In the course of history alienation has undergone significant qualitative changes so that its meaning today is quite different from what it was in previous eras. Once the concept of individual sovereignty had been awakened in the minds of women, a new climate prepared. Women in the male-dominated, rural culture of Sacramento are often viewed as submissive and passive. Growing up in a patriarchal society many such women outwardly display passivity when relating to men. They have been taught to submit to their fathers and husbands and bend to their will. However, while public displays often fit this mold, many women are in fact very strong and important contributors to their families, kinship networks and communities. Just as there are certain types of male marijuana growers, there are also differing types of women associated with these men. Each of these varieties of women serves different roles in the business and life of the male marijuana grower. Women’s functional roles include assisting in recruiting men into the industry and providing domestic and sexual services for isolated growers and aiding the men in growing, harvesting, transporting, and selling the crop. Females’ roles, to an even greater extent than their male counterparts, in the marijuana industry are dependent upon social class membership. Women’s degree of involvement ranges from passively assisting their husbands to playing highly active central roles. Theoretically more important though, is a view of women’s cultural statuses in the communities of the rural marijuana industry. There are three distinct roles for women in these communities: Strumpets, Decent Women and the Women-in-Between. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The Strumpet is typically a young, uneducated and unmarried woman. Strumpets usually have one or more illegitimate children, are often substance abusers and therefore are perceived as being of loose morals. Additionally, or perhaps consequently, the strumpet rarely attends church, which is an important social function for the rural women. The specific roles expected of the strumpet are to provide companionship, sexual services and to perform domestic chores for rural men, including marijuana growers. Unless she is fortunate enough to marry, as the strumpet ages she becomes increasingly expendable to the men in her life. In such a case, due to lack of education and jobs available to women, the strumpet will live out the rest of her life in poverty, and be looked down upon by other, more respectable women. While marriage will not bring the strumpet the same degree of respectability afforded the decent woman, marriage will bring her relative financial security. These young women often associate with marijuana growers for personal gain. She receives clothing for herself and her children, is taken to restaurants and other places of entertainment, travels with her male associate and may receive additional money for her living expenses. Strumpets display strong loyalty to the men of the marijuana industry. However, this loyalty does not extend to waiting for a grower after he is imprisoned, leaves the area or ends their relationship. She is typically a very pragmatic and self-interested person. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Despite her avowed love for her man, a strumpet realizes that when he is no longer immediately available it is in her financial best interest to seek out another man. The rural male also recognized this relationship as a practical arrangement. The strumpet fulfills very specific, and for him important, roles in his life. He does not expect the same loyalty from her that he does from his wife. The strumpet’s role is to keep him sexually satisfied and to perform jobs decent women cannot and would not be asked to perform. Because including women in the growing operations would require living with other men, rural Sacramento males would never allow their wives or other female relatives to be involved. Thos considered to be decent women would not consent to such an arrangement in any case. When discussing the roles fulfilled by women in his organization, Mr. Buford described strumpets, saying: “Most of us had girlfriends that we could trust with our lives…even though most of us were married at the time. These girls would go on some deals, more or less to keep us company. Also they kept the guys happen and content…They didn’t need to leave the marijuana farm for sex. We all loved women and always will.” Strumpets are not respected in their rural communities. As might be expected, such women received especially strong disdain from female relatives of the men in the marijuana industry. However, even though a man’s female skin will disapprove of a strumpet, because the culture is extremely patriarchal their disapproval need not derive him away from a relationship with a strumpet. The marijuana grower accepts the strumpet as a necessary, and sometimes valuable, part of his business. She is a commodity, valued only by the men with whom she couples. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The second type of female is quite different and much more respected. Decent Women are highly respected and very rarely placed in any jeopardy by rural men. Decent women include the majority of mothers, sisters, grandmothers, daughters, aunts and wives of the active participants in the marijuana industry (as well as many women with no connection to the industry). Although there are few exceptions, these women do not generally grow, transport or in any way become involved with the activities of the marijuana industry. They are, for the most part, aware of illegal activities engaged in by the men in their lives, but they themselves rarely participate. Among decent women those most likely to express strong disapproval for marijuana-related activities are the mother and grandmothers of the men involved. Countrymen show great respect, both real and ritual, for these women, displaying great deference to them. However, decent women’s expressed disapproval does not lead the men to curtail their activities, for after all, they are “just women.” Living in a strictly patriarchal culture, the decent women may be called upon by her male relatives to assist in recruiting new members of the marijuana industry. New participants, for the most part, are introduced into a kinship network involved in the marijuana industry by marriage to a decent woman. For the decent woman’s husband to be incorporated into her kinship network of marijuana growers she must “indirectly” indicate her endorsement of her husband’s involvement. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

It is her responsibility to communicate her husband’s desire for inclusion. While she may (and probably will) voice her disapproval, in the end she will bow to her male relatives’ wishes. Jolene, a decent woman explains how her husband became involved in the marijuana industry by the way of her male relatives: “My husband and I was married about six years before he got in with the family. I kind of had an idea what my uncle was doing. My husband said he wanted some good pot…The only way my husband could be brought in was if I said the word…Finally, I mentioned it to my uncle in an off-hand sort of way. My uncle said for me to tell him to drop by, he might be able to help him out. I couldn’t have gotten him in sooner. They had to see what he was like before inviting him in and then on my say-so.” Women-in-Between are distinct from, yet a combination of qualities found in, decent women and strumpets. They may be divorced and employed at the local factory. If unmarried they may frequent the local nightclubs in search of a new husband. They often meet and form intimate relationships with marijuana growers. Unlike strumpets, these women may insist upon a monogamous relationship of either marriage or at least living together. While more respected than the strumpet, they are still less respected than the decent woman. The woman-in-between is unique, she often has an active role in growing and distributing marijuana. Mr. Buford descried the role of these women as a relatively recent development in rural culture. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

The woman-in-between is a new social category in the World of marijuana growers. It is difficult to ascertain the full extent of her role in this culture partly because of her recent emergence and partly because of their status as a hidden member of the culture. Few of the women have been arrested and none has chosen to discuss her role. In this patriarchal society, she is apt to have been recruited and trained by male relatives, her husband or boyfriend. Her future in the marijuana industry remains to be seen. It appears women may be developing more egalitarian roles in the marijuana industry. It can also be speculated that as male marijuana growers are being imprisoned for longer periods of time, the women are stepping in to replace them. It remains unclear, then, whether the emergence of women that is presently being seen is due to feminist politics or simple necessity. All three groups of women play significant roles in the marijuana industry. Some are respected in their community, others are not. They all reflect the culture in which they have been raised and have the same distrust of outsiders as their male counterparts. The marijuana industry is a powerful economic and social force in the United States of America, especially in economically depressed, rural regions of the country. The U.S.A. semi-legal medical and recreational marijuana sales for the closed of 2023 are estimated to be $33.6 billion. However, illegal cannabis sales are estimated to be more than $100 billion each year. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

The growth and distribution of marijuana is not a randomly occurring, scattered endeavor, but rather is a structured industry that occupies an important cultural position in rural communities. Even those individuals who are not themselves actively involved in the industry play important roles in facilitating the industry’s economic success and continued operation. Furthermore, with the organization of rural Sacramento’s communities there are structural factors that promote and support the marijuana industry. Due to cultural and economic factors of the region, the roles rural residents occupy in relation to the industry are focused on the maintenance of community and culture, not necessarily making the success of the industry itself the primarily focus. Accepting the political economy and its laws, we presuppose private property, the separation of labor, capital, and land; and of wages, profit and rent; the division of labor, competition, the concept of exchange-value. And not only are most forecast in the political economy about global power based on overly simple assumptions, they misdefine. Some sources popularize the idea of the decline of America, essentially measure national power in terms of wealth and military capability alone. However, these sources also only allude to, but undervalue the impact of ideology, religion, and culture, all of which are becoming more important than ever. They vastly underestimate the role of knowledge—which, in fact, has now become the dominant source of both economic wealth and military strength. This is the central powershift of our time. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Moreover, power, as we have seen, is not just a matter of how much but of how good—quality of power may be as important as its quantity, and a nation’s power must be related to its own goals, not merely to the power of other nations. What might be adequate for one purpose, reflecting one set of values, might be inadequate for another. Unlike Europe, whose focus is regional, and Japan, which is hesitating between a regional and a global role, the United States of America is committed to a global role. Having led a global coalition for the past half-century, America can hardly imagine narrowing its ambitions to a single region. However, more than psychology is involved. The U.S.A. economy is linked into so many parts of the World, and now depends upon so vast a variety of relationships, that to be cut off from access to an significant part of the World economy would be devasting. No American political leader can allow that to happened. The same may turn out to be true for Japan—and perhaps for Europe as well. Thus, any serious threats of protectionism—in response, say, to an economic crisis—would totally destabilize relations among the three great capitalist centers. What is more, three is an unstable number. Parties of three frequently split into a two and a one. Of course, many other nations and regions are already fighting for a place in the 21^st-century power system. Strange new alliances and strategies will appear. Countries long relegated to the back pages of history will suddenly loom into our consciousness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

However, even now, European leaders are approaching Washington with what amounts to plans for a new alliance, no longer aimed at Moscow. Some proposals are limited to specific fields, like high-definition television, or to technology generally. However, broader terms are clearly in mind. Closer ties between Europeans and Americans can only be of mutual benefit in coordinating policy toward their joint competitor Japan. However, what if American long-range strategists were blind and permitted history to swing in the opposite direction—toward a tacit alliance (and economic division of the globe) between Japan and a Germanicized Europe? Japanese companies like JVC Professional Europe Ldt/Germany is already a reality in Berlin. Mitsubishi has already forged links with Messerschmitt. The United States of America, even if integrated into an all-North American common market, could not for long survive this global squeeze play, the result of which might be nothing less catastrophic than World War III. A reinvigorated U.S.A.-Japanese alliance, however, could produce a sharply different outcome. U.S.A.-Japanese relations have never been worse since World War II. Indeed, the gap between the United States of America and Japan can only widen so far before dangerous sparks arc across it. Irresponsible jingos in both Tokyo and Washington, playing for easy votes and money, are deliberately stoking dangerous emotions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

If Shintaro Ishihara, a former Cabinet member, can speculate about a future in which the United States of America reoccupies Japan to prevent the sale of advanced chips to the Soviet, he is, by implication, speculating about outright war, voicing an incredible thought not far from consciousness in both countries. He and his American counterparts who picture Japanese and American missiles pointed at each other should remember that he who rides the tiger cannot get off. In a World of sudden turnabouts and surprises, no fantasy can be ruled out. However, the remotest risk of such confrontation should send horrors down the spine even of those who are equally weary of American superpowerdom and Japanese competition. Such a struggle could plunge the entire Earth into a nightmare from which it might not recover for centuries. The growing hostility between these two Pacific powers could only be heightened if Europe turned protectionist, forcing them into even fiercer competition in the rest of the World. Which is why the idea of a “Fortress Europe” closed to outside competition is the equivalent of a death threat to World peace. In this highly volatile situation, American can play the coquette, allowing itself to be used as a “card” to be played by Europe or Japan in their global competition. It can play the role of mediator. Or it can force an alliance to dominate the earl decades of the 21^st century. But with whom? #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

It is precisely here that the “power triad” analysis proves most revealing. For if we once more look at violence, wealth, and knowledge, we can glimpse the power consequences of any given lineup. It tells us, for example, that a defector U.S.A.-European alliance would weld together great military power (the old NATO, plus). It would bring together huge markets and great wealth (much of it, however, based on rust-belt manufacture and assumptions). It would merge America’s science and technology with Europe’s and it would assemble vast cultural power. Long cultural and ethnic ties would make this convergence natural. Such an alliance, aimed at Japan, would call up memories of the 1930s, further accelerate Japanese rearmament, install hawks in power, and drive Japan deeper toward the developing countries as less favorable markets for its goods and capital. Militarily it could lead to Soviet-Japanese deal and even toward some new form of Chinese adventure. For Japan to be froze out of Europe or even if it is imaginable, the United States of America, would be yet another equivalent of setting off a global bomb. By contrast, cold calculation also shows that a de facto alliance between the United States of America and Japan, despite their current tensions, would produce quite different consequences for the planet. This turnabout should not be discounted in a World in which public opinion can shift overnight and in which the United States of American finds itself defending Vladimir Putin. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Strange as it sounds, an American-Japanese alliance to balance the power on the European “heartland” would bring together what are currently the World’s first- and third-biggest military budgets; its two largest economies; and its two fastest-growing scientific and technical bases. Such a combination could form a strategic duopoly or condominium encompassing within it the fastest-growing economies in the World—those of the Pacific region, the “heart-sea” counterpart of the “heart-land.” There is, moreover, one last awesome factor differentiating the two alliances, between which the United States of America may find itself torn. This difference is so little discussed in Washington, Tokyo, or the European capitals that strategists in the richest and most powerful nations tend to forget it. Yet over the long run it holds potentially enormous significance in the great game of nations. Any Euro-American alliance without Japan is basically a mono-racial, all-white power coalition in a World in which the white race is a dwindling minority. By contrast, a United States of America-Japan alliance, for all the xenophobia in both those nations, is an interracial power coalition. That difference cannot but register on the rest of the planet’s populations. History does not run along railroad tracks to a pre-set future. In the Powershift Era, a period of revolutionary upheaval on the planet, many other permutations of power are possible. Europe is already worrying about the Muslim pressure on its southern flank. China could erupt in civil war. Any number of other wild-card scenarios can be imagined. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Surely the rest of the World ill not sit idly by as Europe, Japan, and the United States of America divide up the spoils. Yet strategists in Washington, Tokyo, Brussels, and Berlin may soon have to choose sides in the great triadic competition for the World power. The decision that Washington makes (consciously or by default) will shape the future of the entire rest of the planet, from China and the U.S.S.R. to the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. What, then, should we conclude about this inter-capitalist struggle for World power? Which of the three great contenders will triumph in history’s next great powershift? The answer, as we will see in coming days, is that we are asking the wrong question. As mentioned, Chinese households’ indebtedness is meager while their saving rates are remarkably high. There is the Western culture of living on debt, and there is the Chinese culture of minimizing family debts and keeping them under tight control. Thus, in China there is effectively no room for unaffordable consumption prompted by excessive household borrowing. In the corporate sector, Chinese banks, most of all state-owned banks as major lenders, are extending massive loans to domestic companies. Usually two major problems are raised in this regard. First, there are concerns that a substantial portion of loans—especially those extended to state-owned enterprises—may be politically motivated and lack commercial rationale. Second, there is a lot of anxiety about the fact that government and the central bank often fail to keep credit expansion within the limits they set, which allegedly exacerbates the threat of overheating and creates an asset bubble. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

Such concerns, however, are usually exaggerated. Indeed, politically motivated loans to particular Chinese companies, especially state-owned, are still extended, and some poorly performing enterprises may get funding to keep afloat. However, the major trend is the reverse. Since the start of market reforms, China has been marking a really big shift from soft to hard budget constraints for enterprises. As time goes by, generally it is becoming more and more difficult for companies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) included, to get funding from the state, and the proportion of the fund-raising done by themselves in accordance with the market rules is steadily increasing. Already in the 1980, the government effectively terminated the SOE’s direct budgetary financing. Yet, until the launch of the SOE reforms in the second half of the 1990s, state banks had to continuously provide massive loans under the government’s directive without the right to squeeze or terminate commercially unviable credit. With the reform, however, this practice significantly decreased in scale. Back in 2003, the state recapitalized the four major banks and after that embarked on their corporatization. The latter was marked by consecutive World records in terms of the amount of funds they raised through the IPO, reflecting high expectations of the investment community. The Chinese leadership understands too well that commercially unviable financing and lending are a potential bomb whose explosion can undermine the very foundation of the economic system it is creating—and also the foundation its own power is resting on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The collapse of the Soviet Union and other conventional socialist economies provided crucially important empirical evidence in this regard. Hence, it is doing its best to make more, not less, state lending commercially viable. Even the three so-called policy banks (China Development Bank, Export-Import Bank, and Agricultural Development Bank of China) are increasingly relying on self-initiated commercial loans, while the proportion of subsidized government-directed lending is falling. As for excessive bank lending, which sometimes exceeds government-imposed limits, it is important to examine the problem within the context of China’s macroeconomic policy as a whole. For three decades the key features of this policy has been a persistent stance to neutralize the overheating threat. The architects of China’s macroeconomic policy are always on the alert. The record clearly shows that the government and the central bank recognize this threat very well and, when necessary, do not hesitate to tighten monetary policy in a very resolute manner. In the late 1990s, China’s monetary policy was expansionary in 2022, monetary policy has become moderately accommodative following modest interest rate-based easing measures, cuts to the reserve requirement ratio, adjustments to deposit rate guidance policies that have helped lower deposit rates, and the use of credit policies to steer credit to SMEs and other borrower segments. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

 To prevent overheating and contain the financial bubble, the Chinese government utilizes a wider range of monetary policy tools than its Western counterparts. For example, along with setting lending limits and increasing mandatory bank reserves to be held in the People’s Bank of China, it designates industries with excess production capacity where new investment projects are put under direct state supervision, or intervenes into the real estate market, restricting purchases and reselling of high-end property, which is likely to become target for speculators. Furthermore, when inflation risks are considered high, it does not stop short of directly guiding sellers not to raise prices for important consumer and production goods. Overall, at this point China has a very impressive record (perhaps, more impressive than that of any other big country) of avoiding, or rather preventing overheating and the asset bubble threat. Seen from this angel, inability to keep credit within imposed limits appears to be just a technical problem emerging in the process of the implementation of a policy that basically works. With increasing bureaucratization, it becomes plain to all who would see that man is to a very important degree controlled by his social relations to the instruments of production. Bureaucratization makes readily visible what was previously dim and obscure. More and more people discover that to work, they must be employed. For to work, one must have tools and equipment. And the tools and equipment are increasingly available only in bureaucraices, private or public. Consequently, one must be employed by the bureaucracies in order to have access to tools in order to work and live. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

 Schools, secular and religious, are in a favorable situation to experiment with various ways of supplementing and facilitating the family in the development of empathic capacity. Experimental and control groups could be used without detriment to the children used as subject, indeed, with the conscious participation of the children and parents in the experiment. Hypotheses such as the following illustrate some of the possibilities: Groups of children who are given the following experiences will show more empathic capacity than comparable groups who are not given such experiences: Taught courses in fiction, biography, and drama in which the child is instructed and is given assistance in putting himself in the roles of various characters studied. Taught by teachers who themselves are high in empathic capacity. Taught by a number of teachers who represent different subcultural backgrounds. Given explicit instruction, training, and practice in accurate portrayal of others who represent different roles in his own life situations in which the emphasis on individualistic striving for grades is replaced by emphasis on collaborative responsibility for maximizing the skill and the mastery of the subject matter by each member of the collaborating group. Participation in group activity which involved responsibility for co-operation in planning of significant programs, resolution of real problems, and genuine discipline of members. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

The design of such experiments should provide for the “noncontamination” of groups. The numbers involved should be large enough for reliable statistical comparisons. The value of the experiments would be further divided into groups which provide for the carious relevant combinations of parents: being told and actively co-operating in designated ways; informed, but not asked to participate further; and not informed; experimental subjects: informed as to objectives and participating in planning and appraisal of results; and not informed as to objectives. The general hypothesis to be tested by inclusion of the variable mentioned above is that active informed participation in the experiment will enhance the effectiveness of the antecedent variables. Recreation reflections the various types of activity in our culture. Despite the demonstration there that recreation is not a separate aspect but relates to all other aspects of our life, it is appropriate here to note some of the specific relations between recreational conditions and empathic response. Unilateral giving of toys with no opportunity for the child to reciprocate and to occupy the role of giver inhibits his empathic development. Toys which confine the child to the role of spectator limit his empathic development. Abundance of mimetic and dramatic play is positively correlated with empathic development. Reading and films, radio and television programs, which provide rich opportunity for identification with a variety of characters, increase the empathic capacity of the child. Forms of play which involve discussion, planning, teamwork, and resolution of differences are productive of empathic capacity. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Manifestations of influence of psychopathic offenders called natural idiosyncrasies—this truth abut the workings of psychopathic offenders among the pure, and the cause and symptoms of their power upon mind or body, has been so veiled in ignorance that multitude are deceived by them. The manifestations are generally taken as natural idiosyncrasies or infirmities. The ultimate concern’s work is put on one side, or even never taken up, because the pure is “over-strained” or else, “without gifts” for doing it. He is “nervous,” “timid,” has “no gift of speech, no power of thought” where the service of ultimate concern is; but in the social sphere these “deficiencies” are forgotten, and the timid ones shine out at their best. It does not occur to them to ask why it is that only in the ultimate concern’s service are they thus incapable. However, it is only in respect to such a service that the hidden workings of the psychopathic offenders interfere. If heteronomy inevitably foes shipwreck on the rocks of the demonic, authority becomes a dangerous problem because heteronomy is the authority claimed or exercised by a finite being in the name of the infinite. It is difficult and painful to break-through to autonomy which has made one immune against any system of thought or life which demands the surrender of this autonomy. However, subjection to a law is not experienced as our own. Actual authority is based on a superiority of knowledge, ability, and experience, which is indispensable due to man’s limitations and deficiencies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

However, authority ambiguously degenerates into “established” authority attached to social positions, exempli gratia, parents, kings, and priests, which trespasses upon the sacred domains of the personal self. We are keenly aware of the need for authority, an awareness intensified by the political chaos in America after the 2020 election, but one most be even more sensitive to the ambiguity of authority and its constant need for a corrective. There can be a power through a renunciation of power, a renunciation or moderation based not on weakness, but on the vitality of participation in the transcendent power beyond all finite power-structures. Power is an ontological concept. The power of authority an be directed toward fostering union, but this process of unification may not be vitiated by an unjust and meaningless conformity. Man needs authority because we are so frail, so dependent upon others, and the acceptance of authority is the acceptance of what is given by those who have more than we. There is possibility of an authority guaranteed by its inner power, not established by tradition, knowledge or experience. There is something in the Christian message which is opposed to established authority. There is something in the Christian experience which revolts against subjection to even the greatest and holiest experience of the past. The place where the ultimate concern gives authority to man cannot be circumscribed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

It cannot be legally defined. It cannot be put into the fences of doctrines and rituals. It is here, and you do not know where it comes from. You cannot derive it. You must be grasped by it. You must participate in its power. This is the reason why the question of authority never can get an ultimate answer. Authority is from God but God is Spirit, the Spirit that blows where it wills and cannot be imprisoned in finite institutions. The God who is Spirit does not eliminate preliminary authorities from our lives—parental, social, political, and ecclesiastical—but they are not ultimacy. The only suitable symbol of authority is the Cross upon which Jesus witnessed, not to himself, but to “Him who is the ground and the negation of everything which is authority on Earth and in Heaven.” The problem of authority which we have seen—power through renunciation of power, power inspired by love but tempered by justice, the acceptance of preliminary authorities but the denial of the possibility of localizing ultimate authority—through all of these solutions shines the Protestant principle, the paradoxical principle of simultaneous affirmation and negation. By the Protestant principle he accepts authority, but in the same breath criticizes it, for authority always leans toward heteronomy and thus presents a constant target for the prophetic protest against the demonic. Heteronomy is a type of union of religion and culture, but a demonically distorted one. It fails to respect legitimately autonomous forms and imposes itself as an alien law. Thus heteronomy is more a subordination of culture to religion than an organic union of the two, for it is the attempt of a religion to dominate autonomous cultural creativity from the outside. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21