Sin and passion originate wholly in the inevitable conditions of human existence. There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing, one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. In your reality, as you feel the weight of difficult days—uncertainty and fear—peace feels distant. All of us yearn for a peaceful and just world. However, mankind has shattered the possibility of peace through an insatiable hunger for material possessions and an unquenchable thirst for dominion. What begins as a secret disorder of the heart—an inward distortion of desire—unfolds outward into the great calamities of the age. The individual, unable to master his own passions, becomes the first battlefield. Within him, the conflict manifests as despair, self‑reproach, and the tragic impulse toward self‑destruction. In the family, this same moral disease takes the form of cruelty, suspicion, and violence, as the home—once the sanctuary of affection—becomes the arena where frustrated ambition and wounded pride seek their victims. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Among nations, the disorder magnifies itself into insurgency, civil strife, and the perpetual rivalry of states. Peoples rise against their rulers; rulers wage war against their neighbors; and the earth, weary of human contention, bears witness to the same tragic cycle repeated across centuries. No nation, however proud its heritage or lofty its ideals, has escaped the scourge of war. Each has, at some point in its history, bowed beneath the weight of its own ungoverned passions.Across the United States, crowds are clashing with federal authorities over the enforcement of the law. Some individuals have gone beyond peaceful protest, choosing instead to physically confront federal officials, mock them, or treat the documentation of their actions as a source of amusement. Yet the moment those same individuals discover that their conduct has placed them under federal scrutiny—listed as potential domestic threats, restricted in employment opportunities, or barred from air travel—the laughter will fade. These confrontations carry consequences far beyond the adrenaline of the moment. People who engage in violence or targeted harassment against federal officers jeopardize their futures, their freedom, and their safety. They also endanger the lives of the very officials tasked with maintaining public order. History shows that provoking armed authorities is never a trivial matter. The state’s responsibility to enforce the law does not disappear because a crowd is angry, and the risks escalate quickly when people treat confrontation as entertainment or political theater. Whatever one’s grievances, escalating into violence or direct attacks on federal personnel is a path that leads only to harm—for individuals, for families, and for the broader society that must absorb the consequences. Thus, the unrest of the world is not an accident of politics but the inevitable consequence of a deeper moral and psychological failure: the inability of mankind to restrain greed, to govern desire, and to honor the dignity of others. Until the inner life is reformed, the outer world will remain in turmoil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Human aggressiveness, enmity, violence, and war have revealed man’s inability to govern himself. Neither religion nor science has ever suggested that humans are perfect in the sense of possessing great powers of intellect, will, and decision-making. Dr. Jung stresses that aggressiveness, violence, and greed are the inherent characteristics of “ego-instincts.” The originally simple and unequivocal instinctual determination, in Dr. Jung’s view, can appear transformed into “pure greed” and into a characteristic expression of self-preservation. It may well be that greed is encouraged to a greater degree in capitalism, but it is impossible to deny that greed precedes rather than follows the capitalistic economic order. Humans, like animals, are born with greed. The nursing child, knowing nothing about capitalism and dialectical materialism, will instinctively overfeed himself. Goldfish, like many animals, will overeat when given the chance. This instinctive excess reflects a broader truth: the drive to take more than is necessary is not unique to humans but inherent in many living beings. What humans call “greed” is, in its rawest form, a biological impulse toward survival and accumulation. Animals hoard food. Plants compete aggressively for sunlight and nutrients. Predators overhunt when prey is abundant. Humans accumulate wealth, power, and status far beyond survival needs. The difference is that humans moralize the impulse, while animals simply enact it. However, no mutual interaction of economic forces, including private ownership, division of labor, and exchange, can ever give rise to human greed, although this interaction can influence its intensity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Greed—understood as the desire to acquire more than one needs—is older than capitalism, older than socialism, older than any modern ideology. It appears in monarchies, tribal societies, feudal systems, and communal experiments. It appears in families, workplaces, religious institutions, and political movements. Economic systems do not invent greed; they merely provide different avenues for it to express itself. In capitalist societies, greed often expresses itself through the accumulation of wealth, the exploitation of labor, monopolistic behavior, and consumer excess. Critics argue that capitalism can reward greed by tying success to acquisition. In socialist or collectivist movements, greed can take a different form: a sense of entitlement to others’ labor or resources, demands for benefits without contribution, political elites controlling distribution, and corruption within centralized authority. These are not inherent to socialism itself, but they are ways human desire can distort the system. Whether someone seeks private wealth or public redistribution, the psychological root can be the same: a desire to acquire without limit or without responsibility. Greed and selfishness are defects of human nature and not defects of socioeconomic relations. The primacy of greed and other human passions has nothing to do with the capitalist economy. The situation of human action and the character of humanly possible responses to that situation are shot through with deep-seated tensions which make the maintenance of any given state of affairs precarious.  Human beings are never simply reacting to the external world; they are continually negotiating the inner contradictions of dependency and autonomy, fear and desire, vulnerability and assertion. These tensions press upon the developing personality long before the individual has the resources to understand them, and the early solutions adopted in childhood often harden into enduring orientations toward life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

People who later tend toward the self‑effacing solution usually have solved their early conflicts with others by “moving toward them.” In the face of threat, disapproval, or emotional uncertainty, they discovered that safety lay not in resistance or withdrawal but in compliance, appeasement, and the cultivation of exaggerated agreeableness. What begins as a child’s attempt to preserve connection becomes, in adulthood, a habitual strategy of self‑preservation: the self is protected by diminishing itself, by anticipating the needs of others, by forestalling conflict through submission or charm. Yet this solution, like all characterological defenses, carries its own internal strain. The individual who survives by yielding must continually monitor the emotional climate, suppress personal impulses, and maintain a vigilant sensitivity to the expectations of others. The very strategy that once ensured safety becomes a source of chronic tension, for it requires the ongoing sacrifice of spontaneity, autonomy, and authentic self‑assertion. Thus, the self‑effacing solution preserves the person at the cost of constricting the self. The self-effacing type grew up under the shadow of somebody: of a preferred sibling, of a parent who was generally adored (by outsiders), of a beautiful mother or of a benevolently despotic father. It was a precarious situation, liable to arouse fears.  However, the affection of a kind was attainable—at a price: that of the self-subordinating devotion. There may have been, for instance, a long-suffering mother who made the child feel guilty at any failure to give her exclusive care and attention. Perhaps, there was a mother or a father who could be friendly or generous when blindly admired, or a dominating sibling whose fondness and protection could be gained by pleasing and appeasing. And so, after some years, in which the wish to rebel struggled in the child’s heart with his need for affection, he suppressed his hostility, relinquished the fighting spirit, and the need for affection won out. Temper tantrums stopped, and he became complaint, learned to like everybody, and to lean with a helpless admiration on those whom he feared most. He became hypersensitive to hostile tension and had to appease and smooth things over. Because the winning over of others became paramount in importance, he tried to cultivate in himself qualities that would make him acceptable and loveable. Sometimes, during adolescence, there was another period of rebellion, combined with a hectic and compulsive ambition. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

However, he again relinquished these expansive drives for the benefit of love and protection, sometimes with his first falling in love. The further development largely depended upon the degree to which rebellion and ambition were suppressed or how complete the swing toward subordination, affection, or love became. Like every other neurotic, the self-effacing type solves the needs evolving from his early development by self-idealization. However, he can do it in one way only. His idealized image of himself primarily is a composite of “lovable” qualities, such as unselfishness, goodness, generosity, humility, saintliness, nobility, and sympathy. Helplessness, suffering, and martyrdom are also secondarily glorified. In contrast to the arrogant-vindictive type, a premium is also placed on feelings—feelings of joy or suffering, feelings not only for individual people but for humanity, art, nature, values of all sorts. To have deep feelings is part of his image. If he reinforces the self-abnegation trends which have grown out of his solution of his basic conflict with people, only then can he fulfill the resulting inner dictates. He must therefore develop an ambivalent attitude toward his own pride. Since the saintly and lovable qualities of his pseudoself are all the values he has, he cannot help being proud of them. One patient, when recovering, said about herself: “I took my moral superiority humbly for granted.” Although he disavows his pride, and although it does not show in his behavior, it appears in many indirect forms in which neurotic pride usually manifests itself—in vulnerability, face-saving devices, avoidances, et cetera. On the other hand, his very image of saintliness and lovableness prohibits any conscious feeling of pride. He must lean over backward to eradicate any trace of it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Thus begins the shrinking process which leaves hum small and helpless. It would be impossible for him to identify himself with his proud, glorious self. He can only experience himself as his subdued, victimized self. He feels not only small and helpless but also guilty, unwanted, unlovable, stupid, and incompetent. He is the underdog and identifies himself readily with others who are downtrodden. Hence, the exclusion of pride from awareness belongs to his way of solving the inner conflict. The weakness of this solution, as far as we have traced it, lies in two factors. One of them is the shrinking process, which in biblical terms entails the “sin” (against oneself) of hiding one’s talent in the earth. The other concerns the way in which the taboo on expansiveness renders him a helpless prey to self-hate. We can observe this in many self-effacing patients at the beginning of analysis, when they respond with stark terror to any self-reproach. This type, often unaware of the connection between self-accusation and terror, merely experiences the fact of being frightened or panicky. He is usually aware of being prone to reproach himself but, without giving it much thought, he regards it as a sign of conscientious honesty with himself. He may also be aware that he accepts accusations from others all too readily, and realizes only later that they may actually have been without foundation and that it comes easier to him to declare himself guilty than to accuse others. In fact, his response to admitting guilt, or a fault when criticized, comes with such a quick and automatic reaction that his reason has no time to interfere. However, he is unaware of the fact that he is positively abusing himself, and still less of the extent to which he does it. His dreams are replete with symbols of self-contempt and self-condemnation. Typical for the latter are execution-dreams: he is condemned to death; he does not know why, but accepts it; nobody shows him any mercy or even concern. Or he has dreams or fantasizes in which he is tortured. The fear of torture may appear in hypochondriac fears: a headache becomes a brain tumor; a sore throat, tuberculosis; a stomach upset, cancer. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

As analysis proceeds, the intensity of his self-accusations and self-torture comes into clear focus. Any difficulty of his that comes up for discussion may be used to batter himself down. An emerging awareness of his hostility may make him feel like a potential murderer. Discovering how much he expects of others makes him a predatory exploiter. A realization of his disorganization with regard to time and money may arouse in him the fear of “deterioration.” The very existence of anxiety may make him feel like somebody utterly unbalanced and on the verge of insanity. In case these responses are out in the open, the analysis at the beginning may then seem to aggravate the condition. We may therefore get the impression at first that his self-hate or self-contempt is more intense, more vicious than in other kinds of neurosis. However, as we get to know him better, and compare his situation with other clinical experiences, we discard this possibility and realize that he is merely more helpless about his self-hate. Most of the effective means to ward off self-hate which are available to the expansive type, are not at his disposal. He does try, though, to abide by his special shoulds and taboos and, as in every neurosis, his reasoning and his imagination help to obscure and to embellish this picture. However, he cannot stave off self-accusations by self-righteousness, because by doing so, he would violate his taboos on arrogance and conceit. Nor can he, effectively, hate or despise others for what he rejects in himself, because he must be “understanding” and forgiving. Accusing others, or any kind of hostility toward others, would, in fact, frighten him (rather than reassure him) because of his taboos on aggression. Also, he needs others so much that he must avoid friction for this very reason. Finally, because of all these factors, he simply is not a good fighter, and this applies not only to his relations to others but to his attacks on himself as well. In other words, he is just as defenseless against his own self-accusations, his self-contempt, his self-torture, et cetera, as he is against attacks on the part of others. He takes it all lying down. He accepts the verdict of his inner tyranny—which in turn increases his already reduced feelings about himself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Nevertheless, he, of course, needs self-protection, and does develop defensive measures of his own kind. If his special defenses are not properly functioning, the terror with which he may respond to the assaults of his self-hate actually only emerges then. He tries to placate and take the edge off accusations by (for instance) an overeager admission of guilt. “You are quite right…I am no good anyhow…it is all my fault.” He tries to elicit sympathetic reassurance by being apologetic and by expressing remorse and self-reproach. He may also plead for mercy by emphasizing his helplessness. In the same appeasing way, he takes the sting out of his own self-accusations. He exaggerates in his mind his feelings of guilt, his helplessness, his being so badly off in every way—in short, he emphasizes his suffering. A different way of releasing his inner tension is through passive externalization. This shows in his feeling accused by others, suspected, or neglected, kept down, treated with contempt, abused, exploited, or treated with outright cruelty. However, this passive externalization, while allaying anxiety, does not seem to be as effective a means of getting rid of self-accusations as does active externalization. Besides (like all externalization), it disturbs his relations to others—a disturbance to which, for many reasons, he is particularly sensitive. All these defensive measures, however, still leave him in a precarious inner situation. He still needs a more powerful reassurance. Even at those times in which his self-hate keeps within moderate limits, his feeling that everything which he does by himself or for himself is meaningless—his self-minimizing, et cetera—makes him profoundly insecure. So, following his old pattern, he reaches out for others to strengthen his inner position by giving him the feeling of being accepted, approved of, needed, wanted, liked, loved, and appreciated. His salvation lies in others. Hence, his need for people is not only greatly reinforced but often attains a frantic character. Greed, self‑preservation, and the self‑effacing personality are best understood as divergent attempts to resolve the same fundamental insecurity that marks the human condition. In a world where the individual is continually confronted with threat, uncertainty, and the precariousness of all social arrangements, the psyche develops characteristic modes of safeguarding itself. Greed represents an expansive, acquisitive effort to secure safety by accumulating power or possessions; the self‑effacing solution represents the opposite tendency, in which safety is sought through compliance, appeasement, and the reduction of one’s own claims. Both are expressions of the broader instinct toward self‑preservation, shaped by early relational tensions and hardened into enduring patterns of character. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Human action unfolds within a field of tensions that no individual can fully escape. The moral life, like the psychological life, is marked by contradictions that render the maintenance of any stable orientation precarious. The ethic of ultimate ends collapses when confronted with the problem of means; the individual who seeks purity of intention soon discovers that action in the real world demands compromise, ambiguity, and the acceptance of morally hazardous instruments. In such moments, the strain of unresolved conflict often drives the idealist into chiliastic certainty, a prophetic absolutism that shields him from the intolerable burden of contradiction. Clinical experience reveals a parallel process within the developing personality. The child, confronted with the inescapable tensions of dependency, fear, and the unpredictability of others, must fashion some workable mode of self‑preservation long before he can comprehend the forces that shape him. These early solutions harden into characteristic patterns of character. Greed represents one such solution: an expansive, acquisitive attempt to secure safety by accumulating power, possessions, or advantage. It is a defensive maneuver against the felt precariousness of existence, a way of mastering anxiety by enlarging the sphere of control. The self‑effacing solution represents the opposite pole. Here, the individual seeks safety not through expansion but through contraction—by appeasing others, yielding to their demands, and minimizing his own claims. This pattern, too, is a response to the same fundamental insecurity. Where the greedy personality attempts to overcome tension by dominating the environment, the self‑effacing personality attempts to dissolve tension by aligning with it, “moving toward” others in the hope that compliance will forestall conflict. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Thus, the ethic of ultimate ends, the greedy pursuit of security, and the self‑effacing retreat into submission are all variations on a single theme: the human effort to manage the deep and persistent tensions inherent in action, relationship, and moral life. Each represents a different strategy of self‑preservation, shaped by early experience and sustained by the individual’s ongoing attempt to find safety in a world that offers none without cost. Human action is continually strained by contradictions that no individual or moral system can fully resolve. Even those who preach “love against violence” often find themselves, under the pressure of events, calling for one final act of force that will supposedly abolish all future violence. This shift from moral purity to chiliastic certainty is not an aberration but an expression of the deep tensions inherent in acting within a world where every means carries danger and every end demands compromise. The psyche, no less than the moralist, seeks refuge from these contradictions by adopting protective strategies that promise safety, coherence, or release from inner conflict. Clinical experience shows that individuals respond to these same tensions with characteristic patterns of self‑preservation. Greed represents one such pattern: an expansive attempt to master anxiety by accumulating power, possessions, or advantage, as though the enlargement of one’s sphere could neutralize the precariousness of existence. At the opposite pole stands the self‑effacing solution, in which the individual seeks safety through compliance, appeasement, and the reduction of personal claims. Both strategies arise from the same fundamental insecurity. Where the greedy personality attempts to overcome tension by dominating the environment, the self‑effacing personality attempts to dissolve tension by aligning with it, “moving toward” others in the hope that submission will forestall danger. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The moralist who turns from nonviolence to a final purifying act of force is engaged in a similar psychological maneuver. Faced with the intolerable strain of contradiction, he seeks a decisive act that will eliminate the very conditions that produced the conflict. This is the chiliastic impulse: the belief that one ultimate gesture—whether of force, renunciation, or submission—can restore harmony and abolish tension. Yet, like the characterological solutions of greed and self‑effacement, this impulse is itself precarious, for it rests on the illusion that the fundamental conflicts of human existence can be resolved once and for all. Therefore, whether in moral doctrine or in personality structure, the same pattern emerges: confronted with the inescapable tensions of life, individuals and systems alike adopt protective strategies that promise safety but cannot escape the underlying instability of the human condition. In the social sphere, the same instability that marks individual action becomes readily apparent. People often express grievances about economic strain, rising taxes, or the cost of living, yet their responses to the conditions producing these burdens are frequently marked by contradiction. They may support policies intended to reduce financial pressures while simultaneously protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which, as an institution, is tasked with enforcing policies to reduce inflation and enforce laws. Illegal immigration is costing Americans jobs, it is increasing health care costs and education costs, and increasing competition for housing, which results in billions of taxpayer dollars being spent unnecessarily. Such inconsistencies are not best understood as matters of logic but as manifestations of deeper emotional tensions. Much of this behavior reflects the strain of self‑preservation under conditions of uncertainty. When individuals feel economically or socially threatened, their anxieties seek an outlet. The resulting agitation may attach itself to whatever object is most symbolically available, regardless of whether it aligns with their stated concerns. In these moments, the protest is less about the issue itself and more about the need to discharge accumulated frustration, to assert agency, or to locate a target for diffuse anger. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

This pattern is not unlike the clinical solutions we observe in personality development. Just as the greedy personality attempts to secure safety through expansion, and the self‑effacing personality through submission, the socially agitated individual may attempt to preserve a sense of control by directing hostility outward. The object of that hostility need not be logically connected to the underlying distress; it merely needs to serve as a vessel for the emotional tension. Furthermore, what appears as political inconsistency is often a psychological maneuver—an attempt to manage inner conflict by externalizing it. In this sense, the instability of public reaction mirrors the instability of individual character. Both arise from the same fundamental condition: the difficulty of maintaining coherence in a world where threats are real, tensions are chronic, and the means of securing safety are never entirely adequate. Using the logic that people who immigrated illegally should be allowed to be here, even though they broke the law, is like saying the guys who crashed the airplanes on September 11, 2001, should have been allowed to do so because they made it past security. What is interesting—and where this ties back to your work—is that people often use whatever argument feels emotionally satisfying, not necessarily logically consistent. When people feel threatened, insecure, economically strained, or morally conflicted, they may reach for explanations that symbolically express their frustration, even if the reasoning is inconsistent. This is a form of self‑preservation, not logical analysis. In other words, some arguments are not really about history. Some arguments are not really about science, but they are about managing anxiety, identity, and social tension. As you can see, people adopt positions that help them cope with inner conflict, even when the reasoning is unstable. People may try to appeal to historical territorial changes to justify their modern immigration position. However, territorial history is extremely complex. Borders have shifted countless times across the world. Nations have formed, dissolved, and merged, and historical ownership does not determine modern law. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

This problem—the experience of the irrationality of the world—has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with all diabolical powers, and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant. We are placed into various life-spheres, each of which is governed by different laws. Religious ethics have settled with this fact in different ways. Hellenic polytheism made sacrifices to Aphrodite and Hera alike to Dionysus and to Apollo, and knew these gods were frequently in conflict with one another. The wickedness of the world stemming from original sin allowed, with relative ease, the integration of violence into ethics as a disciplinary means against the heretics who endangered the soul. However, the demands of the Sermon on the Mount, an acosmic ethic of ultimate ends, implied a natural law of absolute imperatives based upon religion. These absolute imperatives retained their revolutionizing force, and they came upon the scene with elemental vigor during almost all periods of social upheaval. They produced especially the radical pacifist sects, one of which in Pennsylvania experimented in establishing a polity that renounced violence towards the outside. This experiment took a tragic course, inasmuch as, with the outbreak of the War of Independence, the Quakers could not take up arms in hand for their ideals, which were those of war. Normally, Protestantism, however, absolutely legitimized the state as a divine institution and hence violence as a means. Protestantism, especially, legitimized the authoritarian state. There is an ethical responsibility for war, and that is transferred to the authorities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

To obey the authorities in matters other than those of faith could never constitute guilt. Calvinism, in turn, knew principled violence as a means of defending faith; thus, Calvinism knew the crusade, which was for Islam an element of life from the beginning. One sees that it is by no means a modern disbelief born from the hero worship of the Renaissance which poses the problem of political ethics. All religions have wrestled with it, with highly differing success, and after what has been said, it could not be otherwise. It is the specific means of legitimate violence as such in the hands of human associations which determines the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics. Whosoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends—and every politician does—is exposed to its specific consequences. This holds especially for the crusaders, religious, and revolutionaries alike. Let us confidently take the present as an example. He who wants to establish absolute justice on earth by force requires a following, a human “machine.” He must hold out the necessity of internal and external premiums, heavenly or worldly reward, to this “machine” or else the machine will not function. Under the conditions of the modern class struggle, the internal premiums consist of the satisfying of hatred and the craving for revenge; above all, resentment and the need for pseudo-ethical self-righteousness: the opponents must be slandered and accused of heresy. The external rewards are adventure, victory, booty, power, and spoils. The leader and his success are completely dependent upon the functioning of his machine and hence not his own motives. Therefore, he also depends upon whether or not the premiums can be permanently granted to the following, that is, to the Red Guard, the informers, the agitators, whom he needs. #RandolphHarris 15 of

In every sphere of collective life, the individual who assumes a position of leadership discovers that the actual outcome of his efforts is never fully his own. What he attains is shaped not only by his intention but by the motives of those who follow him—motives which, when examined ethically, are often mixed, ambivalent, or frankly base. The following can be harnessed only so long as a genuine belief in the leader’s person or cause animates at least a portion of them; never, in the realities of earthly affairs, can one rely upon the purity of motive in the majority. The leader must therefore contend with the instability inherent in human action: the gap between the ideal he seeks to embody and the emotional currents that drive those who rally behind him.  For here, as with every leader’s machine, one of the conditions for success is the depersonalization and routinization, in short, the psychic proletarianization, in the interests of discipline. After coming to power, the following of a crusader usually degenerate very easily into a quite common stratum of spoilsmen. Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these paradoxes. He lets himself in for the diabolical forces lurking in all violence. He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence. Those who enter political or social struggle for the sake of what they believe to be the common good often discover that the work exacts a psychological toll. They must contend not only with external opposition but with the inner conflict that arises whenever one is compelled to use imperfect means in the service of a desired end. Under such conditions, it is not uncommon for the individual to feel that his soul is endangered, that the very act of resisting disorder draws him into the moral ambiguities he hoped to overcome. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

This sense of being “damned” is less a theological judgment than a recognition of the tragic structure of human action: no one can engage the world’s conflicts without being touched by their impurities. In the course of fulfilling one’s duty, it is not uncommon for the individual to feel that the impurities of the world have reached out and drawn him into their orbit. The work of resisting ignorance, disorder, or harm requires contact with precisely those forces one would prefer to avoid. This contact produces a sense of inner strain, as though the soul itself were endangered by the very responsibilities laid upon it. Yet it may be that such burdens are not accidental but intrinsic to the vocation. There are tasks that fall to particular individuals not because they are untainted, but because they possess the strength to endure the tension without collapsing into cynicism or despair. The genius or demon of politics lives in an inner tension with the god of love, as well as with the Christian God as expressed by the church. This tension can at any time lead to an irreconcilable conflict. Men knew this even in the times of the church rule. Time and again, the papal interdict was placed upon Florence, and at the time, it meant a far more robust power for men and their salvation of soul than the “cool approbation” of the Kantian ethical judgement. The burghers, however, fought the church-state. And it is with reference to such situations that Machiavelli, in a beautiful passage, if I am not mistaken, of the History of Florence, has one of his heroes praise those citizens who deemed the greatness of their native city higher than the salvation of their souls. If one says, “the future of capitalism” or “international peace,” instead of native city of “fatherland” (which at present may be a dubious value to some), then you face the problem as it stands now.  #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the “salvation of the soul.” If, however, one chases after the ultimate good in war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is lacking, and two diabolic forces with enter the play remain unknown to the actor. These are inexorable and produce consequences for his action and even for his inner self, to which he must helplessly submit, unless he perceives them. The devil is old; grow old to understand him! Age is not decisive; what is decisive is the trained relentlessness in viewing the realities of life, and the ability to face such realities and to measure up to them inwardly. Sure, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with the head alone. In this, the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of “sterile” excitation—excitation is not, after all, genuine passion—if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs—politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, “The world is stupid and base, not I,” “The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,” then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in the nine out of ten cases, I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human point of view, this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

However, it is immensely moving when a mature man—no matter whether old or young in years—is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: “Here I stand; I can do no other.” That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. Insofar as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man—a man who can have the “calling for politics.” In the United States of America, where the rule of law is stable and consistently applied, individuals experience a heightened sense of security. People are not required to adapt to chronic threat, nor to accept violence, disappearance, or predation as ordinary features of daily life. This predictability becomes a psychological asset: it reduces the burden of vigilance and allows the individual to invest energy in constructive pursuits rather than in constant self‑protection. The popularity of the United States of America is therefore not mysterious; it reflects the universal human longing for an environment in which danger is not omnipresent and where the individual can rely upon institutions to stop and/or prevent conflict and crime. However, everything that we are accustomed to call love, that which lives in the depths of the soul and in the visible deed, and even the brotherly service of one’s neighbor which proceeds from a pious heart, all this can be without “love,” not because there is always a “residue” of selfishness in all human conduct, entirely overshadowing love, but because loves as a whole is something entirely different. Only he who knows God knows what love is. It is not the other way round; it is not that we first of all by nature know what love is and therefore know what God is. No one knows God unless God reveals Himself to him. And so no one knows what love is except in the self-revelation of God. Love, then, is the revelation of God. And the revelation of God is Jesus Christ. “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him,” reports 1 John 4.9. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19