To be better at life is to be better at work. The great secret to success is to go through life as a person who never gets used up. Because the New World has been so economically dominant for so long, it is often overlooked that five centuries ago China, not Europe, had the most advanced technology, and it was Asia that led the World, turning out fully 65 percent of the globe’s measurable economic output. It is largely forgotten, at least in America, that in 1405 a fleet of 317 ships manned by some 27,000 sailors and warriors set out on the first of seven extraordinary voyages of exploration. The fleet was commanded by Admiral Zheng He, a Chinese Muslim eunuch and one of the most remarkable men ever to put to sea. It explored the coasts of African and the Gulf of Aden in the Middle East, reaching as far west as Jiddah and Dhofar, and laying the navel basis for Chinese trade all across the Indian Ocean. It was not until another two and a half centuries passed that the Enlightenment and the early industrial revolution launched the great Second Wave transition that gradually shifted the locus of economic, political and military power to Europe. It did not, however, stay there. By the end of the nineteenth century the center of the World wealth creation had begun to move on—pushing farther westward to the United States of American. Two World wars put an end to what was left of Europe’s economic dominance. By 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States of American into World War II, one knew inherently that the twentieth century was already “the American Century.” The United States of America, was supposed to be the Good Samaritan of the entire World, feed all the people of the World, who, as a result of this Worldwide collapse of civilization are hungry and destitute. Indeed, since this time, and especially since the mid-1950s, when the Third Wave and the transition to a knowledge-based economy began, the American economy has been dominant. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Technology is arguably at the center of the changing relationship between China and the World. Tthe wealth shift toward Asia, starting with a trickle toward Japan and later the so-called newly industrialized countries (NICs) such as South Korea, gathered strength throughout the subsequent decades. The floodgates really began to open when, in the 1980s, Chia explicitly legitimized and encouraged the not-very-communist pursuit of wealth. They swung fully open in the 1990s, and foreign direct investment (FDI) poured in. China was the second largest recipient of FDI inflows Worldwide in 2020 and has been an attractive destination for foreign investment since it opened-up four decades ago. Annual FDI inflows increased rapidly from around 40 billion U.S. dollars in 2000 to 124 billion in 2011. In 2021, the value of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to China reached approximately 179 billion U.S. dollars. This was an increase of around 20 percent compared to the previous year. The Xinhua news service called the torrent of FDI “nothing less than miraculous.” The United States of America took the leadership position as the largest recipient of FDI in 2019 and, consolidated that position in 2020, mainly driven by higher direct investments from Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands. Together, these three economies accounted for most of the increase in foreign direct investment in the United States of America over the last three years. However, there is a very important reason to keep taxes low. Low-tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, and Ireland remained among the top direct investors and investee economics. They continued to be attractive destinations for different types of investments, including those channeled through special purpose entities (subsidiaries created by parent companies in the countries convenience). Nonetheless, China’s remarkable rise is a tribute to the hard work, brains, and innovation of its people, once freed from the severe constraints of communism. However, and here the story of Henry Luce resumes, it could not have happened without the assistance of the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

Mr. luce was the son of a Missionary in China and was himself a committed Christian and anti-communist who never lost his interest in China. And if he were alive to look back at the last few decades, he might take astonished satisfaction in the powerful support given by the United States of America to China’s rapid economic rise, though the suspicion flickers that altruism had little to do with it. By 2003, Americans had poured $44 billion in investments into China. The United States of America also provided a gigantic market for Chinese goods, importing more than $150 billion in 2003. By then China’s World exports had hit $436.1 billion, and its GDP reached $6.5 trillion. That year marked an Asian watershed. China, along with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, had an aggregate GDP nearly equal to the combined total of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain—the five biggest economics in Europe. And that calculation did not even include Japan. Or India. If Japan and India are added, the six Asian nations have a combined GDP $3 trillion greater than the entire twenty-five-member European Union—or the United States of America. What we have been witnessing, therefore, has been a monumental transfer of wealth and wealth creation across the World map. It can be seen as nothing less than the continuation of the movement begun when economic power first shifted from China to Wester Europe and then to the United States of America—the completion of a great historical circle, retuning economic dominance to Asia it left centuries ago. Ponder the World of 2050, an Asia with more than half the World’s population; perhaps 40 percent of the global economy; more than half the World’s information technology industry; and World class high-tech military capabilities. It seems that important goods, FDI in other countries, and high taxes has been a Trojan Horse of the United States of America. No wonder why so many people want “Made in America” produce, beef, fruits and vegetables. So is this really the great circle closing? Will today’s changes continue in linear—or should we say circular—fashion? #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

The United States of America should prepare for a triumphant or ascending People’s Republic of China (PRC)—scenarios that not only align with current PRC national development trends but also represent the most challenging future scenarios for the U.S military being a country who is proud of having an unprotected boarder. In contrast, Beijing’s intense preoccupation with internal security and deep suspicions regarding the United States of America toward China may frustrate attempts by Washington to improve bilateral relations and encourage more liberal domestic policies. Researchers studied trends in the management of politics and society and analyzed the specific national-level strategies and plans that China’s Communist Partyer rulers have put in place to further their vision of a China that is well governed, socially stable, economically prosperous, technologically advanced, and military powerful by 2049, the centenary of the founding PRC. China, as other nations, could already be sneaking spies and military across the southern border. It seems a country would have learned from the past and want to secure it border for national security reasons. If China proves ascendent, the United States of America’s military should anticipate increased risk to already threatened forward-based forces in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, as well as a loss of the ability to operate routinely in the air and sea space above and in the Western Pacific. The United States of American should optimize its abilities to deter hostilities, get troops and equipment to hotspots quickly, operate from forward bases, and work with allied forces. The United States of American could field more robust cyber and network attack capabilities and other means to counter China’s unmanned aircraft systems. The capacity to respond quickly and effectively to China’s burgeoning reconnaissance-strike system will play an important role in determining the extent to which China’s leadership remains risk averse when considering military options to resolve regional disputes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

China’s $14 trillion economy is second only to the United States of America. On the basis of purchasing power, China will take the number one slot as early as 2023. Even in nominal terms—depending on how you analyze the data—the Chinese economy is expected to surpass the United States of America at some point in the 2030s. China is also the World’s largest trading nation in goods, and Chinese and Taiwanese companies account for more than a fifth of this year’s Global Fortune 500. Not only does China rank in the World’s top two countries for receiving and giving foreign direct investment, it is also the second biggest spender on research and development at some $3 billion last year. China is also represented in international institutions. Its citizens sit at the top of global bodies like the International Telecommunications Union and –until Meng Hongwei was detained for reportedly confessing in a Chinese court to taking bribes—Interpol. China now rivals the United States of America in technology, speaking a new arms race in areas such as artificial intelligence and fifth-generation telecoms networks. While China needs access to foreign markets to support teach development, it also wants to increase the market share for local technology players. And while the United States of America believes in it breaking strides for having weak borders and amnesty, and historical and first this and that, and what seems to other nations as a country that is confused about gender identity and sexuality or what bathroom certain genders should use, other countries are paying close attention to whether China break from global trade to focus on its domestic market. China’s rise and modus operandi have created waves across the globe, threating foreign relations and imperiling trade, technology, and capital flows. We will return to the future of China and Asia later. For now, we need to look at some of the other surprising spatial changes that come with revolutionary wealth. Now, imagine a nowhere in which we all live and in which we all live and in which all the riches of the World are made. Exactly such a fantasy took wing during the Internet explosion of the late 1990s. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

 The growth of the Internet was so dramatic that it began to call into question the very meaning of space and spatial relations. Many digerati and Internet enthusiasts spoke glowingly of “placelessness.” Think, what is location become irrelevant? Imagine a World where you could close your eyes and appear in Bombay or Paris as if you had been assisted by a Star Trek transporter. Picture the ability to have parties with someone while he or she is in another part of town or in another city. Think of being in two or three spots at once…Such is a World without place. The Placeless Society…does not exist. Not yet. However, convergent technologies are moving us in precisely this direction. Others described cyberspace as a territory that has no place in the physical World and even as the first instance of a parallel World. For them, the virtual World occupies what might better be called “unspace.” Despite the poetry and hyperbole, however, even electronic bits are stored somewhere, in some actual location, and they move through space, not unspace, as they are transmitted. Digitization, in short, does not dematerialize space. It does not substitute “virtual space” for reality. However, it does speed up and facilitate the shift of wealth and wealth creation everywhere, not just on the scale of a “great circle” but right down to the local level. Back here on the ground, the wealth maps of the World are being redrawn as waves of changes roll across the Earth, fast-forwarding some cities and regions into future and sending others into economic oblivion. Around the World tomorrow’s higher-value-added places are even now taking form. Cleveland, Ohio, was once an important center of hard-core industry, with its steel mills, foundries and auto plants. Today Cleveland claims one of the nation’s top science and engineering universities, Case Western Reserve, and has a huge medical sector led by the Cleveland Clinic. However, its housefronts and stores are still blackened by decades of smog and smoke, and Cleveland is listed as the poorest big city in America, a victim of its past industrial success and its failure to move on even as the Third Wave carried other parts of America toward the future. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Cleveland, moreover, is only the most obvious example. Much the same fate has met the other great smokestack cities around the World—yesterday’s engines of industrial wealth. It is not just cities, however. Whole regions are declining in economic significance as new ones rise to take their place. Take Guangdong in southeaster China. A couple of decades ago it was noted for being a place where water buffalo pulled plows across paddy fields. However, Guangdong is now known as China’s economic powerhouse. Not only does it have the largest and fastest-growing economy in terms of GDP among the 31 provinces and municipalities in Chinese mainland, and is also home to the Pearl River Delta (PDR) Economic Zone and the Shantou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai Special Economic Zones, but it also has rows of factories and high rises producing computer chips, radios, mobile phones, toy, clothed and green technology. Big-name investors with production bases there include Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Mitsubishi. Millions of people have flowed into the area. Millions of jobs have been created, and Guangdong’s per capita GDP has quadrupled in the last decade. Today Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta of which it is a part, along with Hong Kong and Macao, form one of the most powerful manufacturing centers in the World. They have made the transition from agrarian economies to industrial centers, taking over much of the manufacturing earlier done in the West’s smokestack cities. However, that is not all they have accomplished. For instead of setting its sights on a Second Wave future, Guangdong has one eye fixed on what happens after the inexpensive-labor factory jobs run out. It is grabbing all the low-tech work it can get, but it is already going after Third Wave, knowledge-intensive, higher-value added production. Thus the China Development Institute notes that Guangdong’s growing high-tech sector now includes companies in fields like information technology, new materials, new energy, biotechnology and laser-machine-electronic integrated systems manufacturing. Apart from research at Case Western Reverse, relatively few of these are found in Cleveland—or in its rust-belt sister cities. All of which need new strategies for survival. And new wealth maps. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

With so much going on the World, the people are going to need to learn to be more social. Research suggests that 4 percent of the people in the United States of America are affected with anti-social disorder. Explanations of antisocial personality disorder come from the psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, and biological models. As with many other personality disorders, psychodynamic theorists propose that this one, too, begins with an absence of parental love during infancy, leading to a lack of basic trust. In this view, some children—the ones who develop antisocial personality disorder—respond to the early inadequacies by becoming emotionally distant, and they bond with others through the use of power and destructiveness. In support of the psychodynamic explanation, researchers have found that people with this disorder are more likely than others to have had significant stress in their childhoods, particularly in such forms as family poverty, family violence, and parental conflict or divorce. Many behavioral theorists have suggested that antisocial symptoms may be learned through modeling, or imitation. As evidence, they point to the higher rate of antisocial personality disorder found among the parents of people with this disorder. Other behaviorists have suggested that some parents unintentionally teach antisocial behavior by regularly reinforcing a child’s aggressive behavior. When the child misbehaves or becomes violent in reaction to the parents’ requests or orders for example, the parents may give in to restore peace. Without meaning to, they may be teaching the child to be stubborn and perhaps even violent. The cognitive view says that people with antisocial personality disorder hold attitudes that trivialize the importance of other people’s needs. Such a philosophy of life, some theorists suggest, may be far more common in our society than people recognize. Cognitive theorists further propose that people with this disorder have genuine difficulty recognizing a point of view other than their own. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Finally, a number of studies suggest that biological factors may play an important role in antisocial personality disorder. Research reveals that people with this disorder often experience less anxiety than other people, and so may lack a key ingredient for learning. This may help explain why they have so much trouble learning from negative life experiences or tuning in to the emotional cues of others. Several studies have found that subjects with antisocial personality disorder are less able than control subjects to learn laboratory tasks, such as finding their way out of a maze, when the key reinforcements are punishments such as shock or loss of money. When experimenters make the punishments very apparent of force subjects to pay attention to them, learning improves; left to their own devices, however, subjects with this disorder are not influenced much by punishments. Perhaps they simply do not react as anxiously as other people to negative events. Why should people with antisocial personality disorder experience less anxiety than other people? The answer may lie in the biological realm. Subjects with the disorder often respond to warnings or expectations of stress with low brain and bodily arousal, such as slow autonomic arousal and slow EEG waves. Perhaps because of the low arousal, the individuals easily tune out threatening or emotional situations, and so are unaffected by them. It could also be argued that because of their physical underarousal, people with antisocial personality disorder will be more likely than other people to take risks and seek thrills. That is, they may be drawn to antisocial activity precisely because it meets an underlying biological need for more excitement and arousal. In support of this idea, as we observed earlier, antisocial personality disorder often goes hand in hand with sensation-seeking behaviour. Approximately 25 percent of all people with antisocial personality disorder receive treatment for it, yet treatment is typically ineffective. A major obstacle is the individuals’ lack of conscience or desire to change. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Most of those in therapy have been forced to participate by an employer, their school, or the law, or else they come to the attention of therapists when they also develop another psychological disorder. Not surprisingly, one study found that 70 percent of these patients left treatment prematurely. Some cognitive therapists try to guide clients with antisocial personality disorder to think about moral issues and about the needs of other person. In a similar vein, a number of hospitals and prisons have tried to create a therapeutic community for people with this disorder, a structured environment that teaches responsibility toward others. Still another popular approach uses physically challenging wilderness programs to build self-confidence, self-esteem, and commitment to others in a group. Some patients seem to profit from such programs. Generally, however, most of today’s treatment approaches have little or no impact on people with antisocial personality disorder. Now, special mention must be given to male homosexuality, which preoccupies adolescents and young men of every class from bottom to top. The preoccupation appears either as gnawing doubts that oneself might be a “latent homosexual,” or as reactive contempt and ridicule, or hostility even paranoia. Among young people every kind of nonconformism in a contemporary tends to be thought of as homosexual, whether it be a passion for music or a passion for social justice. Inevitably in the stimulating and hectic biological atmosphere, including overtly expressed homosexuality, repressed homosexual thoughts also begin to break through. Remnants of unfinished normal homosexual situations reappear, and one is sharply aware of new temptations in the culture. The shared narcissism of dandy-contact of buddies is obsessionally inhibited or immediately commented on and “interpreted”; and one sees homosexuals everywhere. The question must be asked why the breakthrough into awareness seems to balk and circle at just this point on just this issue? why, in the present, just the homosexual temptations and threats loom so large? #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Well, the fellows are interrupted in growing up as men; their homosexuality threatens them as immaturity. They are afraid of going backward to boyhood status, admiring the model male organs and powers of their seniors and adults. Or they regress further to a safe narcissism and would want their own male organs and bodies to be loved as their personal worth, but this reversion to infantilism is fiercely resisted. In the difficulty of growing up, the young man psychologically regresses to an earlier stage because it is easier, he cannot take on the responsibilities of heterosexual love and masculine conflict. However, then, doubling his potency and to avoid ridicule and danger, he becomes obsessionally heterosexual and competitive; or alternatively, he may become apathetic and sexually not there. Other “animal” expressions, besides the sexual, are also problematic. Let us sum them up by some more philosophical considerations. As our organized systems perfects itself, there is less “open” environment. It is hard for a social animal to grow when there is not an open margin to grow in: some open space, some open economy, some open mores, some activity free from regulation and cartes d’identite. I am referring not to a war between the “individual” and society, or to a wild animal that has to be acculturated—for there is no such individual or animal—but to a deepening sociological flaw in the modern system itself. A society cannot have decided all possibilities beforehand and have structured them. If society becomes too tightly integrated and pre-empts all the available space, materials and methods, then it is failing to provide for just the margin of formlessness, real risk, novelty, spontaneity, that makes growth possible. This is almost formal cause importantly drives young people out of the organized system altogether and makes creative adults loath to co-operate with it. When time, clothes, opinions, and goals become so regulated that people feel they cannot be “themselves” or create something new, they bolt and look for fringes and margins, loopholes, holes in the wall, or they just run. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Our society pre-empts literally too much of the space. For instance, it is impossible in the Eastern United States of America to pitch a tent and camp for the night without registering with the National Parks and its list of regulations. You cannot go off somewhere for a bout of pleasures of the flesh without paying rent. Almost any stone that a kid picks up and any target that he throws it at, is property. People hygienically adopt a permissive attitude toward the boisterousness and hyperkinesis of children, and meantime we design efficient minimum housing. Under modern urban conditions, it is impossible for woman who is a senior citizen to be a harmless lunatic, as was commonplace in country places; she would hurt herself, get lost among strangers, disrupt traffic, stop the subway. She must be institutionalized. If you roam the street late at night doing nothing, and looking for something to do, the police who is protecting you and everybody else does not want you to be going nowhere and to have nothing to do; and you ask him, Does he have any suggestions? We have all heard, and probably joked, about chastity belts. We know, vaguely, that they were used in the olden days. If pressed, we might even cobble together a description. Were not they gruesome contraptions, bolted around helpless woman’s loins like enormous, saw-toothed, mini prisons? Did not jealous husbands use them before setting out on long voyages Were not some of these husbands holy Crusaders, leaving civilized Europe to Christianize the heathen? Or was it the opposite, that Crusaders returning from foreign conquests carried with them as booty these exotic monstrosities? If fact, chastity belts were exceedingly rare. They were not unicorns—they did really exist—but they are far more common in literature and in the popular imagination than as actual hardware, and in Europe, only the cruelest most obsessive men forced their women into one. Those unlucky women, however, numbered at least in the hundreds. The discomfort, inconvenience, humiliation, and often agonizing chafing they suffered was the terrible price exacted from them to guarantee exclusive access to their body. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

Most authenticated chastity belts, which were primarily to protect maidenly virginity, are from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Several court cases resulted from the injuries they caused their wearers. One involved a jealous Danish husband who bolted his wife into a chastity belt. For months she endured the pain it caused her, until her friends intervened and insisted she have it removed. Her predicament became public and an outcry ensued. Her husband was summoned to court, which banished him for his cruel treatment of his wife. However, as late as 1892, a Frenchman named Hufferte seduced a young girl, then became so ragingly jealous that he put her into a chastity belt. What happened afterward is uncertain, but newspapers of the period reportedly sometime carried advertisements for these items. The British Museum, for instance, has a copy of a Heinrich Aldegreyer engraving portraying a love-struck young couple, in their birthday suits except for her chastity belt. In one had she grips a key, evidently to the other garment she wears, and stares uncertainly into he pleading eyes. Dare she or daren’t she? That is the unanswered question. First of all, surviving belts are all slightly different, but their essential design is the same. They have hip bands formed of anywhere from four to ten iron-jointed strips. The portion that passes between the legs is also jointed so it bends back up again, behind that woman’s posterior. Some attention was given to decoration and the wearer’s comfort. Designs are etched into the surface, and the insides are padded with velvet or silk. There is a slit in the front for bathroom business, and often a large heart-shaped area in the rear for bathroom business. These openings are surrounded by saw-edged teeth that would quickly lacerate or mince any male organ inserted into them. An obvious problem was that the metal dug or bit into the flesh and, at the very least chafed it. Unless the woman could take care of bathroom business with unusual precision, the interior of the belt must soon have been fetid, soiled and caked with errant bathroom business. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Sleeping with a chastity belt must have been nightmarishly difficult, as the belt pressed down on the flesh. Washing the enclosed areas was impossible, for the sharp metal teeth at each womanly aperture would be as lethal to fingers holding a cloth as anything else trying to enter where it does not belong. They chastity belt tortured real women, but as a metaphor in literature and popular culture, it has titillated millions. Britney Spears often preforms with one made of silk. She has a matching outfit, one red, one black. Paris Hilton is also often photographed in a red, silk chastity belt outfit. I guess it is called chastity belt lingerie? As private area shield, it kept the individual woman chaste. As a symbol, it has been a powerful reminder to millions of how important chastity is and to what stupendous lengths men have gone to ensure their women observe it. The belts, of course, have nothing to do with the optimistic aspects of chastity and everything to do with the double standard and the outmoded concepts of male dominance over woman’s bodies that are associated with it. In some North American societies, such as with the Cheyenne people, they also invented a chastity belt. If a young man had so much as touched a woman’s private areas, the Cheyenne view of premarital chastity was so grim that a young woman had no hope of a respectable marriage. Cheyenne virginity was a deadly serious business. It is always good to get some background information on one’s culture and how people were raised to understand the people. History often tends to slander cultures and so them what has become of them after their culture has been ravaged and destroyed. Some people like Dr. Freud believe that the oppression of pleasures of the flesh leads to violence, but there is already so much violence dealing with non-consensual pleasures of the flesh one hundred years after his revolution started. It seems now people think they have a right anyone’s body they want. And it probably would be a good idea for Americans to be more concerned about chastity to desexualize society and make it safer for people to walk the streets or be at home alone or go out to a nightclub. American values of what is a right and what is important need to change. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

So anyway, the Cheyenne regarded the belt as perfect protection. If he attempted to undo it, each mand knew that his victim’s male relatives would probably end his life and the female relatives would destroy his family’s property. Males respected the chastity belt and the penalties for tampering with it were draconian enough to enforce the respect. As a result, Cheyenne women were famed for their chastity, and those few who willingly surrendered it were disgraced for life. However, sometimes chaste wives and virgins who were forced to married were “put on the prairie” and it was known that it was okay to have your way with them. Sometimes as many as thirty men would be waiting to. Nonetheless, Cheyenne society was considered unusual in that male chastity was also highly regarded. Obviously a society with virtually no available women must develop an ethos of chastity for all its members, in contrast to the double standard, which can operate only with women of the evening as an integral element. Seen in this light, the Cheyenne chastity belt was as much symbol as it was physical obstacle to pleasures of the flesh. What made it so successful was the community’s commitment to chastity as the only acceptable way of life. There is something attractive in the forbidden. On the usual psychological theory, to do the forbidden is to attack the forbidding authority, ultimately the oedipal father. This explains the obvious fear of punishment, and also the stronger, often quite irrational, fear of transgressing the due order of things. (Exempli gratia, “Are we allowed to climb up the ladder?” “Naw! of course not!” “Then we’d better not”—even though there is nobody to catch them at it. But they then climb up anyway.) On this theory, what would the attraction be? The forbidden by the oedipal authority; and secondly, more subtly, a teasing of the authority, to win his personal attention, for he is so impersonal. I think there is a good deal to this second point, for it has somewhat the feel of the attraction of the forbidden. (Exempli gratia, “Will the watchman wake up?”—hoping that he will thrillingly wake up, even if he bites.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

However, there is still a third fundamental attraction in doing the forbidden: the animal need to transgress the limit in order to finish the situation. Consider. People are continually stimulated and set in motion, but they come up against limits and cannot fully go or let go. Typically, because of inhibitions and circumstances, the full expression is not total and not altogether without “self-consciousness.” The spontaneous acceleration toward an unlimited goal seems evident in the way one forbidden achievement emboldens the next, until the process comes to a natural end, rather than an impose limit. The freedom that beckons in the forbidden attraction is not, negatively, merely a freedom from constraint, but a relief of internal pressure as one arrives and finishes the experience. If there is not much satisfaction in the forbidden object achieved (exempli gratia, there is nothing up on the roof and the kids soon climb down and go home), there is a quiet satisfaction. However, there is no disappointment, because the action has reached its natural end: you have climbed to the top of the mountain and that is the furthest you want to go. This spontaneous acceleration to the goal is not the same as “raising the ante” characteristic in purely delinquent behavior. Raising the ante has a fragmented and desperate tone that comes from finding that each daring act has not paid off, and therefore the next time one must stab more wildly. The end of raising the ante is clearly self-destruction, to be “extreme”; it is not to finish a process. Doing the forbidden is a normal function of growth; raising the ante is a sign that a person is not in contact with his real needs. The same twelve-year-olds I have been describing returned to the same building the next week—a pleasant spot overlooking the Hudson where they came to smoke forbidden cigarettes. They directly climbed onto the roof for it was now the established routine, and they came down. However, there was a new boy with them whose behavior was different. He promptly dared the others to jump off the roof—a ten-foot drop to a concrete pavement, guaranteed to break his ankles. He himself climbed over the ledge and hung by his hands and said he was going to drop. He would have let go, too, except that we men intervened, shouting. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

The other kids were indignant and disgusted at his senselessness; they did not seem challenged. One of the men said to him. “That wasn’t smart.” He, grinning: “Aw, I thought youse’d think it was smart.”!! Had he been playing, after all, for our attention? He got it. Millions of people seem to carry on their lives quite comfortably and form their opinions quite easily without the necessity of troubling themselves about the place in one for the spiritual laws and in the other for spiritual truths It is as if such things simply did not exist. Some people are very shallow and it is because they are pressured to be sometimes that is because of behaviors other force on them. Things like chastity, which is very important, or you may not every hear them say it and that thought may shock them when they listen to their thoughts, but they may think like Marcia Brady, that the World is about having nice shinny hair, and “being skinny and pretty is the most important thing” because that is engrained in their head and they have nothing else in their life to life for. You know, they have not done anything important to be satisfied in life that their physical appears is what is most important because they are hallow inside. The realm of spiritual truths has become like a foreign country to them, the spiritual life like a queer eccentricity. It is not that they are incapable of understanding truths, for many of them have fair intelligence, or that they are too distant from the life, for many of them are good in heart and conduct. However, when so many people are so unaware of, or so indifferent to, the higher purpose of life it requires no special foresight to forecast what gloomy changes will take place in their future course. Those who interest in life begins and ends in their little egos, who cannot believe in and immediately reject the need of putting a higher purpose into all their activities, naturally fall into unavoidable error and experience avoidable sufferings. Both the protagonists in our contemporary international scene have really fallen into the same soul-sickness; the chief difference is only in the way and the extent to which they fell into it. Both have sold their spiritual birthrights for a mess of materialistic pottage, the one through temptation and freedom and other through blindness and compulsion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

The goals of both civilizations are similar, only their methods and atmosphere differ, and widely. Both seek the mechanistic and materialistic life, but only partially, the other wholly. Hence the real struggle is between two varieties of materialism. The only correct conclusion is that this is not so much a conflict of clashing ideologies as of two different variants of the same ideology—a good variant and an evil one. This leads to a confused rather than a clear issues. The clean-cut difference in ethical values, aims, and ideals which made the war against the precious incarnation of the aggressive spirit a defensive struggle against obvious evil is still present today, but the metaphysical issues are somewhat chaotically distributed on both sides. However, how far is it enough from the point of view of higher culture? Will they learn to appreciate the values of truth, goodness, and beauty or despise and trample on them? For the juncture of social justice with mechanical development could provide them for the firs time with more freedom every day. What use will they make of this enlarged or even new freedom? We may not let such questions hinder us from creating the opportunity to think about higher matters. What use or abuse will be made of its history’s concern. With the summer solstice we feel the maximum power of the sun as it gives it fullest offering to our part of the Earth. The time of rigorous outward manifestation is here. Everywhere are the energies of doing. The garden image of summer applies to whatever we undertake; if we continue to give them our energies—sun, water, care, love—our dreams will grow and prosper. If we do not continue to nourish our dreams, they may wilt and perish. Faith does not detach humans from thinking, it does not suspend reason. It is opposed not to knowledge but to indifferent aloofness to the essence of living. Faith means to hold small things great, to take light matters seriously, to distinguish the common and the passing from the aspect of the lasting. Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man. To regard all that happens as workings of Providence is to deny humans responsibility. We must not idolize history. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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Now Selling!

Enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of living in a peaceful setting. Enter your home through a welcoming porch and feel the expansive great room, dining area, and kitchen all ready to cheer family and friends. 

Cresleigh Havenwood features four distinct floor plans ranging from 2,293 – 3,377 square feet and offering up to five bedrooms. 

Each plan has been thoughtfully designed and includes great features such as single story homes, guest suites, optional offices, garage workshops, and more!

Get the most out of your new home with Cresleigh’s All Ready smart home featuring all the connectivity needed to keep your house running. Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes with owned solar included! 

Located off of Virginiatown Road and McCourtney Road, residents of the 83 homesites of Cresleigh Havenwood will benefit from a brand new neighborhood in the charming City of Lincoln. 

Palo Verde Park, is  just down the street and there’s plenty of recreation to take part in all around town. #CresleighHomes