Speaking of Human Experience, Let Us Consider the Idea of Equality

In the beginning there were the laws and the particles. The laws caused the particles to aggregate to form atoms of a limited number of types and properties and the atoms to fit together in specific molecular configurations. In the atmosphere of the primordial Earth the basic sources of energy—radioactivity, ultraviolet radiation, electric discharge, and heat—broke up some of the gaseous molecules into fragments that, on recombining, formed a number of heavy and relatively complex compounds which drifted down into the sea. The new ingredients included energy-rich molecules which drifted down into the sea. The new ingredients included energy-rich molecules which, by temporarily hooking on to other molecular fragments, facilitated their participation in the formation of even more complex compounds. There were also amino acids, which sometimes linked together to form simple proteinlike substances; there were sugars, phosphates, and bases, which under suitable conditions of temperature and juxtaposition, were occasionally able to form primitive precursors of the nucleic acids. In isolated pools cut off from the major seas by seismic events, evaporation of most of the water greatly increased the rate of chemical activity. Within these pools the statistics of random combination of molecular fragments occasionally resulted in the creation of complex molecular assemblies, which constituted effective catalysts for specific chains of reactions among the available ingredients. Once in a long while the phenomenon of autocatalysis occurred, resulting in closed cycles of self-amplifying chemical activity. Through the operation of the laws of physics that determine the properties of high-molecular-weight material dissolved in water, the new compounds had a tendency to collect in droplets, or coacervates. These bags of chemicals ultimately came to display lifelike properties, including the ability to “grow” and, under suitable circumstances, to “reproduce” their own kind. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Meanwhile, another important line of chemical evolution was developing. The simple nucleic acid molecules which continually and automatically formed in the “hot dilute soup” of the primordial seas began to exhibit interesting reproductive processes of their own. The first occurred in sophisticated types of coacervates which possessed certain kinds of catalytic ingredients as well as temporally varying cycles of chemical activity. Ultimately the random but thorough process of evolutionary trial and error succeeded in combining a fortunate set of properties in the same coacervate. These properties included the conditions required for the precise self-reproduction of the “genetic” nucleic acid molecules” of nucleic acid to stretch out on solid inclusions and form attachments with shorter “transfer molecules” of the same substance. The natural attraction of the unattached ends of the transfer molecules for other molecular species the yielded a spectacularly important by-product of these reactions—the manufacture of other complex organic compounds in addition to nucleic acid. With the passage of time evolutionary refinement specialized the messenger and transfer molecules until the nucleic acid mechanisms became unusually effective in the assembly of protein enzymes. These powerful catalysts, in turn, ultimately took over control of the pattern of interrelated reactions that, finally, contributed to the “bags of chemicals” enough stability and metabolic sophistication to entitle them to be called “living organisms.” Along with the increased architectural effectiveness of the nucleic acid/enzyme mechanisms came other evolutionary improvements in the structure and metabolism of single-celled organisms. Membrane properties improved. Ribosomes and “organelles,” such as mitochondria, appeared to contribute to the viability of the cell. The development of the nucleus facilitated complex chemical reactions by providing a degree of isolation between major metabolic subsystems. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Additional ruggedness was provided by dividing the functions of nucleic acid between two different kinds of molecules and protecting, by means of the chromosomal mechanisms, those carrying the basic “book of instructions” for control of the structure and metabolism of the cell. These unusual packaging provisions resulted in such a precise means of nucleic acid distribution, during cell division, as to ensue the high degree of genetic stability appropriate to the relatively advanced evolutionary stage of modern life. The economics of evolution even permitted capitalization on what might have seemed an important weakness in the cellular mechanisms: the sensitivity of some of the nuclear and cytoplasmic reactions to the influence of chemical agents in the environment. For the resulting nuclear gene switching and cytoplasmic modulation of enzymatic effectiveness made possible multicellular organisms by permitting different groups of cells to develop in different ways despite a common genetic endowment. And, because of the contribution of local environmental effects to the differentiation of the parts of the organism, the information content of the book of instructions in the genes could be enormously less then that required to code the detailed structure and metabolism of every cell into the nucleic acid molecules. Thus, complex organisms became practicable. Higher plants and animals, including man, were able to develop. It can certainly not be claimed that the sequence of events just summarized has been documented in these reports with anything like completeness. The time scale is so vast and the absence of corroborating paleontological evidence for some of the important steps is so complete as to render it unlikely that the speculative aspects can ever be entirely removed from this kind of narrative. It still appears necessary to invoke an element of faith if any story of the creation is to carry conviction. To those who are inclined to believe in a lawful and orderly World, however, the present state of knowledge and theory offers considerable encouragement. Any self-consistent explanation of the origin of life in terms of purely physical, nonvitalistic principles, despite inaccuracy of detail, is a significant accomplishment. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

And such a spectacular biochemical success as the stimulation of cell-free extracts from bacteria into the manufacture of protein, by means of human-made nucleic acid molecules, comes close to the long-awaited demonstration that “life” can be synthesized in the test tube. Such developments must greatly enhance confidence in the thesis that proclaims the unity of biological and physical science. Thus our narrative has carried us a long way toward the philosophic objective of establishing that physical principles alone are capable of accounting for all human observation and experience. Yet the story told here is obviously not complete; for the adequacy of physical science to account for the structure and chemistry of living organisms does not necessarily imply equal adequacy for the explanation of such seemingly nonphysical attributes as behaviour, intelligence, and consciousness. The evidence that has been considered seemed convincing to the conclusion that all aspects of behaviour, including those which we call “intelligent,” will ultimately be found reducible to the operation of a combination of physical principles not fundamentally different from that which underlies the design of advanced versions of human-made computing and logic machines. If that is true, there remain only the phenomena of conscious awareness to be accounted for in order to establish that all experience can be explained by the operation of a single set of natural laws. However, there is a growing body of evidence attesting to an orderly and predictable interrelationship connecting the qualities of conscious experience with the physical condition of parts of the brain. We know, for example, that a signal sent from the brainstem to the cortex turns on or off the state of consciousness that sensations of pleasure, pain, rage, horror, or ecstasy appear automatically in response to the injection of electric current into specific parts of the brain. These discoveries can be interpreted as indications that conscious phenomena are suitable for inclusion in the subject matter dealt with by the laws and methods of the physical sciences. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

To be sure, a mere formal transfer of the phenomena of consciousness out of metaphysical and into the realm described by the physical laws of nature would not “explain” the mystery of subjective awareness. However, as observed in the introduction, physical science does not really explain any of its mysteries. Gravitational attraction and electric charge are essentially as inexplicable as consciousness; they seem better understood only because we have long since established that their effects are regular and predictable, not because we know what they “really” are. The available evidence is consistent with the expectation that the properties of conscious experience may ultimately be found to be as regular and predictable as are those of gravity and electricity. If so, it is inevitable that we shall eventually add the relationships between physical states of neuronal matter and qualities of subjective awareness to the laws which, along with the basic particles, make up the content of modern physics. And, for all its philosophic importance, this will then be but an incident in the continuing development of our understanding of the body of natural law that determines the course of observable events. The same body of natural law will then suffice to “explain” the formation of a distant nebula, the operation of a television receiver, the growth of a child, and the genius of an Einstein. Like other sweeping philosophic generalizations, this belief in the unity and adequacy of science cannot be proved to be correct—it is essentially an article of faith. However, it has a great advantage over the philosophies: this philosophy, uniquely, derives further strength from every new scientific discovery. This is because, in science as it is actually practiced, all theory is nonvitalistic: the postulate of a single set of natural laws is the starting point for all modern scientific explanation. And spectacular advances in our understanding of the Universe are continually being made by application of this simplifying assumption. Thus, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the case for the unity and adequacy of science has become a strong one. Future discoveries may soon render inescapable the conclusion toward which science had for so long been trending—that the regular and predictable operation of a single body of physical law is sufficient, without supplementation by any form of extra-scientific or “vitalistic” principle, to account for all aspects of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Speaking of human experience, let us consider the idea of equality, one of the foundations of rationalistic-progressive ethics. In the light of the principle of love, and in the perspective of the idea of Kairos, the following can be said: love implies equality in some respect. One who loved and one who is loved are equal to each other insofar as they are worthy of love, the love, the one for the other. However, nothing but precisely this principle in different situation, with love and the distortion of love at the same time. Looking at a Greek city-state, we discover that there is a political equality among individuals in a special group, and to a certain extent among all those who are free; but there is an absolute inequality between the free and the slave. Love is not manifest as the principle; but since it is potentially the principle, it is effective even in the religion and culture of Apollo and Dionysus. It is effect in the kind of equality that the city-state gives to those who belong to it, excluding slaves and barbarians. Love is effective even in this restricted equality, but it is a restricted, distorted love—love within the boundaries of national pride and racial discrimination. The central Kairos in which love becomes manifest as what it really is has not yet appeared. Nor did it appear in the period of the universal Roman empire, when Stoicism extended equality to all human beings—men and women, children and slaves. Here the principle of love broke through the limitations of national and social arrogance, but it did so as a universal, rational law, and not as love. Stoic equality is universal, but cool and abstract, which out the warmth and communal element of the limited equality in the city-state. At its best, it is participation in Roman citizenship and implies the possibility of a human’s becoming wise. In the Christian message, love becomes manifest in its universality, and, at the same time, in its concreteness: the “neighbour” is the immediate object of love, and everyone can become “neighbour.” All inequalities between humans are overcome insofar as humans are potential children of God. However, this did not lead Christianity to the Stoic idea of equality. Not even the inequality between the lord and slave was attacked, except in the realm of the Christian community. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Later, not the totalitarian but the hierarchical principle was supported by the Christian church in accord with the late ancient and medieval society. The social and psychological inequalities of the feudal order did not seem to contradict the element of equality implied in the principle of love. On the contrary, the mutual independence of all the degrees of the hierarchy, the solidarity of all the members of a medieval city, and the patriarchalistic care of the feudal lords for the “people,” were considered the highest form of equality demanded by the principle of love. In bourgeois liberalism, equality was again interpreted in terms of the general natural law, the law of reason and humanity. Equality became equality before the law and the demand for equal economic opportunities. This was in accord with the principle of love over against the tyranny and injustice into which the older system had developed. However, it the measure by which the equal opportunity of everybody became a mere ideology to cover the exclusive opportunity of a few, the liberal idea of equality became a contradiction of love. A new idea of equality arose, conceiving the equal security of everyone, even at the sacrifice of much political equality. One must not condemn the collectivistic and authoritarian forms of equality just because they negate equality’s liberal and democratic forms. Love may demand a transformation in this Kairos. A new creative realization of the element of equality as implied in the principle of love may be brought about in our period. It will be good insofar as it is in better accord with the demands of love in our special situation than were the demands of love in our special situation than were the feudal and liberal forms. It will be bad insofar as it will become a distortion and contradiction of love. For love is eternal, although it creates something new in each Kairos. One could refer to many other ethical problems in order to demonstrate their double dependence on the principle of love, on the one hand, and on the changing Kairos, on the other. For example, one could point to the evaluation of wok and activism in the different periods of history and their relation to leisure and meditation. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

It is obvious that a coming collective will reduce the emphasis on work and activism considerably by restraining the principle of competition. As the struggle against some forms of feudal and ecclesiastical leisure and meditative life was a demand for love in the period of the decaying Middle Ages, and occurred at the time when humankind began to control nature, so it is now a demand of love and Kairos that leisure meditation returns in terms of a new more collectivistic structure of society over against a self-destructive adoration of work and activism. Other examples are the problems of asceticism and worldliness, of self-control and self-expression, of disciplines and creativity, their relation to each other. Both sides these contrasts follow from the principle of love. The negation of the first aspect would prevent the self-surrender implied in love; the negation of the second would destroy any subject worthy of love. It depends on the Kairos as to which of these aspects, in which form and in which balance with the other, is emphasized. For our present stage, neither the supranatural asceticism of the Catholic system nor the rational self-control of bourgeois society, nor the naturalistic war-and-state discipline of fascism can provide the solution. And the same is true of feudal eroticism, of bourgeois aestheticism, and of the fascist idolatry of vitality. Another solution is demanded by love and by Kairos. Psychoanalysis provides some elements of the solution, although mere psychotherapeutic psychology is not able to create by itself a new system of ethics. Other elements of the solution are suggested by the rediscovery of the classical meaning of eros, one the one hand, and self-control, on other, are shaped by love. A final question must be answered. If love is the principle of ethics, and if Kairos is the manner of its embodiment in concrete contents, how can a permanent uncertainty, a continuous criticism which destroys the seriousness of the ethical demand, be avoided? Is not law and are not institutions necessary in order to maintain the actual ethical process? Indeed, law and institution are required. They are required by love itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

For every individual, even the most creative, needs given structures that embody the experience and wisdom of the past, that liberate one from the necessity of having to make innumerable decisions on one’s own, and that show one a meaningful way to act in most situations. On this point Catholicism was superior in love both to Protestantism and to liberalism. And this is the reason why the younger generation in many countries eagerly demands laws and institutions to relieve them of their unbearable burden of having to make continuous ultimate decision. In system of ethics can ever become an actual power without laws and institutions. Luther, in his great emphasis on the creativity of love, forgot this necessity. This is one of the reasons why the moral education of the masses in Germany is less thorough than in Calvinistic countries. On the other hand, there is a greater readiness for a Kairos in Germany than there is in the more thoroughly educated and normalized Western nations. Love demands laws and institutions, but love is always able to break through them in a new Kairos, and to create new laws and new systems of ethics. I have not mentioned the word “justice” in this report. It would be misleading in the present discussion because it is generally understood in the sense of the abstract natural law of Stoicism and rationalism. As such, it is either empty or is the concrete law of special period, and is thus without universal validity. If justice is taken concretely, it means the laws and institutions in which love is embodied in a special situation. The Platonic ideal of justice was the concrete harmony of the city-state. In America, justice was the pious obedience to the commands of God. In medieval feudalism, it was the form of mutual responsibility of all levels of the hierarchy to each other. The liberal idea of justice was the abolition of formal privileges and the introduction of legal equality. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

In the more collectivistic society of the future, justice will be the system of laws and forms by which a sufficient security of the whole, and of all members, will be developed and maintained. It follows, then, that justice is the secondary and derived principle, while love, actualized from Kairos to Kairos, is the creative and basic principle. I have given no definition of love. This is impossible because there is no higher principle by which it can be defined. It is life in its actual unity. The forms and structures in which love embodies itself are the forms and structures in which life is possible, in which life overcomes its self-destructive forces. And this is the meaning of ethics: the expression of the ways in which love embodies itself, and life is maintained and saved. Humans who are otherwise capable of correct judgment and sane conduct, as in their business activity, will reveal a paranoid imagination or pernicious delusion when racial, class, religion, or aesthetic prejudice gets into their head or eyes. The use of blood in animal sacrifices is a legacy from Atlantean sorcery. It is evil, and found only among peoples who have not attained the refinement of consciousness and development of conscience which accompany a higher conception of God. The terrible fact is that millions of so-called sane humans are so unbalanced, so hysterical, and so obsessed, that they are really half insane. They are dangerous to themselves and to society. The average person who thinks one belongs to the human species, has still a long way to travel before one becomes a full member. Only half of one has become human. The rest is still terrestrial, in whom the killing instinct is still active enough to punctuate one’s history with frighting wars. One’s terrestrial ancestry has provided humans with the killing instinct. One’s human cleverness has provided one with the most effective weapons to express that instinct. Ones spiritual aspiration has not evolved to the level where is should be—above the other two and restraining them. There are other manifestations of this killing instinct, this lust to slay another living creature. We see it in the child who tears wings off a fly. Brutality and cruelty are especially linked with the minds and actions of those persons swayed by evil forces, whether physical or psychical. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

There is enough unpleasantness or evil in the World in which we have to live. We should avoid getting involved in it so far as we can. This applies to activity and also to receptivity through reading, through entertainment, and other uses of leisure. When adult people begin to accept, and their young children to demand, entertainment by the daily portrayal of sadistic violence or obscenity, when those who feel outraged by this situation have become a small minority, we have to assume that decadence, bad manners, and low moral standards are triumphant. The school of journalism and periodical-filling these days is preoccupied with the ego, with personality: the universal and impersonal does not attract or interest. Moreover, it is only the bestial, the negative, the pretty, and the surface characteristics of the ego which hold their scribblers’ attention. Prying, meddlesome, trivial gossip and pulling other to pieces is a favourite sport. There must be censorship in the era of annually increasing crime. How many films and stage plays, books and magazine are let loose on an undisciplined World packed with detailed suggestions for immorality and criminality. This is not entertainment: it is evil. So many composed pieces are almost textbooks for the susceptible imitative young on how to start self-destructive, antisocial, selfish careers, how to yield to fleshly promptings without exercising the slightest restraint. We would not allow full freedom of movement to plague-carrying rats in our kitchens and homes. Yet we allow these human carriers of mental plague the freedom to print and publish, declaim, and propagate their poisonous suggestions and negative ideas, their pleasures of the flesh and violence, their hates and moral subversion, their evil. The young worshippers of new art forms in the pop and rock World are the same ones who contributed to the ranks of drug takers and, later, hatha yoga. They need violent thrills to sustain their interests. That is, they are primarily pleasure-seekers, not spiritual seekers. They are governed by moods and impulses. The romantic rubbish which fills the ears and attracts the eyes of the modern young through the communications media leads them into false pictures of the life which awaits them and so into false values. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

When a civilization finds its pleasures in witnessing plays which explore all aspects of pleasures of the flesh, seeing films exploring all aspects of brutality and crime, permitting sports as cruel as fox-hunting, it has become low in morals, vulgar in taste, and self-destructive in its universal law. It will fall, as Rome fell. In the time of Washington, the public men—Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Henry, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay—were a fair sampling of the good spirits in the country, humane, literate, brave, not self-seeking. (There is a remarkable letter of Jefferson’s to David Rittenhouse, urging him to waste no more time in mere politics, for the World needed him more in his capacity as a scientist.) By and large, it could not be said of our presidents and governors at present, the symbols of the country, that they are a fair sampling of the best of us. It would not be difficult to make a list of a hundred, or two hundred, who are superior to them in every relevant way, in whom a boy could feel pride and trust. Of course this is not a new trouble among us. Just as the European writers of the eighteenth century idolized our statesmen as if they were demigods, so in the nineteenth they spoke of their inferiority. This is the consequence of another missed revolution, the democratic revolution. A man of sense obviously cannot waste his life learning to sure to an ignorant electorate and coming up through political ranks in which disinterestedness and pure convictions are not the most handy virtues. Yet the fault is not with democracy, but that we have failed to have enough of it. For instance, if our emphasis had been on perfecting the town meeting and the neighbourhood commune, there would not be ignorant electors and they would choose great officers. If people had the opportunity to initiate community actions, they would be political; they would know that finally the way to accomplish something great is to get together with the like-minded and directly do it. However, the men in power do not think politically either. For instance, this year we have had the usual spectacle of politicians going about the country looking for nominators for the Presidency, presumably (why else?) because they have important new programs to offer. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

However, as soon as it becomes clear that the country leaders of the party do not want them, they retire from the race and rally to elect whomever. What becomes of the programs? Since this is what political responsibility means to a politician, why should the electorate respect politics, and how could an honest boy be inspired to enter on such a career? Characteristically, we have an immense amount of formal training in flourishing institutes for public administration at Harvard, Princeton, Syracuse, Tufts, etcetera, as if we could get the thing by learning the role. Commager sensibly concludes that training does not begin early enough and it lacks the content of actual experience. The environment does not encourage public service, it does not esteem public goods. Few fathers give much thought to the distant generations of posterity, and children do not take fire in reading about the great men of history and thinking “Why not I?” as a plausible purpose. And finally, says Commager, the narrow chauvinism and energetic hostility to subversive ideas that are now the test of our political are precisely disastrous to patriotism, for that must be spacious, disinterested, and broad-based, otherwise it is intolerable foolishness. The men who won our independence and laid the foundations of the America nation were devoted patriots but they were, too, me of the World. They were children of the enlightenment. Reason taught them that all men were brothers, that purely national distinctions were artificial, that there existed a great community of arts and letters and philosophy and science cutting across and transcending mere national boundaries. The nationalism of the eighteenth century did not rest on a narrow base but on a broad one. It did not find nourishment in fear and suspicion but in faith and confidence. Perhaps one reason for the decline in statesmanship is that we have hemmed our potential statesmen in, we have denied them tolerant and spacious ideas. As it is, what must be the effect on a boy when he comes to realize that the public spokesman up there is not even speaking his own words, but repeating, like performer, something written for him by a staff from Madison Avenue? The boy must learn to shout, “Shame! Make your own speech at least!” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Our present President (Mr. Biden) is an unusually uncultivated man. It is said that he has invited no real writer, no artist, no philosopher to the White House. Presumably he has no intellectual friends; that is his privilege. However, recently he invited the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a banquet and musical. And the formal music of the musical they listened to was Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got to Do with It” and such other numbers. (Well, at least he has great taste in music.) So anyway, in dealing with mental health, family therapy is often a good idea. Around 25 percent of persons who are recovering from schizophrenia live with family: parents, siblings, spouses, or children. Such situations create special pressures, so that even if family stress was not a factor in the onset of the disorder, a patient’s recovery may be greatly influenced by the behaviour and reactions of the relatives at home. Generally speaking, persons with schizophrenia who feel positively toward their relatives do better in treatment. Recovered patients living with relatives who display high levels of expressed emotion—that is, relatives who are very critically, emotionally overinvolved, and hostile—often have a higher relapse rate than those living with more positive and supportive relatives. For their part, family members may be greatly affected by the social withdrawal and unusual behaviours of a relative with schizophrenia. One individual complained, “In the evening you go into the sitting room and it’s darkness. You turn on the light and there he is just sitting there, staring in front of him.” To address such issues, clinicians now commonly include family therapy in their treatment of schizophrenia, providing family members with guidance, training, practical advice, psychoeducation about the disorder, and emotional support and empathy. In the family therapy, relatives develop more realistic expectation and become more tolerant, less guilt-ridden, and more willing to try to new patterns of communication. Family therapy also helps the person with schizophrenia cope with the pressures of family life, make better use of family members, and avoid troublesome interactions. Research has found that family therapy—particular when it is combined with drug therapy—helps reduce tension within the family and so helps relapse rates go down. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The principles of this approach are evident in the following description: Mark was a 32-year-old single man living with his parents. He had a long and stormy history of schizophrenia with many episodes of psychosis, interspersed with occasional brief periods of good functioning. Mark’s father was a bright but neurotically tormented man gripped by obsession and inhibitions in spite of many years of psychoanalysis. Mark’s mother appeared weary, detached, and embittered. Both parents felt hopeless about Mark’s chances of recovery and resentful that needing to care for him would always plague their lives. They acted as if they were being intentionally punished. It gradually emerged that the father, in fact, was riddle with guilt and self-doubt; he suspected that his wife had been cold and rejecting toward Mark as an infant he had failed to intervene, due to his unwillingness to confront his wife and the demands of graduate school that distracted him from home life. He entertained the fantasy that Mark’s illness was a punishment for this. Every time Marl did begin to show improvement—both in reduced symptoms and in increasing function—his parents responded as if it were just a cruel torment designed to raise their hopes and then to plunge them into deeper despair when Mark’s condition deteriorated. This patten was especially apparent when Mark got a job. As a result, at such times, the parents actually became more critical and hostile toward Mark. He would become increasingly defensive and insecure, finally developing paranoid delusions, and usually would be hospitalized in a panicky and agitated state. All of this became apparent during the psychoeducational session. When the pattern was pointed out to the family, they were able to recognize their self-fulfilling prophecy and were motivated to deal with it. As a result, the therapist decided to see the family together. Concrete instances of the pattern and its consequences were explored, and alternative responses by the parents were developed. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The therapist encouraged both the parents and Mark to discuss their anxieties and doubts about Mark’s progress, rather than to stir up one another’s expectations of failure. The therapist had regular individual sessions with Mark as well as the family session. As a result, Mark has successfully held a job for an unprecedented 12 months. The families of persons with schizophrenia may also turn to family support groups and family psychoeducational programs for assistance, encouragement, and advice. In such programs, family members meet with others in the same situation to share their thoughts and emotions, provide mutual support, and learn about schizophrenia. Although research has yet to determine the usefulness of these groups, the approach has become popular. Now, celibacy could also be another way to prevent mental illness and mood disorders because people are not potentially exposing themselves to the dark side of what could be a toxic relationship. In the Aztec empire, female virginity was so exalted, that a certified virgin was spoken of metaphorically as a precious jewel. A young woman was motivated to preserve hers by pride, reinforced by her terror of retribution. The disgusted gods would not rot her flesh and if he suspected her virginity was not intact, her husband would not reject her.Rejection would happen during the marriage festivities, on the sixth day. An unhappy husband would announce his wife’s misconduct by serving wedding guest their food in pierced dishes. She would not be stoned to death, as both men and women were for adultery, but she could expect either divorce or an eternally suspicious husband. In reality, this seldom happened, for Aztec maidens were thoroughly indoctrinated from childhood. A lyrical folk tale repeated a loving father’s counsel to his little daughter. “My precious necklace, my precious quetzal plume, my human creation, my offspring,” he croons. “You are my blood, my colour, in you is my image.” Then he warns her: “Do not give up your body in vain, my little daughter, my child, my little dove, my little girl…If…you cease being a virgin…you will be lost…you will never be under the protection of someone who truly loves you.” The ecstasy of pleasures of the flesh will become your bitterest memory and will haunt you forever, he concludes, because even your husband will always suspect your chastity. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

The Aztec preoccupation with premarital celibacy stemmed from their religious convictions and Worldview and forged a golden mean between excess and abstinence. By eliminating rivalries involving pleasures of the flesh, it greatly reduced tension between the military and the collective labourers. Another important feature of virginity was that it emphasized the difference between youth and adult. The Aztecs feared that emotional attachment resulting from an early experience with pleasures of the flesh might foster individuality or rebellious independence. This would seriously affect a young person’s relations with one’s family and one’s future life as a citizen in this highly regulated and hierarchical society. For quite different reasons, the tiny Enga societies of the New Guinea Highland also stressed bachelor virginity. After a half century of foreign contact, often with Australian and American anthropologist, the Enga number about 180,000 and live on the western side of the Hagen Mountain range. The Enga are subsistence farmers who specialize in cultivating sweet potatoes and raising pigs as symbols of wealth and prestige. They share a religious belief system that leads the unmarried men to accept celibacy. Indeed, this precept is so thoroughly instilled that few of them have the slightest desire to disobey it. The Engas’ supreme creator is Aitawe, who inhabits the upper World along with the sky beings, the yalyakali. The underworld is populated by ghost, or timango, mighty spirits who interfere constantly in human affairs and sometimes kill humans by biting them, though each timango is restricted to a single death-by-biting. Timango are malign, and the Enga devote much time to placating them. In particular, they must observe tradition, for the timango strike the entire clan to punish a single clam member’s transgression. The Enga must also maneuver between the negative and positive forces of their World. Some negative forces are women, mothers, grandmothers, women’s private areas, and ghosts. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Their positive opposites are men, fathers, grandfathers, the male organ, and sky deities. Marriage, then, is a union of polarities, often contracted between members of warring clans: “We marry the people we fight!” one Enga clan trumpets. This is not as anomalous a system of material selection as it might first appear, because the Enga notion of war is more stylized than real—one anthropologist describes them as “balletic episodes.” To foreign eyes, Enga battles resemble fencing matches or duels between fight leaders or bands of warriors armed with bows and arrows. Bloodshed is limited and death infrequent. After a day of fighting, the combatants engage in ritual rhetoric. Later, Enga Big Men on both sides present each other with impessive gifts of pork to mark the return of peace. Men marry for the first time at twenty to thirty years old, women between fifteen and eighteen years. Both should be chaste, the bride so her clanspeople may arrange a suitable marriage, the groom because only upon marriage can he acquire magical protection against the dangerous consequences of pleasures of the flesh with women or contact with his wife when she dealing with “female” concerns. The bachelor “knows,” for example, that touch a woman who is dealing with “female” concerns will, in the absence of magic sicken a man and cause persistent vomiting, turn his blood black, corrupt his vital juices so that his skin darkens and wrinkles as his flesh wastes, permanently dull his wits, and eventually lead to a slow decline and death. This “knowledge” is just the beginning. At about fifteen years, Enga boys join bachelor associations and remain members for about a decade, when they marry. Ritual baths protect them from the female influence, and ceremonies preserve the flora that is their subclan’s heritage. Ritual retreats enhance the bachelor’s physical appearance, including growing the hair, a symbol of masculinity and physical stamina, which must never be cut or even coiffed against the proud possessors’ wishes. Pleasures of the flesh by any of these bachelors would endanger them all and kill their precious plant life. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The bachelors would beat any offender and fine him the price of a pig in compensation for the harm he has done them. They avoid looking at each other’s private areas and prudishly refrain from mentioning pleasures of the flesh or bodily functions in their conversations. At four-day retreats, essentially bachelors’ purification rituals, the agenda is instruction in Enga lore and magic and preparation of appropriate costumes and wigs. In most Enga societies, everyone but disabled adults will marry, so the preparatory activities for future husbands are compulsory, and participants take them seriously. Enga premarital chastity is integrally linked to ghost, the wrathful timango who serve all human activity and even penetrate thoughts and that is why men need magical protection. Premarital chastity may also serve another, unacknowledged purpose: to limit population growth, desirable in this cramped society with such limited resources, where was perpetually flare between clans trying to subsist on barely adequate land. This extends to the mores dealing with pleasures of the flesh of married couples, who enjoy intimate passions infrequently and, apart from their initial coupling, never near their gardens, whose fertility they fear contaminating. These negative emotions are just like physical ills: they too require treatment, and are not to be left in neglect. These negative thoughts have a habit of pushing themselves into one’s consciousness. One must just as often resolutely push them out again. In every human difficulty there are two ways open to us. The common way is familiar enough: it consists in reacting egoistically and emotionally with self-centered complaint, irritability, fear, anger, despair, and so one. The uncommon way is taken by a spiritually minded few: it consists in making something good out of something bad, and in reacting selflessly, calmly, constructive, and hopefully. This is the way of practical philosophy, this attempt to transform what outwardly seems so harmful into what inwardly at least must be markedly beneficent. It is a magical work. However, it can only be done by deep thought, self-denial, and love. If the difficulty is regarded as both a chance to show what we can do to develop latent resources as well as a test of what we have already developed, it can be made to help us. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Even if we do not succeed in changing an unfavourable environment for the better, such an approach would to some extent change ourselves for the better. We must accept, with all its tremendous implication for our past, present, and future, that we are ultimately responsible for the conditions which stamp our life. Such acceptance may help to shatter our egoism and that, even though it is painful, will be all to the good. Out of its challenge can come the most blessed change in ourselves. Truth twisted into service of the lower purposes or even the evil forces must be carefully inspected, analysed, and lastly corrected or rejected. Now, as we look at institutions of today and how they interact, it becomes clear that what America confronts today is not simply a runaway acceleration of change but a significant mismatch between the demands of the fast-growing new economy and the inertial institutional structure of the old society. Can a hyperspeed, twenty-first-century info-biological economy continue to advance? Or will society’s slow-paced, malfunctioning, obsolete institutions grind its progress to a halt? Bureaucracy, closed courts, legislative myopia, regulatory gridlock and pathological incrementalism cannot but take their toll. Something, it would appear, will have to give. Few problems will prove more challenging than the growing systemic dysfunctionality of so many related but desynchronized institutions. If Americans want the enormous benefits of a World-leading economy, the United States of America will have to root out, replace or radically restructure its legacy institutions that stand in the way. As change accelerates still further, institutional crises will not be limited to the United States of America. Every country in the twenty-first-century World economy—including China, India, Japan, and the European Union nations—will need to invent new style institutions and adjust the balance between synchronization and de-synchronization. Some countries may find that more difficult than the United States of America, whose culture, at least, smiles on change-makers. In any case, while our partially tongue-in-cheek speed rankings are certainly debatable, one central reality is not: All across the board—at the level of families, firms, industries, national economies and the global system itself—we are now making the most sweeping transformation ever in the links between creation and the deep fundamental of time itself. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Whenever a strong impulse becomes uppermost and inclines one toward some deed or speech of a negative kind, one had better scrutinize its source or nature as quickly as one can. Enjoy your youth, be polite and clean so people will want you are a neighbour, employee, and friend. We harmed no animals in Eden, but afterwards, when things got hard, we forgot the peaceful kindship of that ancient kingdom. So people began to see humans as soulless, of no good reason, and no rational speech. We then made a chain of things to protect us—fire, medicine, our locking houses, many kinds of clothes. We pray that we will see the face of everything thing in Heaven. We thank God for the tasks we shared together, and for the hours we communed here with Thee; for the joys we found in the fellowship of worship, for the blessings of courage, comfort and peace; for the will to strive and the wisdom to accomplish, for hope when despondent and faith when in doubt; for comrades who laboured, devotedly loyal, with spirit undaunted, with vision undimmed; for all these we thank Thee and praise Thee, our Father; Thy House is our refuge, our buttress, our strength, our bond with the past, our hope for the future, our fathers’ bequest and our children’s sacred trust. We reverently pause to recall those departed, who loyally served with heart and with hand; they live in this Sanctuary they helped to establish, they live in our thoughts, in our prayers, in our deeds. O may we maintain and preserve what they builded, and bring to fruition the seeds they have sown. We come with our children to pray at Thine altar, that their hearts, like ours, maybe lifted to Thee, to find here the truths that their forefathers cherished, and make this their Holy Place, even as we. Our old and our young who worship together, renew here the pledge that their forefathers made. Accept then, O Lord, our hearts’ earnest devotion, and keep us united in service to Thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD

Residence Three is the largest of the single story homes offered in Cresleigh Havenwood. A porch welcomes you upon entry to the home. Inside you will find an expansive 2,827 square feet; you’ll be hard pressed to a contemporary floorplan that offers this much space.

This floor plan is a perfect choice for couples, growing families, and singles who like to entertain.

There are four bedrooms, two and one half bathrooms, and a three car garage. Utilize the den as your own private study or convert into an optional fifth bedroom if needed.