All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human want directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth. If we are honest we have to admit that we will never fully know what happened to our ancestors in their journey towards modern humanity. To be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom. Instrumental aggression is a biologically adaptive type of aggression, which has the aim of obtaining that which is necessary or desirable. The aim is not destructive as such; this serves only as an instrument for attaining the real aim. In this respect it is similar to defensive aggression, but in other important aspects it is different. It does not seem to have a phylogenetically programmed neuronal basis such as that which programs defensive aggression; among mammals, only animals of prey, whose aggression is instrumental to obtaining food, are endowed with an innate neuronal pattern that impels them to attack their prey. The hunting behaviour of hominids and Homo is based on learning and experience, and does not seem to be phylogenetically programmed. The difficulty with instrumental aggression lies in ambiguity of the terms “necessary” and “desirable.” It is easy to define necessary in terms of an unquestionable physiological need, as, for instance, warding off starvation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27

Capital is part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth. In December of 2020, 30 million Americans needed food assistance and/or could not feed themselves and their families. Simultaneously, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk made headlines for overtaking each other as the richest person in the World with more than $160 billion each. If a human steals or robs because he or she and his or her family do not have even the minimal amount of food they need, the aggression is clearly an act motivated by physiological necessity. The same would hold true for a primitive tribe on the verge of starvation which attacks another tribe that is better off. However, these clear-cut examples of necessity were once relatively rare, but are becoming increasingly common. Other more complicated cases are also becoming much more frequent. The leads of a nation realize that their economic situation will be seriously endangered in the long run unless they can conquer territory having the raw materials they need, or unless they defeat a competing nation. Although frequently such reasons are merely an ideological cover for the desire for increasing power or the personal ambition of the leaders, there are wars which do respond to a historical necessity, at least in a broad, relative sense. However, what is desirable? #RandolphHarris 2 of 27

In a narrow sense of the word desirable, one could answer: The desirable is what is necessary. In this instance “desirable” is based on the objective situation. More frequently, however, desirable is defined as that which is desired. If we use the term in this sense, the problem of instrumental aggression assumes another aspect, and in fact the most important one in the motivation of aggression. The truth is that people desire not only what is necessary in order to survive, not only that which provides the material basis for a good life; most people in our culture—and in similar periods of history—are greedy: greedy for more food, drink, pleasures of the flesh, possessions, power, and fame. Their greed may refer more to one than to another of these objects; what all people have in common is that they are insatiable and hence never satisfied. Greed is one of the strongest noninstictive passions in humans, and it is clearly a symptom of psychical dysfunctioning, of inner emptiness and a lack of a center within oneself. It is a pathological manifestation of the failure to develop fully, as well as one of the fundamental sins in Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian ethics. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27

A few examples will illustrate the pathological character of greed: it is well-known that overeating, which is one form of greed, is frequently caused by states of depression; or that compulsive buying is one attempt to escape from a depressed mood. The act of eating or buying is a symbolic act of filling the inner void and, thus, overcoming the depressed feeling for the moment. Green is a passion—that is to say, it is charged with energy and relentlessly drives a person toward the attainment of one’s goals. In our culture greed is greatly reinforced by all those measures that tend to transform everybody into a consumer. Of course the greedy person does not need to be aggressive, provided one has enough money to buy what one desires. However, if one wants to satisfy one’s desires, the greedy person who does not have the necessary means must attack. The most drastic example of this is the drug addict who is possessed by one’s greed for the drug (although in one’s case increasingly reinforced by physiological sources). The many who do not have the money to buy drugs, rob, assault, or even kill in order to get the necessary means. Destructive as their behaviour is, their aggression is instrumental and not their goals. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27

On a historical scale greed is one of the most frequent causes of aggression and is probably as strong a motive for instrumental aggression as the desire for what is objectively necessary. The understanding of greed is obscured by its identification with self-interest. The latter is a normal expression of a biologically given drive, that for self-preservation, the aim of which is to obtain what is necessary for the preservation of life or of a customary, traditional standard of living. As Max Webber, R. H. Tawney, Heinrich von Brentano, Werner Sombart, and others have shown, humans in the Middle Ages were motivated by the desire to preserve one’s traditional standard of living, whether as a peasant or an artisan. The demands of the revolutionary peasants in the sixteenth century were not to have what the artisans in the cities had, nor did the artisans strive for the wealth of a feudal baron or a rich merchant. Even as late as the eighteenth century we find laws that forbid a merchant to try to take customers away from a competitor by making one’s own store look more attractive or by praising one’s wares to the disadvantaged of those of another merchant. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27

Only with the full development of capitalism—as earlier, in comparable societies like that of the Roman Empire—did greed become a key motive for an ever-increasing number of citizens. However, greed, perhaps because of a still-lingering religious tradition, is a motive to which hardly anyone dares to confess. The logic went: self-interest is a biologically given striving anchored in human nature; self-interest equals greed; ergo: greed is rooted in human nature—and not a character-conditioned human passion. In our phantasy World we are engaged with ideas which have the nature of dynamic structures, acting as “authority figures,” “goodies” and “baddies,” “persecutors,” “victims,” “rescuers,” and so on. Mostly we define these stagey figures in such a way that our way of dealing with them or relating with them is implied in the word itself. We love “goodies” and we try to be like them and feel bad when we are not. We strongly dislike “baddies” and persecute or feel persecuted by them. We identify and sympathize with “victims” (if we did not, it would be because they are “baddies”—their suffering serves them right!) and we welcome and cheer on the “rescuers” (if we did not, it is because we see them as “persecutors”). #RandolphHarris 6 of 27

We have learnt to relate to the World in an excited but frustrated way, or in an angry need-rejecting way, or, thirdly, in a spuriously calm matter-or-fact way. What is left after the libidinal and the anti-libidinal organizations of the self have been disowned? There still remains a self shorn of both enjoyable and painful components, but still capable of engaging in the survival functions, mainly perceiving, remembering, comparing, planning, and so on—the ego-functions. This is left-over is the Central Ego; it is almost entirely a monitor of events. It is an organized region of the self which registers that there has been arousal of need, and gratification or frustration of needs, wishes, impulses to approach or retreat, but it does not register the accompanying feelings. Though of necessity in touch, however, minimally, with whatever dynamic structures enable the organism to survive, there is not much contact with the arousing, gratifying, or frustrating sensations themselves (which have formed “libidinal” and “anti-libidinal” organizations). The Central Ego relates to the Ideal Object. The phantasy is that is an individual does not make a nuisance of itself, is not unjustifiably demanding, and avoids whatever makes its attachment figures reject one, if one does all this and maybe more…then the individual will be behaving in an ideal way and the attachment figures, who of course are ideal, will be able to respond in an ideal way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27

This is called the Moral Defense (against the intolerable anxiety of living in the hostile World). Alas that is should sound so plausible a term. The World central might suggest that the Central Ego is somehow at the core of a person. However, the Central Ego is the monitor at the boundary between the self and other people and things. In this is closely resembles what Dr. Freud meant by “ego”—he also did not mean the self but only that monitoring process. It is also like Dr. Winnicott’s False Self, the Caretaker Self which protect more vulnerable feelings which are conceived of as deeper, further away, or further back. There are therefore circumstances when the Central Ego is divorced from much that is part of a person; there is only the sort of consciousness which is expressed in “I must get along somehow,” not feeling much or needing much or dreading much since all that is almost entirely split off. Being out of touch with most of the springs of action, the mode of speech is passive. This is how a withdrawn person does feel. The more personal pronouns are also removed: “That is life,” “It is what it is,” “That is how the cookie crumbles,” “No use complaining.” The Central Ego holds summarized abstracts of the environment: concepts not percepts. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27

In these circumstances, the environment, too, is shorn of anything that might make for strong feelings. An Ideal object, it is stripped of its exciting or rejecting aspects, bland. Sometimes this is called the Accepted Object, since everything is experienced as acceptable: “My family is just ordinary,” “We get on well,” “We do not have problems,” What is anything to do with anything?” A person who represents the extreme condition in this mood, might say, “I have no wishes; I do not care about anything or anyone.” Such people have a simple system of guidance—pleasure—seeking/pain-avoiding, or survival, or a cause, or a set of values—by the light of which they manage their lives, rather as managers of industrial organizations may impersonally manage the organization on lines laid down by others. They manage; they do not enjoy. They may think of this matter-of0fact region as their real and most central self. It is a region of thoughts and calculations—an entrepreneurial self-region, or a managerial one, individualistic. #RandolphHarris 9 of 27

The extent to which it is cut off and isolated from other self-regions varies of course—people differ. If it varied from social classes to social class in systematic ways which would be shown up by research, I would not be surprised. I certainly think that it varies between the genders, by and large, the men’s Central Ego being on average more pronounced and more isolated, and also more highly valued than women’s. Personality-structures here, as so often, reflect the institutional structures of our society. So, perhaps to an even greater degree, do the theories we construct, since they are constructed by those of us who have done well by our institutional arrangements. There are people whose Central Ego is the most conscious and valued aspect of their self-imagery. They seem to be conscious of themselves mainly as thinkers, believing themselves to be most uniquely themselves when thinking. It is interesting to note how often philosophers are like this. Dr. Descartes wrote, “I think therefore I am—Cogito ergo sum”; Dr. Pascal called himself a mere fragile reed but, he added quickly, “un roseau pensant”: a thinking reed. Perhaps professional thinkers, academics, and theory-writers are particularly prone to this kind of personality structure, which they thus believe to be characteristic of the whole human race. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27

Being thinkers, they are good at words, and get themselves into print. However, they may not be accurately describing how it is for all of us.  Welfare economics is often defined as a conception of political economy, that is, as standards by which to assess economic arrangements and politics, and their background institutions. (“Welfare” suggest that the implicit moral conception is utilitarian: the phrase “social choice” is far better although I believe its connotations are still too narrow.) A doctrine of political economy must include an interpretation of the public good which is based on a conception of justice. It is to guide the reflections of the citizen when one considers questions of economic and social policy. One is to take up the perspective of the constitutional convention or the legislative stage and ascertain how the principles of justice apply. A political opinion concerns what advances the good of the body politic as a whole and invokes some criterion for the just division of social advantages. Justice as fairness applies to the basic structure of society. It is a conception for ranking social forms viewed as closed systems. Some decision concerning these background arrangements is fundamental and cannot be avoided. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27

In fact, the cumulative effect of social and economic legislation is to specify the basic structure. Moreover, the social system shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons that are. Thus an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and needs but a way of creating and fashioning wants in the future. How humans work together now to satisfy their present desires affects the desires they will have later on, the kind of persons they will be. These matters are, of course, perfectly obvious and have always been recognize. They were stressed by economist as different as Alfred Marshall and Karl Marx. Since economic arrangements have these effects, and indeed must do so, the choice of these institutions involves some view of human good and of the design of institution to realize it. This choice must, therefore, be made on moral and political as well as on economic grounds. Considerations of efficiency are but one basis of decision and often relatively minor at that. Of course, this decision may not be openly faced; it may be made by default. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27

We often acquiesce without thinking in the moral and political conception implicit in that status quo, or leave things to be settled by how contending social and economic forces happen to work themselves out. However, if the conclusion is reached that it is best left to the course of events to decide, political economy must investigate this problem. One might think that this conception of justice relies upon the aims of existing individuals and regulates the social order by principles that persons guided by these aims would choose. We must not overlook the very special nature of that situation and the scope of the principles adopted there. Only the most general assumptions are made about the aims of the parties, namely, that they take an interest in primary social goods, in things that humans are presumed to want whatever else they want. A just system must generate its own support. This means that it must be arranged so as to bring about in its member the corresponding sense of justice, an effective desire to act in accordance with its rules for reasons of justice. Thus the requirement of stability and the criterion of discouraging desires that conflict with the principles of justice put further constraints on institutions. They must be not only framed so as to encourage the virtue of justice in those who take part in them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27

In this sense, the principles of justice define a partial ideal of the person which social and economic arrangements must respect. Finally, as the argument for embedding ideals into our working principles has brought out, certain institutions are required by two principles. They define an ideal basic structure, or the outlines of one, toward which the course of reform should evolve. The upshot of these considerations is that justice as fairness is not at the mercy, so to speak, of existing wants and interests. It sets up an Archimedean point for assessing the social system without invoking a priori considerations The long range aim of society is settled in its main lines irrespective of the particular desires and needs of its present members. And an ideal conception of justice is defined since institutions are to foster the virtue of justice and to discourage desires and aspirations incompatible with it. Of course, the pace of change and the particular reforms called for at any given time depend upon the current conditions. However, the conception of justice, the general form of a just society and the ideal of the person consistent with it are not similarly dependent. There is no place for the question whether human’s desires to play the role of superior or inferior might not be so great that autocratic institutions should be accepted. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27

Also, there is no question whether human’s perception of the religious practice of others might not be so upsetting that liberty of conscience should not be allowed. We have no occasion to ask whether under reasonably favourable conditions the economic gains of technocratic but authoritarian institutions might be so great as to justify the sacrifice of basic freedoms. Of course, these remarks assume that the general assumptions of which the principles of justice were chosen were chosen are correct. However, if they are, this sort of question is already decided by these principles. Certain institutional forms are embedded within the concept of justice. This view shares with perfectionism the feature of setting up an ideal of the person that constrains the pursuit of existing desires. In this respect justice as fairness and perfectionism are both opposed to utilitarianism. The utilitarian can always say tat given social conditions and human’s interests as they are, and taking into account how they will develop under this or that alternative institutional arrangement, encouraging one pattern of wants rather than another is likely to lead to a greater net balance (or to a higher average) of satisfaction. On this basis the utilitarian selects between ideals of the person. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27

Some attitudes and desires, being less compatible with fruitful social cooperation, tend to reduce the total (or the average) happiness. Roughly speaking, the moral virtues are those dispositions and effective desires that can generally be relied upon to promote the greatest sum of well-being. Thus, it would be a mistake to claim that the principle of utility provides no grounds for choosing among ideals of the person, however difficult it may be to apply the principle in practice. Nevertheless, the choice does depend upon existing desires and present social circumstances and their natural continuations into the future. These initial conditions may heavily influence the conception of human good that should be encouraged, The contrast is that both justice as fairness and perfectionism establish independently an ideal conception of the person and of the basic structure so that not only are some desires and inclinations necessarily discouraged but the effect of the initial circumstances will eventually disappear. With utilitarianism we cannot be sure what will happen. Since there is no ideal embedded in its principle, the place we start from may always influence the path we are to follow. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27

In order to find an Archimedean point it is not necessary to appeal to a priori or perfectionist principles. By assuming certain general desires, such as the desire for primary social goods, and by taking as a basis the agreements that would be made in suitably defined initial situation, we can achieve the requisite independence from existing circumstances. The original position is so characterizes that unanimity is possible; the deliberations of any one person are typical of all. Moreover, the same will hold for the considered judgments of the citizens of a well-ordered society effectively regulated by the principles of justice. Everyone has a similar sense of justice and in this respect a well-ordered society is homogeneous. Political arguments appeal to this moral consensus. There is another resemblance to idealism: justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community. The essential idea is that we want to account for the social values, for the intrinsic good of institutional, community, and associative activities, by a conception of justice that in its theoretical basis is individualistic. For reasons of clarity among others, we do not want to rely on an undefined concept of community, or to suppose that society is an organic whole with a life of its own distinct from and superior to that of all its members in their relations with one another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27

Thus the contractual conception of the original position is worked out first. It is reasonably simple and the problem of rational choice that it poses is relatively precise. From this conception, however individualistic it might seem, we must eventually explain the value of community. Otherwise the theory of justice cannot succeed. To accomplish this we shall need an account of the primary good of self-respect which relates it to the parts of theory already developed. Since we see so many forms in Nature which are gloriously beautiful, and yet at the same time so many which are repulsively ugly, we may rightly conclude that both beauty and ugliness, the opposites, are present in the World-Idea and hence in the World-Mind. The same may be said of loving-kindness and merciless cruelty. For these attributes are merely human conceptions. The Infinite Mind is infinitely larger and more impersonal in outlook that is the human mind. It will be fund by experience that preoccupation with such questions as “Why does God allow evil in the World?” will fall away under the influence of the Witness Self. The question is relative to and relevant only in the sphere of the personal self in interaction with other personal selves, and in that sphere it has no answer. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27

In the sphere of God the question does not exist. “Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” is still as true as when spoken by the Christ over two thousand and twenty years ago. It is the outward appearance of their environment and the inward reality of their egoism which make so many thinkers doubt whether God is perfectly great. God has not the kind of limited five-sense conscious to which most human beings are limited. One trouble is that it is ordinarily believed that a God who is not a Person is no God at all because He will not be a thinking, intelligent being. It is so customary to associate consciousness with individual consciousness that it seems almost impossible to grasp the concept of omnipresent, everywhere-diffused, all-inclusive Mind which is not a mind. What we deny is the limited kind of being which is the only kind of God most human faculties can imagine. The Real, as the ultimate source of all knowing and feeling beings, cannot itself be unknowing and unfeeling. We could not deny consciousness to God without denying consciousness to humans. However, being absolute and infinite God does not know and feel in the same limited way which confines the knowledge and feelings of finite humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27

It is more correct to speak of Mind as the All-Conscious than as the unconscious. What we may rightly say is that, viewed from the side which alone is know to us, a certain phase of it appears to be unconscious. The higher teachings state that all the phases of Mind are consciousness ones. There is a curious and mysterious statement that God can gain nothing more by making Himself known to Himself, since He is already all-knowledge. Friendship cannot exist except towards rational creatures, who are capable of returning love, and communicating one with another in the various works of life, and who may fare well or ill, according to the changes of fortune and happiness; even as to them is benevolence properly speaking exercised. However, irrational creatures cannot attain to loving God, nor to any share in the intellectual and beatific life that He lives. Strictly speaking, therefore, God does not love irrational creatures with the love of friendship; but as it were with the love of desire, in so far as He orders them to rational creatures, and even to Himself. Yet this is not because He stand in need of them; but only on account of His goodness, and of the services they render to us. For we can desire a thing for others as well as for ourselves. Nothing prevents one and the same thing being loved under one aspect, while it is hated under another. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27

God loves sinners in so far as they are existing natures; for they have existence and have it from Him. In so far as they are sinners, they have not existence at all, but fall short of it; and this in them is not from God. Hence under this aspect, they are hated by Him. There is in fact an inner affinity between the law and the soul. That is why rebellion against the law makes the soul sick and distances it from God. That is why love of the law restores the soul. Law is god for the sou, is an indispensable instrument of instruction and a standard of judgment of god and evil. Walking in the law with God restores the soul because the law expresses the other of God’s kingdom and of God’s own character. That is why it converts and restores the soul. Grace is also essential, but not grace as formless spurts of permissiveness that thrust the law aside. The correct order that the soul requires for its vitality and proper functioning is found in the “royal law” of love (James 2.8), abundantly spelled out law, which he fulfilled and enables us to fulfill through constant discipleship to Him. One whose aim is anything less than obedience to the law of God in the Spirit and power of Jesus will never have a soul at rest in God and will never advance significantly in spiritual transformation into Christlikeness. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27

Finally, then, transformation of our soul requires that we acknowledge its reality and importance, understand scriptural teachings about it, and take it into the yoke of Jesus, learning from one humility and the abandonment of “outcomes” to God. This brings rest to the soul. Then our soul is reempowered in goodness by receiving the law and the Word into it as the structure of our covenant fellowship with God in grace. The law is the structure of a life of grace in the kingdom of God. Other things maybe required for soul recovery in some people: perhaps special acts of deliverance or ministries of inner healing or psychological counseling. Always, the good news of Jesus is presupposed. However, the most powerful force for transformation of the soul born “from above” is to walk in righteousness upheld by grace. “The soul is deep.” What do you understand that to mean? How does it relate to intellectual and cultural tendencies of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries? To biblical teachings. How does “failure of good intentions” relate to the disorders of the soul? Why does fanaticism have such an attraction for the broken soul? What are some way you can acknowledge your own soul? How is law and obedience to law an expression of grace? #RandolphHarris 22 of 27

Does the idea of an affinity between law and the soul make sense to you? Everything, be it person, news, government, celebrity, chatter or gossip, that you set up in the place of God is an idol. In every act of such worship you commit idolatry. If divinity cannot be represented by any idol, any graven image, nether can it be described by any word. All verbal descriptions are non-descriptions. What Jesus Christ called “the only true God” is the ultimate formless reality, not the thoughts about it or the pictures of it created in human imaginations. It is an object of insight, not of sense of thought. Try as much as you can, but in the end you will find God is not something imaginable. Nobody can tell us what God looks like, for God has no form at all. God must be found as He is in reality, not as He has been in human imagination. We feel the presence of a divine power, but we are baffled by its motives. Neither thinking nor any kind of human activity can grasp the full truth about the World-Mind. Not even at the height reached by the self-actualized or adept is this possible. If God were not a mystery, He would not be God. Humans who claim to know Him need semantic correction; this said, their experience may yet be exceptional, elevating, and immaterialist. However, let God remain God, incomprehensible and untouchable. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27

God is a mystery which no human can truly understand, no language can really express, and no idea can fully embody. The one infinite life-power which reveals itself in the cosmos and manifests itself through time and space, cannot be named. It is something that is. For a name would falsely separate it from other things when the truth is that it is those things, all things. Nor would we know what to call it, since we know nothing abouts its real nature. The consciousness and nature of the World-Mind is utterly beyond the capacity and power of any human being to understand, much less to explain. “A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, one, too, will drink from the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. One will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of holy angels and of the lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.’ This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27

“Then I heard a voice from Heaven say, ‘Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes,’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labour, for their deeds will follow them,’” reports Revelation 14.9-13. Father, I choose faith! I choose Your unlimited grace and favour. I choose to believe that You have good things in store for me. You use me for Your glory in Jesus’s name. Amen. You must continue to bear in mind that the temporal and spiritual are blended. They are not separate. One cannot be carried on without the other, so long as we are here in mortality. We do not feel that it is possible for people to be really good and faithful Chrisitian people unless they can also be good and faith, honest and industrious people. Self-reliance implies the individual development of skills and abilities and then their application to provide for one’s own needs and wants. If further implies that one will achieve those skills through self-discipline and then, through self-restraint and charity, use those skills to bless oneself and others. The Lord expects all his children of sound mind and body to thus perform in this second estate is made clear in many scriptural passages whose central thought focuses on work—personal, earnest, life-sustaining work. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27

The Lord sets free the captives. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord raises up them that are humble; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord protects the strangers, God upholds the fatherless and the widow; but the way of the wicked God does confuse. The Lord shall reign forever, eternally and always. Thy God, O America, shall be Sovereign unto all generations. Hallelujah. Just as each individual is accountable for one’s choices and actions in spiritual matters, one is also accountable in temporal matters. Father, my finances belong to you. I thank You in advance for my financial prosperity. Lord, I know that everything that comes from You is good, so I know that by placing my finances in Your hands, You will come through for me and I will become financially stable and secure. I know that in this new year, You will bless me with my dream house and guide me to stable grounds. Dear Lord, keep me in mind of my blessings no matter how much or little I may have. Please give me the patience to save and the will power to make wise choices. Please help me see the value in building a savings for retirement and a college fund for my children. Please, God, grant me the patience and tolerance necessary to calm my spirit and bring peace and love into my home and silence. I know that you are in control of everything. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27

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A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form for us before light fell on them. The individual differentiated itself out of the infinite ocean of Mind into a distinct individuality after a long development through the diverse kingdoms of Nature. Having thus arrived at consciousness of what it is, having travelled the spiral of growth from germ to human, the result of all this effort is certainly not gained only to be throw away. Were this to happen then the entire history of the human race would be a meaningless one, its entire travail a resultless one, its entire aspiration a valueless one. If evolution were merely the complementary return journey of an involuntary process, if the evolving entity arrived only at its starting point for all its pains, then the whole plan would be a senseless one. If the journey of humans consisted of nothing more than treading a circle from the time of one’s emergence from the Divine Essence to the time of one’s mergence back into it, it would be a vain and useless activity. It would be a stupendous adventure but also an unenlightened one. There is something more than that in one’s movement. Expect in the speculations of certain theorists, it simply does not happen. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

The self-consciousness thus developed will not be dissolved, extinguished, or re-absorbed into the Whole again, leaving not a trace behind. Rather will it begin a new spiral of evolution towards higher altitudes of consciousness and diviner levels of being, in which it will co-operate as harmoniously with the universal existence as formerly it collided against it. It will not separate its own goo from the general good. Here is part of the answer to this question: What are the ultimate reasons for human wanderings through the World-process? That life matters, that the Universe possesses meaning, and that the evolutionary agonies are leading to something worthwhile—these are beliefs we are entitled to hold. If the cosmos is a wheel which turns and turns endlessly, it does not turn aimlessly. Evolution does not return us to the starting point as we were. The ascent is not a circle but a spiral. Evolution presupposes that its own possibility has always been latent within the evolving entities. Hence the highest form is hidden away in the lowest one. There is development from the blindly instinctive life of animals to the consciously thinking life of humans. The blind instinctive struggles of the plant to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the self-conscious efforts of the human. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

The blind instinctive struggles of the planet to sustain itself are displaced in the evolutionary process by the intelligent self-conscious efforts of the human being. Everywhere we find that evolution produces variety. There are myriads of individual entities, but each possesses some quality of uniqueness which distinguishes it from all others. Life ma be one but is multitudinous expressions do differ, as thought difference were inherent in such expression. Evolution as mentalistically defined by philosophy is not quite the same as evolution as materialistically defined by Dr. Darwin. With us it is simply the mode of striving, through rhythmic rise and fall, for an ever fuller expansion of the individual unit’s consciousness. However, the ego already possesses all such possibilities latently. Consequently the whole process, although apparently an ascending one, is really an unfolding one. Narcissism can be described as a state of experience in which only the person oneself, one’s body, one’s needs, one’s feelings, one’s thoughts, one’s property, everything and everybody pertaining to one are experienced as fully real, while everybody and everything that does not form part of the person or is not an object of one’s needs is not interest, is not fully real, is perceived only by intellectual recognition, while affectively without weight and colour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

A person, to the extent to which one is narcissistic to one has significance, while the rest of the World is more or less weightless or colorless, and because of this double standard the narcissistic persons shows severe defects in judgment and lacks the capacity for objectivity. Often the narcissistic person achieves a sense of security in one’s own entirely subjective conviction of one’s perfection, one superiority over others, one’s extraordinary qualities, and not through being related to others or through any real work or achievement of one’s own. One needs to hold on to one’s narcissistic self-image, since one’s sense of worth as well as one’s sense of identity are based on it. If one’s narcissism is threated, one is threatened in a vitally important area. When others wound one’s narcissism by slighting one, criticizing one, showing up when one has said something wrong, defeating one in a game or on numerous other occasions, a narcissistic person usually reacts with intense anger or rage, whether or not one shows it or is even aware of it. The intensity of this aggressive reaction can often be seen in the fact that such a person will never forgive someone who has wounded one’s narcissism and often feels a desire for vengeance which would be less if one’s body or one’s property had been attacked. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

“Splitting an object” refers to what happens when a person experiences more than one object where other people may be sure that there is only one. For instance, I might have split my experiences in which a way that I sometimes relate to a perfectly good mother, and sometimes bad. Where the point of a sentence is that a person’s experience of something or someone is not being shared by other people, is called a phantasy object or inner object. Phantasy, in psychodynamics, is also called expectancy. We may think of a person as passively undergoing experiences over which one has little control. However, from the experience of some regularly recurring routines, one will come to expect that the first stages of such a routine lead to the rest of a sequence. This is one way in which an organization of memory-traces becomes a dynamic structure. The experience of many individuals is that the emergence of a need—say, hunger—will lead to an expectation or an imaginative anticipation or a phantasy of something or someone coming to gratify that need: a complex concept of a gratifying person or a gratifying thing. This phantasy, once it is constructed, remains. The memory-traces persist. Even when the satisfaction does not come, the concept—the phantasy—is not wiped out. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

   So one can keep thinking about this phantasy, making up stories about it, and so on. This does not depend directly on how often the god thing actually happens. If it does not happen so very regularly, the individual can build up two phantasies of a significant object (person)—of one who is good and satisfying, and of one who is uncontrollable and is sometimes satisfying and sometimes not. The fact that the latter is sometime satisfying, helps to maintain the phantasy of a satisfying good object, and the fact that the object sometime does not being satisfaction helps to maintain the phantasy of a bad object. It, too, persists Once a nasty or frightening concept has been established, it can keep alive and dynamic, independent of whatever good experiences may also be taking place. Objects are bad by virtue of having been experienced as painful, or as not-there when they should have been there, or as there when they were not wanted, or generally causing too much tension. If an individual is not frustrated, they will register what is going on. If the transition from feeling a need to having it met was smooth and without pain, the individual may not register it, at least in the very early stages of psychic development. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

Howling, it seems clear to me that people do register pleasant sequences of exactment and gratification as well as unpleasant ones of excitement and gratification as well as unpleasant ones of excitement and frustration. I believe these pleasant sequences to be important in the development of a strong, realistically trusting and optimistic personality. However, in most cases bad objects are the first to be internalized. Still instincts are the motivating power because they have built-in drives toward objectives. The super-ego is a parental image created by a mixture of the individual’s experience of one’s own anxieties and one’s experience of one’s parents’ prohibitions and threats. The super-ego is a motivating power in so far as the individual took over the parental threats and prohibitions as part of its imagery (internalization). This made the super-ego an inner object with motivating power because the individual’s instinctual drive is thought to be directed to what the parent had; the energy of this drive, should not reach its target, was thought somehow to be diverted and deflected back to the individual. Thereafter the energy was available to the individual and reinforced the individual’s acceptance of parental prohibitions and threat. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

The super-ego is the limbo of abandoned object-cathexes’, that is a collection of instinctive energies which had not been expended in gratification, because they had not reached the object(ive) to which they had been directed. Most persons are not aware of their own narcissism, but only of those of its manifestations which do not overtly reveal it. Thus, for instance, they will feel an inordinate admiration for their parents or for their children, and they have no difficulty in expressing these feelings because such behaviour is usually judged optimistically as filial piety, parental affection, or loyalty; but if they were to express their feelings about their own person, such as “I am the most wonderful person in the World,” “I am better than anyone else,” et cetera, they would be suspected not only of being extraordinarily vain, but perhaps even of not being quite sane. On the other hand, if a person has achieved something that finds recognition in the field of art, science, sports, business, or politics, one’s narcissistic attitude appears not only to be realistic and rational, but is also constantly fed by the admiration of others. In these cases one can give full rein to one’s narcissism because it has been socially sanctioned and confirmed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

The problem pf narcissism and creativity is a very complex one. In present-day Wester society there is a peculiar interconnection between the narcissism of the celebrity and the needs of the public. The latter wants to be in touch with famous people because the life of the average person is empty and boring. The mass media live from selling fame, and thus everybody is satisfied: the narcissistic performer, the public, and the fame merchants. Among political leaders a high degree of narcissism is very frequent; it may be considered an occupational illness—or asset—especially among those who owe their power to their influence over mass audiences. If the leader is convinced of one’s extraordinary gifts and of one’s mission, it will be easier to convince the larger audiences who are attracted by humans who appear to be so absolutely certain. However, the narcissistic leader does not use one’s narcissistic charisma only as a means for political success; one needs success and applause for the sake of one’s own mental equilibrium. The idea of one’s greatness and infallibility is essentially based on one’s narcissistic grandiosity, not on one’s real achievements as a human being. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

However, that does not mean one is nothing but a bluff; this is true frequently enough, but not always. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill, for instance, were very narcissistic persons, yet they did no lack in important political achievements. However, these achievements were not such as to justify their feeling of self-assurance and unquestionable rightness often manifested in arrogance; at the same time, their narcissism was limited in comparison with that of others. When he lost the election of 1948, that explains why Churchill did not suffer from severe mental consequences. If Roosevelt had experienced defeat, I assume the same would have been the case, although the fact must not be ignored that even after political defeat, they would have retained a great number of admirers. Wilson’s case may be somewhat different; it would be a subject for study whether his political defeat did not create serious psychic problems that interacted with one’s physical illness. Some leaders prefer to die rather than to face defeat. And yet some can do without the narcissistic inflation because of their human core—conviction, conscience, love, and faith—is not very developed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

Extremely narcissistic persons are often forced to become famous, since otherwise they might become depressed or insane. However, it takes much talent—and appropriate opportunities—to influence others to such a degree that their applause validates these narcissistic dreams. Even when such people succeed, they are driven to seek further success, since for them failure carries the danger of collapse. Popular success is, as it were, their self-therapy against depression and madness. In fighting for their aims, they are really fighting for their sanity. The precept that there is no offense without a law (Nullum crimen sine lege), and the requirements it implies, also follow from the idea of a legal system. This precept demand that laws be known and expressly promulgated, that their meaning be clearly defined, that statutes be general both in statement and intent and not be used as a way  of harming particular individuals who may be expressly named (bills of attainder), that least the more severe offenses be strictly construed, and that penal laws should not be retroactive to the disadvantaged of those to whim they apply. These requirements are implicit in the notion of regulating behaviour by public rules. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

For if, say, statues are not clear in what they enjoin and forbid, the citizen does not know how one is to behave. Moreover, while there may be occasional bills of attainder and retroactive enactments, these cannot be pervasive or characteristic features of the system, else it must have another purpose. A tyrant might change laws without notice, and punish (if that is the right word) one’s subjects accordingly, because one take pleasure in seeing how long it takes them to figure out what the new rules are from observing the penalties one inflicts.  However, these rules would not be a legal system, since they would not serve to organize social behaviour by providing a basis for legitimate expectations. Finally, there are those precepts defining the notion of natural justice. These are guidelines intended to preserve the integrity of the judicial process. If laws are directives addressed to rational persons for their guidance, courts must be concerned to apply and to enforce these rules in an appropriate way. A conscientious effort must be made to determine whether an infraction has taken place and to impose the correct penalty. Thus a legal system must make provisions for conducting orderly trails and hearings; it must contain rules of evidence that guarantee rational procedures of inquiry. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

While there are variations in these procedures, the rule of law requires some form of due process: that is, a process reasonably designed to ascertain the truth, in ways consistent with the other ends of the legal system, as to whether a violation has taken place and under what circumstances. For example, judges must be independent and impartial, and no human may judge one’s own case. The mayor, senator, governor, or majority owner of a sports team cannot influence a judge’s ruling. Trials must be fair and open, but not prejudices by public clamour. The precepts of natural justice are to insure that the legal order will be impartially and regularly maintained. Now the connection of the rule of law with liberty is clear enough. Liberty is a complex of rights and duties defined by institutions. The various liberties specify things that we may choose to do, if we wish, and in regard to which, when the nature of the liberty makes it appropriate, others have a duty not to interfere. However, if the precept of no crime without a law is violated, say by statues, being vague and imprecise, what we are at liberty to do is likewise vague and imprecise. The boundaries of our liberty are uncertain. And to the extent that this is so, liberty is restricted by a reasonable fear of its exercise. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

The same sort of consequences follow if similar cases are not treated similarly, if the judicial process lacks its essential integrity, if the law does not recognize impossibility of performance as a defense, and so on. The principle of legality has a firm foundation, then, in the agreement of rational persons to establish for themselves the greatest equal liberty. To be confident in the possession and exercise of these freedoms, the citizens of a well-0rdered society will normally want the rule of law maintained. We can arrive at the same conclusion in a slightly different way. It is reasonable to assume that even in a well-ordered society the coercive powers of government are to some degree necessary for the stability of social cooperation. For although humans know that they share a common sense of justice and that each wants to adhere to the existing arrangements, they may nevertheless lack full confidence in one another. They may suspect that some are not doing their part, and so they may be tempted not to do theirs. The general awareness of these temptations may eventually cause the scheme to break down. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

The suspicion that others are not honouring their duties and obligations is increased by the fact that in the absence of the authoritative interpretation and enforcement of the rules, it is particularly easy to find excuses for breaking them. Thus even under reasonably ideal conditions, it is hard to imagine, for example, a successful income tax scheme on a voluntary basis. Such an arrangement is unstable. The role of an authorized public interpretation of rules supported by collective sanctions is precisely to overcome this instability. By enforcing a public system of penalties government removes the grounds for think that others are not complying with the rules. For this reason alone, a coercive sovereign is presumably always necessary, even though in a well-ordered society sanctions are not severe and many never need to be imposed. Rather, the existence of effective penal machinery serves as human’s security to one another. Knowing what things the law penalizes and knowing that these are within their power to do or not to do, citizens can draw up their plans accordingly. One who complies with the announced rules need never fear an infringement of one’s liberty. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

Unless citizens are able to know what the law is and are given a fair opportunity to take its directive into account, penal sanction should not apply to them. This principle is simply the consequence of regarding a legal system as an order of public rules addressed to rational persons in order to regulate their cooperation, and of giving the appropriate weight to liberty. I believe that is view of responsibility enables us to explain most of the excuses and defenses recognized by the criminal law under the heading of mens rea and that it can be serves as a guide to legal reform. The ideal theory requires an account of penal sanctions as a stabilizing device and indicates the manner in which this part of partial compliance theory should be worked out. In particular, the principle of liberty lead to the principle of responsibility. The moral dilemmas that arise in partial compliance theory are also to be viewed with the priority of liberty in mind. Thus we can imagine situations of an unhappy sort in which it may be permissible to insist less strongly on the precepts of the rule of law being followed. Any injustice in the social order is bund to take its toll; it is impossible that its consequences should be entirely canceled out. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

In applying the principle of legality we must keep in mind the totality of rights and duties that defines the liberties and adjust its claims accordingly. If we are to mitigate the loss of freedom from social evils that cannot be removed, and to aim for the least injustice that conditions allow, sometimes we may be forced to allow certain breached. Now, it is always true from the beginning to the end of the Bible, as well as of human history, that human deliverance comes from a personal relationship with God established in God’s gracious love and power. However, the law is an essential part of that relationship. The inadequacy of human effort taken by itself is simply assumed. Still, the law was given as an essential meeting place between God and human beings in covenant relationship with him, where the sincere heart would be received, instructed, and enabled by God to walk in his ways. God is the only restorer of souls. When those walking in personal relationship with God take one’s law into their heart, that law, as a living principle, quickens and restores connection and order to the flagging soul. However, that never happens in the absence of the personal presence and gracious action of God with the person involved. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

Thus some of the greatest assurances of God’s personal presence are found in the Old Testament. In the book of Isaiah, for example: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land fountains of water…that they may see and recognize, and consider and gain insight as well, that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it,” reports Isaiah 41.10, 18, 20. Spirit, covenant, and law always go hand in hand within the path of spiritual formation, for it is the path of one who walks with God. Rational creatures are masters of their own acts; and for this reason certain special expressions of the divine will are assigned to their acts, inasmuch as God ordains rational creatures to act voluntarily and of themselves. Other creatures act only as moved by the divine operation; therefore only operation and permission are concerned with these. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

All evil of sin, though happening in many ways, agrees in being out of harmony with the divine will. Hence with regard to evil, only one expression is assigned, that of probation. On the other hand, good stands in various relations to the divine goodness, since there are good deeds without which we cannot attain to the fruition of that goodness, and these are the subject of precept; and there are others by which we attain to it more perfectly, and these are the subject of counsel. Or it may be said that counsel is not only concerned with the obtaining of greater good; but also with the avoiding of lesser evils. Although the possibility of this discovery and awareness of God and establishment in it has always been with every human at every moment, the possibility is not. For one has to develop the equipment for maturing from the terrestrial being through human’s gathers experience to this full establishment in full union with one’s highest being. The savage may get the glimpse, and does, but this is only a beginning, not an end. We came from God and shall return to God, but that is an oversimplification which generally leads to misunderstanding. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

If not on our part then on God’s if that is the case, then all this long pilgrimage with all its sufferings becomes a senseless waste of time and an idiotic expenditure of energy. It is like banging one’s head against a wall in order to enjoy the relief which follows when the actions ends. The Infinite Being, whose Consciousness and Power is behind the Universe of history, can itself have no history, for it is beyond time, evolution, change, development, can have no purpose which is gainful to itself, cannot be made the object of human thought correctly because it utterly transcends the limitations of such thought. However, all this is not to say that the World-Mind’s activity is meaningless, Idea-less, and fruitless. The very contrary is the case. However, because the causation is shown to be illusory, and the cosmos uncreated and unending, this does not mean that our cosmology denies the truth of evolution. It denies only the conventional attitude towards evolution. For it takes all change and hence all progress out of the realm of ultimate reality and relegated them to where they belong, to the realm of immediate appearance. Just as there have been misconceptions about the role played by the personal ego and the physical ego in the life of humankind—misconceptions which have arisen by holding on to ideas which are out of their time and place. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

So the question must be asked, did these egos come by a process which launched them on a path where, the dew-drop slips into the shining sea, where the ego is utterly annihilated, where the personal self is completely dissolved in a sort of mass-consciousness, where all that it has gained from experience, all that it has learned from intelligence, is to be dissolved and thrown away as futile and useless although the ages upon ages have been taken for the process? Or will there unfold a higher type of individuality, one that is free because it has earned its freedom; free to exist in harmony with the universal harmony, with the Universal Mind. If anyone finds anything in this Universe which to complain, if one criticizes its defects and deficiencies, its evils and imperfections, let one remember that a Universe which is perfect in the sense that one means does not and could not exist. Only God is perfect. Anything else, even any Universe, being distinct from God, cannot also be perfect as Go without becoming God—when it would itself vanish. Nevertheless, even if they never attain it, its divine origin and sustenance are revealed in the fact that all things and all beings in its strive for perfection. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

This is what evolution means and this is the secret spring being it—the quest for perfection. For in seeking to return to their source, they are compelled to seek its perfection too. That is, they are compelled to evolve from lower to higher states and forms, from evil conditions and characteristics to ideal ones. It is not a game of hide-and-seek that God is playing with humans, not a sport for God’s own amusement as some believe, but a process of evolvement intended to give humans insight into the Real and power for co-operative participation. It is a treasure-hunt through many Earthly lives. We murmur against the World’s obstructiveness to our aspirations: the body is our stumbling-block. Yet if we had to live always as disembodies spirits, our spiritual development would need an immeasurably longer time to accomplish itself. The sharper focus of physical consciousness quickens our pace. Humans, in their earlier phases of being, were connected with God and aware of it. However, this connection lacked one’s own control. Eventually, to fulfil the purpose of evolution, they lost this connection and reawaken this awareness by their own efforts and out of one’s own inner activity, through one’s own desiring and one’s own individual freedom. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

What has one gained by this change to compensate the loss? One’s consciousness has become more sharply focused and consequently more clearly aware. Our source is in God; our growth is but a return to God, made fully conscious as we were not before. The immediate purpose of human incarnation and evolution is to develop a true and full self-consciousness at all levels from the lowest to the highest. The human who does not know oneself beyond the physical intellectual ego is still only half-conscious. As a human truly evolves, one is more guided more and more by intelligence and consciousness. It is a false evolvement which guides one into cunning and selfishness. The idea of human perfection would mean the attainment of a static condition, but nowhere in nature do we find such condition. Every thing is in a state of becoming. Reality is motion. Becoming and motion are processes, but Being, pure consciousness, is not. In the experience of a glimpse we discover this fact, Being transcends becoming, but it is only God who lives on the plane of Being; we humans many visit it, even for long periods, but we must return.  What a happy people we should be with the knowledge we have that this Earthly probation is not to prepare us to die, but to live; that the Father’s desire for us is that we may avoid every error and receive every truth. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

By applying truth in out lives we become more like God, and become worthy to dwell with Him. We should think of it seriously because this is a serious matter. We must look into our own lives, not the lives of others, but out own lives and discover if we are prepared for the great future life, if we were called hence tomorrow whether we would be prepared to given an account for our Earthly deeds. Remember that it is the intelligence that you acquire that is eternal, the truth which you learn here and apply in your lives, the knowledge and experience you gain and profit by—these you will take with you when you go home. The thing that God has given to you that is worth more than all the rest is and the opportunity to obtain eternal life in the celestial kingdom and a gift far greater than silver and gold. God is not only of bliss, but of faithful and dedicated love, and may He be our model and our guide in our lives. Because of Jesus Christ’s righteous life, the Saviour is the perfect example to all, and His resurrection is the first assurance to humanity that, we, too, shall come forth from the tomb. At the end of my life, I put my trust in God. Ancient Wise Father, please cover me with your cloak as I walk in this valley that leads to you land. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

Lord of Heaven, I greet you with arms wide open in trust as I learn to serve you in this realm. I will enter the World beyond Worlds with my eyes open and my head lifted, ready to experience its unique wonder, no loess beautiful than in this World I have known. I will go to your Land of Youth, to rest in your halls, O God of my people, to commune with the spirits of those who have gone this and who wait for me, there on the other side. The Lord has established His throne in the Heavens; and His kingdom rules over all. Let the Heavens be glad, and let the Earth rejoice; and let them say among the nations: “The Lord reigns.” The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King forever and ever. The Lord is King for ever and ever; the heathens are perished out of His land. The Lord brings the design of the heathens to naught; He makes their thoughts of no effect. Many are the thoughts in a human’s heart; but it is the Lord’s counsel that shall stand. The counsels of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations. For God spoke, and the World came into being; God commanded, and it stood firm. For the Lord hath chosen America; He has desired it for His habitation. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

Cresleigh Homes

If you also have a tupperware obsession, you may have already heard the storage space at #BrightonStation Residence 4 calling your name. 😉 Shown here with our extended island option, this kitchen is perfect for everyone from home cooks to professional slime makers. 🤗

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Stylishly spacious appointments. The Brighton Station’s residence 4 offers inviting covered entry and welcoming foyer open immediately onto the expansive great room. There is also a form dining room, and desirable large covered patio beyond. The well-designed gourmet kitchen is enhanced by a expansive center island with breakfast bar, plenty of counter and cabinet space, and generous walk-in pantry. And imagine all the possibilities you have with your private backyard!
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