Various scientists around the World are trying to build cells from scratch. Marileen Dogterom has been piecing together a cytoskeleton in the Netherlands. Kate Adamala is attaching receptors to a lipid bilayer in Minnesota. And Tetsuya Yomo built RNA that can evolve like the real thing in Japan. However, by and large they have been independently working on different cell parts. Now, a growing number of collaborations are melding these efforts together and speeding progress toward an audacious goal: building a living cell out of non-living molecules. A cell constructed from the ground up would let researchers better test drugs, enable bioengineers to build the next generation of cellular machines, and help biologists answer the fundamental questions: What does it mean to be alive? The efforts to find out is driving toward a common purpose: constructing organisms that have some properties of cells, such as the ability to divide and pass on information to their offspring. Scientists can also customize these new creations, building cells to do things that might not occur in nature. Perhaps most interestingly, they might build something that meets our definition of “alive” but looks nothing like existing cells—perhaps it has a different information storage molecule than DNA, or it is enclosed not by lipids but by proteins. Creating and studying such a thing might help answer the basic question of what it means for something to be alive. Researcher J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had created a minimal bacterial cell—a Mycoplasma bacteria that contained just enough genes to stay alive. That number is 473. Cut one more gene off, and the bacteria will not work properly. Add an extra gene, and not the bacteria is carrying unnecessary baggage. However, at the time of the study’s publication, the scientists only knew the function that 324 those genes actually served. The remaining 149 did something to keep the cell chugging along, but scientists do not know what. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

As cellular chemistry became more and more complex, requiring increasing numbers of different enzymes to direct the many separate metabolic reactions on which life depended, the problem of ensuring that the individuals of each generation received a complete complement of the corresponding types of DNA molecules must have become more and more critical. It seems unlikely that modern cells, with their survival requiring the successful completion of complex reaction sequences depending on thousands of different enzymes, could ever have developed if a way had not been found to pass DNA along from parent to offspring in an orderly manner. Fortunately, orderly procedures were possible and evolution succeeded in finding one. All the principles governing continuity of general characteristics withing species and inheritance of detailed characteristics by individual derive from the nature of the particular procedure that is now universally employed by living organisms for the precise handling of DNA. The processes we are about to consider occur in the nucleus. With a small exception, to be discussed later, that is where all the DNA of the cell resides. In very primitive organisms such as bacteria, in which a definite nucleus/cytoplasm boundary is hard to detect, there is still a localized nuclear region within which the processes in question take place. The key to the modern genetic protection mechanism is packaging. Within the nucleus the thousands of different DNA molecules do not simply mill around, each performing its functions of self-replication and manufacture of complementary RNA molecules independently of the rest. Instead, the DNA molecules carry, a big step further, the long-chain structural concept that led to their own formation. They themselves hook together end to end, thereby forming nucleic acid “strands”—giant giant molecules composed of individual DNA components, each of which is already a giant molecule because of its own linking together of hundreds or thousands of nucleotides. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

In the cell of a complex organism there may be thousands of different DNA molecules strung together to form each such gigantic array. All of such strands or arrays possessing the same configuration of DNA molecules then line up side by side, along with some protein material about whose function we shall later speculate. The resulting package is called a chromosome. (Evidence suggests that, in most cells, there are only few copies—perhaps only one—of each type of giant giant molecule. However, certain special cells, such as those in the salivary gland of the fruit fly, develop giant chromosomes containing thousands of times as much DNA as the average cell. In such special cases the chromosome appears to be a bundle of thousands of parallel and identical strands of DNA.) The separate types of DNA molecules that compose the chromosome are called genes. Higher organisms package many more different genes in each chromosome than do lower organisms, in order to carry the book of instructions that directs the complex chemistry of the cell. Frequently there are also more chromosomes. Thus only 8 chromosomes are found in the nuclei of fruit-fly cells, 46 in those human cells. Each stand of a chromosome acts partly as if it were a single molecular entity, partly like a loose aggregation of separate molecules. It reproduces itself as a unit—each ordered array of DNA molecules begets another similarly ordered array of the same types of DNA molecules. On the other hand, the individual DNA molecules seem able to perform their chores of manufacturing messenger RNA independently of one another. However, in the movement of DNA from the nucleus of an old cell to that of a new one, during cell division, again unit action occurs: the separate DNA molecules are evidently tied together tightly enough that only completely strands participate in the migration. It is, of course, cell division (mitosis) that plays for modern organisms the same kind of reproduction role that plays for modern organisms that same kind of reproduction role that was once played by the physical forces of wind and wave as they broke into smaller pieces the primitive coacervates. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Nowadays, however, it is the chemical state of the cell, rather than the physical conditions of the environment, that sets into motion the reproduction process. For example, it is possible that the complex interrelated chemical activities of mitosis are triggered by the approach to some built-in limit by the amount of DNA in the nucleus. Certain it is that, between successive divisions of a growing cell, the amount of nuclear DNA doubles. Whatever may be the initiator of the processes of mitosis, the events that take place are known to every student of elementary biology. They are featured by a doubling of each of the chromosomes, a dissolution of the nuclear membrane, and an orderly migration of the two resulting sets of chromosomes to opposite sides of the cell. This is followed by a pinching together of the walls of the extended cell to form two separate cellular units and finally by the reestablishment of nuclear membranes to contain the chromosomal material. The result is two cells instead of one, each possessing approximately half of the original cytoplasmic material and a set of nuclear DNA molecules identical with that with which the parent cell started life. However, we have explicitly localized these DNA packaging and distribution mechanisms in the nucleus. And references have been made to the fact that not quite all of the DNA of the cell is confined in the nucleus. The time has come to explain thee references and to examine whether the existence and properties of the nonnuclear DNA can be accommodated in our picture of the DNA protection mechanisms. The nonnuclear DNA—of an amount totaling a very few percent of that located in the nucleus—is found in some of the organelles of the cytoplasm. Mitochondria contain a small amount of DNA; so do chloroplasts, the chlorophyl-containing inclusions that perform photosynthesis in green plants. And this DNA clearly carries out genetic functions. This is been proved by experiments in which mutations were induced in the DNA of the cytoplasmic organelles by microbeams of ultraviolet radiation so directed as to miss the nucleus; physically abnormal organelles were then observed to occur in all subsequent descendants of the irradiated cell—showing that the undamaged nuclear DNA did not provide the structural specifications involved. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Further elaboration of the details of the nonnuclear genetic mechanisms, which is under way today in a number of research laboratories, is clearly of great scientific importance. The discoveries already made render it untenable to attribute all of the genetic control of an organism to the nucleus, as was once done. However, there is as yet no evidence calling for other major changes in the picture we have drawn of the genetic mechanism. For the experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the nucleic acid/enzyme processes related to the small amount of DNA of the organelles are just like those related to the much larger amount of DNA in the nucleus. The organelle DNA appears to manufacture messenger RNA which assembles corresponding enzymes. And, during mitosis, not only does the nucleus of the cell divide but so also do the organelles we are considering. It seems likely, too, that there are chromosomal mechanisms within the organelles that cause their genetic material to be accurately apportioned between parent and offspring, just as in the case of the nucleus. Thus, while it is interesting to speculate about the course of evolutionary development that has withheld from the nucleus of modern cells, there is as yet no indication that the anomaly of nonnuclear DNA requires any other major revision in our basic concepts pertaining to the genetic mechanisms. Whether we have in mind the nuclear or the nonnuclear DNA packaging arrangements, it is clear that their net effect is to remove most of the element of chance from the basic mechanism of genetics. The precise propagation of DNA molecules from one generation of cells to the next results in similar precision in the chemical and physical nature of the progeny. A splitting amoeba process more amoebae, a paramecium more paramecia, a human cell more human cells. Even though the environmental conditions within which the new generations develop differ somewhat from those which nourished their parents—in temperature, chemical composition of the surrounding fluids, and so on—the relatively tight control over the specific cellular chemical processes exercised by the powerful protein enzymes, which in turn owe their creation to the specific roster of DNA molecules in the chromosomes, results in the remarkable continuity of species characteristics that features modern living forms. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

A final comment about what may seem to be a curious inconsistency in one aspect of our argument would appear to be in order. We have just expressed admiration for the effectiveness of the chromosomal mechanisms in preventing change in the nature of the vital DNA material in going from one generation to another. And yet, only a few days ago or so, our sympathies seemed quite different. For the development of our theories then we emphasized the existence of mechanisms capable of causing accidental changes in the ingredients responsible for the structure and metabolism of our organisms. We even went so far as to postulate the presence in the primordial seas of a small quantity of “nucleotide-linking catalyst” that encouraged the accidental formation of nucleic acid molecules of increased length and complexity. We could in addition have expressed satisfaction with the knowledge that thermal collisions and radioactive particles are also capable of causing mutations in the structure of nucleic acid molecules. Is our earlier emphasis on change consistent with our later emphasis on genetic stability? Fortunately, it is not too difficult to reconcile these apparently incompatible points of view. During the era of preanimate coacervates, when extensive refinement in structure and metabolism was necessary before anything like living organisms could exist, there was obviously a premium on “mutagenic agents.” This led not only to a corresponding emphasis in our literary treatment but probably also, by the normal economics of the evolutionary processes, to a relative abundance of such agents in the primordial seas. However, after eons of the trial-and-error refinement of the properties of organisms, a time must ultimately have come when random change in their properties was so much more likely to be harmful than helpful to the species that the advantage would all have been on the side of a combination of environment and organisms leading to relatively low rates of mutation in the hereditary mechanisms. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Natural selection would then not only have brought to prominence such techniques for protection of the property-determining ingredients as we have just considered in connection with the nuclear DNA but might even have acted to diminish the abundance in the environment of some of the mutagenic agents. For example, if in certain regions primitive organisms were spilling into the seas such a quantity of nucleotide-linking catalyst as to lead to an undesirably high rate of mutation in the properties of most other organisms in the vicinity, there would have been a tendency for the main line of evolutionary development to be retarded in such regions; the result would ultimately have been the starving out of the undesirable mutagen-producing species as the course of evolution in remoter regions accelerated the proliferation of more modern strains. Whether such developments occurred to slow down the rate of mutation or whether it was always slow (with the extensive accomplishments of evolution attribute only to the great time periods available), it is certain that today the combination of environment and organism seem usually to emphasize stability rather than change. When modern cells successively divine and send some of their precious DNA to guide the construction of new individuals, we expect the DNA that each new individual ultimately sends on to its progeny to be identical with that which it received, and we are rarely disappointed. It is likely that, on the average, each individua DNA molecule duplicates itself 100,000 or more times without the change of even a single atom in the thousands of which it is composed. Changes do occur occasionally, to be sure; if they did not, evolutionary development would be impossible. However, in terms of the few dozen or few thousand years over which the human species makes most of its observations, the protection provided to the large majority of the DNA by its nuclear environment and the precision of the mitotic distribution mechanisms, together with the relative scarcity of mutagenic agents, now contributes a remarkable degree of stability to the structure and metabolism of living organisms. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The sophisticated membrane properties of the modern cell, the ribosomal and mitochondrial structures, the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms, the chromosomal/mitosis processes—these and other features have been achieved at a tremendous cost of time and painstaking trial-and-error experiment. It is fortunate that the natural forces of evolution operate in such a way as to require convincing evidence of superiority before novel processes are allowed to replace such tried-and-true structural and metabolic principles. Looking ahead, does bullying qualify as a national crisis? Bullying is an unacceptable behaviour that adults and students have a responsibility to stop. Most people think of bullying as teasing someone and make lighthearted jokes about an individual. However, it is a blanket term to downplay serious crimes. Bullying and cyberbullying can become a crime if you: physically assault someone, vandalize property, harass someone especially if the harassment is based on gender or racism. Furthermore, violent threats, death threats, obscene and harassing phone calls and texts are also criminal acts. The list goes on to include explicit photos of an adult or minor used to extort the person, or sharing these photos with other, stalking someone, committing hate crimes, taking a photo of someone in a place where they expect privacy, and extortion. Do not think these acts are not a crime. The Secret Service released a report examining the dozens of school shooting that have taken place across the United States of America since 1997. It found that bullying was a factor in two-thirds of them. In some cases, the shooters had been bullies; much more often, they had been the victims of bullying. A survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Nickelodeon asked a national sample of children aged 8 to 15 what issues in school concerned them most, and all age groups pointed to teasing and bullying as “big problems” that ranked higher than racism, deadly illnesses, and peer pressure. Reports such as these have elevated bullying from a narrow concern that is best dealt with by students themselves (or perhaps by the teachers and parents of those directly involved) to wide speared problems that requires the attention of school-level programs and statewide policies. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

A recent study found that a full 30 percent of American students are involved in moderate or frequent bullying—11 percent have been victims, 13 percent have been bullies, and percent have been both. Other studies report even higher results. When you sit down to talk to someone who has been a victim of noted death threats, felony assault and vandalizing, stalking, and trespassing never says, “So you are being bullied.” That is totally making the situation seem like someone has just been teased by children on the playground. However, when someone in a political position is hit in the face with a pie, it suddenly becomes a very serious problem and is called “assault,” no bullying, or “just horsing around.” In 2016, when Sean Thompson walked up to the defunct mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, and hit him in the face with a pie. The Johnson then tackled Thompson, then punched him more than half a dozen times until his face looked like a “bloody pulp.” Sean Thompson hit Kevin Johnson with a pie because he put more than half a billion dollars into the King’s arena, instead of projects that could actually help people in the community. Sacramento then charged Sean Thompson with many believe was the stiffest potential penalty a pie-thrower has ever received: felony assault and misdemeanor battery, with a bail of $100,000. Many believe the punishment was unconstitutional. However, when you look into Kevin Johnson, many may wonder why he got away with so much when he was far more than a bully, then rewarded by becoming mayor, where he racked up more crimes that as of yet, have still gone unpunished? Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and a European American mayor had responded to a young African American male the same way. The World would have been outraged. While the issue of equality is important, African Americans do not want to be perceived as aggressive victims. The issue is equal rights under the law for all. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

How easy can it be for clinicians to identify which children will turn dangerously violent if indeed 33 percent of all children have experienced bullying? One thing to keep in mind about self-defense, is often times it is, in many cases, better to walk away from the situation because it may not go the way you think it will. Certain people, and those in certain positions get more leeway when it comes to how they react to “bullying.” However, keep in mind, when it comes to self-defense, you will need to prove you had a reasonable belief that you were in imminent danger of suffering harm or death, you have reasonable belief that using force was necessary to prevent such harm, and you used an amount of force that was necessary to stop that threat. Because if some person hits you in the face with a pie, and you beat them to a bloody pulp, you might actually go to jail for that because that is called excessive force. How can we rid ourselves of a problem as pervasive as this? Short of raising kinds in isolation chambers…bullying behaviours can never be eliminated entirely from the sustained hazing ritual knows as growing up. Remember bullying and the force you use to defend yourself can be considered a criminal act. Think about it, is assault or a hate crime worth being sent to jail for? Is being mean and cruel and hurting other people worth running their life and yours? Next time you think it is funny to hurt someone in person or online, think carefully about the consequences. You may think it is funny at first, but think about how much fun it would be for you to be spending time in jail! Think about how being in jail could prevent you from attending college, having a great career? Think about having a criminal record for the rest of your life, which could even impact who is willing to marry you, rent to you, or hire you for a job. Think about how funny you think it is when you bully others. However, if you go to jail, think about how others will feel about you. None of these things would be too much fun…would they? #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Equal to some businessmen, some of our government and public spokesmen have a knack for debasing the noble and making the excellent trivial. The current disease is to make Cold War capital out of everything, no matter what. We cannot dedicate a building of William Carson’s of Sarah Winchester’s in California without criticism for being so beautiful and creative. This type of criticism is tasteless; the matter becomes serious when our freedoms are involved. Many civil rights leaders and organized friends of culture keep repeating freedom of speech, freedom of culture. (You would think that we did not have our own means of censoring, by commercial selections and by swamping.) However, many Americans are facing Cold War censorship, not only have they been forced to wear masks, and get two and three vaccinations, there is also talk out of Washing about having Americans receive a COVID vaccine every year. In addition, many people had to shut down their businesses and stay locked in their homes during the pandemic. The concern is that this sort of treatment could turn into tyranny. This resulted in an inconceivable loss of revenue and tourists. Such behaviour is inconceivable by Americans. We are not at Cold War with the American Dream of working hard will afford you a nice lifestyle. However, tyranny is patriotically disastrous; it teaches that our spokesmen and women are not earnest; they pick and choose when to stand up from freedom of thought. How then can a boy be proud? (But to be sure, we have little such freedom, compared with the British, for our mass media are not, like their, open to fundamental controversy. It is not surprising, therefore, that for English Angry Young Men an important topic is their outraged patriotism, whereas our Beats do not care about that.) Racial antipathy leading to actual violence is not limited to humans, although it is only the less evolved humans who resort to it. In the tropics one sees black ants fighting the red ones, mutilating and even ending the lives of one another. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The final tragedy of Humans: that they let themselves go along with destructive forces which in the end could gravely injure the whole species, when they could go alone with the constructive ones. This fleshly body, in which we live and move and have our being, has, through pleasures of the flesh and sport, become a cult to the modern World. We fall in our millions, prostrate votaries at its shrine, forgetful that its quick growth is followed by quick decay, that our idol is doomed to crumble. Too many moments of highest enthusiasm on the part of youth are often reserved for the new religion—sport. A whole theology has been built up around the strokes of a bat and the throws of a ball; hard hitters are now canonized as saints. One who throws one’s ball far enough may yet send oneself, with it, to the new Heavenly America! And as far as pleasures of the flesh, the passions and emotions of the young are deliberately stimulated by the arts of literature, journalism, cinema, and advertising just at the age when they ought to be disciplined. How little humans collectively learn from the past is show by every textbook of history, which teems with constant repetitions of the ugliest passions. The Worldwide condition of human mass, its hates, ignorance, and violence, brings despair to many a thoughtful mind. Violence is a destructive force which in the end and when excessive destroys even itself. Among the negative emotions we must include prejudice and bias. The negative emotions include arrogance and vanity, cowardice and moral weakness. All the negative thoughts and feelings show a misuse of mental power. Temptations and beguilements, illusions and deceptions, beset the path of ordinary life just as they do the inner life of the quest. However, in the latter case they may also assume a subtler form. Here there are telepathic, psychic, spiritualistic, and neurotic possibilities. There are times when a person is more vulnerable to attack by negative thought than at other times. In great emotional excitement, anger, or passion of any kind, we are most susceptible. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Yet, there are three great types of life and thought representing three different solutions of the problem of ethics in historical change: first, the static supranaturalistic solution, represented by the Roman Catholic church and expressed in the ethics of Thomas Aquinas; second, the dynamic-naturalistic solution, represented by the National Socialist movement and expressed in the ethics of the philosophers of life; third, the rationalistic-progressive solution, represented by Anglo-Saxon common sense expressed in the ethics of the philosophers of reasons. With tremendous psychological power the static supranaturalistic solution maintains the eternal and immovable character of the ethical norms and commands. Philosophy and theology co-operate in this direction. The World is conceived as a system of eternal structures, preformed in the divine mind, which are substance and essence of everything and which establish the norms and laws for a human’s personal and social practice. Philosophy discovers these structures and laws, and revelation confirms and amends them. Revelation adds some superstructures of its own that are new and higher laws, but equally eternal and immovable. Both the natural and the supranatural together form a hierarchy of powers and values that control nature and are supposed to control human activities. The church, itself a hierarchical system, teaches this system, educates for it, fights for its political realization, and defends it against new systems. However, in so doing the church cannot disregard the actual situation and historical changes. The church must adapt its ethical system to new problems and new demands. The Catholic church has been able to do just this, admirably, for centuries, and the living authority of the Pope is still a marvelous instrument for achieving adaptations without losing its immovable basis. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Catholic church did not fully succeed in dealing with the presuppositions and demands of the bourgeois era. Protestantism and the Enlightenment created new systems of ethics standing in opposition to the supposedly eternal system of the medieval church. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

And when the church tried to proceed with the stream of the rising bourgeoisies, as, for example, in the moral preachings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuitism and in the teachings of nineteenth-century modernism, either it lost its seriousness and authority or it gave the unhappy impression of rearguard action in which every position is defended as long as possible and then surrendered. And the important utterances of the Holy See during the nineteenth century concerning social and political problems presuppose, in order to be applicable, the unbroken unity and authority of the Christian church, which no longer exist. Therefore, they did not at all influence the spirit of modern ethics and the direction of bourgeois society. The price paid by the static supranaturalistic answer to our question has been the loss of a determining influence on the changing World of the last centuries. The opposite solution, represented by national socialism, was prepared for in two main ways—by the Continental vitalistic philosophy and by Angelo-American positivism and pragmatism, the latter being only a different form of the vitalistic philosophy. National Socialism has used and abused philosophical motives of the Continental philosophy of live, especially of Nietzsche, Pareto, and Sorel. Philosophy must express life in its changing forms and trends. Truth, according to Nietzsche, is that lie which is useful for particular species of being. Values are produced and withdrawn in the dynamic process of life—biologically speaking, by the strongest kind of living beings; sociologically speaking, by the strongest kind of living beings; sociologically speaking, by the new elite; and politically speaking, by the eruptive violence of a revolutionary group. Change, being the chief character of life, is also the chief character of ethics. There are no independent norms above life, no criteria by which power can be judged, no standards for a good life. Good life is strong life, or violent life, of the life of a ruling aristocracy, or the life of conquering race. This implies that the individual, instead of being guided by the ethical norms that are manifest in one’s conscience, is obliged to merge one’s conscious with the group conscience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

One must co-ordinate one’s standards with the group standards, as represented by the leaders of the group. The dynamic-naturalistic type of answer to the question of ethics in a changing World has a primitive-tribal character. It is, historically speaking, at the same time the most recent and the most ancient of all solutions of the ethical problem. Now a quantum leap, from reasoned dedications about the general principles governing the behaviour of long-vanished societies to three real societies: traditional and modern China, ancient Greece, and several nations in today’s Muslim Middle East, all demanding bribes preserve their virginity for their husbands. For long periods of history, the Chinese increased the chances of maintaining large-scale chastity by crippling little girls’ feet so that, as nubile woman, they could barely hobble from room to room, much less down past the garden gate to indulge in pleasures of the flesh adventures. Nonetheless, some unmarried women—maimed and unmaimed—were unchaste. Of these, many concealed the fact or got caught by their families or were publicly exposed—for example when the bridegroom feld from the wedding chamber, bleating about having married a “wing-broken bird.” How did these lapses occur? In the usual way, and sometimes, even women with bound feet defined probability and were wanton, willful, or seduced. These unmaidenly maidens felt no spiritual guilt, for their deed had no religious connotations—as females, after all, they were considered lesser beings than males. However, they had violated China’s pervasive principle of yin and yang, the essential harmony that governed society. Those who were caught dreaded the consequences, for the price of unchastity was dishonour for the entire family. They had defiled the national culture of mianiz, honouring one’s family’s prestige. For women, a peccadillo in pleasures of the flesh was costly in other ways. It was difficult or impossible to find a husband for sullied women except by subterfuge—passing her off as a virgin. And if a man agreed to accept a nonvirgin, he would not send his bride’s family the expensive gifts they could otherwise have expected five or six times a year. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

In China today, the old values have not disappeared, though communism and modernity have modified culture expectations. However, female virginity is still very crucial to a love relationship. For chaste bride’s, the groom’s family often paid a large price forth the wedding. However, sometimes weddings are just an economic affair. As in China, celibacy in ancient Greece was also a uniquely female virtue. As we have seen, the Greeks did not value celibacy, but their daughters had to remain virginal. Because they regarded girls as lustful, early marriages seemed sensible—less time for brides to succumb to temptation. Sometimes, however, marriage did not come soon enough. If she was caught, the young woman was in terrible trouble. Fathers were obligated to obliterate all reminders of such shameful daughters from the household. Selling them selves into slavery was a common solution. One Athenian official took more drastic action: he fed his “ruined” daughter to a starved horse. Why not? By her unchastity, the girl had rendered herself a nonentity whose worthless body might as well sate another sort of bestial hunger. It was, of course, natural for a young woman whose secret lover had actually cause her to be with child to fight with the wiliness of desperation against her dreadful fate. The most common ploy was to swear the pearl inside was holy and that one of the gods had done this to her. Any girl (Parthenos) who managed to pull this off—and a few did—was not merely saved but was afterward treated as someone protected by divine immunity. After all, punishing a Parthenos, whom a god rather than a moral man had made unchaste, would inevitably provoke divine retribution. Palestinian Muslims are reminiscent of the ancient Greeks in their fanatical concern about premarital virginity. If they even suspect a girl has been unchaste, then brothers and fathers’ storm into action, terminating their own sists and daughters in sacrifice rituals. Often, these are disguised as accidents by burning the body. This usually happens to one woman a week. “They feel that women should take care to be a virgin when married, and not sleep around,” said Suheir Azzonuni Mashi, director of the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee in Ramallah, West Bank. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Now, moving on to the economy. The dream of a perfectly synchronized, machinelike society tantalized many of the “modernizers” who influenced the industrial age. The object was to create a state and a society that ran with the efficiency of a machine: every bureaucracy acting as one, every individual moving in lockstep. However, human beings and human societies are, in fact, open systems. Messy and imperfect. In our lives and in our societies, regions of chaos and chance alternate with, and give rise to, regions of temporary stability. We need both. Stability and synchronization provide the degree of predictability we need to function as individuals in social groups and especially in the economy. Without some stability and time coordination, life is reduced to oppression by anarchy and chance. However, what happens when instability and de-synchronization take over? Despite decades of bloodshed and internal suppression, the United States of American never complete the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.  In modern times, many people fear that COVID and high inflation could lead to the middle class being frequently being reduced to eating nothing but potatoes and cabbage. And that we will wander through ghostly supermarkets with virtually empty shelves. Some can envision in their mind’s eye the few jars of gray, moldy pastas that are on sale. And the freezing old woman standing on the steps of public buildings trying to sell a single ballpoint pen or a potholder—their only possession. Fearing a total economic breakdown, they very social order on which the country depends on will dissolve, and along with it any pretense of synchronized efficiency. Imagine is no knew when, or even if, promised products will arrive. Picture instead of just-in-time, American enterprises running on not-on-time. During a trip, one may be prevented from flying to New York from California as scheduled, forced to take a midnight train instead because, one was tole, no one is sure whether aviation gas will arrive in time for flight #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

People fear hungering for things to work, for predictability, for someone—as the Italian dictator Mussolini once put it—“to make the trains to run on time.” However, societies need more than just trains that run on time. They need institutions that run on time and law enforcement which does their jobs and listens to citizens before things snowball into an avalanche. What happens, however, when one institution runs at such high speeds that it leaves society’s other vital institutions miles behind? No one can answer this question scientifically. The hard data are not there. Nevertheless, it is revealing to see what is happening to key institutions in America, where the race in the twenty-first-century economy is, at least for now, most advanced. What follows, then, is a first sketch, purely conjectural and surely controversial, that may help not just business leaders and government policy makers, but all of us as we try to cope with rapid change. And while we use the United States of America as the example, the implications are international. Let us focus, then on rates of change. Start with a mind’s-eye image of a freeway. At its side a police officer sits astride a motorcycle, pointing a radar gun at the road. On the highway are BMWs, each representing a major institution in America. Each BMW travels at a speed that matches that institution’s actual rate of change. Tomorrow we will look more into this equation. Grey Wolf, we are sending you to the Great God. Please tell Him that we, who invented forgiveness do not forgive; that we, who speak of trust can not trust; that we, who invoke faith would not believe. I write as though you could read. However, I know you understand. When you have left the forests and tundras and no longer lave your sinewy trails with the snows, tell Him that you were made on a different day. Your howls of bewilderment will echo with the mountain winds. And your songs will join those of the whales. Please tell Him for me, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

There may be those who feel that they can live quite happily without either religious discipline or communion with God. However, they are grave error. The restlessness which characterizes us, the confusion which has come on our times, the increasing percentage of neuroses among us, and the general unhappiness of all of us in the midst of the greatest affluence the World has yet seen, has come upon us primarily because of the lack of that sense of communion with God which made our forefathers happy in spite of their poverty and their physical suffering. We relearned to interpret the symptoms of weariness and hunger, cry when bedtime or mealtime comes, and yet refuse either to go to bed or take their food. Living in a gilded palace, as it were, we are still miserable, for we are essentially orphans, having lost that most precious of all values in life, the sense of the Fatherhood of God. The feeling of deprivation grows sharper and more poignant, instead of less severe, as we grow older. The time comes to each of us when the burdens of life seem far too heavy to carry, when the brightness of youth begins to fade, and we notice the lengthening shadows which presage our end. More than ever then do we become homesick; homesick, not for our houses or for our countries, but homesick for the Universal Parent of all of us, for that deep affection which is the heart of the Universe itself, for the mercy of God; yet a wall of iron has been placed between us and Him, and we cannot find Him. What greater good can a human achieve, either for oneself or for the World, than to contribute one’s effort to piercing this wall and bring the Father and the children once more into loving communion with one another! Also, the about the national security risk racist against fellow Americans is. You are all American and if you use racism to suppress other Americas and keep them from advancing, it is a loss to the economy, it is a loss of tax revenue, and it is a loss of skill that may keep America number one. Remember, China has a population of 1.4 billion and America only has 3.25 million. Therefore, every American who can work needs to be allowed to work so they can innovate and keep the country strong. Politicians should address racism as a threat to national security. You do not have to welcome people you do not like into your homes, but it is important to respect the United States Constitution and give everyone equal opportunity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

Live in luxury like you have always wanted to in a Cresleigh Home. These thoughtfully designed floor plans allow you to customize your home with added features and upgrades.

Enter on the first level to find a stunning open concept kitchen, dining room and great room where you’ll spend much of your fun time. 

In the still of the night, I held my Cresleigh Home tight, ‘cause I love you so. Promise I will never let my Cresleigh Home go.

I the still of the night, I remember that night in May, the stars were bright above. I’ll hope and I’ll pray to keep your precious love.

“The more I live in this Cresleigh community, the more I realize that it’s such a caring community. It’s much more than welcoming and friendly. It’s a place where people are respectful.”

That’s what it means to be part of a friendly community.
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