No More Cold Eggs–Societies for the Reformation of Morals

How simple it is to see that all the worry in the World cannot control the future. Leaders set aside a portion of each day (even if it is only a matter of minutes) for quiet time devoted to prayer, meditation, imaging, or just daydreaming. Learn to value your time alone—when you value something you are keener to protect it. Humans who are wholly selfish, cunning, combative, ambitious, and unscrupulous represent the dark principle and become dangerous to society. Sentimentality is not spirituality. It is true we give our goodwill to all humankind, and so we give it to those who are the instruments of dark forces. However, that does not mean weakness or foolishness in our dealings with them. Life will teach them. Leave them alone. Brotherhood? No, be the thought far from me. They are Adam’s children—alas, yes, I well remember that, and never shall forget it; this rage and sorrow. However, they have gone over the dragons; they have quitted the Father’s house, and set up with the Old Serpent; till they return, how can they be brothers? They are enemies, deadly to themselves and to me and to you, till then; till then, while hope yet lasts I will treat them as brothers fallen insane. Those who have scientifically engaged in psychical research know that a psychological belt wherein a host of evil Earth-bound spirits are congregated surrounds this planet. Physical researchers are aware too that such obsessing entities become most active at night, as anyone may discover by watching the conduct of a possessed person. A human being can be infested astrally with psychic vermin as one can be with physical vermin. The wise human refuses to accept removable evils and avoidable sufferings. If one finds oneself brought by circumstances into the society of evil-minded people, the first step to self-protection should be to switch the mind instantly into remembrance of the witness-self and to keep it there throughout the period of contact. To turn inwards persistently when in the presence of such discordant persons is to nullify any harmful or disturbing effect they might otherwise have on our thoughts. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

This instant and unhesitating turning inward is also an effective method of insulating oneself against the currents of fear, despair, and weakness which misfortune often generates. If the student feels evil forces have attacked one from time to time, let one pray earnestly every day for self-purification and make the sign of the cross whenever one becomes aware of their presence, at the same time invoking the help of whatever power or personage one feels inspires one most. In times of terrible danger, one should stick to one’s faith in the divine power as a protective talisman. Whenever one is in difficulty, one should drop all fear and trouble temporarily from one’s mind and imagine oneself handing them over to one’s higher Self, thereby surrendering oneself to its will, help, and protection. When there is evidence of being obsessed by a spirit-entity, the only radical cure is exorcism. Unless one has the guidance of an actualized Christian, the following is suggested: First, one should try sleeping with a green-coloured night light burning throughout the night. It should be placed not more than eighteen inches from the bed. If this fails, then an ordinary non-coloured bulb may be substituted, thus giving a stronger light. The inconvenience of trying to sleep with the bedroom illuminated will only exist for a few days or a few weeks and will vanish as the eyes become accustomed to the new habit. It may even be averted by covering the eyes with a black silk bandage. In addition to this, one must pray, and combine this with creative meditation, wherein one actually pictures the freed condition desired during the night. One should also pray and meditate prior to retiring. One must learn to control one’s thoughts—deliberately driving out the memory of undesirable psychic experiences or of any individual possessing “evil powers.” One should take the protective words, “Jesus Christ, I am with You always” and repeat them to oneself, trying to realize their truth and meaning. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

The student who has got involved with sorcery or black magic must cut off every possible connection and communication with the source of evil. Then, one must destroy or get rid of any articles or writings in one’s possession coming from it. One must express repentance for one’s errors of judgment and pray for guidance in the future. One needs for such psychic encounters the faith, the courage, and the knowledge which may come with time and growth. One needs such an attitude as George Fox had when, thrust into a cell haunted by the ghost of men’s murderers, he exclaimed, “I told them if all the spirits and devils in hades were there, I was over them in the power of God, and feared no such thing.” One who is confronted with a choice of evils must call in the help of the higher power. Even trouble can be turned to self-educative uses, and some kind of benefit gained out of the experience. However, this can happen more easily and more quickly only if the willingness to learn is there, and only if a corresponding surrender of self is present. It is then that so-called evil is converted to so-called good. What Jesus Christ taught over two thousand years ago is still true—even more true, if that could be, for it has the proofs afforded by all history during that time: hatred cannot end by being returned, nothing will dissolve it save a generous and patient goodwill. A friend who has turned against you and become an enemy can be met in a better way. Instead of getting angry or resentful for one’s unkind words or actions, try to turn one over benevolently to the higher power. If you succeed in entering the Stillness for a period with your last thought being such a wish for one, this will be, in the end, more effective. It will make it possible for one’s attitude to be modified and for one’s own hurt feelings to calm down. The more you forget one in the Stillness, the better the result will be for both of you. Some religions associate grief with the evil principle, and therefore shun it. Summon the strength to refuse to receive other people’s negative opinions. Say plainly that they are certainly entitled to their views, but you would rather not discuss them and would prefer some other subject—providing it is optimistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Instead of hating your enemy, and meeting punches with punches, one’s sin with your sin, try another way, Christ’s way. This involves real risk, moral courage, and mental flexibility. It requires willingness to endure and suffer for what is right, a trust in spiritual principle rather than in brute power. One is competent to deal with life who equips oneself to deal with its darker sides as well as with its brighter ones, with its difficulties and sufferings no less than with its joys and successes. We cannot ignore the spirit of our times without inviting failure, and we cannot despise it without inviting danger. We must need to face its reality. Throw out negative feelings, expel resentments against other persons, and one will be better and happier person. Every negative thought about others cut it out at once by a smile to yourself, looking at your higher Self dealing with it. At the heart of every atom of every Universe there is Spirit, divine and deathless. It is for this reason that any human society based upon its denial has no future and cannot survive. As long as humans exists, one will need to satisfy inner hunger, to find spiritual comfort, to receive holy communion, and to hear words of eternal truth. The sight of evil humans rising to power over stupid or stupefied masses has brought good human to despair. However, the Universe has room for both. It is a school for all and the outcome of its instruction is yet to be seen. It may well be that those who have banished the religious faith of childhood from their hearts and replaced it by the scientific scepticism of adulthood, followed by the political cynicism of maturity, will end by banishing hope, too. The perversity of humankind, the hypocrisy of its leaders, and the presence of materialistic society may well seem to justify it. Through ignorance of destiny’s laws and through weaknesses in one’s psychological being, humans create the conditions which must finally express themselves in violent conflict with one’s fellows. Most people have failed to recognize that the forces of destiny are back of these events. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Even the powerful impact of such stirring events as history has recorded in our times has not been enough to bring about this recognition. Yet they sense their own helplessness, although they do not understand that it is the very inevitability of their retribution from misusing the Universal Law which has made them feel this helplessness. Some humans radiate animosity as others radiate goodwill. The unfortunate members of the first class are victims of their own negative thinking. Those of us who have been born and brought up in democratic countries like England and the United States of America rightly resent the idea of living under oppressive dictatorship. Yet we tend to overlook the fact that even in such countries the State is itself becoming more and more formidably dictatorial as it becomes more and more centralized. Those of us who value individuality and freedom are coming into inner conflict with it—some of us even into outer conflict. Humans who are scarcely sane, who are either pathological cases or in need of psychological treatment, become heroes and leaders among the young. Confronted in actual firsthand experience by the terrors and errors, the tragedies and sufferings of these decades, the serious mind could lose its balance enough to declare life an unmitigated evil. The disciples of Materialism say that the execution of 3000-odd persons in the French Revolution was a small price to pay for the beneficial reforms which it brought about. However, only the philosopher can trace the line of connection between its hatred and violence and the Napoleonic wars which soon followed it, taking a half million French lives and hundreds of thousands wounded, mutilated, or crippled French bodies; these too must be added to the cost of hatred, the price of violence. Cunning criminals and brutal plotters have found whole nations willing to follow them. These sinister figures seek, and often get, key positions in politics, organized groups, etcetera, and from there manipulate the mass and use them as blind unwitting tools. If we are to report faithfully at all, when we examine the forces which are active in the heart of sick humanity today, we must report little hope for the patient’s future. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Spiritual faith is stronger in a few individuals but weaker in the great masses. The future is bright for better machines yet dark for better morals. A moral awakening and religious renewal was hoped for. That, unfortunately, is not the situation which has actually developed. Humanity has suffered but has not been prepared enough by its sufferings to let the new spirit have entry into its heart. Nothing is gained by blinking at these facts. The end of the war did not bring that new spirit amongst humankind which is the prerequisite to a better era. The social, political, and economic structures now being erected will not succeed without it. It is a waste of time to enter any public activity which is foredoomed to defeat. This disadvantage of attempting to avoid sufficient consideration of these truths and of shutting one’s eyes to their consequences, is that the pleasanter time thereby gained is much more than offset by the immense worsening of the climax when it does come. Too many find their work boring, their careers futile, and their lives aimless. The result is spiritual torpor. In other times what they sought from drink or pleasures of the flesh, ambition or adventure, was happiness. However, in these times what they seek from them is—short of ending their lives (which is NOT recommended)—refuge from unbearable hopelessness and fatiguing uselessness. They must be uneasy whose hearts are spiritually empty but whose World is full of menace. The past has become a grave of buried hopes, the present a dulled waiting for better times, and the future a bitter blankness which will not bear contemplation. Just as the introduction of poisons into the human body harms it, so the introduction of unsuitable materials and forces into the Earth’s body will harm it too. Nature brings its own retribution to its dwellers for what they do to the planet. This applies just as much to the introduction of mental and psychical pollutions into the invisible atmosphere or aura. The magnetic relationship between the two Earth poles has been disturbed by the excessive amounts of radiation poured lately into space, with great weather disturbance as a result. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

A despondent outlook can be an effective obstacle to hearing the Overself’s voice. History, both ancient and modern, shows that there is much evil in humankind, that its stupefying effects leads not only to an unwillingness to listen to truth and an unreadiness to understand it, but also to a hostile malignity against it expressed through vituperation and opposition. Resistance to the spiritual forces and rejection of their message must lead in the end to the destructive penalties of which war, pestilence, and flood are instances. We have tried broadly to paint some of the background conditions that discourage patriotism: the lack of bona fides about our liberties, the dishonourable politics in the Universities, the irresponsible press, the disillusioning handling of the adventure in space, the inferior and place-seeking high officers of the State, the shameful neglect of our landscape and the disregard of community; later we shall speak of our trivial leisure which has no community meaning. However, besides these not usually mentioned background conditions, there are of course the persistent immediate uglinesses that everybody talks about and every child sees: the cases of graft, social injustice, stupid law, and injustice to persons. Yet in an important sense, these scandals do not discourage patriotism, so long as there is the feeling of a persistent effort against them. My guess is that more pride of country is engendered by one good decision, or even a good powerful dissenting opinion, of the at least traditional Supreme Court, than by billions of repetitions of the pledge of allegiance. Racial segregation and prejudice destroy community by definition, and we need not discuss them. Here again the revolution commenced in Jefferson’s time and recommenced by the abolitionists, went unfinished; and we have inherited the consequences. However, it is perhaps useful to point out again that, when there is prejudice, the community of the dominant class is equally destroyed. Some people, for instance, talk a blatant patriotism and a specious regionalism grounded in nothing but keep some groups of people marginalized. The result is that flag and cross have become contemptible in their own eyes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Real regionalism, that finds its culture and satisfaction in its own geography and economy and can withstand the temptations of the national cash-nexus, has long ago succumbed to Madison Avenue, Hollywood, and Wall Street. Now that law and religion side against them, the groups who like to discriminate are manic with wounded conceit and intimate fear; their behaviour or integration should be referred not to the Attorney General but to the Public Health Service. All this has come banging down on the children as the battleground. Yet, paradoxically, among all young people it is perhaps just the young people are the ones who find life worth living these days, because something real is happening in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. (In some cities and towns, also, the children are thrown into a central position in the community crisis of exclusion and prejudice, but sometimes as peacemakers. Here is an interesting architectural example. It has become common to use the new centralized school building as the community building for meetings and recreation. One reason is economy. However, another reason that is given is that the school is the one community function that brings together the otherwise discordant elements in the neighbourhood, so maybe the adults can get together in the school. It is a curious situation when the grownups have to rely on the children to make sense for them and when the school building is the chief community building. However, it is better than nothing.) Deep in the organized system itself there has been an important new effort toward community. The postwar boom in young marriages and the sensational rise in the urban birth rate that for the first time promises to surpass the rural birth rate, have been accompanied by the moving of affluent workmen to suburban projects and of the middle status to ranch houses. These new settlements devote time and energy to common interest. Do they do anything for local patriotism? They are communities for small children, one to five, and for women as the mothers of small children. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

These are the groups in society unequivocally benefited by high production, full employment, and the high standard of living. They thrive on animal security. Labour-saving devices make the World of the infants much pleasanter. Morally and vocationally, there is no question that having and caring for the children is justified work for the mothers, necessary, honoured, and using good human capacities. Women have real jobs, and men are likely to be certified public accountants or politicians. Today, when so many work in the Rat Race, few would deny that this is correct. So now men too try earnestly to devote themselves to the small ones as a secondary but real career. This is called the New Fatherhood. The child World, in the suburbs and surrounding country, and somewhat less in the city, is the best that small children have had in modern times. The new psychology of belonging is feeble stud, but the new psychology of infant care has been radical: no toilet training, permissive thumb sucking and so forth, free crying and movement, exposure to the grownups’ bare skin, honest answers to questions. The new medicine gets them quickly over the usual diseases (though there is debate about the later consequences). The school system as a whole is poor, but the nursery schools are often first-rate, progressive, and have intelligent and dedicated young teachers. It is said that children’s toys and games are excellent, practical and imaginative, up to the age of six, when the commercial criteria of the eleven-billion-dollar market begin to operate. For the adults, the improvement of this child’s World results in genuine community participation, committee meetings and lectures on psychology, concern for traffic and zoning, and even extension courses in cultural subjects to create the proper atmosphere for growing up. It seems astonishing, given so much active participation, that these community activities have not much developed into other important political and social action. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

However, courage gives out at the political issues relevant to age six. The sponsorship and control of the organized system are everywhere apparent. (For instance, in a recent agitation that has prevented some marginalized groups from moving into Deerfield, a suburb of Chicago—average income per person $93,026.91-$103, 363.24—an “attractive young married couple” explained that most of their friends had most of their money tied up in their houses: “We do not expect to live in them very long. Some of the junior execs expect to become seniors and move to the real North Shore, and a lot of us will be transferred all over the United States of America. When this happens, we want to be sure our houses have resale value.” The spiritedness of this speaks for itself.) Unfortunately, when the adults devote themselves thus to the child’s World, there is not much World for the child to grow up into in the next stage. For Father to guide his growing son, it is necessary for him to have a community of his own and be more of a man. In the circumstances this is difficult. However, if there is no big environment, there are no grounds for patriotism. The corporations, however, have now entered into this arena too, to organize the next stage of growing up. This is the meaning, surely of the publicity that has been trumped up for the Little League, the baseball teams of subteen-agers sponsored and underwritten by various business firms. What value the Little League has as play, I do not know, I have not watched games. The high-pressure advertising has been violently denounced by the older sports writers as giving kids an unsportsmanlike taste for publicity. As a school of rulemaking, responsibility, and impersonality, the Little League certainly cannot compare with the free games of the street, but we saw that these have been passing away. Economically, however, the function of the Little League is clear-cut: it is child labour, analogous to ten-year-olds picking hemp in the factory one hundred and sixty years ago: it keeps idle hands out of mischief; it is not profitable as production, but it provides valuable training in attitude and work habits. Viewed so, the suburban and exurban trends are the formation of a new proletariat, producers of offspring. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Naturally the Public Relations have been unable to restrain themselves from invading the public schools. The classes are flooded with pamphlets and documentary films on electronics and the introduction of cows into New Zealand (Oh, and in America, we are do thankful to the Europeans because so many of us love red meat and it is not native to America.), put out by Consolidated Edison, Ford, Shell, Westinghouse, the National Dairy Council, Union Carbide, Bell, etcetera, and even Merrill Lynch. These proclaim their sponsorship with more or less discreet plugs. In the ninth grade, however, at a New York City school I know well, they have spent class time with an item called The Educational ABC’s of Industry, a collection of advertisements interlarded with reading matter; and the class was actually required, by a teacher distracted by overwork, to copy out jingles in which C stands for Orange-Crush, “taste it and see,” and F for the Ford Motor Company, “where the first car grew.” I would gladly share this literature with the reader, but is publisher has not given me permission. Also, why not allow corporations to advertise in schools. Like for example when teaching the ABC. A could stand for Audi, B for BMW, C for Cadillac, instead of charging a Mello-Roos. We need to find ways for government institutions to make money besides through taxes and consumer spending. Allow, for instance, NASA to build private airplanes that car fly to space and manufacture cars. Imagine how good they would be with the technology they have. Now, when we consider some of uncontrolled debaucher in society, there are some consequences for this. There were countries that proposed to protect a great many virgins by legalizing a limited number of people who were allowed to solicitate intimate passions. The rationale for this moral triage—for every three virgins, there would be one person who was allowed compensation for indulging in pleasures of the flesh. However, solicitation became so widespread that Societies for the Reformation of Morals, moral vigilantes who hunted down and prosecuted sinners, had sprung up everywhere. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The gravest consequences of solicitation were illnesses, which, in two Centuries, made such incredible Havock all over the World. The Innocents had to suffer by it as well as the Guilty: Men gave it to their Wives, Women to the Husbands, or perhaps their Children…so that no Age, Gender, or Condition could be entirely safe from the Infection. Other terrible consequences were that children without a father to claim them were terminated after birth, lascivious young men refrained from marrying because they prefer to indulge in pleasures of the flesh with hired help, and marriages were destroyed by errant husbands. Seduced young maidens are were ruined when a “slip of this nature was discovered” because afterward, they have no chance of marrying and were often forced into becoming women of the evening. However, at the bottom of it all, the blame is with human nature. Because pleasures of the flesh are taught to be something everyone should enjoy. To counterbalance their innate sensuality, social pressures were employed. All young woman were to have strong notions of honour carefully inoculated into them from their infancy. Young girls were taught to hate solicitors, because they knew what the “word” is implying in these circumstances; and when they grow up, they find their Worldly interest entirely depending upon the reputation of their chastity; and it is upon this compound of natural and artificial chastity, that every woman’s real actual chastity depends. This shrewd analyses of seduction and courting rituals, painfully reminiscent though cleverer by far than the offerings in many modern women’s magazines, explained how women calculate their dream guy will continue to love them as they have struggled to maintain their chastity and surrendered it only after being “stormed” or seduced. Wrong, wrong, wrong, of course—but by then, chastity is a thing of the past, but many would like to revive it. Especially because many people dislike the double standards between genders. At the heart of the matter, they only way to preserve female chastity, is to prevent the men from laying siege to it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Legislation against impropriety, of course, will not work well because cities and states cannot claim they own human bodies, as slavery was already outlawed. However, a campaign to advocate abstinence and celibacy is an excellent idea because it will advise people of the risks involved in being unchaste and make it clear that the male and the female are both responsible from preserving their own bodies and health. Yet many critics say that is the job of the church and the parents. Also, a system of carefully regulated “solicitation” is not a solution. The double standard would remain in full force, laundered and made tolerable by decriminalizing “solicitation.” All women suffer a hangover from our long understanding of the relationship between wives, nuns, and virgins. Virtually every woman who was not an aristocrat had to uphold an ideology of respectability and chastity that is distinguishes her from an unchaste person. Of course, there are some other things people were outraged about involving this double standard, which we will discuss tomorrow. Now, people recovering from schizophrenia need medication, psychotherapy, help in handling daily pressures and responsibilities, guidance in making decisions, training in social skills, residential supervision, and vocational counseling—a combination of services sometimes assertive community treatment. Those whose communities help them meet these needs make greater progress than people living in other communities. Some of the key features of effective community care programs are coordination of patient services, short-term hospitalization, partial hepatization, supervised residencies, and occupational training. When the Community Mental Health Act was first passed, it was expected that community care would be provided by a community mental health center, a treatment facility that would supply medication, psychotherapy, and inpatient emergency care to people with severe disturbances, as well as coordinate the services offered by other community agencies. Each center was expected to serve a geographic area with a population of 50,000 to 200,000 people. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

When community mental health centers are available and do in fact provide these services, patients with schizophrenia often make significant progress. They are better integrated into the community and function more effectively than patients who receive only standard outpatient care. Coordination of services is particularly important for the so-called mentally ill chemical abusers (MICAs), patients with schizophrenia as well as a substance-related disorder. When people develop symptoms of schizophrenia, today’s clinicians first try to treat them on an outpatient basis, usually with a combination of antipsychotic mediation and psychotherapy. If this approach fails, short-term hospitalization—in a mental hospital or a general hospital’s psychiatric unit—that lasts a few weeks (rather than months or years) may be tried. Soon after the patients improve, they are released for aftercare, a general term for follow-up care and treatment in the community. Short-term hospitalization usually leads to greater improvement and a lower rehospitalization rate than extended institutionalization. Countries throughout the World now favour this policy. People’s need may fall between full hospitalization and outpatient therapy, and so some communities offer day centers or day hospitals, all-day programs in which patients return to their homes for the night. Such programs actually originated in Moscow in 1933, when a shortage of hospital beds necessitated the premature release of many patients. Today’s day center provides patients with daily supervised activities, therapy, and programs to improve social skills. People recovering from schizophrenia in day centers often do better than those who spend extended periods in a hospital or in traditional outpatient therapy. Another kind of institution that has become a popular setting for the treatment of people with schizophrenia is the semihospital, or residential crisis center. Semihospitals are houses or other structure in the community that provide 24-hour nursing care for people with mental disorders. Many individuals who would otherwise be cared for in state hospital are being transferred to these virtual hospitals. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Many people do not require hospitalization but, at the same time, are unable to live alone or with their families. Halfway houses, also known as crisis houses or group homes, often serve individuals well. Such residences may shelter between one and two dozen people. The live-in staff usually are paraprofessionals—lay people who receive training and ongoing supervision from outside mental health professionals. Those houses are usually run with a milieu therapy philosophy that emphasizes mutual support, resident responsibility, and self-government. Research indicates that halfway houses help many people recovering from schizophrenia adjust to community life and avoid rehospitalization. Here is how one woman described living in a halfway house after 10 hospitalizations in 12 years: “The halfway house changed my life. First of all, I discovered that some of the staff members had once been clients in the program! That one single fact offered me hope. For the first time, I saw proof that a program could help someone, that it was possible to regain control over one’s life and become independent. The house was democratically run; all residents had one vote and the staff members, outnumbered 5 to 22, could not make rules or even discharge a client from the program without majority sentiment. There was a house bill of right that was strictly observed by all. We helped one another and gave support. When residents were in a crisis, no staff member hustled them off or increased their medication to calm them down. Residents could cry, be comforted and hugged until a solution could be found, or until they accepted that it was okay to feel bad. Even anger was an acceptable feeling that did not have to be feared, but could be expressed and turned into constructive energy. If you disliked some aspects of the program or the bahviour of a staff member, you could change things rather than passively accept what was happening. Choices were real, and failure and successes were accepted equally. Bit by bit, my distrust faltered and the fears lessened. I slept better and made friends. Other residents and staff members who had hallucinated for years now were able to control their hallucinations shared with me some of the techniques that had worked for them. Things like diet…and interpersonal relationships became a few of my tools.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Paid employment provides income, independence, self-respect, and the stimulation of working with others. It also brings companionship and order to one’s daily life. For these reason, occupational training and placement are important services for people with schizophrenia. Many people recovering from this disorder receive occupational training in sheltered workshop—a supervised workplace for employees who are not ready for competitive or complicated jobs. The workshop replicates a typical work environment: products such as toys or simple appliances are manufactured and sold, workers are paid according to performance, and all are expected to be at work regularly and on time. For some, the sheltered workshop becomes a permanent workplace. For others, it is an important step toward better-paying and more demanding employment or a return to a previous job. In the United States of America, occupational training is not consistently available to people with severe mental disorders. Some studies find that fewer than 15 percent of such people are completive employed. The way the World works, is not always perfect, but many people try hard. In a perfect timed World, friends would never show up late, breakfast eggs would never be cold and kids would always come home on schedule. Better yet, inventories would be reduced to zero, eliminating their various costs, including storage, maintenance, management and warehousing. Best of all, meeting would always begin and end on time. However, what kind of economy would result? In economics, the term balanced growth has been loosely used to mean many things. For some, it suggests that environmental factors are taken into account. For others, it signifies the inclusion of transportation or take your pick of other factors in the definition of “growth.” It can mean growth that occurs when capital and labour inputs (adjusted for productivity) increase at the same rate. Alternatively, it can imply an equal emphasis on agriculture and industry in development policy. In the 1960s, and ‘70s, a school of “balanced growth” economists argued that the best way for an economy to develop was for all sectors to grow at the same rate, with the relations of all inputs and outputs held steady. This was, in fact, a call for perfectly synchronized development—a belief that the path to ever-growing wealth was through ever-greater synchrony. However, things are not that simple. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

These theorists brushed aside something important. Perfect synchronization, holding key variables in fixed relationships, makes any system inflexible, inert and slow to innovate. It creates an all-or-nothing game in which you have to change everything at once or change nothing at all. And changing everything at once, still less proportionally, is extremely difficult. By contrast, as economist Joseph Schumpeter showed, economic development also requires “gales of creative destruction”—winds of change that annihilate old, backward technologies and industries to make way for the new and disruptive ones. And the first thing creative destruction tears up is yesterday’s timetable. Every firm, every financial system, every national economy needs, therefore, both synchronization and some degree of de-synchronization. Unfortunately, at present we lack both the data and the metrics that would help us know when we are about to crash the limits of either. What might be called “chronomics”—the study of timing in the economy—is still primitive at best. What is clear, however, is that time adjustment is now so complex and important that a big, booming synchronization industry has grown up around it. This industry experienced three “great leaps forward” between the mid-1980s and the first quarter of the new century. Today it is a gain. Tomorrow it will be even bigger. In 1985, when the Institute of Industrial Engineers published a book called Innovations in Management: The Japanese Corporation, the term Kanban—what the West came to call the “just-in-time” principle or JIT—hardly rated mention. Manufacturing in the United States of America was still dominated by something called material requirements planning or MRP, a mainframe-based system for scheduling factory resource requirements. MPR’s purpose was to produce parts and products according to a present schedule. The JIT system, by contrast, first developed by Toyota, allowed the customers’ changing needs to set the schedule. It made flexible timing practical. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

By 1990, when the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in the United States of America published its Competing in World-Class Manufacturing report, JIT had already become a buzzword in America and was spreading throughout manufacturing. Soon management consultants jumped on board the JIT express and sped its implementation. IBM, Motorola, Harley-Davidson and scored of other leading firms adopted it. A study of 291 diverse manufacturing facilities in the United States of America and in 128 in thirty other countries found that, as the NCMA summarized it, “of the many potential means of improving productivity, only JIT-related ones were statistically shown to be consistently effective. What JIT did, however, was shave time tolerances even more closely. And that required far more sophisticated synchronization than ever before. Another burst of change in business began when consultants Jim Champy and Michael Hammer, in their best-selling book Reengineering the Corporation, told managers to “reengineer” their firms when “leading competitors achieve significantly shorter cycles,” when the organization responds a single supplier and required the restructuring of entire long supply chains in the 1990s and early 2000s. Not only did first-tier markers of components have to deliver them as needed, but second-tier suppliers did as well, in order to accelerate through-put and reduce inventories. The goal was tighter synchronization at every level. Huge companies such as Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft and scores of others offering enterprise resource planning (ERP) and related software owe their very existence, in substantial measure, to the mounting demand for smarter and closer timing in business. Hundreds of consulting firms by now were heavily into the synchronization business. SAP or Oracle, say, would sell the software. Then I.T. consultants would be called in to implement it. Anderson Consulting (now Accenture), one of the largest consulting firms in the World, owed much of its remarkable growth to the new synchronization systems. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

The greater the synchronization, the greater the value added to the entire supply chain’s performance. No wonder some UPS delivery trucks bear the slogan: “Synchronizing the World of Commerce.” The synchronization industry still has a long way to go—and grow. First, many small firms that have not yet restructured their supply and/or value chains will increasingly be compelled to do so. Second, synchronizing supply and distribution chains is only one step toward tomorrow’s deeper and more comprehensive temporal integration. Now the synchronizers want to do more than sell just the initial software. They also want to service their direct customers and tier after tier of downstream customers stretching all the way to the end user. Indeed, it may even extend beyond that someday because more and more products may be returned to the manufacturer for recycling, as is already the case with autos in European and printer ink cartridges in the United States of America. All these changes multiply layer after layer of suppliers, distributors, servicers and users needing synchronization. Last, the synchronization industry will expand because rising competition requires innovation after innovation, each of which, in turn, changes timing requirements and requires resynchronization. However, the hidden paradox of the law of de-synchronization is that the more you synchronize at one level in a system, the more you de-synchronize at another. If price decisions are taken neither continuously nor in perfect synchronization, the process of adjustment of all prices to a new nominal level will imply temporary movements in relative prices. It might then well be that, to avoid these movements in relative prices, each price setter will want to move one’s own price slowly compared to others. The result will be a slow movement of all prices to their new nominal level, and substantial inertia of the price level. Even small departures from perfect synchronization can generate substantial price level inertia. If price decisions are desynchronized, even anticipated movements in money will usually have an effect on economic activity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

It is however possible to find paths of money deceleration which reduce inflation at no cost in output. Price desynchronization has implicated for relative price movements as well as for the price level. Goods early in the chain of production have more price and profit variability than good further down the chain. Price inertia, if it is due to price desynchronization, may be difficult to remove. It may well be that, given the timing decisions of others, no agent has an incentive to change one’s own timing decision: the time structure of prince desynchronization may be stable. Until recently, a mindless cult of acceleration led by numerous business “gurus” in the United States of America urged companies to “Be first! Be agile! Shoot now, aim later!” This simplistic advice led to the launch of many low-quality, poorly tested products; angry customers; unhappy investors; a loss of strategic focus; and a high turnover of CEOs. It ignored the problems of synchronization and de-synchronization. It was a superficial way of dealing with the deep fundamental of time. Mismatched timing can damage—even kill—individual companies. However, this is not just a problem of particular enterprises. It can upset relations among multiple firms. Moreover, anecdotal evidence at least suggests that it can impact the whole industries, entire sectors of a country’s economy, and even the global economy. Now, time to close in prayer. Little by little roads eat away the hearts of mountains. Fires burn through, come back in huckleberries, trails close in August, too many bears. Too many bears, now following avalanche chutes, glacier lily, early spring. Caribou in old growth spruce, lichen, banks of snow and fog. Bear tracks in the mud. Treat each bear as the last bear. Each wolf as the last, each caribou. Each track the last, gone spoor. Gone scat. There are no more deertrials, no more flyways. Treat each animal as sacred, each minute our last. Ghost hooves. Ghost skulls. Death rattles and dry bones. Each bear walking alone in warm night air. To pray is to mediate on events of the past which testify to God’s guiding spirit in the affairs of humans, and which give us courage to fight for justice and freedom, and to look confidently and hopefully to the future. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

Our Riverside Residence 1 home may be the smallest floorplan, but it clocks in at 3 bedrooms with the option to convert the den into a fourth!

In this expansive floorplan is serious living space and seriously gorgeous features! This is the perfect setting for every day life or entertaining guests.