth Wave system? What accounts for the total control that a Jim Jones was able to exercise over the lives of one’s followers? #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

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It is loosely estimated today that some 13,000,000 Americans belong to about 5,000 religious cults, the largest of which bear nations like the Unification Church, the Divine Light Mission, the Hare Krishna, and the Way, each of which has temples or branches in most major cities. One of them alone, Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, claims 60,000 to 80,000 members, publishes a daily newspaper in New York, owns a fish-packing plant in Virginia, and has many other money-creating enterprises. Its mechanically cheerful fund raisers are a common sight. Nor are such groups confined to the United States of America. A recent sensational lawsuit in Switzerland called international attention to the Divine Light Center in Winterthur. “The cults and sects and communities…are most numerous in the United States of America because America is, in this matter, too 20 years ahead of the rest of the World,” says the London Economist. “However, they are to be found in Europe, west and east, and in many other places.” Just why it is that such groups can command almost total dedication and obedience from their members? Their secret is simple. They understand the need for community, structure, and meaning. For these are what all cults peddle. For lonely people, cults offer, in the beginning, indiscriminate friendship. Says an official of the Unification Church: “If someone’s lonely, we talk to them. There are a lot of lonely people walking around.” The newcomers is surrounded by people offering friendship and beaming approval. Many of the cults require communal living. So powerfully rewarding is this sudden warmth and attention that cult members are often willing to give up contact with their life’s earnings to the cult, to forego drugs and even pleasures of the flesh in return. However, the cult sells more than community. It also offers much needed structure. Cults impose tight constraints on behaviour. They demand and create enormous discipline, some apparently going so far as to impose that discipline through beatings, forced labour, and their own forms of ostracism or imprisonment. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

Psychiatrist H. A. S. Sukhedo of the New Jersey School of Medicine, after interviewing survivours of the Jonestown mass suicide and reading the writings of members of the Peoples Temple, concludes: “Our society is so free and permissive, and people have so many options to choose from that they cannot make their own decisions effectively. They want others to make the decision and they will follow.” A man named Sherwin Harris, whose daughter and ex-wife were among the men and women who followed Jim Jones to death in Guyana, has summed it up in a sentence. “This is an example,” Mr. Harris said, “of what some Americas will subject themselves to in order to bring some structure into their lives. The last vital product marketed by the cults is “meaning.” Each has its own single-minded version of reality—religious, political, or cultural. The cult possesses the sole truth and those living in the outside World who fail to recognize the value of that truth are pictured as either misinformed or Satanic. The message of the cult is drummed into the new member at all-day, all-night sessions. It is preached incessantly, until he or she begins to use its terms of reference, its vocabulary, and—ultimately—its metaphour for existence. The “meaning” delivered by the cult may be absurd to the outsider. However, that does not matter. Indeed, the exact, pinned-down content of the cult message is almost incidental. Its power lies in providing synthesis, in offering an alternative to the fragmented blip culture around us. Once the framework is accepted by the cult recruit, it helps organize much of the chaotic information bombarding one from the outside. Whether or not that framework of ideas corresponds to outer reality, it provides a neat set of cubbyholes in which the member can store incoming data. It thereby relieves the stress of overload and confusion. It provides not truth, as such, but order, and thus meaning. By giving the cult member a sense that reality is meaningful—and that one must carry that meaning to outsiders—the cult offers purpose and coherence in a seemingly incoherent World. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

The cult, however, sells community, structure, and meaning at an extremely high price: the mindless surrender of self. For some, no doubt, this is the only alterative to personal disintegration. However, for most of us the cult’s way out is too costly. To make Fourth Wave civilization both sane and democratic, we need to do more than create new energy supplies or plug in new technology. We need to do more than create community. We need to provide structure and meaning as well. And once again there are simple things we can do to get started. Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their happiness, do not work against God’s intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the Earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you—alas, it is true of almost every one of us! Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy kneading-trough. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy land and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy cattle, and the young of thy flock. The Lord will command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou puttest Thy hand unto; and He will bless Thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The Lord will open unto thee His good treasury, the Heaven to give the rain of thy land in its season, and to bless all the work of thy hand; and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. Happy art thou, O America; who is like unto thee, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and the sword of thy triumph! And thine enemies shall dwindle away before thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places. “And they yearn for you while they pray for you, because of the surpassing measure of Go’s grace (His favour and mercy and spiritual blessing which is shown forth) in you. Now thanks be to God for His Gift, [precious] beyond telling [His indescribable, inexpressed, free Gift!]! reports II Corinthians 9.14-15. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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Plants in the bathroom? That’s a YES from us! With bathrooms this size, they deserve as much décor attention as any of the bedrooms, wouldn’t you agree?!