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Don’t Go Out Like Whitney Huston–Can I Leave A Million at Your House and You Won’t Touch it?

Great changes require administrative support and necessary and necessary resources. A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. The World changes faster than the people in it. We must now try to imagine what the nucleic acid molecules, in the late coacervate/early cellular era, could have done besides reproduce their own kind. For definiteness, let us consider a coacervate or cell containing large numbers of nucleic acid molecules of different compositions and lengths. Let us assume, moreover, that much of the nucleic acid is in its single-stranded form at the time we commence our observations. This could be because not enough time has yet elapsed for the growth of the Siamese-twin configurations since the cyclically changing chemistry of the cell last produced the conditions that split the double molecules into single ones. In any event, let us follow the adventures of a single nucleic acid molecule as it floats around in the cellular fluid. We know, of course, that the floating around of such a molecule would not be a completely passive performance. We have already dealt with the tendency, arising from the electric fields associated with atoms and molecules, for some of the small organic and inorganic molecular fragments that inhabit the cellular fluid to attach themselves to local regions of the nucleic acid molecules. In the past, we concentrated on one type of such attachment process—that which cases a single molecule of nucleic acid to grow into a double one by conjugation of its bases. At that time, we did not concern ourselves greatly with competition from other kinds of attaching molecular fragments, although we knew that such other attachments were bound to occur from time to time. Our lack of concern for such competition was based on our awareness that most of these other attachments would be tenuous and quickly broken, since the randomly encountered molecular fragments would usually not “mate” very well with the nearby parts of the nucleic acid. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Our discussion implied that, upon the approach of a free nucleotide to a suitable region of a molecule of nucleic acid, the strong binging forces that would come into play would result in the displacement of any lightly held “impurity” in favour of the attachment of the arriving nucleotide. Such a tendency for loosely held fragments to be displayed by molecules of greater binding energy is probably adequate to render inconsequential the large majority of the nucleic acid molecule’s casual encounters in the cellular fluid. Nevertheless, there would appear to be possibilities for attachments of kinds that would not necessarily yield to such displacement forces. For example, two different nucleic acid molecules would occasionally bump together. And once in a while such a collision might bring together short regions of the two long molecules carrying base sequences complementary to one another—an A base opposed to a U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) base, then a G opposed to a C, and so on. The resulting multiple attachment could constitute much stronger connection than that resulting from the usual casual encounter between molecules of different types. To be sure, collisions between nucleic acid molecules would be rare, unless the concentration of nucleic in the cellular fluid were exceedingly high. There is a related kind of encounter, however, that would occur much more frequently—the collision of one part of a long nucleic acid molecule with another part of the same molecule. For the nucleic acid backbone is supple; it can turn back upon itself like a rope. Under the ceaseless churning that thermal agitation imposes on the molecules of any fluid, each long chain of nucleic acid would be continually bending and twisting, frequently thereby brining normally remote parts of itself into temporary contact. An occasional attachment would be of just the nature described in the example of the encounter of two different nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

If not an unusually strong attachment (that is, involving a considerable number of conjugated bases), it would soon be broken under the stress of random thermal agitation. However, if a special way of folding the long molecule back upon itself could result in a binding together of the two halves strong enough to survive, it would eventually be “found”; the random processes would ultimately make nearly the right kind of fold, the resulting attractive forces would do the rest, and the long molecule would lock together in a characteristic folded configuration. Of course, certain conditions would have to be met by a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule before it could be eligible to form a folded configuration. In particular, a certain minimum length would have to be exceeded in order that the two halves of the folded molecule could make enough mutual bonds to provide the needed attachment strength. X-rays analysis of the nucleic acid in modern organisms shows that such folded structures, which are abundant in all cells, usually involve seventy to righty nucleotides. A combination of speculation and evidence suggests that there may be nothing very critical about the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of a successfully folded molecule. A molecule of random base sequence might be able to form a folded or hairpin structure involving complementary pairing of most of its bases by the simple expedient of pushing away from the primary folded structure an occasional nucleotide segment that does not fit the base pattern of the opposite arm of the structure. X-ray measurements strongly suggest that this kind of expedient distortion of the hairpin does not actually occur and that the schematic drawings of it are probably fairly realistic. Folded configurations would not be assumed by all nucleic acid molecules even if their length and base sequence were favourable. For the reproduction process would sometimes prevent the formation of folded molecules; to the extent to which the projecting bases had already been mated with conjugate nucleotides from the surrounding fluid, there would be a decrease in the probability that the different parts of the flailing molecule would stick together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

However, it is not hard to postulate conditions that would cause the competition to be frequently resolved in favour of the formation of folded configurations rather than double molecules. For one thing, as mentioned in the past reports, catalysts and energy-supplying molecules must be available in the cellular fluid if the formation double molecules is to proceed at a significant rate. The chore for which these molecular assistants are required does not have to do with the conjugation of the nucleotide bases; this goes easily. Rather, the additional energy and catalytic assist are needed to connect the sugar phosphate ends of the nucleotides. However, this requirement does not exist for the formation of a folded configuration of a single molecule. Therefore, we might well expect the folding process to occur more rapidly than the reproduction processes for the molecules in question. This would be particularly true if, as we can easily postulate, the supply of catalysts and energy-contributing molecules were low in the vicinity of some of the single-stranded nucleic acid. Under such circumstances we can easily imagine that the occasional free nucleotide that attached itself to conjugate bases along the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule would be displaced by the stronger binding forces brought into play by the tendency toward multiple affiliation of the components of the two arms of the molecule itself. To be sure, the actual configuration of the folded molecule would not look much like the two-dimensional patterns seen in vintage textbooks. The same electric forces that cause double-stranded nucleic acid molecules to form a double helix would operate to impose a twist on the folded molecule. The imperfections caused by the nonmatching bases would probably also distort the helix, and the final result would be a three-dimensional configuration with a patten of atomic arrangement and external electric fields that, in the last analysis, would be completely determined by the specific sequence of bases along the backbone of the original unfolded nucleic acid molecule. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Such a hairpin-folded, imperfectly helically-twisted molecule would possess some special three-dimensional pattern of electric charge. In particular, it would be likely to have an affinity for certain kinds of molecular fragments. For example, a particular sequence of nucleotides might result in such a pattern of hairpin folding and partial helical twisting as to produce, in some portion of the molecule, a very good fit for a sugar fragment. Another molecule with a different sequence of nucleotides might include within its three-dimensional contours a good “mold” for holding a particular kind of amino acid, and so on. Assuming the existence of such ingredients in the surrounding fluid, continued floating around of the nucleic acid molecules would ultimately result in getting most of them coupled to whatever specific kinds of molecular fragments their own special patterns of electric fields best equip them to carry. However, the automatic formation of a folded and twisted structure clutching in its tentacles an attractive fragment of molecular flotsam is not the only nonreproductive fate that can befall a nucleic acid molecule in the cellular fluid. Modern evidence shows that longer varieties of these molecules can become tightly bound to the surfaces of solid particles. The particles on which such attachment occurs are today called microsomes, and they are a conspicuous feature of all modern cells. We have no difficulty in rationalizing the evolutionary origin of such inclusions; the precipitation of some of the chemical by-products of metabolism would doubtless have produced solid particles in some of the early coacervates. The requirement of length in the surface-bound nucleic acid molecules (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides (in modern organisms each contains about 1,500 nucleotides, although, of course, it is unlikely that the primitive forms were of this degree of complexity) is probably generally understandable in terms of the ever-present competition between combining and disrupting forces. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Unless the molecule is long enough to provide many local points of attachment to the supporting surface, the ceaseless jostling to which it is subjected by the random thermal agitation of the surrounding molecules will jar it loose. Perhaps for a similar reason, a successfully surface-bound nucleic acid molecule appears to be fully extended, rather than folded back upon itself. Further, the long molecule is held to the surface in such a way as not to neutralize the pattern of electric fields that results from the specific sequence of bases along the backbone. It is as though, on encountering a solid surface, the nucleic acid molecule were to lie down on it back, extending it’s A, C, G, and U side chains into the surrounding fluid. For the bound molecules are chemically reactive. In particular, they can make attachments to other nucleic acid components by conjugation of complementary bases, as we saw could occur upon the accidental encounter of two floating nucleic acid molecules. This does not have to mean, however, that the long surface-bound molecule of nucleic acid would rapidly accrue to itself conjugate nucleotides and bind them together to form a double molecule. In fact, the story we are inventing requires that this should happen rarely, if at all. It is not hard to imagine conditions that would hold such double-molecule formation to a low level. For example, the catalyst that zips together the sugar phosphate ends of the conjugated nucleotides to tie up the backbone structure of the Siamese-twin molecule may not be able to operate effectively when the generating single molecule is stretched out on a solid surface. Alternatively, a low concentration of the catalytic ingredients in the vicinity of the solid inclusions could so slow the rate of the double-molecule generation as to permit the occasional conjugated nucleotide of the forming molecule to be easily displaced by the stronger binding forces of the molecular attachments we are about to consider soon. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

To get others to do what you want them to do, you must see things through their eyes. It is notorious that the physical plant and social environment have grown out of human scale. To achieve simple goods, it is often necessary to set in motion immense masses. In scarcity, where the means are unavailable, we wistfully renounce the ends. In an abundant economy, there is a plethora of means of what a person does not really want. Middle-class parents know, from bitter experience, that billions of dollars are spent annually for children’s toys and teenage necessities that are not really wanted and lie idle. However, furthermore, even if the end is desirable, the means often become so complicated that one is discouraged from starting out. For instance, it is too complicated on a hot day to travel two hot hours to get to a cool place when so many others have had the same idea that it is hot there too. To adults, such complicated means are irritating and take the joy out of life. To children growing up, they are disastrous because they make it impossible to learn by doing. The sense of causality is lost. Initiative is lost. And one ends with the idea that nothing can be changed. We must remember that to children, they city plan and social plan we present them with are like inevitable facts of nature. Unless they have architects or builders in the family, they cannot realize that the buildings were drawn by somebody on a piece of paper and could have been different. Unless their parents teach them otherwise, they believe that compulsory school attendance is a divine creation and it is a sin to be absent. It is, of course, very difficult to judge the environment concretely from the child’s point of view. Thus, living in a big city does not as such make a child inept, though any city has very complicated means. The city is short on farm work, swimming holes, and animals to trap; but it has docks, freight-car yards, labyrinthine basements, pavements to chalk up, and subway trains to play tag on. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

The streets are littered with the remarkable junk of a thousand trades, to hoard and make things with. The ingenuity of California’s Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors and Oakland Raider’s ball games adapted to various improbable fields and obstacles is a model of rule making and rational debate that any senate might emulate: it sizes up the situation, argues, decides, and gets things done that work. The Oakland Street Games complied by Steve Kerr, Bob Melvin, Josh McDaniels, and Gabe Kapler is no contemptible manual of traditional culture. History teaches that cities have made people smart because of their mixed peoples, mixed manners, and mixed learning. On the whole, cities have probably trained more intelligent children than the country. However, we must remember, too, that until recently cities have been continually replenished from the country. City people had country cousins, and drew on both influences. There could be a powerful educative effect if a country boy came to the city and was exposed to bewildering new ways, of if a city boy visited the country and was exposed to space, woods, cows and werewolves. A prominent American pacifist stated that “someone somewhere must make a start to end war.” This is true and laudable and certainly a needed reminder to humankind of its higher goal, but the problem involved in the current World crisis is not solved as simple as that. Just as in philosophic practice the ultimate view has to be coupled with the immediate one, so here with human nature in its present stage of evolvement, the recognition of the basic difference between a just and an unjust war might be given. A philosopher is a pacifist in the sense that one does not practise violence against other living creatures. However, one is not an uncompromising pacifist. One does not consider the use of arms wrong in all circumstances. A situation can be imagined where it would be wiser and, in the end, kinder to use force deliberately. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Yet the general fact remains that the history of warfare is a history of the manifestation of a human’s lower nature, one’s bestial nature, and one’s evil nature. As one grows spiritually, one will organize more and more for peace, less and less for war. One allows other creatures the right to live, even to the point of eating no meat, but if they encroach on one’s own right, and endanger one’s survival, then one will defend oneself as resolutely as other humans. Nor is the situation changed if these creatures are not animal but human. Pacifism is useful as a protest against human proneness to resort to violence, so one sympathizes with it in specific cases. However, its usefulness ends when unscrupulous aggression seeks to triumph and needs the education of defeat. The pacifist movements naturally attract intellectuals and artists, ministers of religion and humanitarians. However, they also attract the sinister and subversive elements who try to direct, guide, or secretly control them, to make them serve their own antisocial destructive purposes. The presence and prominence of genuine idealists along with these pretended ones create confusion in the public mind. How can a movement be bad which is supported by such good humans? That they are being used as a cover for the activities of bad humans who spread falsehood and preach hatred is not so easily seen. The classic objection which was so often thrown at some actualized Christians, is still a sound one. “Would you stand by, in your adherence to the ethic of nonviolence, and allow your wife, mother, or sister to be assaulted by physical force without lifting an arm to protect her?” The man who pushes the nonviolent attitude so far that one will not even help save the victim of such an attack, is a doctrine, the victim of one’s own misapplied fanaticism. Nature (God) can be very violent at times: it is not always peaceful. One the mystical level, all war is evil and all pacifism is good. On the philosophical level, the universality of this rule vanishes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

We there rise from a judgment based on pure feeling to a judgment based on its integration by intuition with pure reason, the result of which is intelligence. If pacifism is to mean the acceptance of evil, then it cannot be enough. Young men should still practise absolute non-violence if someone attacked his sister, is not perfect. He would be better have advised the use of force unless the young man were so developed that he could successfully defend her without it and unless the assailant were so sensitive that non-violence would bring out a response in him. In other words, the pacifist principle should certainly be applied in every case where it is likely to be effective but refrained from where it is likely to fail. It is not a principle of universal applicability. Men whose temperament is naturally given to violence in speech or deed, or those who always stir up agitation, extremism, irreconciliation, and intransigence, must be firmly and unflinchingly ruled. Weakness would be folly. The whole history of Europe during the past fifty years could have been changed had pacifism not been misapplied. When Biden seized power in America, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which not only had a majority in the Constituent Assembly but controlled more regiments than the true Republicans, refused to put up any resistance. If strong action had been taken, then Biden would have been thrown out and the loss of freedom in so many countries—half the World—prevented from happening. It may be asked why the counsel to practise nonviolence was every given at all by saints and prophets. Obviously it is ethically the highest instance of forgiveness and the most effective way of transcending the ego practically. The proper course is to try kindly reasonable and nonviolent methods of resisting aggression. If they fail, then forceful ones become the only alternative. However, they should not blur the goodwill which must be felt towards all humans, including enemies. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

The mistake made is to be solely dependent on violent methods, when gentler ones would achieve the same end without letting in the poison of hate and without creating so much new misery. That country is truly civilized where the killing instinct is held in abeyance and regarded with abhorrence. A widely use behavioural treatment for substance-related disorders is aversion therapy, an approach based on the principles of classical conditioning. Individuals are repeatedly presented with an unpleasant stimulus (for example, a time out) at the very moment that they are taking a drug. After repeated pairings, they are expected to react negatively to the substance itself and to lose their craving for it. Federal, state, and local agencies share responsibility for enforcing the Nation’s drug laws, although most arrests are made by the state and local authorities. In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were about 1,948,600 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States of America. According to the UCR, drug abuse violations are defined as state and/or local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, manufacturing, and making of narcotic drugs including opium or cocaine and their derivatives, marijuana, synthetic narcotics and dangerous nonnarcotic drugs such as barbiturates. More than four-fifths of drug law violation arrests are for possession. Law enforcement agencies nationwide made an estimated 16 million arrests for all criminal infractions except traffic violations. Among the specific categories, the highest arrest counts were—1.9 million for drug abuse violations; approximately 1.6 million for driving under the influence; 1.5 million for simple assaults; 1.4 million for larceny-thefts. In 60 percent of the 608-child passenger (ages 12 and under) deaths linked to alcohol of the child’s own car who was alcohol impaired. And more than 91,000 children were injured. Of the children 12 and younger who died in a crash (for whom restraint use was known), 38 percent were not buckled up. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Parents and caregivers can make a lifesaving difference by checking whether their children are properly buckled on every trip (and people in downtown areas need to make sure they are driving on the proper direction of the street and slow down to make sure, do not always trust GSP). Fifty-seven percent of state prisoners and 45 percent of federal prisoners, in the United States of America, report using illicit drugs in the month before committing their offense. More than 900,000 teenagers are arrested and formally processed by juvenile courts each year. Around half of them test positive for marijuana. Aversion therapy has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to others substance-related disorders. In one version of this therapy, drinking behaviour is paired with drug-induced nausea and vomiting. Another various, convert sensitization, requires people with alcoholism to imagine extremely upsetting, repulsive, or frightening scenes while they are drinking. The pairing of the imagined scenes with liquor is expected to produce negative responses to liquor itself. Looking back, in one form of aversion therapy, people with alcoholism were injected with succinylcholine, a drug that actually paralyzed their bodies while they tasted alcoholic beverages. Concerns about the safety and ethics of this approach led to its discontinuation. Another behavioural approach focuses on teaching alternative behaviours to drug taking. This approach, too, has been applied to alcohol abuse and dependence more than to other substance-related disorders. Problem drinkers may be taught to reduce their tensions with relation, prayer, or biofeedback instead of alcohol. Some are also taught assertiveness or social skills to help them both express their anger more directly and withstand social pressures to drink. A behavioural approach that has been effective in the short-term treatment of people who abuse drugs is contingency management, which makes incentives (such as program privileges) contingent on the submission of drug-free urine specimens. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

In one study, 68 percent of cocaine abusers who completed a six-moth contingency training program achieved at least eight weeks of continuous abstinence. Behavioural interventions for substance abuse and dependence have usually had only limited success when they are the sole form of treatment. A major problem is that the approaches can be effective only when individuals are motivated to continue with them despite their unpleasantness or demands. Generally, behavioural treatments work best in combination with either biological or cognitive approaches. What is good for one is by n means food for all. Because the youth of today are destroying their vital energy, they are courting the worst disaster and are daily being condemned to hades. Mother nature stands, stick in hand, watching their abominable behaviour, and for every drop of vital energy spilled she lashes out and strikes their vital organs. Now tell me, what future do such people have? The Christian Bible is not to gather dust. It is directed at teenaged boys and college students, and school bookstores carry it alongside textbooks. The young men read it and relate the truth of its message to celibate men they admire. Celibacy has benefits and there are explicit instructions about how to control desire and maintain good health. Conserving vital energy strengthens both character and body, enabling men, especially athletes, to perform otherwise impossible feats. The vital energy is the most essential fluid of life. To tell the truth, it is an elixir. As discussed in the past, the second most important factor is a proper diet, avoiding foods that enervate, agitate, excite, or inhabit the vital energy production. Generally, spicy, friend, and oily items should be avoided. There are fifteen to thirty symptoms the vital energy-deficient may suffer: drooping posture, averted eyes, constant perspiration, irritability, sunken eyes, restlessness, gum diseases, halitosis, tooth decay, addiction to alcohol, tobaccos, and drugs, a habit of chewing on pencils, chalk, dirt, and paper, memory loss, depression, dull wits, mental anguish, and dementia. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

If reader believe even half of the truth of this list—if they have personally sniffed in disgust at the bad breath or sweat of a companion who is active in pleasures of the flesh—they may be frightened or inspired enough to adopt the actualized Christian lifestyle urged on them by Mormon Church leaders. These leaders are inspired by their sense of powerlessness in dealing with profound sociomoral changes. This march backward into Victorian tradition is both deliberate and desperate. Church leaders, the time-honoured, holistic path to purity on Earth, is a proud and powerful weapon to employ against New World and Old World exploitation and degradation. Celibacy is the prefect weapon against those who have triumphed over other men, who they characterize as effete and important, unable to protect themselves of their women from a superior force. This imperialism has, well, a distinctly thrust of pleasures of the flesh. Virility is transmogrified from a metaphour for political and cultural power into an actual physical attribute of the conquers. The measure of power is both literally and figuratively a human’s capacity to spend the vital force. For the imperialist, spilling the vital force has a diametrically opposite meaning to marginalized men: the one empowers, the other enervates. Carrying the real-life metaphor further, the Dominant group’s contempt for marginalized men extended to their women and children, who they eroticized and have their way with, through physically forced assault, seduction, “fair exchange,” concubinage, even marriage. Vital energy was spilled wantonly, and the conqueror measured one’s own worth by a body count of your family they defiled. (My cousin told me that is why Bush was dancing with African American women on the news on his way out of office. It was not a show of unity, but imperialism. “Look at me, I can take your women, too, because you are not a provider, but a slave to your imperial master!) #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

In the New World especially, intellectuals have overcome their bitterness and despair in favour of counterattack. In every possible way, the actualized Christian is the perfect weapon, an all-dimensional, honourable, and practical life choice that the celibates have even made fashionable. It is another, uniquely actualized Christian way of measuring virtue. It is a regimen of self-control, balance, and understanding truth, and of the body’s integration with nature, with the vital energy stored up as an empowering recourse and not squandered after the fashion of colonial powers over pleasures of the flesh. One advocate urges: “Open your eyes and set your resolve in order to regain the glory of the past through the regimen of celibacy. One who is able to control a single drop is able to control the seven seas. There is nothing in the World—no object or condition—which a celibate man cannot overcome. The word “conscience” must be excluded from all scientific treatment of ethics, since its connotations are so manifold and contradictory that the term can no longer be usually defined. If we look not only at the term can no longer be usefully defined. If we look not only at the popular use of the word, with its complete lack of clarity, but also at its confused history, this desperate advice is understandable. Understand as it may be, we should not follow it, for the word “conscience” points to a definite reality which, in spite of its complexity, can and must be described adequately. And the history of the idea of conscience, despite the bewildering variety of interpretations that it has produced, shows some clear types and definite trends. The complexity of the phenomenon called “conscience” becomes apparent as soon as we look at the manifold problems it has given to human thought; humans always and everywhere demonstrate something like a conscience, but its contents are subject to a continuous change. What is the relation between the form and the content of conscience? #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Conscience points to an objective structure of demands that make themselves perceivable through it, and represents, at the same time, the most subjective self-interpretation of personal life. What is the relation between the objective and the subjective sides of conscience? Conscience is an ethical concept, but it has a basic significance for religion. What is the relation between the ethical and the religious meaning of conscience? Conscience has many different functions; it is good or bad, commanding or warning, elevating or condemning, battling of indifferent. Which of these functions are basic, which derived? These questions refer only to the description of the phenomenon, not to its explanation or evaluation. They show its complex character and the reason for its confused history. The concept of conscience is a creation of Greek and Roman spirit. Whenever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a creation of the Greek and Roman spirit. Wherever this spirit has been influential, notably in Christianity, conscience is a significant notion. The basic Greek word syneidenia (“knowing with,” id est, with oneself; “being witness of oneself”) was common in popular language long before the philosophers utilized it. It describes the act of observing oneself, often as judging oneself. In philosophical terminology it received the meaning of “self-consciousness” (for instance, in Stoicism, the derived substantives syneidesis, synesis). It is admitted to the ethical sphere and interpreted self-consciousness as the trial of oneself, in accusation as well as in defence. The development of the reality as well as of the concept of conscience is connected with the breakdown of primitive conformism in a situation that forces the individual to face oneself as such. In the sphere of an unbroken we-consciousness, no individual conscience can appear. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

The second building-block of tomorrow’s political systems must be the principle of “semi-direct democracy”—a shift from depending on representatives to representing ourselves. The mixture of the two is semi-direct democracy. The collapse of consensus, as we have already seen, subverts the very concept of representation. Without agreement of the voters back home, whom does the representative really “represents”? At the same time, legislators have come to rely increasingly on staff support and on outside experts for advice in shaping the laws. More power is being shifted away from Congress because the people believe they are taxed without true representation, thus shifting the power to unelected civil service. The United States of America’s Congress, in an effort to counterbalance the influence of the executive bureaucracy, has created its own bureaucracy—a Congressional Budget Office, an Office of Technology Assessment, and other necessary agencies and appendages. Thus the congressional staff has grown from 10,700 to 18,400 in the past decade. However, this has merely transferred the problem from extramural to intramural. Our elected representatives know less and less about the myriad measures on which they must decide, and are compelled to rely more and more on the judgment of others. The representative no longer even represents him- or herself. More basically, parliaments, congresses, or assemblies were places in which, theoretically, the claims of rival minorities could be reconciled. Their “representatives” could make trade-offs for them. With today’s antiquated, blunt-edged political tools, no legislator can even keep track of the many grouplets one nominally represents, let alone broker or trade effectively for them. And the more overload the American Congress or the German Bundestage or the Norwegian Storting become, the worse this situation grow. This helps explain why single-issue political pressure groups become intransigent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Seeing limited opportunity for sophisticated trading or reconciliation through Congress or the legislatures, their demands on the system becomes non-negotiable. The theory of representative government as the ultimate broker collapses too. The breakdown of bargaining, the decision crunch, the worsening paralysis of representative institutions mean, over the long term, that many of the decisions now made by small numbers of pseudo-representatives may have to be shifted back gradually to the electorate itself. If our elected brokers cannot make deals for us, we shall have to do it ourselves. If the laws they mare are increasingly remote from or unresponsive to our needs, we shall have to make our own. For this, however, we shall need new institutions and new technologies as well. “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walk in His ways, keep His statues, His commandments, His precepts, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may do wisely and prosper in all that you do,” reports I Kings 2.2. Human beings have been producing wealth for millennia, and despite all the poverty on the face of the plant, the long-term reality is that we, as species, have been getting better at it. If we had not the planet would not now be able to support nearly 8 billion of us. We would not live as long as we do. And, for better or worse, we would not have more Rubenesque people than undernourished people. Face it, food is a legal and lovely treat people love. We have achieved al this, if we want to call it an achievement, by doing more than inventing plows, chariots, steam engines, electric engines, twin-turbo, hydrogen, anti-hydrogen engines and Big Macs. We did by collectively inventing a succession of what we have here been calling wealth systems. In fact, these are among the most important inventions in history. President Trump may have been America’s best friend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

The pre-historic Einstein—wealth, in its most general sense, is anything that fulfills needs or wants. And a wealth system is the way wealth is created, whether as money or not. Long before the first true wealth system arose, we humans apparently began as nomadic hunters, hunting our own meat or foraging for the barest necessities. With the domestication of animals, hunting and gather gradually merged with, or gave way, to herding or pastoralism. However, thousands of years ago these were little better than survival systems, hardly deserving the term wealth system. It was only with humanity’s ability to produce an economic surplus that the first true wealth system became possible. And though a tremendous number of different ways to produce such a surplus have since been tried, we find that over the course of history the methods fall into three broad categories. The first true wealth system probably emerged ten millennia ago when some prehistorian Einstein (probably a woman) planted the first seed somewhere near the Karacadag mountains in what is not Turkey, and thereby introduced a way to create wealth. Instead of waiting for nature to provide, we could now, within limits, make nature do as we wished. (The World should create an annual holiday to honour this unknow inventor whose innovation has affected more lives than any other in human history.) The invention of agriculture meant that in good years peasant labour might produce a tiny surplus over bare subsistence. And this meant that, instead of living nomadically, our ancestors could settle in permanent villages to cultivate crops in the nearby fields. Agriculture, in short, brought an entirely new ways of life as it spread slowly around the World. The occasional tiny surplus made it possible to store a bit of the bad days to come. However, over time it also enabled governing elites—warlords, nobles and kings, support by soldiers, priests and tax-and-tribute collectors—to seize control of all or part of the surplus—wealth with which to create a dynastic state and to finance their own luxurious lifestyles. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

They could build grand palaces and cathedrals. They could hunt for sport. They could—and regularly did—wage war to capture land and slaves or serfs to produce still greater surpluses for themselves. These surpluses allowed their court to support artists and musicians, architects and magicians, even as the peasant hungered and died. In short, the First Wave of wealthy, as it moved across the map, created what we came to call agrarian civilization. Plants and Animals in the Garden, we welcome you—we invite you in—we ask your forgiveness and your understanding. Listen as we speak to you. We call up plants we have removed by dividing you and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here; we invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We dedicate this ceremony to you. We will continue to practice with you and for you. O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and knowest me. Thou knowest my every step; Thou understandest my thought from afar. Thou measurest my going about and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For if there be a word on my tongue, Thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether. Whiter shall I go from Thy spirit? Or wither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in the nether World, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the seas, even there would Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand would hold me, and Thy right hand would hold me. And if I say: “Surely the darkness shall envelop me, and the night shall shut me in;” even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, yea, the night shineth as the day; the darkness is even as the light. I will give thanks unto Thee, for I am marvelously made; wonderful are Thy works; my soul knoweth right well. Before my days were fashioned, in Thy book were they all written down. How mysterious are Thy purposes, O Lord, how vast is their number! Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any guild in me, and lead me in Thy way forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

Cresleigh Homes

With a bathroom like this, you might never want to leave. Which could be a good thing when the whole family’s home!

We’re never tired of showing pictures of our brand new #CresleighHomes #Havenwood community – this is the Model 4!

Maybe I didn’t treat you quite as good as I should have. Maybe I didn’t love you as I could have. Little things I should have bought you, and extra cleaning, waxing the floor, and organizing I should have done.

I just never took the time. My Cresleigh Home was always on my mind. (You were always on my mind).

Maybe I did not clean your windows all those lonely, lonely times. And I guess I never told you I’m so happy that your mine. And, with the moon up above, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, so they tell me.

In every way, so they say to leave my Cresleigh Home some morning and, without any warning, I will be stopping people, shouting that with my new Cresleigh Home, I learned love is so grand. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/residence-four/

We Are Finally About to Discover a Clue to the Mystery of Great Importance!

The person who does not read good books has no advantage over the human who cannot read them. The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to gain knowledge, and choose an attitude in any given set of circumstance that is conducive to freedom, peace, and tranquility. A slight complication should be mentioned in the ladderlike structure described here, the “double-stranded” nucleic acid molecule that forms the subject of so much discussion these days. For a commonly mentioned feature of double-stranded nucleic acid (also established by Watson Crick) I the helical form of its molecule. It is as though the uprights of the ladder we have been discussing were flexible and the top and bottom ends of the ladder had been grasped and twisted in opposite directions until a form of double corkscrew resulted. X-ray photographs leave no doubt that such a double helix is the normal configuration of a free double-stranded molecule of nucleic acid. However, this geometrical complication is of little apparent significance in most of the processes we have to consider, and it will therefore be ignored when the resulting task of description is made easier thereby. Now let us see what can happen to our ladderlike double-stranded molecule of nucleic acid. One interesting possibility is that it will separate into two single-stranded molecules of nucleic acid. This can happen because the so-called hydrogen bonds that tie together the A-U (Substitute T for U, in DNA) and C-G bases at their points of contact in each rung of the ladder, though stronger than other bonds that sometimes cause temporary linking of molecular fragments, are still comparatively weak and can be broken without disrupting the rest of the structure. In the test tube, the addition of acid or alkali to the surrounding fluid or gentle heating to just under the boiling point of water will do the trick; in modern organisms, the presence of certain organic catalysts will cause the hydrogen bonds to break at ordinary temperatures. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

In either case, the result is as though each rung of the ladder had been sawed in two at the junction of the conjugated bases. This yields two separate single-stranded nucleic acid molecules in place of the double-stranded one. One of these single-stranded molecules is just the original piece of nucleic acid with which our discussion started several reports back. The other is a new molecule, different from the original one, but different in an orderly way. It is a “complement” of the original in the sense that the sequence of bases, or side chains, along its backbone is specified by substituting a U base for every A base of the original molecule, a G (This is for RNA; a T base, in the case of DNA.) for every C, a C for every G, and A for every U. We are finally about to discover a clue to the great importance of nucleic acid in life processes. For consider what will happen is the pair of reactions we have been discussing is repeated, employing as starting material both the original molecule and its complement. This time each of the two single-stranded molecules will form a complement, and the complement of the molecule which itself was the complement of the original molecule will be a carbon copy of the original! Here is indeed a new and interesting phenomenon—a long-chain organic molecule that controls a cycle of chemical reactions so as to produce exact duplicates of itself. To be sure, we have had to postulate a cyclically varying environment for our reacting ingredients. At times the fluids surrounding the nucleic acid molecules have had to contain the nucleotides, energy-rich molecules and catalysts needed to support the formation of double-stranded structures; at other times they have had to be different at least to the extent of containing hydrogen-bond-destroying ingredients that break double-stranded molecules in two. In the era of the early coacervates it seems most unlikely that such a cyclical change in chemical environment could have been provided by the simple structure and metabolism that must have then prevailed. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

However, with the evolutionary development of increasing chemical and architectural sophistication, a time must ultimately have come when the required cyclically varying conditions could have been sustained. The conditions postulated would still have been unlikely but probably not so unlikely that they would not have occurred from time to time during the many millions of years at the disposal of the remarkably prolific species-generating process of evolution. Note that we have as yet discovered nothing about the nucleic acid molecules to suggest that a mechanism for their production would have any kind of survival value for the host coacervate, interesting though we have judged such a mechanism to be. We are therefore, to this point, discussing a by-product of the coacervate metabolism. We are, in effect, assuming tht the relatively complex metabolic processes that sustained the growth and reproduction of certain advanced coacervate species just happened to include chemical reactions that from time to time produced the special materials, such as catalysts and energizing substances, needed for the two-stage synthesis of nucleic acids. Under such circumstances we are observing that nucleic acid molecules would in fact have been produced, whether or not they were useful to the host coacervate. Of course, to account for the fact that organisms containing nucleic acid ultimately starved out all others and are the only forms of life that persist today, we have to find some way in which nucleic acid could have become involved in the chemistry underlying growth and reproduction so as to contribute survivability advantages to the host coacervates. To attain such a goal, which we may hope to do in the future, we are going to invoke certain properties of nucleic acid that arise directly from the sheer physical length of its molecules. Therefore, before terminating the present discussion of the nucleic acid generation and reproduction mechanisms, we must show that the processes we have postulated are capable of leading to the formation of long and complex molecules, and not just short molecules consisting of only a few segments. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

To this end, we should first note that the two-stage process described so far is strictly a copying process—it could not originate new kinds of molecules. (Except, of course, for the complementary forms of the originally supplied nucleic acid molecules.) To get the process started, we had to assume that a molecule or molecules of nucleic acid were somehow “provided”; after that, additional copies of the starting molecules would be manufactured at a significant rate. The starting molecules, in the original coacervates embodying the process would have had to be more or les spontaneously generated when nucleotides happened to bump together in just the proper way. We know that the raw materials needed were continually formed in the primordial atmosphere, and experimental evidence suggest that the automatic hooking together of the constituents would have occurred from time to time. However, such random collisions would have been vastly more effective in producing simple molecules than complex ones. The greater the number of segments in a “long-chain” molecule manufactured in the random fashion, the rarer would the molecule be in the population of organic ingredients inhabiting the primeval seas. To keep our present story believable, therefore, we must assume that the molecules produced in the earliest forms of nucleic-acid-synthesizing coacervates were short and simple and thus, in terms of our upcoming genetic requirements, not very interesting. Happily, there is a way of getting around this difficulty. Organic catalysts are known today that, in the test tube, enormously accelerate the linking of nucleotides into nucleic acid molecules. Under the influence of such catalysts, chains of one thousand or more nucleotides have been formed in the laboratory. To be sure, it is most unlikely that catalysts of the late coacervate period had anything like the complex and sophisticated structure of today’s product. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

On the other hand, the modern reactions go to completion in seconds. A primitive ancestor of modern organic catalysts could have been of great evolutionary significance even though it required years instead of seconds to achieve its catalytic results. The rulers of the game of speculation we are playing would appear to permit us to postulate the existence of such catalysts in the era in question. Specifically, let us assume that some of the coacervates (not necessarily those which featured the nucleic acid reproduction mechanism) developed chemical reaction patterns that produced, as by-products, substances that were able to catalyze the attachments of additional nucleotides to the ends of nucleic acid molecules. The ultimate bursting apart of the parent coacervates would then spill into the seas some of these catalytic molecules, which from time to time would be accidentally incorporated in other coacervates. In particular, let us consider the consequences if some of these catalytic molecules happened to enter individual members of a species of coacervate possessing the nucleic acid reproduction mechanism we have been discussing. In the evolutionary terms the results of such an accident could be profound. These new catalysts, even though present in the coacervates in only minute quantities, would occasionally add nucleotides on to some of the nucleic acid molecules under continual production by the coacervate metabolism. Because of the independence of the copying mechanism on the length or specific base sequence of the nucleic acid, the new and longer molecule would then go into production and soon become abundant. Occasionally one of these longer molecules would in tern be lengthened by the action of the catalyst; this would result in the appearance of substantial numbers of a still more complex nucleic acid molecule, and so on. In this way, coacervate individuals blessed with a combination of the nucleic acid reproduction mechanism and a few nucleotide-liking catalytic molecules would automatically and continually develop an increasing variety of nucleic acid products. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The ultimate result would be a population of nucleic acid molecules in the seas that would grow steadily not only in numbers but also in average complexity. The molecules containing thousands of nucleotides that are commonplace in modern organism could well owe their complexity—and therefore, as we shall see later, their remarkable ability to regulate and control life processes—to such a past developmental history. Thus we have finally been able to rationalize the appearance of advanced forms of coacervates containing quantities of long-chain nucleic acid molecules together with mechanisms for their precise reproduction. We are clearly moving toward a hypothesis to account for the remarkable monopoly of control growth and reproduction processes that is exhibited by the nucleic acid mechanisms of modern organisms. As our next step, let us see whether we can discover any properties of the new and complex nucleic acid molecules that might have bestowed increased survivability on their coacervate hosts. Most people believe that all that is required of teachers is knowledge of the subject matter. We know much better. We have seen many experts in the content who cannot teach. The World if full of people who can do, but cannot teach. Change is mandatory; growth is optional. Falling in love is madness. No treatment is required, indeed none is effective. It is self-limited in time, recovery is certain and spontaneous. In the aftermath, however, one may find oneself joined for life to a partner one would not in any normal state have chosen. This disorder generally runs a benign course. However, it is a madness. One loses contact with reality, clutches jealously to one’s breast something one believes to be a treasure while everyone else see plainly it is but an ordinary loaf of bread. The opportunity to love is ever-present. No one, in one’s loneliness, need ever say, “I wish I had someone to love.” That someone is right there. The trouble is one has become real, while only the still-imaginary inspires us to love. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

We say we want love, and surely we do, but we want it to flow toward us, a great wave splashing over us, bountifully; we are not so eager that it flow outward, away from us to other who might need it more than we. We live by attachment, not by reason. There is no value without caring, and caring is loving. That is the point: one’s own life has value only because one cares for others. And one cares without a reason! Without reflection, without the weighing of profit and loss. The caring that justifies everything else is itself without justification. It is a leap. Attachments grow in the dark, like roots. Silently, invisibly, they extend themselves in heart-soil, anchoring us in the World. To go on living then is not elective; we cannot depart this life, we are held by invincible tendrils. After arriving at the peak of a breathless air of passion and desirability, we being a long process of decline. Imperceptible for a few years, but then beyond overlooking. We are becoming less loveable. There is no stopping it short of dying young. And if we live long enough—proceed far enough into ugliness and decay—we are not lovable at all. Whatever attention still comes our way flows from duty, however well camouflaged as caring. Concurrently, as we grow older, we become less and less able to love others, and if we live long enough we become incapable of loving at all, our concerns reaching then no further than our pains and malfunctions. Irritably aware of the diminishment of love coming toward us, we tend not to notice that we, equally, are giving less to others. To grow old gracefully one must accept, without protest or dismay, the diminishment of incoming love. More, one must anticipate it, always positioning oneself to receive less than that which is voluntarily offered. Never ask or plead or sue for love. The time for wooing is over, this is the time for farewell. Two things I know for sure about love: no one ever gets enough, and you cannot get more by asking. To the beggar for money a few real coins may fall, but the beggar for love is a fool. Into one’s upturned hat, along with the humiliation, will fall only scraps of guilt and duty falsely labeled as love. The only way to get more love is to give more love. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Beware! Wooing may be hidden. Too much giving, too much attentiveness, too many presents, may be but the mask for asking. You have had your turn; now get out of the way. Make room for others. Who can map the vast terrain of love? The sublime heights, the dismal swamps. There are no certified experts, anyone may try one’s hand. What do I know about love? What varieties have fallen to me? What has been meant when a woman has said to me, I love you? But you are supposed to avoid women’s eyes and abstain from pleasures of the flesh. Then suddenly a kaleidoscope of images flashes onto our mental screens. Whether we see this as salacious old goatery or delightful innocence, it is an unforgettable introduction to life. Life, for some, means much more than mere abstinence. Traditionally urged on married couples as, the only noble and straight method of birth control, it embodies a lifestyle of intense self-control in which the rational mind reduces all the carnal appetites to nothingness. Only thus can a man attain the state of selflessness necessary for the realization of truth. Based on ancient thought, including medical writings, successful virtuous men have supremely healthy bodies purified, paradoxically, by conquest of their carnal desires through an austere lifestyle, exercise, and celibacy. The overall fitness this produces owes much to the vital energy, the essence of life, which is no longer wasted but retained as an internal resource. The goal is to build up a resilient store of vital energy so that the body—in a holistic, psychosomatic sense—radiates an aura of vitality and strength. Unchaste men, to the contrary, were morally weak, incapable of leading. Chastity is one of the greatest disciplines without which the mind cannot attain requisite firmness. A man who is unchaste loses stamina, becomes emasculated and cowardly. He whose mind is given to animal passions is not capable of any great effort. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

However, awareness of vital energy is only part of the path to realization of truth. The steps along the way are simple to enunciate, murderously difficult to master. First, understand that celibacy is necessary. Secondly, gradually control all the senses, especially through fasting and careful diet. Third, consort only with clean companions, both human and literary. Lastly, pray. Those focus is on being a spiritual being, enlightenment, which bodily celibacy alone does not suffice. Never entertain thoughts about pleasures of the flesh. That is not to say such fantasies will not insinuate themselves. The trick is to refuse to focus on them. If we non-co-operate with the mind in its evil wanderings, victory will be ours in the end. To acknowledge this aspect of man’s predicament is an act of humility, demanded by honest self-evaluation. However, this demand is not fulfilled by most people. They evaluate their highly ambiguous moral achievements as sufficiently perfect, morally speaking; and there are even some who evaluate them as expressions of the nearly perfect or most perfect moral fulfillment. They consider themselves as “moral men,” or as “men of good will,” and look down on those who are “immoral men” or who at least so not belong to the selected group of the “men of good will.” They do not see the ambiguity of their goodness and the mixture of their motives. They are not hypocritical, but self-assured in their high moral standing. They do not feel that they need forgiveness, either in Christian or in humanist terms. They defend the motivating power of the moral law, pointing to themselves as examples. However, some of these “moral men” and some of the “immoral men” are, at some point, grasped by the unconditional seriousness of the moral imperative, and they then recognize its deep opposition to them, even to the best qualities in them. This experience unites Paul the “righteous Pharisee,” and Augustine the “sinner,” and Luther the “ascetic monk.” They took the moral imperative without compromise and without self-deception, and concluded that the “naked” moral law has no motivating power. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

They looked for something that had this power, and they found it in the religious element which they called “grace,” a word that requires much interpretation to become an answer also for us. However, before discussing grace as the power of moral motivation, I should like to recall two concepts which belong together and represent the highest levels that Greek humanism reached in solving the question of moral motivation, and which remain decisive for the amalgamation of the moral with the cultural. One is classically expressed by Socrates when he speaks of the knowing of the good, which creates the doing of the good. The question, of course, is: what kind of knowledge can create a moral action? It is immediately clear that it cannot de the detached knowledge of prescientific or scientific inquiry, nor can it be the practical knowledge of the day-to-day handling of things and people, even if such knowledge is elevated to the level of technical expertise or psychological skill, for any of this can be used for the performance of the most anti-moral actions. (Our most flagrant modern example of this is a particular political party.) Since we cannot assume, unlike some of his critics, that Socrates was cognizant of this danger, we much search for another kind of knowledge he might have had in mind. Perhaps we approximate it when we use the modern term “insight.” If Socrates did mean “insight,” he stands in line with his great predecessors—for example, Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraculitus’ attack against those who are “fools” is not a criticism of the unsophisticated, but of those not subject to the power of the logos, the universal law of things and mind, the source of the physical and moral laws. Those who are not grasped by the logos are fools, and one directs one’s prophetic-philosophical wrath against them. In this way he established the idea of the wise man who unites knowledge with personal involvement in the universal logos, an idea which become of immense practical significance in the humanist-religious philosophy of the Stoics. Wisdom became the leading virtue in the later ancient World, combining cognition and morality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Knowledge of the character of wisdom cannot be considered as functioning in one direction only, as the cause of moral action, because it is in itself partly a result of moral action. Since one must be good in order to be wise, goodness is not a consequence of wisdom. The Socratic assertion, therefore, that knowledge creates virtue must be interpreted as knowledge in which the whole person is involved (insight). That is, a cognitive act which is untied with a moral act can cause further moral acts (and further cognition). Nonetheless, clinical theorists have developed sociocultural, psychological, and biological explanations for why people abuse or become dependent on various substances. No single explanation, however, has gained broad support. Like so many other disorders, excessive and chronic drug use is increasingly viewed as the result of a combination of these factors. A number of sociocultural theorists propose that people are most likely to develop patterns of substance abuse or dependence when they live under stressful socioeconomical conditions. In fact, studies have found that regions with higher levels of unemployment have higher rates of alcoholism. Similarly, lower socioeconomic classes have substance-abuse rates that are higher than those of other classes. Other sociocultural theorists propose that substance abuse and dependence are mora likely to appear in families and social environments where substance use is valued, or at least accepted. Researchers have, in fact, found that problem drinking is more common among teenagers whose parents and peers drink, as well as among teenagers whose family environments are stressful and unsupportive. Moreover, lower rates of alcohol abuse are found among some religious groups, where drinking is typically acceptable only as long as it remains within clear limits, whereas alcoholism rates are higher among some others who are not taught to drink in moderation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

The sociocultural explanation of substance abuse and dependence are supported by studies that generally compare drug use among people of different environments or cultures. As with sociocultural explanations of other mental disorders, however, they fail to explain why only some people who live under unfavourable social conditions develop substance-related disorders. Psychological (psychodynamic, behaviourable, and cognitive) and biological theorists have provided some insight into this issue. Our youth is already fairly grown-up (fifteen to twenty-five years old), and confronting the external and definite problems of jobs and money. We have seen what kinds of opportunities are open to him, either in or out of the organized system, and what kind of public attention one can expect if he makes a nuisance of himself. My emphasis so far has been underprivileged conditions, because we have been discussing “problematic” cases “outside” of society. In the following chapters, however, when we turn to the earlier and character-molding factors that impede growth, we shall see that they apply even more particularly to “unproblematic” youth, whether growing up in the middle class or the working classes. (I do not mention the upper class simply because its numbers are few and it stands for nothing. All ideology and culture in America at present spring from the middle status of the organized system.) My thought is that the average adjusted boy is, if anything, more humanly wasted than the disaffected. So let us go on to discuss his stupidity, his lack of patriotism, one’s confusions about pleasures of the flesh and his lack of faith. The first, heretical principle of the Fourth Wave government is that of power of marginalized citizens. It holds that the majority rule, the key legitimating principles of the Third Wave era, is increasingly obsolete. It is not just majorities, but also non-dominate groups that count. And our political systems must increasingly reflect that fact. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Expressing the beliefs of his revolutionary generation, it was Jefferson, once again, who asserted that governments must behave with “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority.” The United States of American and Europe—still at the dawn of the Second Wave er—were just beginning the long process that would turn them eventually into industrial mass societies. The concept of majority rule perfectly fitted the needs of these societies. Today, as we have seen, we are leaving industrialism behind and rapidly becoming de-massified society. In consequence it is growing increasingly difficult—often impossible—to mobilize a majority or even a governing coalition. This is why is why once, Italy for six months, had gone without governments, and the Netherlands for five had gone without governments. In the United States of America, some do not see the basis for any positive majority on anything today. Because their legitimacy depended on it, Third Wave elites always claimed to speak on behalf of the majority. The government of the United States of America was “of…by…and for the people.” Mr. Trump claimed to represent America’s “Silent Majority.” And the United States of America, under his guidance, was becoming neo-Conservative with support for marginalized groups, ad the moderate, middle-class. Headquartered in the great universities of the Northeast and think tanks in Washington, and also setting foot in great places like Marietta, Ohio; Salina Kansas, academic neo-Conservatives regard Middle America as what the American Dream is all about. Hard work, agriculture, religion, and family values. However, both masses and classes tend to lose much of their significance in powershifts. Different parties have different agendas. One may be pro-American and Capitalistic, the other may be socialist and enjoys the lawless Wild, Wild West. The advance with a political party that is not pro-American thus weakens the very legitimacy of many existing governments. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

The Fourth Wave also challenges all of our conventional assumptions about the relationship of majority rule to social justice. Here too, as in so many other matters, we are watching a startling historic flip-flop. Throughout the era of the Third Wave civilization the fight of majority rule was humane and liberating. In still-industrializing countries in some industrializing countries it remains so. Under President Trump’s society, he gave a fairer break for the less affluent, everyone got stimulus checks. However, under Mr. Biden’s control, he gave the power to grant stimulus checks to the governors. And slick people like Gavin Newsom flat out refused to issue any money to those who worked and became disabled, the elderly, and veterans, and also some poor who did not have kids. And although the economy is rough for the less affluent, it is likely no more help is on the way from the government. It will be hard for even the middle-class to bare this economic holocaust. Not only is majority rule, therefore, no longer adequate as a legitimating principle, it is no longer necessarily humanizing or democratic in societies that are not Pro-American. Ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. Rather than seeing in this enriched diversity an opportunity for human development, they attack it as “fragmentation” and “urbanization” and attribute it to the aroused “selfishness” of groups looking for handouts. The trivial explanation substitutes effect for cause. For the rising activism of marginalized groups is not the result of a sudden onset of selfishness; it is, among other things, a reflection of the needs of a new system of production which requires for its very existence a far more varied, colourful, open, and diverse society than any we have ever known. The implications of this fact are enormous. It means that when political parties try to suppress the new diversity, or cork up the political pluralism that comes with it, they actually (to their jargon) “fetter the means of production”—they slow down the economic and technological transformation of every society. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

And we in the Capitalist World can acknowledge diversity and change institutions accordingly. If we try to stifle diversity, all that will result in is economic and cultural stagnation. We need to jettison the frightening, but false, assumption that increased diversity automatically brings increased tension and conflict in society. Indeed, the exact reverse can be true. Conflict in society is not only necessary, it is, within limits, desirable. However, if one hundred humans all desperately want the same brass ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand, if each of the hundred has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade, cooperate, and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social arrangements, diversity can make for a secure and stable civilization. It is the lack of the appropriate political institutions today that unnecessarily sharpens conflict between marginalize groups to the knife-edge of violence. It is the lack of such institutions that make non-dominate groups intransigent. It is the absence of such institutions that makes the majority harder and harder to find. The answer to these problems is not to stifle dissent or to change minorities with selfishness (as though the elites and their experts are not similarly self-interested). The answer lies in imaginative new arrangements for accommodating and legitimating diversity—new institutions that are sensitive to the rapidly shifting needs of changing and multiplying emerging cultural groups. However, there are some brutes in human shape. That all the links between the baboon and humans have not been lost is plainly proved by the very existence of these creatures. They will respond only to a language which they can understand: disciplinary punishment, firm repression. Their twisted minds must be surgically operated on, which means that they must be made to feel something of the pain which they made others suffer. Therefore those who through false sentimentality or wrong religion would here use kindness make a profound mistake. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

However, object some religious and most mystical persons, ought we not to show mercy? Ought we not to forgive a sinner? Yes, we ought to forgive because we should comprehend that one sins through ignorance of life’s unwritten laws. However, the scriptural injunction to forgive enemies is often misconstrued. We ought to show mercy and forgive sinners, but we should do the one at the right time and the other to the right person. Otherwise, we merely misplace these virtues and thus convert them into vices. It is our duty to practise compassion but it is not our duty to misplace it. We should show mercy only when there are signs of real repentance for having perpetrated the crime and in proportion to the actual degree of such repentance. For example, generally, those who end someone’s life, often times commits the greatest of crime. They must make the greatest of repentances. They must turn themselves into penitents, sincerely disavowing their past evil and convincingly demonstrating their change of heart by tangible proofs. When we witness the return to life of a criminal’s sleeping conscience, the remorseful recognition of wrong-doing, and the honest admission of guilt, when one expresses genuine sorrow over one’s crimes and shows forth sincere repentance, it will be right and proper to treat one mercifully and forgivingly. In the moment when one truly repents, to our joy and one’s profit, in that same moment we must extend forgiveness and help one start a fresh and better life. However, those other individuals who do not do any of these things, who merely smart with resentment and thirst for revenge, their treatment must be stern and punitive. Unless and until they do repent thoroughly, wise justice has no option but to treat them firmly. This treatment is helpful to their purification. A sentimental neglect to administer this tart medicine will only morally harm them in the end, let alone expose the World to a repetition of their crime. They must learn that everything has to be paid for. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

However, the dearness or cheapness of the price they must pay should depend partly upon the measure of spontaneous repentance and amendment which they themselves bring. For there is always the divine message which, if they will tardily heed and obey it, can mitigate their unhappy lot. And that message says, “Repent, and be redeemed!” However, repentance must run deep, into open deeds and secret thoughts, if it is to be karmically effective. Its reality must be proved by abundant evidence. The criminals have to pay today for what they have done yesterday. However, if they have acknowledged their error, if they are genuinely remorseful, repentant in heart and mind and deed, if they strive spontaneously to make what amendment for the past it is still possible to make, then in the cause of the new universal law will manifest itself side by side with the old and thus modify their miseries. For although it is true that part of their future already exists even nor, owning to universal laws causes which they themselves set going, it is equally true that until the event of that future crystallize into the space-time World they are always liable to be modified by any fresh universal legal cases which are introduced into their own domain. The digital revolution is not the only source of fundamental change heading in our direction. On another front, our scientific knowledge base is exploding in all directions. Astronomers are studying “dark matter.” Scientists probing anti-matter have created anti-hydrogen. We are making breakthroughs in field as diverse as conductive polymers, composite materials, energy, medicine, microfluidics, cloning, supramolecular chemistry, optics, memory research, nano-technology and scores of others. U.S. scientists are rightly lamenting recent cutbacks in spending for research in many fields—and especially for basic research. However, largely overlooked are advances being made in a special class of technology—the tools use research scientists. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

The industrial revolution clicked into high gear and vaulted to a whole new level when, beyond merely building machines to make products, our ancestors began inventing machines to make more—and better—machines. Today we call them capital tools. This same process on a vastly larger scale is now happening to what might be termed “K-tools”—the instruments we use to generate knowledge, the most important form of capital in advanced economies. Armed with supercomputers and supersoftware, the Internet and the Web, scientists now also have access to powerful tools that facilitate rapid collaboration. They are forming more and more multinational teams, pooling insights, methods, and tools across multiple time zones. Another cluster of K-tools consists of a fabulous instrument for visualization in the laboratory. In principle, researchers can now “walk around” inside a single grain of rice to visually observe how its internal structures morph as it grows, then continue to watch as the rice is stored, processed, shipped and cooked. Researchers are able to stroll through an intestine as it digests the rice. Scientific periodicals and Web sites are filled with advertisements for better, faster, time-saving lab technologies. “Automate your research,” reads one from Roche Applied Science. “Process virtually any sample material to isolate DNA, RNA, mRNA, and viral nucleic acids in less than two hours…Perform real-time PCR analysis… in less than 40 minutes.” Another, from AB Applied Biosystems, announces that “whatever your path of discovery,” its DNA analyzer “will get you there faster.” However, faster is astonishingly slow when it comes to nuclear physics. To study the erratic motion of the individual electrons surrounding the nucleus of an atom, researchers need to fire extremely short bursts of electromagnetic radiation. The briefer the better. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Recently scientists broke records by creating the fastest light pulse ever developed. The pulses demonstrated by the group led by Professor Zenghu Change are not just shorter in duration, but also in wavelength. The new light reaches an important spectral region, the so called “water window,” where carbon atoms absorb strongly but water does not. Scientists have demonstrated the fastest light pulse every developed, a 53-attosencond X-ray flash, beating its own record set in 2012. Researchers at University of Central Florida in the United States of America have developed a 67-attosecond extreme ultraviolet light pulse in 2012 which was the fastest at the time. At one-quintillionth of a second, an attosecond is unimaginably fast. In 53 attoseconds, light travels less than one-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair. In the same way high-speed camera can record slow-motion video of flying bullets, attosecond light pulses allow scientists to capture images of fast-moving electrons in atoms and molecules with unprecedented sharpness. The pulses demonstrated by the group led by Professor Zenghu Change are not just shorter in duration, but also in wavelength. The new light reaches an important spectral region, the so called “water window,” where carbon atoms absorb strongly but water does not. Such attosecond soft X-rays could be used to shoot slow-motion video of electrons and atoms of biological molecules in living cells to, for instance, improve the efficiency of solar panels by better understanding how photosynthesis works. X-rays interact with the tightly bound electrons in matter and may reveal which electrons move in which atoms, providing another way to study fast processes in materials with chemical element specificity. That capability is invaluable for the development of next-generation logic and memory chips for mobile phones and computers that are a thousand times faster than those in use today. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

So American researchers have been working on a “lasetron” designed to create flames measure in zeptoseconds—billions of a trillionth of a second. Pulses of radiation short enough to probe the nucleus could be generated with existing technology, according to physicists in the United State of America. Alexander Kaplan and Peter Shkolnikov has calculated that a high-power laser could make electrons emit powerful bursts of X-rays or gamma rays just zeptoseconds -10^-21 seconds long. This “lasetron” could also produce magnetic fields as intense as those found near white dwarf stars. In all these widely different fields, the next step is clear. We are likely to see, before long, not only more and more potent capital tools for knowledge acquisition but capital tools for making those capital tools. The combination of more scientists, more powerful K-tools, instant communication, widespread collaboration and an ever-broader base of knowledge on which to draw is changing the borders of science itself, reopening questions that were once regarded as B-movie science fiction. Serious scientists today are no longer afraid of damaging their reputations by talking about time-travel, cyborgs, near-immortality, anti-gravity devices that could transform medicine and provide an endless source of non-fossil-fuel energy, and many other possibilities once found only on the wilder shores of unbelievability. Some of the biggest corporations in the World—and some armies—are spending huge sums to investigate these new technologies. Day after day, our labs offer fresh discoveries. Many will present us with profound moral issues—witness the conflict over stem-cell research and cloning. We now have clues to the genetic manipulation of certain forms of intelligence. Imagine what that might mean to knowledge-based economics and parents who want biologically smartened child. However, also imagine what social and political dangers might arise from such manipulation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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The Law Awakens the Sleeping Sin–What is the True Picture of Life?

The real art of communication is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but do not expect to hear only what you like. We have learned that nucleic acids, like proteins, form long-chain molecules. However, unlike proteins, nucleic acids do not have 6-atom arrangements of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen as their basic structural segments. Instead, each “vertebra” of the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule consists of a configuration, called a sugar phosphate, containing 5 carbon atoms, 8 hydrogen atoms, 5 or 6 oxygens, and 1 phosphorus, bound together by mutual electric forces in a standardized spatial arrangement. (There are actually two slightly different forms of nucleic acid. The one with 6 oxygen atoms in each vertebral segment is called ribonucleic acid (RNA); that with only 5 oxygen atoms is known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). In modern organisms, as we shall see later, the two kinds of nucleic acid have developed specialties, being separately responsible for different features of the genetic process. However, in the primitive era under discussion, it is simplest to consider RNA and DNA to be equivalent in their functions.) The overall distribution of electric charge is such that one end of a sugar phosphate attaches relatively easily to a particular corner of another sugar phosphate, thereby leading to the formation of the observed long chains. In our study of protein molecules, we saw that chemical individuality was conferred on the otherwise identical segments of the chain by the attachment, to each segment, of 20 different side chains of the atomic configurations. The backbone segment with attached side chain was called an amino acid, and the remarkable variety of protein substances was found to be a consequence of the number of different molecules that could be built by hooking together long sequences of the 20 different kinds of amino acids. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Nucleic acids employ a similar arrangement of attached side chains to confer individuality on the segments of the long molecules. However, only 4 types of side chains appear in a molecule of RNA or DNA, instead of the 20 that appear in protein molecules. The nucleic acid side chains contain only carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen and involve, in each case, a characteristic configuration of 12 to 16 atoms. Although the combination of the sugar phosphate backbone segment with its side chain possesses acid properties, there is no such common chemical property term amino acid to designate the structural units of protein molecules. The corresponding term for the nucleic acid molecular structural units is nucleotide. To be sure, the names adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil that are given, guanylic acid, cytidilic acid, and uridylic acid as designations of the individual types of nucleotide, but we shall have little need for such terminology. (In DNA the side chain uracil is replaced by thymine, which differs from uracil only in having an aggregation of 1 carbon and 2 hydrogen atoms tacked on to one out-of-the-way corner.) We should, however, note that the term base is commonly used instead of “side chain” in technical discussions of the nucleic acids. One of the most important similarities between nucleic acids and proteins is their common likelihood of formation under the conditions that prevailed when the Earth was young. In past experiments, wherein the hypothesized primordial atmosphere was exposed to ultraviolet radiation, radioactive bombardment, heat, and electric discharge, the amino acids needed for protein formation were generated, to be sure. However, in addition, the sugars, phosphates, and bases that appear in nucleic acids were sometimes produced. And the local conditions on the infant Earth that occasionally caused amino acid segments to hook together to form simple precursors of modern proteins must sometimes also have produced primitive forms of nucleic acid molecules. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Let us therefore suppose that a primitive molecule of nucleic acid has formed in this way and that it consists of a string of nucleotides of the different types A, G, C, and U (the letters representing the distinctive side chains, or bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil). (Or A, G, C, and T, if the molecules happens to be of the DNA, rather than the RNA, variety.) Suppose, further that this molecule happens to be immersed in a fluid containing an abundance of the ingredients from which other nucleic acid molecules might be constructed—including nucleotides of the four significant types. Under these circumstances interesting chemical reactions may occur. To start with, the free nucleotides floating around in the mixture will tend to stick to the outer, unattached ends of the bases that project from the backbone of the nucleic acid molecule. This by itself is not surprising; probably many different kinds of molecular fragments have patterns of electric charge permitting some kind of partial fit with the patterns of charge at the free ends of the nucleic acid bases; under the ceaseless jostling of thermal agitation, temporary attachments of many varieties must be continually made and broken. However, it happens that certain of the attachments that can be made between the free and the bound nucleotides possess unusual characteristics. This is true of the attachment of a free U nucleotide (substitute T for U, in DNA) to a bound A nucleotide to a bound G nucleotide (or vice versa). The first important characteristic of an A-U or a C-G combination is the strength of the attachment; in either case the interposition of hydrogen atoms between oxygen and nitrogen atoms produces a relatively tight bond. The second important characteristic of these two combinations is that both result in approximately the same length of structure when measured at right angles to the backbone of the supporting nucleic acid molecule. The A and G bases are long; the C and U bases are short; the A-U and C-G combinations are of about the same length. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

What difference does all this make? Just this: the relatively strong binding forces that cause A-U and C-G combinations to be more lasting than others also line up the free ends of the newly attached nucleotides (the ends farthest from the backbone of the original nucleic acid molecule) in just the right positions to permit the to be easily hooked together. The result is a new nucleic acid molecule, complete with backbone and side chains, attached in Siamese-twin fashion to the original molecule. The resulting double molecule is in effect a ladder; the two uprights consist of the sugar-phosphate backbones, and the uniform-length crossbars consist of the A-U, U-A, C-G, and G-C base pairings of the two molecules. Since the reader has been warned that this treatment is rife with speculation, it is therefore probably worthwhile to point out that what has been discussed up to this point rests on a firm experimental basis. In 1953 J.D. Watson and F.H. C. Crick, working at Cambridge University with X-Ray diffraction photographs of nucleic acids (DNA) made by the English physicist M.H.F. Willkins and his colleague Rosalind Franklin, succeeded in establishing the main features of the modern theory of nucleic acid structure. (For this work the three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962). Watson and Crick were able to show that the kind of ladderlike structure just described actually does occur and that the rungs of the ladder always consist of the long-short combinations of bases. In fact, it was later discovered that these ladderlike molecules of nucleic acid can even be formed from single-stranded molecules in the test tube, in the complete absence of living cells, provided that a “broth” containing the necessary ingredients is supplied. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

In the laboratory situation this broth must include more than the original single-stranded molecules and the four kinds of nucleotides to be incorporated in the new nucleic acid; it must also contain catalysts to speed up the reaction and energy-rich molecules by temporarily attaching themselves to the segmental components. As we have earlier observed, such additional ingredients usually facilitate the reactions in living organisms also. Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed. There is no text in theology, philosophy, and psychology that deals more profoundly with the problem of the law than the seventh chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He praises the law as “holy in itself” and the commandment as “holy and just good.” He calls it “spiritual.” In his “inmost self” he “delights in the law of God,” he is “subject to God’s law as a rational being.” Without the law he would “never have become acquainted with sin.” This is one facet of Paul’s evaluation of the law: the law is the expression of what man essentially is and therefore ought to be, but what he actually is not, as the law shows to him. The other side of Paul’s evaluation of the law is based on his experience that the law commands us to do the good that we cannot do because we are estranged from it and under a longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its lodging in me.” However, the law does more than show us our essential nature and our estrangement from it. The law awakens the sleeping sin: “In the absence of law, sin is a dead thing”; “When the commandment came, sin sprang to life”; “Through the commandment, sin became more sinful than ever.” It is obvious that Paul does not consider the law as a power of moral motivation. He was, on the basis of his own experience, aware of the fact that the commanding law produces “all kinds of wrong desires,” but does not motivate the conquest of these desires and the reunion of his actual will with his essential will: “What I do is the wrong which is against my will.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Paul’s experience is independent of the religious framework in which it appears. A humanist with insight into his spiritual predicament could fully agree with it. Actually, however, and not by chance, the problem of the law as motivating power appeared again in its profundity and explosive power in the Protestant Reformation. All Reformers fought the idea that man’s “good works,” his fulfillment of the law, could be a contributing factor in salvation, or the acceptance of humans by God. Not the fulfillment of commandments (which is impossible in the state of separation from God), but the acceptance of the message that we are accepted, is the motive of the moral action. Nevertheless, the Reformers maintained a threefold use of the law—first, in its legal function as the principle of the positive law, the law of the nations; second, in its power to awaken our conscience to the fact that our actual existence contradicts our essential being, that we are estranged from ourselves; and third, in its function as a mirror of what is good and bad in Christian life. Luther denied and Calvin affirmed the third function of the law. However, all the Reformers denied its power of moral motivation. Again it was a personal experience, namely, that of Luther, that led to the rediscovery of Paul’s experience and its theological implications. The depth to which Luther felt the ambiguity of the law emerges in expression of hate, not only against the law itself, but also against the image of God who lays down a law nobody can fulfill and who punishes those who trespass against it. The shaking anxiety produced by this thought, and the hidden hatred against God, break out in Luther repeatedly, even in his later period. In such a state of mind, man is not able to recognize the law as the expression of one’s own essential being; he feels it as a strange and tyrannical command. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

However, as with Paul, this is not Luther’s sole evaluation of the law. The interpretation of the Ten Commandments in Luther’s Small Catechism demonstrates that he is able to see in the law the right relation to God—love and fear—provides the moral motivation. Beyond this, his interpretation indicates, as for every table of laws, a particular situation—in this case the paternalistic kind of rural society in which he lived. The ambiguity of the commanding law, as experienced by Luther, was the decisive problem for the entire period of the Reformation. The emphasis was different in different Reformers, but the basic answer was the same. The enormous tension produced by this ambiguity, however, slowly receded, and Protestantism became to a large extent a religion of the law, doctrinal as well as moral. All systems, determined by the law, whether religious or secular, are systems of compromise. This is true of groups as well as of individuals; and it is true of the great majority of human beings and human situations in all periods. This happens because the moral law becomes embodies in state law, conventional rules, and educational principles (with or without the support of a particular religion), and exercises motivating power through tradition, public opinion, personal habit, and the threats and promises connected with all of them. In this way the commanding law has the power to produce moral action in an institutionalized form. It is, generally speaking, what the Reformers called the “first use of law,” its power to produce “civil justice,” since obedience to the laws makes the existence of society possible. From the point of view of the unconditional moral imperative, and love as the ultimate principle of moral commands, these methods of motivating moral action are compromises, unavoidable in view of the human predicament, but far removed from the true nature of the moral. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

This is true not only because of the universal human estrangement, the struggles between man’s essential and existential nature, the ambiguity of good and evil in ever process, the mixture of moral and amoral motives in every moral act, but also because social institutions as well as personal habits have an almost irresistible tendency to perpetuate themselves in disregard of the demands of creative justice in a new situation or under unique conditions, both in the communal and in the individual life. The law provides moral motivation if morality becomes a thread within a texture of premoral forces and motives. In our times, the distinction between Case Poverty, due to illness, accidents, or personality defects, and Class Poverty, due to social and underprivileged, does not amount to much. Personal and social play into each other. For it could be asked: Why was the accident not insured? What social conditions formed such a careless personality? Or, conversely, Does the poor class not have, economically, a personality defect? (Just as in the Protestant Ethic the poor had a theological defect; but of course it is also persistently true that “only the poor are saved.”) Likewise, the old monastic concept of voluntary poverty is no longer much distinguishable from either case of poverty or class poverty, for it happens that a person cannot continue the Rat Race, it makes one sick; and one chooses out to survive. Another man would like to be rich and famous and he works hard; but cannot work otherwise than the work demands, but such work might not be marketable; so he could be said to “choose” poverty. In an organized system, all poor tend to be the same poor. (The same blurring of distinctions has occurred between “political” and “common” criminals. As society becomes more close-knit and total, a criminal act may well be a dumb political gesture, and political protest is certainly taken as criminal. So the anarchist philosopher refused to distinguish between these and said, “As long as one of these is in jail, I am not free.”) #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

It makes little difference, then, whether a young fellow chooses his lot or is cast among the poor; especially if, being there, he soon takes on habits which make it difficult for him, or unattractive to him, to belong to the system. Supposed, then, that with pretty good awareness our scarred young man is now confirmed poor. He must still face the problem of vocation and money. On these points the writers of the Fourth Wave Generation are confused. For one thing, they have a false notion that the kind of artistic activity that proliferates among the Fourth Wave Generation of artistic activity that proliferates among the youth is art, and gives the justification of art as a vocation. It is not art but something else, and they do not behave as if they were justified by it. The problem of money, again, seems simple, but is not. In voluntary poverty, the problem is to get enough to subsists. (Money is called “bread.”) But how? Many of the youth take jobs generally temporarily. The principle is that anything will do. A fellow might work in the organized system, exempli gratia, dressing a window at Banana Republic; but, it is argued, he would not thereby be in the Rat Race, because he just wants “bread” and will quit. Naturally Banana Republic did not know this when they hired him, so he is using them, not they him. This might come to pretending to conform rather elaborately, for the system is total; exempli gratia, a fellow will get the job if he shaves off his beard. Work is no different from shoplifting. One plays roles and is hip. (Money is now called “loot.”) What is not understood in this form of reasoning is that playing roles and being hip in this way is very nearly the same as being an Organization Man, for he does not mean it either. Obviously the Holy Barbarian is here on shaky ground. Getting his “loot,” he is exploiter of labour, but only a little bit. (The integral aim of useful man’s work is not always mentioned.) Let me make a close analogy—so close that it is probably an identity—between the job in voluntary poverty and the service in wartime that a pacifist can agree to perform. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Nearly any civilian job that a man does advances the war. If he picks beans, he replaces a farmer for the war factory. Pacifists have commonly accepted such a job as attendant in a hospital, which is understaffed anyway. This is not a petty problem, for when the evil, as they see it, is general and close-knit, it is necessary to preserve one’s personal integrity if only to influence the future when the emergency is past. Anyone who does not understand this and the hairsplitting involved, will not understand ingenuous youth. During the last great was many a young fellow went to a conscientious-objector’s camp in order to avoid war work, and then left the camp in disgust and went to jail because the camp work was boon-doggling. Among some of the Fourth Wave youth, such a principle of integrity is clearly operating in the choice of job. To recapitulate, many of the humble jobs of the poor are precisely not useless (or exploiting). Farm labour, hauling boxes, janitoring, serving and dish washing, messenger—these jobs resist the imputation of uselessness (or exploitation) made against the productive society as a whole. These are preferred Fourth Generation jobs. For one thing, in them no questions are asked and no beards have to be shaved. Nor is this an accidental connection. Personal freedom goes with unquestioned moral utility of the job, for at the level of simple physical effort or personal service, the fraudulent conformity of the organized system sometimes does not yet operate; the job speaks for itself. However, on the other hand, such jobs, being hard and useful, are the most miserably exploited. Exempli gratia, hospital workers who struck a union in Sacramento, California were getting $26,588.00 a year—the minimum wage not applying because they were eleemosynary institutions! Migratory farmers average $33,619.20 a year, and are not welcome in the neighbourhood. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

This big money is in the system. So unorganized wages are low. Yet the price of subsistence at the market is standard high. Taking such a job, a man loses his freedom, he never stops working. He is used and made a fool of by the system, and this is in itself dishonourable. This is the dilemma of voluntary poverty in our society: either to compromise one’s integrity (but then why bother?), or to be abused and made a fool of. (As one way out, let me recommend Scheme III of Communitas, by my brother and myself. We suggest diving the economy into two parts: the subsistence economy and the high-standard economy. In the subsistence part, run absolutely for use, everybody will work less than one year in seven and be guaranteed his subsistence for life. The rest of the time he can work in the high-standard economy for high wages, or do nothing at all, as he pleases. This plan would seem exactly to meet the need of voluntary poverty: to work with perfect integrity at the absolutely necessary, and to have the maximum of freedom for noneconomical activity.) Looking at family, one should not feel the ache of future loss, but an unmixed celebration of what one now has. One should accept change not because one cannot anyway prevent it, but because it is life itself. Love and the end of love, like life and death, must be praised as one. The danger in striving for permanence is not that one will fail, but that one may in some stifled measure succeed, thereby preserving a fading relationship behind a mask of love that falls increasingly at a variance with the withering face behind it. Yearning for permanence is failure of nerve, cowardice in face of the risk and opportunities of living. Sometimes an individual can be as if brain-damaged. Life has distanced itself, is taking place behind a veil; sometimes, surrounded by books, one does not want music, and it will seem to one that one is reaching into oneself for a silence beyond the absence of sound, for a stolen preview perhaps of that stillness that lies on the other side. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Sometimes an individual can be stricken with loss, also with guilt. Whom has one loved, truly? To whom has one given oneself, fully, holding nothing back? Has one trusted anyone enough to stand fully exposed before one, fully vulnerable? Is it any different now? One feels that it is different, that one brings to a loved one something more authentic, more worthy, but how does one know? Needing one to cover over the emptiness might very well present itself as true love. Today many people are fervently celibate. Celibacy is the paramount means by which some establish their character. Celibacy is a way for many to obtain the ultimate self-control. People are deeply concerned about their health. You hear about people turning to water purifiers, bottled water, ice cold baths, cupping, vegan diets, but some take it a step further and truly regard their body as a temple of God. Celibacy is an ascetic, righteous, and extraordinarily health devotion to seeking a level of selflessness that will permit them knowledge of pure truth and will allow them to retain the essence of life. For these beings, one drop of “vital energy” is seen to contain sixty drops of blood. It is not just one more fluid but rather a distillate of blood, marrow, bone, and other bodily substances and so incorporates within itself the very nature of human existence. One authority believes that, “A person should guard one’s vital energy as a jeweller guards one’s most valuable diamonds.” This vital energy is the essence of power; the essence of strength; the essence of endurance; the essence of power; the essence of strength; the essence of endurance; the essence of beauty. It gives something special to the lips, a special light to the body, a shine to the eyes, and something special to the cheeks. Celibates are taught to force their minds away from lascivious thoughts and confine their fellowship to like-minded men. They practice austerities, the most obvious one being celibacy. They pray, for faith in God, and for every spiritual success. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

These celibate people have busily structured lives. Never situ around and daydream, they admonish newcomers, for daydreaming can easily lead to circumstances the deplete vital energy. Anything that could waste this vital energy is strictly forbidden. To make sure one has a pleasant night, one washes one’s feet in warm water before bed, reflecting on the Supreme Being, and then going to urinate if an unwelcome urge comes in the night time. Diet, too, is crucial. One much recharge and enrich this vital energy. Milk is at the heart of one’s nutritional regimen, and the stereotype is a burly man who can guzzle bucketsful of milk. Men drink milk to intensify their vital energy—milk, especially cow’s milk is described as an ideal liquid—and, as they gulp, assumes they are adding to their body’s reserve of vital energy. Ghee, clarified butter, also produces vital energy, and strong vital energy at that, the stuff of physical, moral, and spiritual strength. Indeed, it is a more important source of vital energy than milk. It fuels one’s fire in one’s own body. Also one is supposed to devour vast quantities of almonds smashed into a thick paste and mixed with milk and honey. This is a goo pick-me up after school or work. Otherwise, they eat only lightly spiced food, avoid pickles and abstain entirely from tobacco and liquor. Some also recommend sports as a way to maintain celibacy, and many young men in their late teens and early twenties are driven to take up sports as a result. They are so convinced of this way of life and the power that it has that they are motivated by the widespread conviction that celibacy is so power it can transform the frailest and sickliest boy into a champion. Leaders devise a total life program for each of these celibate young men that includes exercises, food, and rest. These individuals are also counseled spiritually. They regard themselves as “extraordinary men who do extraordinary things to and with their bodies.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

These people have physical activity with rules similar to Olympic sports, as well as spiritual quest by men pledged to physical strength and competence, celibacy, duty, obedience, honesty, and humility. The role of religion is so pervasive that nightly prayer and prayer throughout the day is a habit of celibates. These individuals attend work or school. Ideally, one rises at 3 A.M. —in reality, most are u by 4.30 or 5 A.M. A glass of water and premium cranberry juice is followed by the forest or nature area ablutions. At home, careful defecations are a practice, which guarantees total control over vital energy. At 9 A.M is time for physical education, and one preforms a litany of routines before one finally leaves for the crowded bustle of one’s other life. All of these regimens are carefully designed to achieve the strictest celibacy and, with it, the augmentation and enrichment of vital energy, the living quick of human existence. Drinking large amounts of alcohol in a short time, or binge drinking, is a serious problem on college campuses. Studies show that as many as 40 percent of college students binge-drink at times, around half o them at least six times per month. These are higher rates than those displayed by people of the same age who are not in college. In any circles, alcohol use is an accepted part of college life. Are we as a society taking the issue too lightly? Consider some of the following statistics: Alcohol is a factor in nearly 40 percent of academic problems and 28 percent of all college dropouts. Although 84 percent of incoming freshmen consider heavy alcohol use to be a problem on campus, 68 percent drink during their first semester, at least half of them during their first week on campus. Alcohol affects not only those who drink but also those who do not, with approximately 600,000 students each year physically or emotionally traumatized or assaulted by physical force from a student drinker. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Binge drink has been linked to severe healthy problems and serious injury, auto crashes, unplanned and unprotected pleasures of the flesh, aggressive behaviours and various psychological problems. In fact, binge drinking by college students had been linked to an estimated 1,400 student deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 cases of physically forced assaulted or date physically forced assault every year. There was a 31 percent increase in the number of female binge drinkers in colleges from 2011-2019. Excessive alcohol use is associated with more than 27,000 deaths among women and girls each year. Excessive alcohol use poses unique health and safety risk to females. Nearly half of adult women report drinking alcohol in the past 30 days. Approximately 13 percent of adult women report binge drinking and on average do so 4 times a month, consuming 5 drinks per binge. About 18 percent of women of children bearing age (id est, 18-44 years) binge drink. In 2019, about 32 percent of female high school students consumed alcohol compared with 26 percent of male high school students. Binge drinking was also more common among female (15 percent) then male (13 percent) high school students. In 2019, 4 percent of women overall and 8 percent of woman ages 18 to 25 years had an alcohol use disorder. Although men are more likely to drink alcohol and consumer larger amounts, biological differences in body structure and chemistry lead most women to absorb more alcohol and take longer to metabolize it. After drinking the same amount of alcohol, women tend to have higher blood alcohol levels than men, and the immediate effect of alcohol usually occur more quickly and last longer in women than men. These differences make women susceptible to the long-term negative health effects of alcohol compared with men. There is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy. Alcohol use during pregnancy increases the risk of having a baby with fetal alcohol spectrum (FAS) which is associated with intellectual disabilities and birth defects. FAS is 100 percent preventable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

These findings have led some educators to describe binge drinking as “the number 1 public health hazard” for full-time college students, and many researchers and clinicians have turned their attention to it. The implications are clear: college drinking, certainly binge drinking, may be more common and more harmful than was previously believed. At the very least, it is a problem whose research time has come. The Bill of Rights, added to the United States of America’s Constitution in 1791, is clearly one of the stunning achievements of human history. Many wonder how the revolutionists, the men and women, the farmers, merchants, artisans, lawyers, printers, pamphleteers, shopkeepers, and soldiers who together created a new nation on the distant shores of America, were able, in the midst of bitter social and economic turmoil, under the most immediate pressures—to muster so much awareness of the emerging future. Listening to the distant sounds of tomorrow, they sensed that civilization was dying and a new one was being born. These founders were driven to it—compelled, carried along by the tidal force of events, fearing the collapse of an ineffectual government paralyzed by inappropriate principles and obsolete structures. Seldom has so majestic a piece of work been done by humans of such sharply divergent temperaments—brilliant, antagonistic, and egotistic humans—humans passionately committed to diverse regional and economic interests, yet so upset and outraged by the terrible “inefficiencies” of an existing government as to draw together and propose a radically new one based on startling principles. Even now these principles more Americans, as they have moved countless billions around the planet. It is difficult for several patriots to read certain passages of Jefferson or Paine, for example, without being brought to the edge of tears by their beauty and meaning. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Many are thankful for being Americans and having a government of laws, not humans, and particularly for that precious Bill of Rights, which has made it possible to express creativity, vote, have freedom, and write without fear of suppression. It is remarkable that no decision of the past can bind the future forever. The Constitution of the United States of America needs to be recognized, and the Bill of Rights expanded, taking into account the threats to freedom unimagined in the past, and creating a more fortified government capable of protecting national security, making intelligence and coherent democratic decisions necessary for our survival in a new World. There is no easy blueprint for tomorrow’s constitution for the perfect version already exists and just needs to be enforced. The founders already had the answers and one can see that if they take the time to read the document. It includes all the freedoms we need. However, the time has come for us to imagine completely novel forms of peace, to discuss the Constitution, dissent, debate, and design our actions from this democratic architecture that our nation was founded on. We must do this with the widest consolation and peaceful public participation, we need join together to reconstitute American. Some humans look at the American Constitution with sanctimonious reverence and deem it like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to them humans of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and supposed what they did to be beyond amendment. Laws and institutions go must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep peace with the times. Mr. Jefferson is admired and blessed for his wisdom and the help he provided to create the system what has served us so well for so long. There is some confused thinking in the minds of pious people about the question of forgiveness. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Criminal aggressors—whether they be single individuals or whole nations—need to be punished as much for their own moral benefit as for the physical protection of society. If through sentimental emotions they are left unpunished, then we render them a disservice. For they will fail to learn the age-old lesion that crime does not pay. Not that they will really escape from the inevitable come-back of karma, but when the perpetration of crime is swiftly followed by proportionate punishment, the moral lesson involved is brought home to the wakeful consciousness much more effectively than when the same lesson is brought home to the subconscious at a later period in another birth. Just as we do not hate a child even when one is performing such a punitive operation, we ought not to hate the erring criminals who have put their energies into wrong channels even when we are restraining or punishing them. It should be done in the spirit of education, impersonally, calmly, without hatred, but with firm inflexible determination to teach them the lesson of their own experiences—the truth that barbarity does not pay. Today there are more than 2.5 billion computers in the World, including servers, desktops, and laptops. Almost half o the private households Worldwide have access to a computer at home. Microchips are everywhere. In 2020, more than 932 billion chips were manufactured around the World, feeding $493,858,200,000.00 industry. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a computer named Sierra. Sierra is one of the fastest supercomputers in the World. Sierra boasts a peak performance of 125 petaFLOPS—125 quadrillion floating-point operations per second. Sierra is six to 10 times more capable than LLNL’s 20- petaflop Sequoia, which was the World’s eight-fastest supercomputer. Sierra is even more important today as we face increased global complexities, so it is essential that America’s tools operate at the leading edge. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

With a foot print of 7,000 square feet, Sierra is comprised of 240 computing racks, and 4,320 nodes, with each node consisting of two IBM POWER 9 CUPs, four NVIDIA V100 GPUs, and Mellanox EDR InfiniBand interconnect. To prepare for this architecture, LLNL has partnered with IBM and NVIDIA to rapidly develop codes and prepare for applications to effectively optimize the CUP/GPU nodes. Meanwhile, 5 billion people around the World use the internet in January 2022—equivalent to 62.5 percent of the World’s total population. What is more, there are now fewer than 3 billion people around the World who do not use the internet, making another important milestone on our journey towards universal accessibility. Does anyone really think all these chips, computers, companies and Internet connections are going to vanish? Or that the World’s 5.31 billion unique mobile phone users in the World today are going to throw their phones away? In fact, these, too, are daily morphing into more and more advanced and versatile digital devices. What we see, therefore, in parallel with transformation of roles and boundaries in society, is the even more rapid transformation in its knowledge infrastructure. Compared with the changes it makes possible, everything done so far will seem trifling. And not just in a few “developed” countries. For while the United States has spearheaded these developments, they re no longer an “American” phenomenon. As of January 2020, English was the most popular language online, representing 25.9 percent of Worldwide internet users. Chinese was ranked second with a 19.4 percent usage, but Chinese will soon be the most widely used language on the Internet. There has also been exponential growth of mobile devices in Africa. There are 650 million mobile users in Africa, surpassing the number in the United Stated of America or Europe. In some African countries more people have access to a mobile phone than to clean water, a bank account or electricity. There are also tele-centers, cyber cafés and other forms of public Internet access are growing rapidly in urban areas. The global information technology industry is values at $5.3 trillion U.S.D. It is served by 56 million companies around the globe. And change is so rapid that all of these numbers are already obsolete by the time you read them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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The Effect of Witchcraft or Devils

One must recognize that over the course of centuries the ideas about witches and their activity have changed. The medieval notion of witchcraft is far different from that of the Christian Bible, and today’s self-styled witches usually resemble the ancient concept more than that of the Middle Ages. The Old Testament word which denotes a witch is kashaph. It is used in various forms, and most often is translated “sorcerer,” “sorcery,” or “sorceries. This means that a witch was a person who used magical formulas, incantations, or mutterings to exercise control over the unseen World. Other kinds of occultism, though equally condemned, were not regarded in the Old Testament as witchcraft. The individual who sought to communicate with the dead was called a necromancer, and this practice was not synonymous with sorcery. Similarly, foretelling the future by means of “reading” the livers of animals, the signs in the Heavens, the flight of birds, or the movements of particles in a liquid, though also forbidden, were not considered equivalent to witchcraft. Strictly speaking, the term “sorcerer” or “witch” referred to any person who summoned invisible powers to help in casting spells or performing feats of magic. It is not easy for us to accurately define and completely separate the specific practices Moses names. In general, it may be said that the enchanter (worker of magic), the witch (incantation-using sorcerer), the charmer (snake-handling hypnotist), and the wizard (the psychically gifted person who appeared to possess extra-sensory perception) came under the general Old Testament heading of witchcraft. In medieval times the concept of sorcery was different from that of the Old Testament. A witch was considered to be a person who sold her soul to Satan in exchange for magical powers. She was said to engage in pleasures of the flesh with demons and people thought she cast evil spells upon animals and people. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

These witches were always looked upon as dangerous and malevolent, while those of the Biblical times, through practicing a craft forbidden by God, often were regarded by the heathen as benefactors of society. The medieval idea that some women actual sold themselves to the devil led to events which are a dark blot in church history. The combination of superstition, cruelty and mass hysteria brought about the persecution and execution of many women on charges of witchcraft. Some historians estimated that in Europe alone more than nine million suspected witches were put to death upon the flimsiest of evidence. Today we realize that the vast majority of these unfortunates never made a pact with the devil, and did not possess magical powers, and did not harm anyone. Most of them were naïve women who came under suspicion because their words and actions departed from what was considered the norm. Some no doubt were brain-damaged, while others suffered from neuroses or psychotic conditions. The concept of witchcraft today differs in some details from both that of Biblical and medieval times. In contrast to the sorcerers of antiquity who believed in many gods, a large percentage of today’s witches are not deeply religious and do not consider their powers to be attributable to the supernatural. Most of these self-proclaimed witches do not speak of making a covenant with Satan, although this dedication to the devil is basic to black magic, as we shall see later. Contemporary witches do insist, however, that they are able to contact and utilize powers that come from the unseen World. Witchcraft today emulates that of the pre-Christian era in many respects. Its practitioners often organize into covens, a group of six males and six female witches with a high priest or priestess. They meet monthly at the time of the full moon, and at eight other festivals called sabbats throughout the year. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The Halloween sabbat—first the witches remove their clothes and bathe in salt water to purify themselves. Then, still nude (sky-clad, as they call it) they descend to the basement and step inside a 9-foot circle that is drawn about them with a 400-year-old sword by Mrs. Buckland (wife of Raymond Buckland, a Britisher with a Ph.D. in anthropology), who is known in the craft as Lady Rowen. A bewitching ambience is provided by music from a tape recorder and incense burned in a brass censor. Once inside the circle, the witches sing, chant, dance with broomsticks, in commemoration of an ancient fertility rite, drink tea and wine, and listen to the high priestess read from the Book of Shadows. The ceremony ends after Lady Rowen, dressed in only a silver crown, bracelet, necklace, and green leather garter belt, takes a horned helmet and places it on the head of her husband, the high priest, who is known as Robat. This signifies that power has been transferred from the high priestess who reigns during the six months of summer, to the high priest, who rules during the six winter six months. It is obvious that this is a return to ancient pagan practices, and that witchcraft its own religious system. It even has its own Bible, called The Book of Shadows, a compilation of rituals and chants drawn from various books of magic by which the practitioners produce their spells and charms. Witchcraft is therefore a religion that denies or distorts holy Scriptures, ignores or perverts the doctrine of Christ, and offers no deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. However, the very existence of magic is strongly contested. Psychiatry sees the question of magic as being the symptom of mental illness. Psychology would say that when people are subjected to magic it is only the result of an incorrect upbringing, and that such people are superstitiously maladjusted and have a false conception of life. Liberal theology would even, in its modern form, regard magic simply as a system of traditional customs and ideas. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

The ethical character of magic is also a battle ground of opinion. Some praise it as a gift of God while other see in it just neutral forces of nature which can be used either for good or evil. Again others, especially the Christians, know of the demonic character of magic. Why are events involving magic so difficult to judge? Going back to our definition we see that magic is practised through extrasensory forces being called into play. Our five senses have only a limited range. On the physical level people are ready to admit this, since science furnishes us with ample proof of the existence of areas that are beyond our human senses. However, in the spiritual realm such a mathematical demonstration is not possible. Hence the shortsighted rationalist simply deny the very existence of the divine as well as the demonic. We will point out how these extrasensory forces reveal themselves by means of a few example. The two Seiler brothers in Ottenheim, Baden, run a non-professional medical practice. One of the brothers put himself into a trance and in this state, he is able to identify diseases of the patients. The process is always successful. In Alsace a Catholic priest heals by magic. His nickname is Father Slipper. The reason behind this is that all those who desire his help must send him one of their slippers. Through concentrating on the slippers, he can discover what is wrong with the people. During counselling sessions in Austria, I happened to come across a so-called urine taster. The patient’s urine was not examined medically to discover the albumen, sugar and hemoglobin content etcetera, but was used as a psychometrical means of contact for a clairvoyant diagnosis. Such urine tasters are also known in Switzerland, France, Germany and other European countries. The strange thing is that in spite of such curious methods the diagnosis often proves to be correct. These magic healing methods depend on mediumistic and extrasensory forces! Herein lies the reason for their success. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

In the definition the various aims of magic were mentioned. Whereas spiritism seeks to communicate with and to dominate the spirit World, magic enlarges this aim to cover people, animals, plants, and the material World. The black magician endeavours to subjugate and to dominate one’s enemy through magic. Some examples of this will follow later. Others try through magic to influence the animal and the plant Worlds as we see in the next examples. A man dabbled in black magic for many years. He specialized in stealing mile from the neighbouring farmer. He would tie a towel to a door knob, then murmur his magic phrases and squeeze the milk out of the towel. I have heard of similar examples in my counseling work, but was unable to investigate them personally. A missionary told me that on several occasions when she had tried to visit a magician some wild animals had approached her. She felt at once that demonic powers were at work. She had commanded the animals to go in the name of Jesus. They had gone. After this she heard that the magician had boasted that he was able to send out wild animals to kill any foreigner who came to see him. A young man, who a doctor described as schizophrenic, confessed to me during counselling that he had the ability to kill small animals at some distance away from him, merely through using his powers of magic. In Toggenburg, Switzerland, on several occasions in my counselling sessions people confessed that they had the power to kill horses, cows and pigs with the help of black magic. In reply to my question how they had received this ability, they told me that they had subscribed themselves with their own blood to the devil. One actual case of animal killing was examined by some scientists but they could find no natural cause of death. A farmer who had had several bad crops in a row was given the following advice by a magician. He should place three grains of corn under his tongue while sowing, then, having sowed the field, say a magic charm and end by calling on the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Calling on the Holy Trinity would then encourage growth and protect the crops from bad weather. As a matter of fact, the farmer was convinced that the charming of his field had been beneficial. Since that time through, his desire to read the Word of God disappeared, ad besides this there was an enormous increase in accidents in his stables. It is not only the organic World, the World of living creatures, that falls within the sphere and influence of magic, but also the inorganic World of dead matter. The following are some examples of this. For years three sisters slept in a single room. From time-to-time stones would fall from the ceiling of this room. When the eldest sister became engaged and finally left the house, this rain of stones stopped. I head of the incident from one of the sisters. Such magical falls of stones are not so rare as one might imagine. I have on several occasions had eyewitness accounts of them. For many years, a man practiced black magic. One of these specialties which he often demonstrated was thrusting a knife into the ground. He would murmur some magical words and several pints of blood would then come out of the place where the knife had been stuck in. The sister of this man was also an expert in the same field. The question is, was this just a clever trick or a genuine piece of magic? This case is very reminiscent of a fakir trick. Nevertheless similar incidents have been reported to me in my pastoral work. In the sphere of magic some of the most unreasonable things take place. Yet even if it were simply all a case of superstition and imagination, if it had no real foundation, the area would still be an abyss of human aberration and need, demanding enlightenment and conselling help. Other questions arising from the definition will come under discussion later. The Christian Bible presents demons as spiritual beings or spirit personalities. The specific attribute of “spirit” is incorporeality of immateriality. “A spirit hath not flesh and bones,” reports Luke 24.39; that is, demons do not possess a material body. #RandolphHaris 7 of 18

On the other hand, they can act upon the human body, as well as the human soul and spirit. They are capable of entering and assuming control of a human body, speaking and acting through it from time to time and even possessing it, as if it were their own property. That demons are spirits is clear from numerous references in the Gospels. “When the even was come, they brought unto him in many that were possessed with demons: and He cast out the spirits with his word,” Matthew 8.16. When the seventy returned and joyfully declared, “Lord, even the demons are subject unto us,” reports Luke 10.17, or Lord replied, “Nevertheless in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you,” reports Luke 10.20. “The demon” who went out of the lunatic boy, as described in Matthew 17.18, is also called a “foul spirit” in Mark 9.25, The Apostle Paul emphatically declares that Satan and his demons are spirits. In describing the believers’ conflict against the powers of darkness, he indicated that the intense warfare “is not again flesh and blood” but against evil spirits, described as “principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness,” and “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the Heavenly places,” Ephesians 6.12. The Apostle John also indicates that demons are spirits. He describes the three unclean spirits issuing from the mouth of the dragon, of the best, and of the false prophet, as the “spirits of demons,” reports Revelation 16.14. The expression may be interpreted either as a common genitive of descriptions, defining the spirits as “demonic,” or better as a genitive of apposition, more particularly defining the general term “spirits,” which may be either good or bad, as bad, or “demon-spirits.” The fact that demons are spirits, and thus immaterial and incorporeal, does not in the least suggest that they lack individuality, with all the elements of personality such as will, feelings, and intellect. Like all God’s creatures, they were constituted with self-determining choice. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Created originally sinless, demons joined Satan in chosen course of rebellion. Their decision was deliberate and in the full knowledge of the infinite goodness and holiness of their Creator. This is why they are incorrigible and confirmed in their depravity with no hope of repentance or change. Like Satan’s, their choice is irretrievable; their doom is sealed (Luke 8.31; Revelation 20.1-2 and 10-15). That demons are individuals is attested by their intelligent and voluntary actions. They think, they speak, they act (Acts 19.15-16) through spiritistic medium or through a person over whom they have acquired control. In the case of the demon possessed, the domination is almost complete (Marl 5.10; Luke 4.34). In the case of demon influence, their control is less complete and direct (1 Timothy 4.1-2; 1 John 4.1-2). Because demons are spirit personalities, they can act upon and influence human’s body and mind. Counselors, parapsychologists and psychiatrists who deny or ignore this sphere of reality render themselves unequipped to deal with patients who may be suffering from occult oppression and subjection in a day when disturbances of both mind and body from this source are becoming more numerous and more pronounced. In the following tale the ghostly portion is rather dwarfed by the strong fairy element which appears in it, and, as we have already shown, many witchcraft cases in Scotland were closely interwoven with the older belief in the “good people”; Lord Orrery, when giving the account to Baxter, considered it to be “the effect of Witchcraft or Devils.” The reader is free to take what view one likes of the matter! The Lord Orrery mentioned therein is probably Roger, the second Earl, who Lodge in his Peerage describes as being “of a serious and contemplative disposition, which led him to seek retirement.” If this identification be correct the following event must have occurred between 1679 and 1682, during which years the Earl held the title. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

The butler of a gentleman living near the Earl was sent to buy a pack of cards. As he was crossing a field, he was surprised to see a company of people sitting down at a table loaded with all manner of good things, of which they invited him to partake, and no doubt he would have accepted had not someone whispered in his ear, “Do nothing this company invites you to,” upon which he refused. After this they fell to dancing, and playing on musical instruments, then to work, in both of which occupations they desired the butler to join, but to no purpose. The night following the friendly spirit came to his bedside and warned him not to stir out of doors the next day, for if he did so the mysterious company would obtain possession of him. He remained indoors the greater part of that day, but towards evening he crossed the threshold, and hardly had he done so when a rope was cast about his waist, and he was forcibly dragged away with great swiftness. A horseman coming towards him espied both the man and the two ends of the rope, but could see nothing by pulling. By catching hold of one end, he succeeded in stopping the man’s headlong course, through a punishment for so doing he received a smart blow on his arm from the others. This came to the ears of the Earl of Orrery, who requested the butler’s master to send him to his house, which the latter did. There were then staying with the Earl several persons of quality, two Bishops, and the celebrated Healer, Valentine Greatrakes. Here the malice of the spirits of fairies manifested itself in a different manner. The unfortunate man was suddenly perceived to rise from the ground, and the united efforts of Greatrakes and another were unable to check his upward motion—in fact all that the spectators could do was to keep running under him to protect him from being hurt if the invisible power should suddenly relax its hold. At length he fell, but was caught by them before he reached the ground, and so received no harm. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

That night the spectre, which had twice proved so friendly, appeared at his bedside with a wooden platter full of some grey liquid, which it bade him drink, as he had brought it to him to cure him of two sorts of fits he was subject to. He refused to drink it, and it would appear from another part f the narration that his refusal was based on the advice of the two Bishops, who he had consulted in the matter. At this the spirit was very angry, but told him he had a kindness for him, and that is he drank the juice of plantain-roots he would be cured of one sort of fit, but that he should suffer the other one till his death. On asking his visitant who he was, he replied that he was the ghost of a man who had been dead seven year, and who in the days of his flesh had led a loose life, and was therefore condemned to be born about in a restless condition with the strange company until the Day of Judgment. He added that “if the butler had acknowledged God in all His ways, he had not suffered such things by their means,” and reminded him that he had not said his payers the day before he met the company in the field; and thereupon vanished. Had this story rested alone on the evidence of the butler the “two sorts of fits” would have been more than sufficient to account for it, but what are we to say to the fact that all the main points of the narrative were borne out by the Earl while Mr. Greatrakes (according to Dr. More, the author of Collections of Philosophical Writings) declared that he was actually an eye-witness of the man’s being carried in the air above their heads. By now I see spiritualism in a very different light. However, many people think that spirit phenomena are accomplished by trickery, sleight of hand, or black magic. I agree that many mysterious happenings associated with prominent psychics and small-town fortune-tellers are hoaxes—perhaps 85 percent of them, but I believe the rest are actual deeds of evil spirits counterfeiting the power of the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

At one of her golden skeleton key séances, to prove that there was no hocus-pocus involved, the control spirit sent the key sailing between the rungs of the chair on which Mrs. Winchester was sitting. Since she was in her own her, she knew there were no props and no strings were attached. The question, then, is just what are these spirits and how do these spiritualist phenomena occur? Some believe they are part of Satan’s strategy to deceive Christians and to enslave those who as yet do not know God. Many Christians are drawn into spiritualism because they assume all spiritual phenomena are produced by God—these people simply may not know their Christian Bibles. I have no adequate explanation of the marvels produced by spirits…but I cannot explain Christ’s miracles, either. However, since everything is energy in one form or another—this is a basic fact of physics—our bodies, too, are composed of energy. I believe that Satan, who is the temporary prince in control of this World (Ephesians 2.2; 6.12-17), is able to convert body energy that is yielded to him into a spiritual force. This spirit then manifests itself in the bizarre happenings associated with séances. I do affirm the reality associated with spiritualist phenomena. Who are the spirits that attend séances? Are they spirits of deceased people, as they claim? The Christian Bible teaches that the spirits of the departed dead do not become either angels or demon spirits. These spirits are either with the Lord, waiting for the day of resurrection of their bodies (1 Thessalonians 4.14-17), or they are in hell. There is much evidence in Scripture that the spirits who appear at séances are rebel angels. Jude 6 speaks about “angels which kept not their first estate.” Many Bible scholars interpret Ezekiel 28.17, “I will cast thee to the ground,” as indicating that the Earth is the realm of Satan’s powerful operations, with the help of his fallen colleagues, the demons. Satan is called the “god of this World,” in 2 Corinthians 4.4. And Christians are under attack by “rulers…. powers…World forces of darkness,” reports Ephesians 6.12. God tells us that hell was “created for the devil and his angels (demons)” reports Matthew 25.41. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

It is important to realize that the spirit World exists as another dimension all around us, not in some far-off place. When the medium at a séance enters a trance, a control spirit takes over and allegedly introduces the spirit of a dead person. In reality, the unseen visitor is a “familiar spirit” who intimately knows the dead person. Apparently these familiar spirits accompany a person throughout life, becoming so well acquainted that they can convincingly imitate the dead person’s mannerisms and knowledge of personal details when called upon at a séance. In this way even close relatives are ticked into believing they are hearing their dead loved one. I believe this was what happened to the late James A. Pike. He went to several mediums who told him they had contracted his dead son, Jim, Jr., and that father and son could communicate in a séance. Mr. Pike supposedly did so on a number of occasions, as he described in his book, The Other Side. Actually Mr. Pike talked to a spirit who was familiar with his son. This spirit impersonated his son so well and favourably that Mr. Pike overcame his remorse about his son’s suicide, and looked forward to rejoining his son. Bishop Pike was a rather easy convert to spiritualism, since he, like the spiritualists, rejected the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and if Jesus is not God, he cannot be man’s Saviour—nor does man need a Saviour in Mr. Pike’s view. Mr. Pike’s third wife, Diane, was a secretary in a Methodist church before she married Mr. Pike. Her Christian beliefs were shallow also, as revealed in her book, Search. She describes a vision given her while her husband was dying in the Israeli wilderness, and she says she saw him being welcomed in the sky by Christ and a “host of witnesses.” She confesses: “The strangest part for me was to see so literally what I had supposed to be symbolic expressions of meaning.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Diane Pike, and hundreds of thousands of other people, have difficulty believing the extraordinary claims of the Christian Bible, yet they unhesitatingly accept the vagaries of personal fancy or the mysterious manifestations of spirits. This reminds us of the prophecy in 1 Timothy 4.1 about “giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons.” A well-known parapsychologist, Hans Holzer, tells in his book, The Psychic World of Bishop Pike, that he made contact with Mr. Pike through a medium named Ethel Meyers. The television publicity linked to the release of the book excited World interest in communicating with the dead. The familiar spirit contacted at a séance will say remarkable things about the dead person to connive loved one that they really are speaking to the one who has departed to the “other side.” The spirits will even say things long forgotten by the listener. The spirits Mrs. Winchester encountered as séances were, for the most part, very moralistic. They encouraged her not to smoke or drink or do anything nor do anything that would harm her mind and body. Ministers during the 19th century were told to preach morality, good manners, and civic pride. There were ministers who actually has spirit messages taken down by their secretaries and then used them from the pulpit! The spirits often talked about an ethical Jesus, but never about a Saviour who died a sacrificial death for sins. In contrast to the high and moral and ethical tone of the séances in the Winchester mansion, Mrs. Winchester attended some where the spirits were blasphemous and sensual. Spiritualist call them Earthbound demons, and they served to reinforce Mrs. Winchester’s conviction that the spirits in her Blue Séance Room were truly from God. However, some believe that Satan uses blasphemous séances as another subtle trick to convince people that there are “good” spirits and “bad” spirits, and that Mrs. Winchester and others were indeed communicating with God or their loved ones. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Supposedly even the spirits who tell people to improve themselves morally and spiritually were doing so to gain their allegiance for themselves and keep them from God. Even mediums are often unaware that they are dealing with the kingdom of Satan. Certain “psychic” persons, having developed their powers, may very well be able to make accurate or partially accurate revelations about coming events. These clairvoyance, mystics, readers, astrologer, or fortune-tellers use various means to foretell the future for individuals. Usually the revelation will be in very general terms, but sometimes it is specific enough to make people shiver after the predicted event has occurred and they remember in awe: “She predicted it would happen!” As is has been said, it is possible that much astrology and fortune-telling is sometimes of satanic spiritualism. Some people like Jeane Dixon believe her gifts of prophecy and visions are from God, but one no one is willing to acknowledge these supernatural gifts could come from Satan. Mrs. Winchester who built the Winchester Mansion which is now 4-stories tall and over 25,000 square feet had a 13-piece tableware set made entirely of pure gold. The set included goblets, plates, chopsticks, and cutlery, each engraved with a daisy which symbolized eternal youth and health. How magnificent they were! However, they say Mrs. Winchester starved herself to death. She was so besotted by the loss of her precious family members that she forgot—absolutely forgot to eat. There was certainly a glance of mysterious around, they also found the butler dead, seated at the table, with a meal in from of him, as he held a gold fork, which was made for a king. There was an odour of sanctity about the affair—a whiff of air from the land of the ghosts. Before the Winchester mansion was emptied out, one of the movers decided to take advantage of this fancy dinner set and some of the delicious food in the ice box. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

Jed sat down to a nice steak dinner in the venetian dining room and clarence joined him. As Jed was about to smother his steak with steak sauce, he felt his wrist grasped by—well, by what felt uncommonly like an invisible hand. He was so startled. He dropped the steak sauce and drew his hand back, and was conscious of the slight detaining pressure of unseen fingers. Of course, it was hallucination, but it seemed so real, and was so expected, that—well, how could he not cut into this tender, juicy steak. As Jed was grappling with his meal, it must not have looked very appetizing. However, he felt an unusual degree of excitement—sort of feeling of do or die. Intending to keep complete control over his muscles, he held his knife in his right hand and his fork in his left. His index finger extended down the back of the utensils, as he used the fork to pin through the meat and, with the knife he cut enough for a single bite. Jed realized that clenching the knife and fork in his fist was not classy enough for such a fine dinner service in the beautiful mansion, which seem to require the guest to eat properly and enjoy their ambiance. He was just about to cut another piece of steak, when that unseen grasp fastened on his wrist. He paused with something of the feeling which induces the wrestler to pause before entering on the veritable tug of war. For one thing, he was desirous to satisfy himself as to the nature of the grasp—what it was that seemed to grasp him. It seemed to be a hand. The fingers went over the back of his wrist, and the thumb beneath. The fingers were long and thin—it was altogether a slender hand. However, it seemed to be a man’s hand, and an old man’s hand at that. The skin was tough and wrinkled, clammy and cold. On the little finger there was a ring, and on the first, abut the region of the first joint, appeared to be something an opened wound. It was anything but a beautiful hand, it was altogether too attenuated and clawlike, and it was yellow with age. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

He said, “This is a devil or a ghost!” He moved his hand toward the plate to try to eat without the gold utensils. His hand instantly was grasped. With his left hand, Jed made several passes in the air up and down, behind and before, in every direction so far as he could. It was met with no resistance. There seemed to be nothing tangible but those invisible fingers which grasped his wrist—and he moved his left had towards the streak. That is when something slapped the steak out of his hand. “It is enough. Indeed it is too much. This ribaldry must cease,” he said. Jed was sure it was a ghost. He rose from his seat, and said, “If there is any other person with me in this room, may I asked that person to let me hear his voice, or hers? Just speak one word.” Not a sound. For some reason, almost contemptuous coldness fired his blood. He became suddenly enraged. “I shall not leave! Do you think I am going to be fooled by a conjuring trick which would disgrace a shilling séance? Drive out of the mansion at this time of night by a ghost! And such a ghost! If it were something like a ghost one would not mind; but a fool of a ghost like this!” His passion was ridiculous—children even. However, then the circumstances were exasperating—usually so, one might plead. He was standing three or food feet from the table. Jed dashed forward. As he did so a had was fastened on his throat. Instantly it was joined by another. They gripped him tightly. They madded Jed. With a madman’s fury, he still pressed forward towards that steak. He might as well had fought with fate. They clutched him as with bands of steel, and flung him to the ground. When he recovered consciousness, he found he was laying on the floor. That was a night of dreams. Jed did not know if her was awake or sleeping, but all sorts of strange things presented themselves to his mental eye. He could not shut them from his sight. One figure was prominent in all he saw—the figure of a man. “It must be Mrs. Winchester’s late butler, but how?” Jed said to himself. He was a lean old man, and what Jed noticed chiefly were his hands. Such ugly hands! In some fantastical way he seemed to be contending with them all through the night. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

And yet in the morning when he woke—for Jed did wake up, and that from as sweet refreshing sleep as one might wish to have—it was all gone. The dinner service, the steak, the dinning room table, the chairs—all the furniture was gone. For now, the idea of there being anything supernatural going on in the mansion was funny. The sun was shinning into the great, unfurnished room. He did not realize he had died. As Jed walked around the room, he found a menu. The first course was Vermicelli soup, prepared with tomatoes, onion, and garlic. The second course was baked salmon and oysters. The Entrée was braised beef with broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, and carrots. With baked bread, a thick gravy and Yorkshire pudding. The final course was Neapolitan cakes with a layer of yellow, chocolate, n strawberry cake with glazed butter cream and coffee. The purpose of a Victorian banquet was to flaunt status, and the best way to do this was through an elaborate expensive dinner. Courses were brought out and carved in from of the hostess, then passed around to each guest at the dinner table. Maybe Jed should have allowed the spirit to stop him from eating. Of course, at all Victorian parties, guest had to be invited. Perhaps if Jed had just taken heed from the spirits, he would not be another of the Winchester’s ghost in the House Built by Spirits. Divine revelation uniformly views demons or evil spirits as denizens of the World of evil supernaturalism operating above the natural law. Spirits are not normally subject to human visibility or other sensory perception. Demons have superhuman intellect and it is accompanied by superphysical strength. However, the superphysical strength of demons is not limited to their physical energy they impart to their victim. Their power is broad enough to cause occult oppression of mind and body. They can produce physical disabilities and sickness unrelated to organic disorders and which medicine or natural therapy cannot alleviate it. Perhaps the most terrible power of demons is to derange the mind by upsetting the nervous system. In this way they can afflict the body with a psychosomatic disease. Demons are aware of the close relation between physical and mental health. By jangling the nerves and the emotions, they can cause mental instability (Luke 8.26-36), producing suicidal mania (Mark 9.22). Their purpose is to drive their occult-enslaved victims to destruction. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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And She Lived Happily Ever After?

When you aim for perfection, you learn the great secret of success. Commitment is the enemy of resistance. We are now ready to attempt to bridge the gap between primordial coacervates and modern single-celled organisms. Superficially, the gap might appear to be a narrow one. After all, we have traced the development of our primitive bags of chemicals to forms so advanced as to include parallel chains of chemical reactions involving numerous molecular types, partial isolation of different regions by membrane-enclosed inclusions, and even time-varying metabolism resulting from the interactions of two or more chemical subsystems of the coacervates. Nevertheless, cell-like though these properties appear to be, it would be a mistake to underestimate the great differences that separate modern organisms from even the most advanced type of coacervate that our discussion to this point has permitted us to visualize. Biological research in recent years has revealed the existence of remarkably complex mechanisms in even the simplest of single-celled creatures. We shall yet have need of a combination of imagination and confidence in the power of evolution if we are to convince ourselves of the essential kindship between the curious chemical structures we have been considering and the modern organisms we hope to bring under our purview. Although much of the complexity in structure and function of modern single-celled organisms can be generally understood as the result of detailed progressive refinement under the control of the natural-selection processes already discussed, there exists in all life forms today a basic set of mechanism that has not yet appeared in our discussion of the development of coacervates. These mechanisms, in substantially the same form, control the growth and reproduction of viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals. Nucleic acid is they key ingredient in the modern control process. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

One of the fastest-moving and most exciting fields of current scientific research is that of molecular genetics, which deals with the way that giant molecules of ribonucleic acid (RNA) or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) exert precise architectural control over the growth of living forms, determining whether the outcome is to be amoeba or human. This, if our thesis as to the evolution of life from nonlife is to carry conviction, we must show that there is a plausible way in which the operation of the ordinary laws of physics could have resulted in the “discovery” and incorporation of the powerful nucleic acid genetic-control mechanisms in modern organisms. The simple principles of chemical evolution we have been considering might have operated to produce certain types of molecules possessing interesting new characteristics and with further natural selection, these characteristics might have become to be exploited in the control of growth and reproduction. However, no one today knows enough about the almost limitless chemical alternatives available to developing organisms to plot anything like a certain evolution path spanning the billions of years separating primordial coacervates from modern living forms. And there are no fossil records to indicate which was the actual path by which modern organism came by their present properties. The gaps are so great and the steps so numerous that is seems unlikely we shall ever know for sure just how we got from there to here. Therefore, the ensuing “derivation” of some of the principles of modern molecular genetics from the workings of evolution on the primordial coacervates must be take for what it is—a work of fiction. To be sure, the evolutionary episodes of which it is composed have been postulated because they lead to the consequences that are compatible with modern knowledge. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Nevertheless, the story told is almost certainly not “true” in any detailed sense. The best that can be hoped for is that it is “true to life” in that the events that it portrays are similar enough in quality in those which actually transpired as to lead to generally valid conclusions about the nature, although not necessarily the details, of the prehistory of biology. With the limitations of the treatment clearly understood in advance, let us now undertake the assignment of tracing a possible evolutionary path of development of the mechanisms, based on nucleic acid molecules, by means of which growth and reproduction are controlled in all modern living organisms. Consider how hard it is to change yourself, and you will understand what little chance you have of trying to change others. By medical standards, 33 percent of adults in the United States of America weigh at least 20 percent more than people of their height typically do. In fact, despite the public’s focus on thinness, obesity has become increasingly common in the United States of America. When teen girls from an upper-middle class suburban neighbourhood were asked to describe the “perfect girl,” they described a girl of 5’7” weighing between 100 and 110 pounds—proportions that mirror those of so-called supermodels. Attaining a perfect weight, many said, was they key to being “totally happy.” In contrast teenage girls from the inner-city has a healthier view. These respondents tended to emphasize personality traits over physical characteristics when they described the ideal girl. They defined the “perfect girl” as smart, fun, easy to talk to, not conceited, and funny; she did not necessarily need to be “pretty,” as long as she was well groomed. These young ladies also favored more attainable physical characteristics for the typical girl; they favored fuller hips, for example. In addition 66 percent of them defined beauty as “the right attitude.” Some researchers argue that attempts to reduce obesity should focus less on weight loss and more in improving general health and attitudes. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Being overweight is not a mental disorder, nor in most cases is it the result of abnormal psychological processes. Nevertheless, it causes great anguish, and not just because of its physical effects. The media, people on the streets, and even many health professional treat obesity as shameful. Obese people are often the unrecognized victims of discrimination in efforts to gain admission to college, jobs, and promotions. Mounting evidence indicates that overweight persons are not to be sneered at as weak and that obesity results from multiple factors. First, genetic and biological factors seem to play large roles. Researchers have found that children of obese biological parents are more likely to be obese than children whose biological parents are not obese, whether or not the people who raise the children are obese. Other researchers have identified several genes that seem to be linked to obesity. And still others have identified chemicals in the body, including a hormone called leptin and a protein called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), that apparently acts as natural appetite suppressants. Suspicion is growing that the brain receptors for these chemicals may be defective in overweight persons. Environment also plays a causal role in obesity. Studies have shown that people eat more when they are in the company of others, particularly if the other people are eating. In addition, research finds that people in low socioeconomic environments are more likely to be obese than those of high socioeconomic background. However, if poor eating habits can be corrected, if a poor self-concept and distorted body image can be improved, and if overweight people can be educated about the myths and truths regarding obesity, perhaps everyone will be better off. Yet, keep in mind, your body shape changes as you age. You cannot avoid some of the changes, but your lifestyle choices may slow or speed the process. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The human body is made up of fat, lean tissues (muscles and organs), bone, and water. After age 30, people tend to lose lean tissue. Your muscles, liver, kidney, and other organs may lose some of their cells. This process of muscle loss is called atrophy. Bones may lose some of their minerals and become less dense (a condition called osteopenia in the early stages and osteoporosis in the later stages). Tissue loss reduces the amount of water in your body. The amount of body fat goes up steadily after the age of 30. Older people may have almost 33 percent more fat compared to when they were younger. Fat tissue builds up toward the center of the body, including around the internal organs. However, the layer of fat under the skin gets smaller. The tendency to become shorter occurs among all races and both genders. Height loss is related to aging changes in the bones, muscles, and joints. People typically lose almost one-half inch (about 1 centimeter) every 10 years after the age of 40. Height loss is even more rapid after age 70. You may lose a total of 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.5 centimeters) in height as you age. You can help prevent height loss by following a healthy diet, staying physically active, and preventing and treating bone loss. Less leg muscle and stiffer joints can make moving around harder. Excess body fat and changes in body shape can affect your balance. These body changes can make falls more likely. Changes in total body weight vary for men and women. Men often gain weight until about the age 55, and then begin to lose weight later in life. This may be related to a drop in the male hormone testosterone. Women usually gain weight until age 65, and then begin to lose weight. Weight loss later in life occurs partly because fat replaces lean muscle tissue and fat weight less than muscle. Diet and exercise habits can play a large role in a person’s weight changes over their lifetime. Your lifestyle choices affect how quickly the aging process takes place. Some things you can do to reduce age-related body changes are: Get regular exercise, eat a healthy diet that includes fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and the right amounts of healthy fats. Limit your alcohol use. Avoid tobacco products or illicit drugs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

In May 1996 Alicia Machado, a 19-year-old woman from Venezuela, was crowned Miss Universe. Then her problems began. During the first eight months of her reign, her weight rose from 118 pounds to 160 pounds, angering pageant officials and sparking rumors that she was about to be relieved of her crown. The “problem” received broad newspaper and television coverage and much ridicule on talk radio programs around the World. Ms. Machado explained, “I was a normal girl, but my life has had big changes. I travel to many counties, eat different foods.” Nevertheless, in response to all the pressure, she undertook a special diet and an extensive exercise program to lose at least some of the weight she had gained. Her trainer claimed that a weight of 118 pounds was too low for her frame and explained that she had originally attained it by taking diet pills. In the meantime, the whole episode served to demonstrate once again the powerful role of society in defining female beauty, acceptable weight, and “proper” eating. Ironically, many of the individuals who harshly criticized Ms. Machado or made fun of her—that is, the female critics—are themselves victims of the demanding and unrealistic standards of Wester cultures that drive so many individuals toward dysfunctional patterns of eating and, in many cases, eating disorders. Really, physical education (P.E.) is very beneficial for students and they do not even realize it. However, maybe the first part of P.E. should be to explain to students why they need exercise, why they need to eat healthy, and how the body changes as people get older. Some people think just because they were skinny kids that they can sit around and do nothing, and they will stay skinny, and they are baffled when they start to gain weight. And while exercise helps, so does calorie reduction and exercise. Also, many Americans eat rich, creamy foods, steaks fried in duck fat, hamburgers cooked it garlic butter. So, the thing is you have to decide what is right for you. Salads and bland food or rich and delicious food. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

It is relevant to introduce the Fourth Wave Generation in this context of present-day poverty because the present-day composition of the poor in America, with often times a large urban juvenile delinquency—has been fateful for the particular culture of these young folks. Let us try to analyze the accidental and essential influences, as an interesting example of acculturation. Artists and bohemians have generally gravitated to the bottom of the income pyramid. It is less expensive there. There factors operate somewhat today too, but less so, because in some ways it now costs more to be less affluent than modestly lower-middle; and in many of their tastes, exempli gratia, clothes, cars, recreation, and even food, the less affluent have different ways of communicating, and their culture may by different. So let us see what is particular in the cultural effect of present-day poverty on present-day bohemians. Some people have chosen to be outside the mainstream culture and society. Although every aspect of their scene is equally relevant and precious, they have their own vibe. However, if these aspects of their culture were not accidental, such bright and inventive fellows would by now have made more out of them. As they practice them, the bongo drums and jazz are creative, in their light of knowledge and abilities. Their unique language vitalizes their poetry. The style of the particular socializing remains a mystery to the main stream and it attracts the affluent to their lives styles because they find it so enriching and diverse. People often want to belong to groups that are different from their own. It is refreshing to not have to explain who you are and your hobbies to those who, often literally, do not speak that same language. Protective exclusiveness and in-group loyalty is remarkable. Courageously they create their own society, rather than sinking in mere resignation. This has led to these ethnic cultures as being seen as loving, exotic and ingenious. Many of these groups are convinced that society is a Rat Race and they form their own businesses and hire their own people so they can have a more harmonious work environment and gain generational wealth and success. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Within these ethnic communities, the people may be estranged from prejudice, but they are were concerned about their own and are sometime critical of them, out of love, and as a way of keeping them on the right path. They cannot tolerate anything that hints that their own image of perfection is questionable. It is hard to be sure, but my impression is that they are among some of the most tolerant people. Hard knocks taught them to live and let live; and they did not need to protect their repression so much as other in mainstream so society who are out cast. In this case, it means these subgroups who form their own society have more Old-World traditions, and this of course make their culture more profitable and appealing to Americans. However, these people with Old-World values are also delighted by the popular culture. They love the big houses, movies, sharp clothes, and Cadillacs, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Indeed, popular culture is aimed at everyone. It is all about glitz and glam and money. Everyone has to have something in America, and so people of the Old-World often feel big by being able to live the American Dream. The Old-World culture is communally shared. Much of it is handmade and made with love and creativity. The well-crafted creations and homes they built by hand, to the cars they work, food they cook and music they create is so popular that it produces capital because it has a future and have become weaved into the American heritage. These Old-World groups are the believers, and those others who know that the treasure of love is always a mirage, who therefore never seek it, and never find it, would not recognize it if it fell in their lap, and who, never having known the transcendence, is restraining their shimmering blue water. Old-World culture has a deathless passion, its exoticness and voracity has become a passion remembered, a passion respected, a passion manque. Love comes as a blessing. Love is a treasured passion that presently appears as life’s supreme value. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Muhammad Ali struggled to remain celibate for six weeks prior to each fight—it was supposed to make one a great warrior because the individual could focus all one’s energy on one goal. The Greatest is not alone among modern athletes in espousing chastity for the sake of one’s sport, through his reasons hark back to the ancient Greeks than to the modern Muscular Christianity of A.C. Green’s Athletes for Abstinence and the Life Athlete. These movements include scores of professional and Olympic sportspeople who pledge premarital virginity and moral purity, and stars such as Andy Pettitte of the New York Yankees pledge the Life Athlete Commitment, which reads: I will do what is right, even when it is difficult. I will give myself only to that special person that I marry as my partner for life. I will respect the lives of others, especially the unborn and the aged. I will not quit or make excuses when I fail. I will try again. “We exist,” the Life Athletes proclaim, “to survive in a World where the misuse of pleasures of the flesh has hurt many of us. We don’t want disease, divorce and death to keep us from what we want in life.” This return to abstinence is a moral stance in the year 2022 and differs fundamentally from conserving the vital energy to enhance athletic performance. Like their Muscular Christian forerunners, the Life Athletes and Athletes for Abstinence strive for celibacy until they are legally married. Traditionally, coaches and their athletes have believed that pleasures of the flesh undermine sports performance. It is well known that athletes in the United States of America are told to abstain from pleasures of the flesh prior to athletic competition. Several studies, including the first one, conducted in 1968 by William Masters and Virginia Johnson, have investigated the relationship of pleasures of the flesh and performance and have concluded that there probably is none. However, the notion of moral purity or at least superiority may in fact boost an athlete’s self-esteem and hence motivate one to excel. By the same token, knowledge of an opponent’s ascetic regimen may spook a less disciplined rival into underperforming as a form of conceding moral defeat. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The abstinent-champion theory is both die-hard and long-lived. Coaches still advocate it because they believe pleasures of the flesh devours energy and debilitates, reducing concentration, muscle strength, aggressiveness, and the will to win. They also rate premarital pleasures of the flesh and “self-love” as fractionally more enervating than marital pleasures of the flesh. The more strenuous and competitive the sport, the more its coaches tend to hold this view. Boxing, weight-lifting, football and soccer coaches are much more likely to enforce celibacy than those overseeing yachters and golfers. This attitude carries over onto the playing field. College footballers are more likely than baseballers to credit celibacy for better play, and to believe that in increases physical strength by preserving energy. In soccer, the World’s most popular sport, celibacy is often an important training tool. To this day, soccer fans in Peru blame their country’s 1982 World Cup loss, 5-1 to Poland, on those Peruvian players who broke the ban on pleasures of the flesh the night before the game. Prior to the 1998 World Cup, coaches from around the World admitted they enforced the ban on their players. Brazilian wives and girlfriends were ordered to stay away and not to distract their men’s attention during the tournament. For much the same reason, Chilean and Scottish, stood alone and, in the name of creating a happy atmosphere, encouraged pregame pleasures of the flesh by flying in wives and girlfriends. This was in striking contrast to 1966, when England enacted the Celibacy rule—and won its first and only World Cup title. This determinedly celibate thrust in soccer, which draws on an increasingly discredited belief in the power of the “vital energy,” being more than an anachronistic marvel. Soccer is one of the World’s greatest common denominators, and its appeal converts new devotees, both spectators and players. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

In Europe and South America in particular, soccer players are akin to deities, often surpassing movie stars and other celebrities. Their professional careers are documented and their personal lives scrutinized for the edification of their voracious, adorning fans. On top of this, players collectively, as representatives of their nation, bear enormous responsibility. By winning the World Cup, they bestow glory on their compatriots as well as themselves. Conversely, by losing, especially early on in the tournament, they heap shame and humiliation of their co-nationals’ heads; losers returning home may be hooted at or even pelted with debris. Given the importance of their sport, it is no wonder soccer players and coaches grasp at any method that promises to help them. Celibacy, a time-honored athletic tradition, is an obvious possibility. Coaches also justify celibacy as the solution to the problems of players active in pleasures of the flesh. Pleasures of the flesh, they remind naysayers, involves relationships and their commitments and complications. Pleasures of the flesh takes time and energy and is often associated with alcohol and late nights. Some say, “It is not the pleasures of the flesh that wrecks these guys, it is the staying up all night looking for it.” These aspects of active pleasures of the flesh in themselves can be major hindrances to an athlete’s conditioning and workouts and ultimately, one’s actual performance. Implicit in all these debates—for celibacy is not swallowed whole by all the hardy men on every team—is that pleasures of the flesh are especially taxing for male because they lose that vital energy. However, this does not mean that woman athletes, who are in no such danger, are given different guidelines. At least one study has found coaches consider women vulnerable to pleasures of the flesh encounters because they experiencing them as emotionally draining. Men, on the other hand, suffer from physical consequences. (However, both symptoms, as you know and apply to both genders and at the same time.) Yet it is said, the very existence of their vital force, therefore, holds human hostage to its extraordinary power. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The astonishing spread of soccer keeps celibacy in the media limelight. Other sports figures employ it as well, usually weeks before a competition. Boxers traditionally do so. Some footballers abstain at least the night before a game and feel strengthened and energized. For these sportsmen, celibacy is both discipline and ritual. Psychologically, it empowers them, and they experience both discipline and ritual. Psychologically, it empowers them, and they experience this physically. It also lends certain elan to their lives, an idealism and superiority of purpose appropriate for folk heroes. The historical theories of the power of conserved vital energy are now mere echoes, but in their temporary and self-conscious celibacy, these men have embraced the legacy of the legendary athletes of yesteryear. If you ever watch “The Game” by the CW Network, Season 1, Episode 1, called “Away Game,” which originally aired October 1, 2006 you may understand why wife’s and girlfriends are not allowed to see their husbands now. I did not understand at the time I first saw the episode. So, in a very different way, have the men and women of the purely moralistic school of celibacy, the Life Athletes and Athletes for Abstinence. They, too, revere sports as a higher calling and speak with the deepest respect of “an athlete’s heart,” a pure entity that evokes self-sacrifice for higher goals in all sense of the word. Their inclusion of women eliminates at a stroke the invocation of the magic of the vital energy, as well as the misogyny that underlies much of the raison d’etre of sporting celibacy—manfully dodging the seductive snares of pleasures of the flesh by a strong and courageous gender. These inheritors of Muscular Christianity hold each other’s hand with fraternal chastity and mutual pledge to lifetimes of virtue and purity. Another relationship in which the question of the motivating power of the law is decisive is the educational one, first within the family, and then in the school and any other situation where an educational element is implied. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

There are many problems connected with the motivating power of the law in the educational realm. First, it is necessary to distinguish between demands based on authority and demands based on rationality. The distinction is rarely absolute because there is always authority behind educational demands; and this authority always claims to be rational. Nevertheless, it makes a great difference to the child, if one can understand a parental order as adequate to the situation, or if one feels it as a mere exercised incomprehensible authority. In either case the child may resist. However, in the first, the resistance is not rebellious; it is a primitive form of self-affirmation, weakened by a subconscious acknowledgement that the order was justified. Then the essential nature of the child is partly united with the content of the command, and to the degree to which it is united, the order proves not to be a strange law imposed by adult authority, but an expression of the demand of a practical situation, such as the necessary regulation of hours at home and in school. Therefore, it is of great importance to the educational process to help the child to understand the objective validity of the orders one receives. If this is not accomplished, of if the orders themselves are more the expressions of willful authority than of the situation, the child is driven toward a genuine rebellion, and three things can happen: the rebellion may succeed and a creative independence develop; or the rebellion may succeed externally but fail internally, and rebelliousness as a character trait may result; or the rebellion may fail externally and internally, leaving a broken, submissive character. These examples show the problem of the law in a realm where it is almost daily experienced, and where parents, teachers, and even philosophers of education, have concluded that the law should be removed altogether and replaced by a kind of organized permissiveness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

This, however, has led to consequences in which the “dialectics of the law” are patently manifest. After a certain time (usually in later adolescence), the majority of children become well-adapted conformists, albeit on a superficial level. Those among them who feel this superficiality as emptiness complain that they never had to face the law seriously and remained without guidance to their own essential nature and its potentialities. In view of this situation one must agree with the apostle who was most critical of the commanding law—Paul—that “the law is good,” for it expressed the created goodness of humans, which humans must face because they are estranged from it. It is not enough to enforce retribution. Society must help one straighten one’s life-pattern, improve oneself, and reestablish one’s ethical sense. Prisons should not be merely penal institutions but also educative ones. Every prisoner should be brought under some system of instruction that would elevate one’s character—instead, as often happens, of debasing it still further. It is far easier to degrade oneself than to uplift oneself. Every criminal knows that. The process of manufacturing a criminal is simple and easy. One commits one’s first crime and then, in order to save oneself from its effects, one has to commit a second one. Once again one has to save oneself from the effects of this one in turn and so commits a third crime. In the end one slides down a long slippery slope and becomes a hardened criminal! Only forethought for others or fear of the consequences for oneself will save a human from taking the first ominous step. It is become humans have insufficient forethought or insufficient knowledge of the consequences that they become criminals. Or else, after the first punishment, instead of trying to understand the lessons of their sufferings, they nurse under-surface resentments which later explode and injure their whole life. It seems to offer an easier way out than the sterner path of moral repentance and honest endeavour. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

However, they fail to foresee that it is no way out at all, that the selfish new crimes merely revive and worsen the hateful old tribulations. With every wrong step they take, they walk nearer and nearer to that calamity. What their befooled minds do not know is that even if they pass from successful crime to successful crime, nevertheless—under karmic and evolutionary law—they will later pass from painful retribution to painful retribution. All of this can be as true of nations as of an individual. Instead of meditating on the defeat that overtook them, they actually meditate on the victory that they themselves nearly overtook. Even when punishment is catastrophic and overwhelming, they very immensity of it creates a strong egoistic passion for self-justification, leaving room for only few and faint signs of any real change of the heart. Such moral declension is as low and saddening as it is too often repeated by history. Every criminal nation which is at all curable must be brought to understand the moral degradation into which it fell when it blindly followed a path of pillage or violence. They learn little, understanding littler, and take to themselves few lessons from experience. They suffer, but their suffering is misread and misinterpreted. Here, for those who still doubt the truth of reincarnation, is one more argument in its favor. No single lifetime is enough to provide the necessary range of varied experience and to bring human development to an optimum of moral perfection—not even twenty lifetimes would be enough. All aggressive persons and antisocial criminals reveal by their attitudes that they are still have some maturing to do in the understanding of life. There are two schools of thought as to their treatment. They have done wrong and must be punished. They have some wrong but must be forgiven. To state the problem in either of these drastic ways alone and let it go at that is dangerously to oversimplify it complications and difficulties, nay, is indeed misleading. For both these statements are true yet are so only in their own places. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

The first, presented by the cynics, advocated rigorous punishment. The second, presented mostly by the religious idealists, advocate a complete forgive-and-forget policy. The first is sadistic, the second sentimental. Both unwise. Philosophy avoids such extremes and finds a sensible middle way between them. It says we must not push the criminal further down the road of wrong-doing by evoking one’s spirit of revenge through unduly harsh treatment. Yet we must not let one walk down it of one’s own accord by letting one believe that wrong-doing brings no retribution at all. Referring to the “frenetic schedule,” a report by the Congressional Clearinghouse of the Future summarized the situation vividly: “Increasing complexity and speed-of-light crises, such as votes in one week on gas deregulation, Russian and Ukraine, a new Department of Education, a federal Fourth Stimulus Check, Vaccinations and if a fourth doze has been authorized, solid waste disposal, and endanger species, are turning Congress, once a center for careful and thoughtful debate into a national disappointment.” Obviously, a political process varies from one industrial country to the next, but similar forces are at work on all of them. The United States of America is not the only country that seems confused and stagnant. Take a look at North Korea…No response to U.S.A. on nuclear-arms-control proposals. Long delays in negotiating trade agreements with both socialist and capitalist nations. Confused treatment of French President Emmanuel Macron during a state visit. Indecision over Mideast policy. Contradiction calls for China’s Communists to confront with home governments. Even in a one-party system it is almost impossible to project firm policies—or respond quickly on complex issues. In London a member of the Parliament tells us that central government is “grossly overladed.” What about Sweden, with its shaky coalition government barely able to resolve the nuclear issues that has torn the country apart for nearly a decade? Or Italy, with its terrorism and recurrent political crises—unable even form a cohesive government. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

What we confront is a new and menacing truth. The political shudders and crises we face cannot be solved by leaders—strong or inappropriate, broken down, overloaded institutions. A political system must not only be able to make and enforce decisions; it must operate on the right scale, it must be able to integrate disparate policies, it must be able to make decisions at the right speed, and it must both reflect and respond to the diversity of society. If it fails on any of these points it courts disaster. Our problems are no longer a matter of “left-wing” or “right-wing,” “strong leadership” or “weak.” The decision system itself has become a menace. The truly astonishing fact today is that our governments continue to function at all. No corporation president would try to run a large company with a table of organization first sketched by the quill pen of some eighteenth-century ancestor whose sole managerial experience consisted of running a farm. No sane pilot would attempt to fly a supersonic jet with the antique navigation and control instruments available to Bleriot or Lindbergh. Yet this is approximately what we are trying to do politically. The rapid obsolescence of our Fourth Wave political systems, in a World bristling with nuclear weapons and poised delicately on the edge of the entire society—not merely for the “outs” but for the “ins,” not merely for the poor but for the rich, and for the non-industrial parts of the World as well. For the immediate danger to all of us lies not so much in the calculated uses of power by those who have it, as in the uncalculated side effects of decisions ground out by politico-bureaucratic decision machines so dangerously anachronistic that even the best of intentions can eventuate in murderous outcomes. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Our so-called “contemporary” political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system—before canned food, refrigeration, gaslight, or photography, before the Bessemer furnace, or the introduction of the infrared keyboard and touchless screen on the laptop, before the invention of the 5G mobile phone, before the Internet, before digital streaming, before voice command television, before Elon Musk started working on autonomous automobiles, before Orville and Wilbur Wright took wing, before the airplanes and soon public space crafts will shrink distance, before nerve gas and nuclear missiles, and lasers. They were designed in an intellectual World that is almost unimaginable—a World that was pre-Marx, pre-Adam Smith, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud, and pre-Einstein. This, then, is the single most important political issue facing us: the obsolescence of our most basic political and governmental institutions. As we are jolted by crisis after crisis, aspiring Martin Luthers and Manslows are crawling from the wreckage and telling us that the time has come to solve our problems by throwing away not only our absolute institutional hulks but creating our own communities and defining what freedom is. As a race into the Fourth Wave era, those of us who want to expand human freedom will not be able to do so by simply defending our existence institutions. We shall-like America’s founding parents three centuries ago—have to invent new ones. History records endless examples of “revolutions” that replaced old technologies and even governments without significantly altering society itself and the people in it. By contrast, real revolutions replace institutions as well as technologies. And they do more: They break down and reorganize what social psychologists call the role structure of society. Today traditional roles are being changed at high speed in many countries transitioning to knowledge of economies. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The roles of husband and wives, parents and children, professors and students, bosses and workers, in-laws and activists, executives and team leaders all have psychological as well as economic implications. At issue are not merely a person’s task or functions but the social expectations that come with them. On and off the job, the result is rising ambiguity, high uncertainty, complexity and conflict as tasks and titles are continuously renegotiated. We see stress and burnout as the roles of doctors and nurse practitioners, lawyers, and paralegals, police and community workers are challenged and redefined to a degree not seen since the advent of the industrial revolution. Revolutions also smash boundaries. Industrial society set a clear border between life at home and life and on the job. Today, for the growing millions who work from home, the line is blurred. Even who works for whom is becoming unclear. Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, points out that a significant part of the labor forces consists of independent contractions, free agents and other who work in company A but are actually employees of company B. “In a few years,” says Reich, “a company may be best defined by who has access to what data and who gets what portion of a particular stream of revenues over what period of time. There maybe no ‘employees’ at all, strictly speaking.” Academic boundaries are eroding, too Against enormous resistance, more and more work on the campus is becoming transdisciplinary. In pop music, borderlines between grime, garage, rock, Eastern, hip-hop, techno, retro, disco, and big band, Tejano and a variety of other genres disappear in “fusion” and “hybridization.” Consumers turn into procedures by remixing of “sampling” sound from different bands, different instruments, and different vocals into “mash-ups”—the musical equivalent of colleges. Not all the new roles and rights will survive, as still more economic, technological and social changes bombard us. However, anyone who underestimates the revolutionary character of today’s changes is living in an illusion. The World is being transformed, dramatically and irrevocably. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19


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We Wanted it to Last Forever—We Made Promises

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Life often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong. The time is three or four billion years ago—one or two billion years after the Earth was formed. The scene is the open sea; it covers most of the Earth’s surface, just as it will continue to do for eons to come. The principal characters are the coacervates: small, membrane-enclosed bags of organic and inorganic compounds, including catalytic substances that contribute a high level of chemical activity to what would otherwise be inert, uninteresting drops of oily material. The plot, like that of all good dramatic productions, is based on conflict. Indeed, only a small fraction of our initial cast of characters will survive to the end of the play; they rest must die. Despite the superficial similarity of the coacervates, the conflict is essentially a struggle among different “species.” A particular series of reactions that happened to develop in primordial pool number 543 resulted in the formation of droplets of chemically active compounds of adequate stability to work their way to the open sea and there continue their metabolic process. However, a substantially different set of reactions had occurred in pool number 279, and this had led to injection into the ocean of an essentially different species of coacervate. Similarly for pools 59, 176, 798, and all the rest. The tremendous variety of combinations permitted by the basic versatility of organic and inorganic substances had resulted in a correspondingly wide variety of species among the initial cast of character in the drama to consider. As befits the relative simple nature of the members of the cast, the issues that sets them into conflict is a simple one—food. Initially the problem is not serious, for only a few coacervate individuals are widely scattered throughout vast expanses of ocean. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Under these circumstances their ability to grow and reproduce their kind is limited only by their own internal chemistry and a level of concentration of organic and inorganic nutrients in the surrounding water that is insignificantly influenced by the existence of other coacervates. Eventually, however, all this changes. A time comes when the absorption by the growing coacervate population of the nutrients of the ocean is extensive enough to start cutting down on the density of the available food. It is then that the interspecies conflict begins in earnest. For those types of coacervates that have the most effective metabolism, in the sense of being able to assimilate the available nutrients to grow and reproduce most rapidly, then begin to starve the less hardy species out of existence. From the beginning of the conflict, the tactics employed by the successful species are designed to make effective use of the numerical superiority they achieved in the fast-growing early years, while there was still enough food for all. When the era of overpopulation sets in, the continued eating and proliferating of these hungry hordes cause matters to go rapidly from bad to worse, and what started as a minor recession in the coacervate economy quickly becomes a disastrous depression. Of course, all species are affected by the growing food shortage, for each faces extinction if its birth rate falls below its death rate. And this can occur, be cause the decreasing availability of food curtails the birth rate more than it does the death rate. Ultimately, the small and undernourished coacervate droplets of a slowly growing species must get broken up by agitation, collision, and wear, with their contents spilling into the sea to provide food for the more hardy types. Thus the plot becomes clear. As our imaginary play continues for the millions of years that must elapse between opening and final curtain, the abundance of nutrients gradually decreases and the less prolific species, one by one, become extinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

At this point we can foresee the final outcome of the drama—the ultimate triumph of the strong over the weak, the emergence from the herd of the species possessed of the qualities most suitable for survival. We may as well anticipate the ending, quit the theater, and reflect on the meaning of what we have seen. Obviously, Charles Darwin, if not actually the author of our imaginary play, is at least entitled to credit for inspiring the theme. Of course, it is unlikely that he had in mind as primitive a conflict for existence as this when he formulated his principles of evolution, but there is no reason why his doctrine of “survival of the fittest” would not have applied to our primeval cast of characters. In fact, as we have seen, nothing could have prevented it. The principles involved are exactly the same as those underlying any number of physical and chemical phenomena in which parallel processes of different and self-aggrandizing rates of activity simultaneously have access to the same source of supply of basic ingredients. “Evolution” may be widely considered to be a law of biology but, like all other biological principles we have encountered, its roots are firmly implanted in the ordinary laws of physics. The ultimate result of the interspecies struggle for existence among the primordial coacervates had to be the same as the ultimate result of all evolutionary competitions—the suppression of the poorly adapted and the proliferation of the well adapted. The seas must have come to abound in droplets containing a mixture of catalysts and other ingredients that supported a variety of internal chemical activities which not only made rapid and effective use of the raw materials then available in the waters of the Earth but also maintained an internal organization and membrane properties that contributed to balanced growth and reproduction. However, despite our imaginary dramatic production, it is not necessary to conclude that only one species finally survived. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

Differences in climate and local chemical conditions among different regions of the seas would result in different relative survival values for the competing species and would lead to strong geographical influences on the nature of the local population. Changes in the chemistry of the sea resulting from gradual changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and surface composition would also have preserved a larger number of species than could otherwise have coexisted by preventing the evolutionary processes from going to completion and becoming static. In any event, the principles of evolution would not have led to a static situation, even if the environmental conditions of the coacervates had been uniform and unchanging. For the perpetual random jostling of the organic and inorganic constituents inside the coacervates would frequently result in the formation of new types of molecules. Perhaps one of these molecules out of a million would help catalyze some new chain of reactions within the coacervate. And, in one of a million of these new rection chains, one of the products might be the newly invented molecule. If son, autocatalysis could occur, the new molecular form could be abundant, and the associated set of chemical reactions it facilitated could become part of the standard metabolism of succeeding generations of coacervates. To be sure, in our hypothetical example this would occur only once for every million million random formations of new molecular types, but this would be more than often enough to provide for the coacervates a dynamic pattern of evolutionary development. The time between successive events at the molecular level is so few millionths of a second and the time available is so many millions of years that the raw material of evolutionary change can easily consist of such seemingly unlikely accidental molecular juxtapositions or rearrangements. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

In fact, because of the “trying out” of new combinations that must occur ceaselessly in substance that is not held at the absolute zero of temperature, we can be sure that sooner or later pure chance will lead to the formation of any arrangement of the available materials that the laws of physics and chemistry will permit to hold together. Thus, new and improved molecular types, with their associated autocatalytic chains of chemical reactions, would have been continually “sought out” and incorporated into the architecture and metabolism of the coacervates to improve their growth and reproduction characteristics. The cumulative results of these natural-selection processes would ultimately have included the appearance of other new structural and metabolic features. For example, occasionally a chain reaction that got started would have produced, among other things, substances that tended to coagulate and thus form solid inclusions or membranes within the coacervate. Because of the physical adhesive forces, these new inclusions would have trapped and bound, in an extended two-dimensional configuration, some of the molecules floating in the surrounding fluid. In some instances, the surface-bound configuration of the trapped molecules would have had a higher chemical reactivity than the unbound configuration, thereby increasing the growth rate of the coacervate. Ultimately, therefore, evolutionary selection would have made common place coacervates with composition leading to include membranes. Another likely early aberration in coacervate structure would have been the formation of droplets within droplets. It will be recalled that organic materials in the primeval pools spontaneously coalesced into spherical droplets because of strong attractive forces between their molecules and that this was followed by the development of more or less permanent enclosing membranes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

In the same way, certain products of the coacervate metabolism could coalesce into “inclusions” separated from the bulk of the coacervate fluids by enclosing their own. (“Inclusion” is used here in a general sense. Modern descendants such coacervate structures would probably include not only the nuclei common to the cells of most organisms but also the smaller anatomic “organelles” that are found in the more primitive bacteria as well as in the cells of more advanced organisms.) The differential permeability of the membranes would block the transmission of certain molecules while allowing others to interpenetrate freely. This would result in the concentration of certain substances within the inclusions and different ones outside. Different series of reactions could then occur in the two regions of the coacervate. Among the countless millions of times that such inclusions spontaneously formed billion of coacervates, there would occasionally be a combination having above-average survival value. The special conditions preserved in the semi-isolated inclusion would support chemical reactions having a certain product that would not only be able to penetrate the enclosing membrane but, once on the outside, would be unusually effective in accelerating the external pattern of chemical reactions. These reactions, in the surrounding “body” of the coacervate, would then have as one product a substance that could enter the inclusion and further stimulate its synthesizing processes. Such a mutually facilitating interaction would contribute above-average growth characteristics to the complex coacervate, with the inevitable ultimate evolutionary popularizing among the coacervate population of an inclusion/body structure and associated chemistry that started out as a rare and improbably combination. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Even time-varying metabolic processes would be expected to result from the operation of the physical principles of evolution. Consider, for example, a complex coacervate similar to that just described but in which the ingredients that accelerate the growth reactions are not catalysts but instead get “used up” in the reactions thy promote. Suppose further that the body reaction must go on for a substantial period of time before the production of the ingredient that then migrates to the inclusion to participate in its internal chemistry and that the resulting reaction in the inclusion also requires a substantial period before it can generate and send the other accelerating ingredient back to the body. This is a “positive-feedback system” with time lags. Such a system, familiar to electronic engineers, results in oscillatory behaviour. In such a coacervate, in both body and inclusions, the chemical conditions would change periodically. In sophisticated coacervates, comparatively high on the evolutionary scale, the cyclic process would probably not be so simple as merely a successive acceleration and deceleration of a single chain of chemical reactions in body and inclusions. Instead, in addition to the “main chain” of chemistry involved in the cyclic process, there could be “side chains” of secondary reactions with various products, possibly including some useful for the main reaction chain. For example, the periodic exhaustion of the special inclusion-originating ingredient needed in the body of the coacervate could permit new reactions that would not be possible in the presence of the special ingredient. These other reactions might produce a substance needed in some subsequent step of the coacervate chemistry. Thus, temporal cycling of the coacervate chemical activity could have survival value and gradually become “standard equipment” in successive generations of coacervates. Such evolutionary processes would have resulted in a gradual but inexorable speeding up of the rate of development of new species of lifelike structures. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

As natural selection brought to prominence forms of organization of matter characterized by greater and greater efficiency in the use of the raw materials of the seas, the increasing rates of growth and reproduction of these new forms finally must have compressed into centuries of a degree of evolutionary development that had previously required hundreds of millenniums. If the first billion years of the Earth’s history was required for the tortuous development of a handful of coacervate droplets rugged enough to leave their pools of incubation and survive in the open seas, the second billion years must have witnessed increases in chemical and structural sophistication that were fantastic, compared with the accomplishments of the earlier era. Earlier, in our recognition of the lifelike characteristics of the primitive coacervates, we had to ask ourselves whether our discussion had carried us over the line dividing the realm of inanimate mechanism from that of animate organism. As we now contemplate the tremendous increase of sophistication that natural forces of evolution must have brought to the chemistry and structure of the coacervates, the question becomes even more insistent. In fact, from this point on, we should find it awkward if we could not start employing more of the language of biology in discussing the aggregations of matter we must deal with. We must soon start talking about “single-celled organisms” rather than coacervate droplets. However, if the property of “life” has really attached itself to our curious bags of chemicals, this would appear to be a development that no author should allow to slip unheeded into one’s text. After all, there can be no accomplishment more significant than establishing that the prosaic operation of the ordinary laws of physics on the materials and in the environment of the primordial Earth ultimately leads to the appearance of living organisms. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

It would appear that the author would have the responsibility of calling the reader’s attention to the point at which the transition from nonlife to life occurs, so that due notice could be taken of this most important development. The trouble is that no one has designed a definition of life that permits clear-cut distinction between living and nonliving forms of matter. Most would say that a single-celled amoeba is alive and that a primeval pool of hot dilute soup is not. It terms of the organization of this report, there would probably be general agreement that the subject matter of the past was inanimate and that the subject matter even further back on is animate. However, there would be little agreement on precisely where the line between nonlife and life is crossed. This makes it difficult for an author to achieve the dramatic effect to which one feels an event of such importance entitles one. One’s defense must be that the colourlessness of the treatment is a consequence of the peculiarity of the subject matter rather than of one’s own literary inadequacy. Let us therefore take up again the thread of our narrative. We shall do so by exploring the continuing evolutionary development of what we shall now call this single-celled organisms of the late primeval World. As we encounter more evidence of the almost explosive accelerating power of the forces of evolution, we shall, of course, keep constantly in mind the fact that nothing vitalistic or even uniquely “biological” is involved. The appearance of effective evolutionary processes awaited only the development of the competitive conditions fundamental to the operation of the principle of natural selection. When these conditions appeared, so did evolution. The basic rules of the game we are playing are still the laws of physics. Education is about discovering the special skills and talents of students and guiding their learning according to high standards. Education is also about teaching our community basic American values and uncorking that World-renowned American ingenuity that has characterized our country. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

So we had our season in Heaven, we were not cheated. Heaven is never more than a glance and it is gone. We wanted it to last forever. We made our promises. Our lives are operatic. However poorly we sing, we are faithful to our one refrain: love, betrayal, revenge. We cannot settle on love alone, the other two are equally and inalienably our nature. The most we can hope for is to love a lot and go light on the other two. This splendid project has long been a shambles; but the failure, which a palace in ruins, still is grand and has some dignity, yet it has somehow been trivialized. What is left is a very little thing, and what still is possible for us in not very much, nothing that might call for passion or anguish or hope. The pain in our hearts is the meaning. And what does that pain say? Nothing stays. Temples, palaces, and pyramids, and stone heroes on stone horses all swirling into the void. And continents that split apart and drift, and stars that collapse and implode, and we are a flicker of desire in a torrent of fire and ice; it does not mean anything, it all slides away. Once a mysterious and hidden problem, hardly acknowledged by the public and barely investigated by professionals, suicide today is the focus of much attention. During the past 50 years in particular, investigators have learned a great deal about this life-or-death problem. In contrast to most other problems, suicide has received much more examination from the sociocultural model than from any other. Sociocultural theorists have, for example, highlighted the importance of societal change and stress, national and religious affiliation, martial status, gender, race, and the mass media. The insights and information gathered by psychological and biological researchers have been more limited. Although sociocultural factors certainly shed light on the general background and triggers of suicide, they typically leave us unable to predict that a given person will attempt suicide. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

When all is said and done, clinicians do not yet fully understand why some people kill themselves while others in similar circumstances manage to find better ways of addressing their problems. Psychological and biological insights must catch up to the sociocultural insight if clinicians are truly to explain and understand suicide. Treatments for suicide also pose some difficult problems. Clinicians have yet to develop clearly successful therapies for suicidal persons. Although suicide prevention programs certainly reflect the clinical field’s commitment to helping people who are suicidal, it is not yet clear how much such programs actually reduce the overall risk or rate of suicide. At the same time, the growth in the amount of research on suicide offers great promise. And perhaps most promising of all, clinicians are now enlisting the public in the fight against this problem. They are calling for broader public education about suicide—programs aimed at both young and old. It is reasonable to expect that the current commitment will lead to a better understanding of suicide and to more successful interventions. Such goals are of importance to everyone. Although suicide itself is typically a lonely and desperate act, the impact of such acts is very broad indeed. Let us return now to our alert young man of average to good attainments and imagine him growing up in and into this arena. Most likely he will go to work for an organization, in a factory or service job, manual or clerical, with the corresponding job attitude and way of life. However, if he has been to college, he will likely be in the second status of the organized system, in business management, communications, sales or technology, with its job attitude and way of life. After a few years, many such young men will perceive that they are in a Rat Race. The young workers will perceive it as the work speeds up, when they get married, as their installment payments fall due. The Organization Man will perceive it as competition, company pressure to conform, etcetera. Of these, most will race on, but a few will balk and stop running. Now what becomes of these few? #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

They are not likely to choose the other, motely, alternative of trying to remain in society independent of the organization. For their experience has been disillusioning. They have become hip. (We shall see later that this is profoundly organizational attitude.) They know that the independent unorganized are up against it; for they have learned techniques of promotion and they do not think much, or much think, of other methods and kinds of results. However, to be hip and cynical are not attitudes that prompt one to make a go on one’s own. It is not surprising then that many of those who balk in the Rat Race will voluntarily choose the other remaining possibility, poverty “outside” society (whether they choose it, of fall into it, comes to the same thing). These, not boys, but early disillusioned, hip, and resigned young men, are the Fourth Wave Generation. The organization they have quit may be the armed forces or a university that they cannot compound with; these tend to be more naïve. Those who have had experience of working for a firm and making a pretty good living tend to be more cynical. Naturally this cataclysmic transition, between being in and being “outside” society, does not occur without strong accompanying emotional moments: betrayals in love, binges, blow-up at the boss, addiction to forbidden haunts and vices. However, at this point let us stick to the social structure of it. Some men actually treasure their “vital energy,” it is a precious store of God-given fluid one has to dispense frugally enough to last one’s entire virile lifetime. The negative side of this vital energy: how to avoid debilitating/exhausting/weakening one’s manly self. Even the prescribed regimen—wholesome and spiceless food, purity of body and soul—was designed to dodge trouble. However, how is one to energize oneself? Well, one could throw oneself into a sport, which by midcentury, was being touted as an ideal way to stimulate the physical man. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

One delightful consequence of sport was that it would not merely invigorate or reroute a man’s pleasures of the fleshing longings but recharge one’s strength at the same time. This ideology of the “vital energy economy”—budget your seed and spend it wisely—endured for over half a century. A man’s body, unlike his finite volume of seed, could thereby become a renewable resource. One would be a walking, flexing, pulsating specimen of Muscular Christianity. From 1850 to 1890, schools in both North America and England made playing games an important part of their curriculum, and the obsessive role sports in these cultures dates from that period. It became a major instrument in male bonding and in teaching men to be men. It also inculcated in them the notion that they were biologically superior to women and to other, effete breeds of man. (Unlike the Greeks, however, the Victorians were too modest to prove this by competing in the nude.) The vital energy played an equally vital role in this sport-mindedness, partly through seminal sublimation, partly through unexplained physical process. Sports, this vital energy-efficient activity, became associated as well with moral asceticism—temperance, in the nineteenth-century sense of avoiding all evils such as liquor and women. “What are you running here, a Sunday school or a baseball team?” demanded Chicago Cubs star player King Kelly of puritanical manager A.G. Spalding. Spalding’s answer might have been that the two were inseparably connected, moral purity and sportsmanship being two sides of the same coin. In fact, he hired Pinkerton detectives to tail his players and report on their extracurricular movements. At playgrounds, schools, and professional ball fields everywhere, the sportsman’s code applied: no tobacco, booze, gambling, womanizing, or ungentlemanly behaviour. Underlying these strictures was the most outlawed of all sins—onanism, casting irreplaceable vital energy into a moral void. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

In 1889, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms baseball team put their collective celibacy into the headlines when they adopted it as a talisman and won that year’s pennant. This was, admittedly, a desperate measure for a desperate team. However, despite the above-average number of newlywed team members who gave the Bridegrooms their nickname, the players cooperated and avoided their wives until after the play-offs. Pitcher Bob Carruthers went so far as to decline visiting his newborn baby, presumably a consequence of his preseason unchastity. The ideology of Muscular Christianity faded slowly. Today, it still permeates some sports, notably boxing and soccer, and some football teams, all manned by players seeking every possible physical and psychic advantage. Everywhere in the World, men have pondered their physical makeup. Often, the result of such meditations had been the conclusion that the vital energy is an immeasurably important substance and that it plays a role in men’s activities from the cognitive to the carnal, of which sports are arguably the most widespread and beloved. Nonetheless, most contemporary is the psychotherapeutic discovery that the least effective way of treating a person under a destructive compulsion—alcoholism, for example—is to direct one in terms of a moral command, “Stay sober at all times!” No psychoanalyst worthy of one’s profession would commit this destructive error. The law, as stated by the analyst, would produce a tremendous resistance in the patient, and justly so. The patient would withdraw to one’s freedom to contradict oneself, even though one might then destroy oneself. The patient, in this action, defends a decisive element in human freedom. Psychoanalysts who (according to the latest fashion) being to moralize to their patients, however cautiously, should remember that it is precisely the pathological loss of power to respond to moral commands that makes these persons patients. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Most analysts are still conscious of this, preserving one of the deepest insights of psychotherapy, namely, that the law cannot break compulsions, that the “thou shalt” does not liberate. Instead of encountering the law, the patient encounters acceptance on the part of the effective analyst. One is accepted in the state in which one is, and one is not told to change one’s state before becoming acceptable. In some cases, especially in pre-analytic counseling, the acceptance can express itself in a description by the counselor of how one oneself was or still remains in a similar predicament, so that one ceases to be merely the subject, and the patient merely the object, in the healer-patient relationship. One has accused psychotherapy of permissiveness. In particular cases this criticism is just—formerly, even more so. However, so far as the method is concerned, this permissiveness is a result of a simple confusion between acceptance and permission. In the analytic situation there is neither command nor permission, but acceptance and healing. If the power of the compulsion is broken, a counseling exchange between the healer and the healed may take place, and the question may arise as to what the patient should do with one’s newly regained freedom. Only then should the problems of morality, its content, and its motivation come into focus, and the analyst may become a friend or a priest to the patient. However, then the further question for both of them must be raised whether the moral law, appealing to their freedom, has motivating power, or whether it is powerless without a religious element in it—the religious element being an acceptance that transcends the psychotherapeutic distinction between the healer and healed. With all the changes and challenges you face each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine your priorities, and then with renewed focus, align your daily actions with your purpose goals. Since you cannot know it all or do it all, it is vital that you learn to take the time to contemplate what it is you need to know and what you need to do. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Too many decisions, too fast, about too many strange and unfamiliar problems—not some imagined “lack of leadership”—explain the gross incompetence of political and governmental decisions today. Our institutions are reeling from a decisional implosion. Working with out-of-date political technology, our capacity for effective governmental decision-making is deteriorating rapidly. When all the decisions have to be made in the White House, there is often little time for considering fully any one of them. In fact, the White House is so squeezed for decisions—on everything from air pollution, hospital costs, and nuclear power to the elimination of hazardous toys (!)—that one presidential adviser confided to me, “We are all suffering from future shock here!” Nor are the executive agencies much better off. Each department is crushed under the mounting decision load. Each is compelled to enforce countless regulations and to generate vast numbers of decisions daily, under tremendous accelerative pressures. Thus, a recent investigation of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that its council spent all of four and a half minutes considering each class of grant applications. “The number of applications…have far outstripped the ability of the NEA to make quality decisions,” the report declared. Few good studies of this decisional logjam exist. One of the best is Trevor Armbrister’s analysis of the 1968 Pueblo incident involving the capture of a U.S.A. spy ship by the North Koreans and dangerous showdown between the two countries. According to Armbrister, the Pentagon official who performed the “risk evaluation” on the Pueblo mission, and approved it, had only a few hours to appraise the risks of 76 different proposed military missions. The official subsequently refused to estimate how much time he had actually spent considering the Pueblo. The way in probably worked is that he got the book on his desk one morning at nine o’clock with orders to return it by noon. That book is the size of a Sears, Roebuk catalogue. It would be a physical impossibility for him to study each mission in detail. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Nevertheless, under the pressure of time, the risk on the Pueblo mission was termed “minimal.” This could mean that every military mission evaluated that morning received less than two and a half minutes’ consideration. No wonder things do not work. In the years following the 9/11 attacks in the United States of American and its allies have fought a continuous war on terror. The taxpayer tab for the war totals about $5 trillion, or around $16 per person. Reports from the Inspector Generals’ offices of Ira and Afghanistan estimated that the United States of America’s military has lost $60 billion to waste and fraud in Iraq, $100 billion to Afghan reconstruction efforts, and billions more in wasted equipment either burned or left behind after the withdrawal forces. Part of the problem may be that the Pentagon has 1.7 million contracts open, which makes oversight difficult, if not impossible. In Iraq and Afghanistan there was a huge waste, fraud, and abuse on the part of companies like Halliburton and others that [these companies] were able to get away with in the fog of war because there was not enough scrutiny into what they were doing. In some cases billions of dollars went missing; contractors were overcharging for everything from simple task like doing the laundry for the troops and providing meals to building shoddy facilities for schools and things for water and electricity. Another impetus for fraud stems from the blank checks that the Pentagon write to contractors. The most common method of winning contracts is through the “cost-plus” contracting system, in which the government reimburses contractor expenses and tacks on a commission as profit. The system works in such a way that the more work contractors do, the more profit they get, even if their work is inefficient. It basically says, “If you spend a billion dollars building a weapons system, you will get a 10 percent profit or $100 million.” Essentially, for contractors, “you do better if you are wasteful.” Such spending has swelled the military industry to become the eighth-largest lobbying sector in the nations, spending over $100 million on lobbying the government when the troops all deserve more and maybe even a house for risking their lives, but you know they do it for love of America and the people and not for money. However, paying them more would make sure they get adequate health care and buying them a home would make sure they would not end up homeless after risking their lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

This multibillion-dollar bungle, according to a Department of Defense comptroller, has the “lethal potential of a loose cannon rolling around our deck.” He confesses, “The sad fact is that we do not really know how big this [confusion] really is. It will probably be five more years before we will be able to sort it all out.” However, you recall, President Trump wanted to audit budgets and decrease, if not stop, government spending on most foreign aid program. Nonetheless, if the Pentagon, with its complex to manage properly, as may well be the case, what about the government as a whole? The old decision-making institutions increasingly mirror the disarray in the outside World. The fragmentation of society into interest groups and the corresponding fragmentation of congressional authority into subgroups makes it difficult for a president to easily impose his will on Congress. Traditionally, an incumbent president could cut a deal with half a dozen elderly and powerful committee chairmen, and expect them to deliver the votes necessary to approve his legislative program. Today congressional committee chairmen and women can no more deliver the votes to the junior members of Congress than the AFL-CIO or the Catholic Church can deliver the votes of their followers. Unfortunate as it may seem to old-timers and hard-pressed presidents, people—including members of Congress—are doing more of their own thinking, and taking orders less submissively. All this makes it impossible, however, for Congress, as presently structured, to devote sustained attention to any issue or to respond quickly to the nation’s needs. Nonetheless, the roots of revolutionary wealth can be traced to 1956—the year when, for the first time, white-collar and service workers outnumbered blue-collar workers in the United States of America. This sea change in the composition of the labour force was arguably the kickoff point for the transition from an industrial economy based on manual labour to one based on knowledge or mind work. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

The knowledge-based wealth system is till called the “new economy”—and for convenience we will at times continue to call it that here—but the first computers, still huge and expensive, actually were migrating from government offices into the business World by the mid-1950s. And Princeton economist Fritz Machlup, as early as 1962, showed that in the 1950s knowledge production in the United States of America was already growing faster than the gross national product. The 1950s are often pictured as deadly dull decade. However, on October 4, 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, triggering a great space race with the United States of America that radically accelerated the development of systems theory, information science, software programming and training in project-management skills. It also promoted an emphasis on science and mathematics in the United States of America’s schools. All this began pumping new, wealth-relevant knowledge into the economy. Culture and politics began to change as well. Just as the industrial revolution centuries ago brought new ideas, art forms, values and political movements, along with new technology, so did the knowledge economy in the United States of America. Thus the 1950s saw the universalization of television and the introduction of Elvis Presley, the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, and rock ‘n’ roll. Hollywood shifted from heroes and happy endings to surely anti-heroes played by actors like James Dean, Sir Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Antonio Espino y Mora, Anna May Wong, and Marilyn Monroe. The literary Beats and their hippie followers glorified “doing your own thing”—a precision attack on the conformity values in industrial mass societies. By 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was pointing out that “today’s technology has…virtually eliminated the quality of muscular strength as a criterion for filling most jobs, while intensifying American industry’s need for creative intelligence.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

NOW demanded the right of women to participate on fair terms in the “revolution created by automation” and in the economy generally. While the World’s media focused on these dramatic events, almost no attention was paid to the work of top scientists, funded by the Pentagon, on an obscure new technology called ARPANET—a forerunner of what became the World-changing Internet. Given this history, the common belief that the “new” economy was the products of a 1990s stock-market bubble, and that it is going to go away, is ridiculous. A highly exaggerated mystically sponsored Golden Age of the remote past is as supposititious as a materialistically sponsored one of the near future is unrealizable. It is a silly mistake which some mystically minded enthusiasts fall into, that everybody is soon going to follow mysticism! The only basis they have for this assertion would appear to be that they move within a tiny circle where everybody is following mysticism and that they are judging the larger World outside by what is happening inside the circle. The pathway of greedy acquisition upon which humanity now stands must be left for wise co-operation. The old motives will not work today. Destiny is at work and all the multitude of prayers to God are not going to save humanity from what it creates for itself. Nothing could have been more devastating than the bombs falling on Warsaw Cathedral when more than a thousand worshippers were inside praying for God’s protection on Poland. Many in America do not realize how serious, threatening a dangerous war is. There is no battle ground, where no one lives, like the moon, where troops have a video game style show down. People get hurt, populated cities and suburbs are attacked. National defense is very serious. The war period has shown how uncertain are all materialistic standards, how much they are at the mercy of military political and economic shifts. It must therefore articulate in thoughtful minds a quest of higher standards which shall transcend such uncertainties and shifts. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

Because humanity must find the solution to their troubles within themselves, all the so-called solutions offered from without have proved disappointing. And because the attempt to find scapegoats in other humans, other political parties, other doctrines of belief, and other nations is really an attempt to relieve themselves of this personal responsibility, they have so far failed to find an end to their troubles. Those inspirers of evil-doing and racial animosity who fondly believe that they can protect themselves against the forces of spiritual evolution which are stirring within the consciousness of humankind, are dwelling in an atmosphere of futile make-believe. To outgrow the instinctive cravings of the primitive terrestrial human and to try to supplant them by the noble aspirations of the well-advanced truly human being, is the only way to guarantee peace on Earth. We shall have to renounce this fetish of achieving absolute agreement and fully unity among those who differ from each other in fundamentals. Human nature and human mentality being in the present unregenerate and diverse conditions as they are, it is futile to purpose an unrealizable ideal. The attempts to prevent war and unify the nations can meet with no success while we make no attempt to discipline the violent impulses and greedy calculations which cause war. Only when human evolution has gone father, and the brute’s instincts have been sufficiently disciplined in us, shall we drop war. However, the clash of egoisms will still remain. Our frictions and battles will continue; their outer form will, however, change for the better and be lifted to a place more truly human and beyond the merely terrestrial. If present-day World misery demonstrates anything at all, it demonstrated the failure of the materialistic outlook, the futility of expecting peace and prosperity from purely material sources, the danger of ignoring the stubborn fact that personal character counts most in the making of a people’s happiness. The old way of sheer materialism has been tried and found to end in a dangerous morass. The new way of a nobler life and deeper faith does not look so tempting. Yet other way there is not except to sink in a still deeper morass. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

Types of government that are anti-capitalistic could be defeated and avoided if the appeal they make to the discontented could be eliminated. This in turn requires the cause of discontentment be itself eliminated. That cause is the too unequal distribution of profits, income, and capital. The remedy for profits is to make labour an equal partner with capital in the sharing profits by a system of co-partnership. The remedy to fix income is to correct maximum and minimum incomes. The remedy for capital is inheritance reform. Whatever benefit has come from politics physically has to be paid for spiritually, for it has poisoned human relationships. In the end society is only a society of separate persons; in the end we come back to the individual human problem. There is much demand today for various rights in their totality. Can the right to freedom be fully given to maniacs and those who pose a danger to living beings? Can the right to free expression in speech and writing be given at a level beyond the capacities of those who make it? If life is to be orderly, if crime is to be contained, then there must be limits as well as rights? There is no other way left for us today than the way of looking right through the facts of the contemporary situation, to their underlying significance, their foundational cause, if we are to understand it aright. We must have the courage to acknowledge them for what they are. We must have the strength to be pessimistic if pessimism is required by truth. We must have the humility to confess or errors. When we understand the forces which work being the curtain of history, we stop groping. The punishment of crime should be of such a nature as to be materially useful to society and morally useful to the criminal. When humans misuse their liberty to commit crime, we withdraw it and put them in prison However, legal punishment has two grave defects: it makes no provision for more re-education alongside of the physical punishment, and it makes no difference between the repentant sinner and the nonrepentant one. The criminal is simply a human who has misinterpreted life, failed in self-discipline, accepted the suggestions of an evil environment, or been hurt by a hard social system. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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The Vulnerable Hearts Create Something Eternal

Somethings it is better to remain quiet and listen. Knowledge has been known to enter the mind through the eyes and ears. Shake a mixture of salt and water and, if there is not too much of it, the salt will soon disappear—dissolved in the water. However, shake a mixture of water and an oily substance and something quite different occurs. The oil does not dissolve and disappear; instead, if forms droplets dispersed throughout the water. This tendency toward the formation of droplets is not confined to oils, nor is shaking always necessary to elicit the phenomenon. Substances of large molecular weight—proteins, for example—will spontaneously aggregate to form discrete droplets in water These spontaneously formed droplets are called coacervates (from a Latin verb meaning “to heap up”). They have recently been the focus of considerable attention by those concerned with reconstructing the history of the development of life. A.L. Oparin, for example, a Russian biochemist and pioneer in the field, has emphasized the suitability of coacervates for a major role in the development of preanimate organizations of matter. For one thing, the droplets can form even through the initial water mixture contains only a tiny proportion of the large-molecular-weight ingredients. For another, the droplets frequently exhibit impressive stability, maintaining their structural integrity despite considerable agitation and mechanical stress. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the molecular electric forces which lead to the formation of a droplet in the first place frequently contribute to its spherical surface the properties of a selective or semipermeable membrane—certain kinds of molecular types may even move through the surface more readily in one direction than the other. These properties, when taken in conjunction with other physical and chemical characteristics of droplets, probably caused coacervate formation to have a major effect on the course of chemical development in the primordial pools. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Let us consider the consequences of coacervate formation in an early lake of high chemical activity—one in which extensive catalytic processes had developed and a considerable range of organic and inorganic products had been formed. We would expect that some of the coacervate droplets would contain a mixture of many of the various substances indigenous to the pool. Although the surrounding membrane would hold the mixture together, the kind of selective permeability just described might still permit some degree of molecular transfer between droplet contents and surroundings. A very simple kind of membrane selectivity, for example, would permit small molecules to pass through the droplet surface in either direction but make it difficult or impossible for large molecules to do so. Consider the consequences of such a property. As the droplet floated around in the water it would encounter large numbers of amino acid, nucleic acid bases, the even simpler organic constituents of carbohydrates, fats, oils, and other forms of energy-rich molecules, as well as inorganic molecules, of hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and the like. All these molecules, being comparatively small, would pass through the surface membrane into the interior of the droplet. There they would be exposed to a relatively high concentration of the catalysts whose large molecular weight contributed to the formation of the droplet in the first place. This would cause some of the entering material to combine into the more complex molecular configurations of simple proteins, carbohydrates, fats, oils, and nucleic acids. And, of course, autocatalysis would result in an appropriate addition to the store of the enabling catalysts themselves. However, the new molecules, being too large to pass out through the semipermeable membrane, would remain trapped in the droplet. Thus the droplet would tend to grow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

We can even regard the process involved as a primitive form of metabolism: “food,” in the form of a simple organic and inorganic molecules floating around in the pool, is taken into the droplet through its surface membrane, or “skin”; the food is transformed into more complex organic material; the newly formed complex material enlarges the droplet, causing “growth.” We can ever add an excretory function to our list. For probably not all the raw material passing into the droplet from the outside would be employed in the catalyzed chemical activity; the remainder, possibly supplemented by small-molecular-weight by-products of the reactions, would represent the “excrement” or “waste material” and would be passed out of the droplet through its surface membrane. What would be the ultimate consequence of the growth processes? That would depend largely on what happened to the membrane as the droplet grew. To this point we have been able to ignore certain complications related to the formation of the surface of the droplet. When the material enclosed within the surface contains not just one kind of heavy molecule but a mixture of different kinds of relatively complex substances, then the normal operation of the physical forces that control the interaction of molecules will almost inevitably cause a certain separation and organization of the contents of the droplet. Specifically, some of the ingredients will tend to concentrate in the interior where they are not in close contact with the surrounding water, while other materials, because of the electrical structure of their molecules, will have a strong tendency to be found on the surface in intimate contact with the water. It is this second class of material that determines the membrane properties. In the specific example we are considering, the droplet requires an adequate supply of a kind of material that us capable of forming a surface of suitable porosity—permitting admission of the “food” molecules from the outside but not permitting escape of the complex products of the metabolism. If the catalyzed chemical reactions underlying the growth of the droplet were deficient in their rate of production of such membrane material, growth would be limited—the droplet would fall apart when the available membrane substance would no longer stretch to cover the increasing contents. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

If, on the other hand, the products of the reactions included too high a proportion of membrane substance, the surface layer might ultimately become too dense and impermeable, thereby shutting off the supply of food to the growing droplet and placing an upper limit on its attainable size. In addition to such internal effects, there would be various environmental factors that could influence the growth process. Agitation of the water could be expected frequently to break up large droplets into smaller ones, much as we can emulsify an oil/water mixture by severe shaking. Changes in temperature, in the abundance of the inorganic ingredients supplied by volcanic activity or erosion, in the supply of the atmospherically generated organic components—these and other natural event could profoundly speed up or slow down the metabolism of the coacervates. Nevertheless, under suitable conditions these droplets could survive and grow. Once their internal chemical processes included reactions resulting in appropriate catalysts for the synthesis of complex molecules of out of simple ones at ordinary temperatures, these new bundles of chemical activity would have been free from any necessity for fortuitously neighbouring volcanic hot spots. At the same time, the remarkable enhancement of the concentration of the catalysts and other large-molecular-weight products, made possible by the confining membrane, would have resulted in a rate of chemical activity in a typical droplet that was tremendously greater than that in the pool from which it came. The activity and relative self-suffiiency of the coacervates must have had a far-reaching consequence: they were capable of survival in the open seas! And there would have been many opportunities for members of the new rugged species to reach the ocean waters. The coacervates would in effect be “weaned” from their incubating pools and swept into the great outside World whenever a pool drained to the sea by stream or river, or when a seismic cataclysm reunited a smaller body of water with a larger one. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Once in the open sea, there was nothing to prevent these new and improved droplets from growing (although perhaps more slowly, because of the lower concentration of nutrients). Ultimately, the large droplets, by the moral operation of the laws of physics related to weight, size, and surface tension, would tend to break up into smaller ones. Probably most of the new smaller droplets would lack a mixture of ingredients properly balanced to support growth, and “death” would ensure: continuous wear and tear would ultimately destroy such inert units and return their contents to the sea. However, occasionally some of the new smaller droplets would escape from their disintegrating parent with a mixture of catalysts and other substances of proportions that would sustain growth. This would amount to a form of “reproduction” of the coacervates! Are we to regard these primitive droplets as the first single-celled living organisms? If so, we have come a very long way in support of our thesis that biological phenomena are completely explainable in terms of the ordinary laws of physical science. For the coacervates are clearly nonvitablistic. At no point in the reconstruction of the almost incredibly slow developments that finally culminated in these curiously lifelike bags of chemicals have we had to invoke any nonphysical principle. Yet we have been inexorably led to forms having typically biological properties. The coacervates eat and eject waste products; they exhibit metabolic processes that posses a certain degree of chemical complexity; they grow; they reproduce their own kind; they die. If they are not living organisms or at least progenitors of living organisms, then nature would appear to have played an unusually malicious joke on the modern scientist who attempts to understand his biological heritage. The belief in the straightforwardness of nature that underlies all scientific research must impel us to continue along the path of speculation that has brought us successfully to the present point. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

In the introduction of the next report, we will address ourselves to a consideration of how physical principles resulted inevitably in natural selective forces that have been given the name evolution and how the evolutionary process operated to accomplish the gradual development of ever-more-lifelike aggregations of matter. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. What can two people do in one room? I look around me at the elegant emptiness. Teak parquet floor, a stately ebony piano asserting a dignity and certainty I cannot find in my own life, carpets from Persia, Bukhara, the Caucasus, Shiraz, Durbend, Turkoman, on the wall a Tekke, colour of old blood, intricate geometric patterns skewed here and there by the errors and improvisation of the distracted, hungry, and perhaps—who knows?—lovesick nomads clustered about their desert tents on those high, wind-racked Kirghiz steppes. Where are they now, those sad faces starting out of that wasteland? What has become of their reality, whatever it was? Once. Only once, and never again. The recurring comforts us. The singular breaks our hearts, must not be missed. With frail hands, and oh-so-suggestible minds, their vulnerable hearts create something eternal. Can human beings shape a variant reality beyond the onrushing transience, hold it safe against the weight that leans against these walls, the massive onslaughts to come? Can they make their glittering transcendence last? One day all this will be only a memory. We will look back, to find garden or gulf, forest or desert, immutable contours then, now being shaped out of will and desire and fear, of thinnest air and hazardous dream; and whether that then-unalterable landscape proves to have been vaporous fantasy or true love will follow upon the leap we now do or do not make. Sometimes it seems that all my analyzing, which aims to control experience, is but a shadow play on the surface of experience. It controls nothing, it but measures my demand that experience be understandable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Life trips humanity, many are in a maze, every day a new mystery. We will wrap interpretations around the peculiar shapes that impact on us, try to subjugate them, reduce them to order. We clothe experiences Presented with a hunchback, one can, good tailor that so many are, cut a coat to fit but our many coasts correct no deformities, nor tell us anything of the peculiar shape of the next customer one shall have to deal with. How to live? Who knows the question knows not how. Who knows not the question cannot tell. Who knows the question lives in conflict, makes choices, sees that each choice obliterates its opposite, and has learned that the needs of the individual and the needs of others contend and intersect in ways so complex and confusing that no sure answer is possible. Who knows not the question is mute. The birds in flight cannot instruct us, nor the shy deer, nor the cobra poised to strike. They know how, know so unreflectively they cannot tell. We cannot go back. Those who live for themselves alone, unburdened by the needs and rights of others, observing the rules only to the degree required to say out of jail, always in a running skirmish with the group but never in conflict within themselves, they know how, know without ever having known the question: Whatever, buddy! I have got mine, now you get yours. However, the question that cannot be answered cannot, either, be shelved. We cannot stop living until we have learned how. The train is moving. No itinerary, no briefing, no classes for beginners. We are on our way. Our first improvisation is our one chance to do it right. Eubatus was a superb athlete who “knew” what all his competitors “knew”—that the seed was a vital fluid and releasing it weakened the body. He may not have studied the great philosophers and medical writers who dispensed this wisdom, but he and his cohorts had absorbed their teachings. So had their coaches, who appreciated the specific advice the philosophers gave the sportsmen. These trainers applied their knowledge to fashioning programs that would maximize performance. In the fiercely competitive World of athletics, where winners were their city-state’s superstars and victory or defeat carried ominous international significance and symbolism, the stakes were enormously high. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Greek athletes were living testaments to sound minds in sound bodies, revered (when they won) by their countrymen and admired (even in defeat) by philosophers, who lauded their immense discipline and self-control as qualities to be emulated. Their celibacy, in particular, was esteemed. Plato, for instance, reaved about Olympic victor Ikkos of Tarentum, who “because of his desire to win, his ability, and courage in his heart along with self-control…never touched another living being in the entire course of his training.” The same was also true, Plato added, of several other notable sportsmen, despite the fact they were citizens of less refined states than Athens and “possessed much strong drives” for pleasures of the flesh. In ancient times, Olympians were so intent on maintaining celibacy that some practiced ligature praeputti, tying back the foreskin. Such humans looked peculiar, as Dionysus remarked to them in Aeschylus’ Theori Isthmiastae: “Cum decuratas, tanquan murium caudas, mentulas vobis video”—I see your pricks cut short just like the tails of mice. “You have practiced hard…you have not been slack but have trained properly.” Presumably Dionysus spoke with authority, for except in the earliest years when they wore shorts, Greek athletes took pride in competing without clothes. Their vaunted celibacy was not the only strategy Greeks employed to excel in sports. For centuries, the month before competing, they observed an austere and unvaried vegetarian diet of cheese and figs. They also exercised, rested, and maintained a schedule comparable to those of ambitious athletes everywhere. However, the vital force-rich celibacy was especially important, and as they worked out and competed, they could feel it powering their muscular strength, making them, as one first-century commented, “bold, daring, and strong as wild beasts.” They were equally aware that activity involving pleasures of the flesh for athletes, even those with superior physiques and skills, were so weakened by losing their seed that they became “inferior to their inferiors.” After all, it was the seed, when possessed of vitality, that made men manly, hot, well-braced in limbs, hairy, well voiced, spirited, [and] strong to think and to act. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The power of seed in athletics, as in life, had various theoretical sources. From the sixth century B.C. until well into the early centuries of Christianity, Greek philosophers and medical thinkers constructed theories about the seed and the weakening effects of losing it. The Pythagoreans and Kroton medical-school thinkers located semen in the brain and spinal cord, which meant that discharging it would specifically undermine those two vital areas of the body. Democritus’ pangenesis theory took a ubiquitous perspective and saw seed in all parts of the body, so that excreting it would dilute a man’s overall strength. The third major concept was hematological and propounded by writers from Aristotle to Galen. The seed was created from the best elements of the blood, and blood might even be the conveyer of each mortal’s spirit. The obvious effect of losing such an indispensable fluid was to severely undermine the whole man. No matter which of these precepts a coach or his athletes subscribed to, the end result was the same: celibacy was essential. A doctrinal subtext was the Greek belief that pleasures of the flesh with a woman was both debilitating and contaminating. This alone was reason enough for an ambitious young man to abstain. Pleasures of the flesh with anyone was too dangerous. Even nocturnal emission drained their involuntary victims. In his work On Athletics, philosopher Philostratos counseled wet dreamers to exercise cautiously and rebuild their strength, since they now have a deficit in their system. Heroic Greek athletes were often known for their feats of celibacy as well as their triumphant races and matches. Ikkos of Tarentum, who won the Olympic pentathlon in 472 and afterward established himself as a coach, was commended by Plato for his abstinence involving pleasures of the flesh. Cleitomachus of Thebes, who won three Olympic crowns for wrestling and boxing, and who in 216 B.C. surpasses even these achievements by winning three events on the same day, was famous for his chastity. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Cleitomachus could not tolerate even a ribald story and would spring up and out of the room if someone began to tell one. In fact, he was even repelled by the sight of dogs coupling in the street. The great interpreter of dreams, Artemidorus of Daldis, concluded his book on them with the cautionary tale of an athlete who dreamed he had castrated himself and subsequently achieved glorious victory. The athlete construed this to mean he should remain celibate and so abstained completely. As a result, he won many more prizes, but when he grew cocky and indulged in pleasures of the flesh, his winning streak ended and he “retired ingloriously” from the competitive stage. The triumphant Greek athlete, splendid his chaste nakedness, was also the unwitting fountainhead of the legacy that endures to this day, the belief that conserving semen will enhance strength and improve performance. Ironically, the athlete had only to control his urges for others until the race was done, when he was given free rein to indulge his lust. The average Greek citizen neither aspired to celibacy nor admired it, except as an instrument to hone the state’s finest sportsmen. Champions such as Cleitomachus, who abhorred pleasures of the flesh at any time, were exceptions to their culture’s rule. So were certain philosophers and their acolytes, who idealized abstinence. Women, excluded from this sperm-derived perspective except as agents of lasciviousness, could only look on as the lovely Lais did. However, over two millennia later, when the Olympic torch signals the opening of yet another Olympiad, lusty but abstinent young competitors are modern disciples of the ancient Greek legacy. After having discovered its religious dimension in the unconditional character of the moral imperative, and the religious source of the moral demands under the dominance of agape, we now must ask whether there is a religious element in the process of moral motivation. The question leads immediately to the concept of law. The unconditional moral imperative confronts us as the sacred more law. It appears as the only justifiable motivation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Any other motivation would seem to introduce conditions that violate the character of the moral imperative. We have already trespassed against this restriction with respect to the source of the ethical demands by establishing love as this source, without surrendering the formal strictness of the Kantian principles. We must now do likewise with respect to moral motivation. The question leads immediately to the concept of law. The unconditional moral imperative confronts us as the scared moral law. It appears as the only justifiable motivation. Any other motivation would seem to introduce conditions that violate the unconditional character of morality. This is the basic point of view of Kant’s rigoristic (not Puritan or Pietist) ethical theory. It would reduce the religious element in morality to the unconditional character of the moral imperative. We have already trespassed against this restriction with respect to the source of the ethical demands by establishing love as this source of the ethical demands by establishing love as this source, without surrendering the formal strictness of the Kantian principles. We must now do likewise with respect to moral motivation. As the linguistic form itself indicates, the moral imperative has the form of a commandment and, if generalized, a law. We have discussed the term “law” in connection with the natural laws of morals, and distinguished from the physical laws of nature. This difference extensively influences the problem of moral motivation: the moral law is experienced as law only because humans are estranged from the structural law of one’s essential being, namely, to become a centered person. This law belongs to one. It is one’s nature. And it would never become a commanding law if one did not try to break through it. However, if one is estranged from it, if one contradicts it in one’s existence, it becomes a law for them—“Thou shalt love…” If love determined of being, if it were a structural law with which we were one, it could not become a law that commands or an expression of the moral imperative. It would be an expression of our being, one with it, and not standing in opposition to it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

We can use this understanding of the law as a key to two biblical stories of great symbolic power—one, the temptation of Adam, and the other, the temptation of the Christ. In the story of the Fall, God forbids Adam to eat from the tree of knowledge (which is also power). We ask: why is this prohibition necessary? If Adam had been one with his true being, the negative command would not have been necessary. However, as a man, he had the freedom to contradict his true being. In his condition of temptation he had not yet done so, but the tendency was in him, which means that he was already separated from the natural unity with God. The law appeared when the first symptoms of separation appeared, and the innocence of the created state being in God was shaken. The law was a warning, a summoning back to original innocence. However, by this very fact the innocence was no longer innocence. However, by this very fact the innocence was no longer innocence. Neither was it guilt. It was on the boundary line of both, and the name of this boundary line is “desire.” This analysis of innocence, desire, and law can also be applied to one of the most problematic stories of the Gospels, the story of the temptation of Jesus. Some theologians deny the seriousness of the temptations; others affirm it, but are not aware of the consequences of their affirmation. In declaring with the New Testament and most classical theology the seriousness of the temptations of Jesus, we must acknowledge that they are expressions of his true humanity. They should have protected his image against the seemingly irrepressible Monophystic trends in all Christian churches—that is, against the theological error strongly supported by popular piety, which is to see in Jesus a god, walking on Earth. However, if the temptations of Jesus are taken seriously, the question arises whether their seriousness presupposes a separation from that unity with God that determines his whole life and makes him the selected “Son.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The question can be answered by reference to the Adam story. Serious temptation presupposes desire for that by which one is tempted. Jesus, like Adam, stood between innocence and guilt, on the boundary line of existence where the commanding law appears. And Jesus quotes commanding words from the Old Testament against Satan. With this insight into the two different meanings of law, law as structure and law as the demand to actualize this structure, we approach the question: has the law in the second sense a motivating power for the fulfillment of the moral imperative and its concrete demands? The answer, like the answer to the question of the ultimate principle of the content of morality, must be developed along several levels. For it is complex, representing the profoundest tensions in religious experience and in the history of Christianity. The general questions is: can the commanding law, which presupposes the contrast between our essential and our actual being, motivate us to transform ourselves in the direction of reuniting the actual with the essential? The firs logically consistent answer: it cannot! For the very existence of the commanding law is based on that split. The law (in the following sections used only in the sense of the commanding law) is an expression of humans’ estrangement from their true nature. How would it then be able to overcome this estrangement? This logically unavoidable answer is also the psychologically experienced answer: The command to be good does not make us good. It may indeed drive us toward evil! At present, however, our society is setting for the first time in its history into a rigid class system. (Somewhere we missed out on equality, and this is now threatening our flexibility and stability.) It is not that individuals may not move from grade to grade—there is perhaps even more individual mobility than ever. However, the statuses themselves are more rigid; there is less easy gradation, and there is less opportunity to make less easy gradation, and there is less opportunity to make one’s unique “classless” place. One is more definitely in or out, and in a more definite rank. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

At the bottom are the poor, “outside” of society. Next are those groups who are in the organized system of production: Those who are “in” but could not care less about the production and distribution, like the factory operatives. These are paid the lower-middle-class wages, say between $32,048 and $53,413. (For high earners, a three-person family needs an income between $106,827 and $373,894 to be considered upper-middle class. Those who earn more than $373,894 are rich.) The lower-middle class buys on credit and have to keep on the job to make both ends meet. If the work week is shortened to thirty hours, without a commensurate loss of income, there is evidence that they get other, part-time, jobs to buy still more refrigerators. The next status who are “in” are the Organization Humans proper, whose hours, throughout, families, play, and peace of mind are dedicated to maintaining their positions in their particular firms and pushing upward there or in some other firms. Salary $106,827 to $373,894. It is this group—the junior executives, for instance—that we have compared to the juvenile delinquents for their safe conformity and competitive individuality. We shall see that another important trait in common is having no real activity, but living by role playing. (W.H. Whyte, Jr., the Hesiod of this tribe, pleads for individuality to offset the conformity of organization life He, rather cynically, fails to see that such polar “individuality” is the conformity by which humans advance; it is one-upping. The only offset to the organization is nature or worth-whole objects; but the necessary, useful, and pleasant, and the good, true, and beautiful are not much mentioned in this book.) At the top, finally, are the nine hundred managers—figure from Fortune magazine—whose task is to minimize risk and maximize production and sales. Also the fifty governors, the federal staff, heads of foundation, etcetera. It will be seen that these three statuses in the organized labour, entertainment, government, bigger education, etcetera) are engaged primarily in keeping the system itself running and slowly expanding. The most self-aware of its members are the middle-status intellectuals, among the advertising humans, sale team, and junior executives; and they described the system as the Rat Race. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

So W.H. Whyte, Jr. and J.K. Galbraith, however, describes it differently: “Among the many models of the good society, no one has urged the squirrel wheel.” It is interesting to contrast the different species of imagined rodents between those who are running the race and the scholar who is contemplating with wonder. However, there is another large class: those who do not properly belong to the system and are not yet submerged into the poor “outside” of society: this is the vast herd of the old-fashioned, the eccentric, the criminal, the gifted, the serious, the men and women, the rentiers, the freelances, the infants, and so forth. This motely collection has, of course, no style or culture, unlike the organization that has our familiar American style and popular culture. Its fragmented members hover about the organization in multifarious ways—running specialty shops, trying to teach or to give other professional services, robbing banks, landscaping gardening, and so forth—but they find it hard to get along, for they do not know the approved techniques of promoting, getting foundation grants, protecting themselves by official unions, legally embezzling, and not blurting out the truth or weeping or laughing out to turn. They have no style at all, and it is understandable that neither they nor their usually rather irrelevant enterprises make much headway in the market, the universities, entertainment, politics, or labour. Besides, they often speak a minority language (also known as the universal business langue), English. This is roughly the class structure of America in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. It seems most functional to speak of three classes, the Less Affluent, the Organization, and the Independents; and of three statuses within the dominant class, the Organization. Viz.: I. Organized System: Workers, Organization Mortals, Managers. II. Less Affluent. III. Independents. What the World needs is more geniuses with humbleness. Leaders stand up for their beliefs. They practice what they preach. They show others by their own example that they live by the values that they profess. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

During the past 50 years, emphasis around the World has shifted from suicide treatment to suicide prevention. In some respects, this change is most appropriate: the last opportunity to keep many potential suicide victims alive comes before the first attempt. The first suicide prevention program in the United States of America was founded in Los Angeles in 1955; the first in England, called the Samaritans, was started in 1953. There are now hundreds of suicide prevention centers in the United States of America and in England. In addition, many of today’s mental health centers, hospital emergency rooms, pastoral counseling centers, and poison control centers including suicide prevention programs among their services. There are also hundreds of suicide hot lines in the United States of America, 24-hour-a-day telephone services. Callers reach a counselor, typically a paraprofessional, a person trained in counseling but without a formal degree, who provides services under the supervision of a mental health professional. Suicide prevention programs and hot lines respond to suicidal people as individual in crisis—that is, under great stress, unable to cope, feeling threatened or hurt, and interpreting their situations as unchangeable. Thus the programs offer crisis intervention: they try to help suicidal people see their situations more accurately, make better decisions, act more constructively, and overcome their crises hot lines and also welcome people who walk in without appointments. Although specific features vary from center to center, the general approach used by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center reflects the goals and techniques of many such organizations. During the initial contact, the counselor has several tasks. Establishing a conductive relationship: As callers must trust counselors in order to confide in them and follow their suggestions, counselors try to set a beneficial understanding, interested, nonjudgmental, and available. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Understanding and clarifying the problem: Counselors first try to understand the full scope of the caller’s crisis and then help the person see the crisis in clear and constructive terms. In particular, they try to help callers see the central issues and the transient nature of their crises and recognize the alternatives to suicide. Assessing suicide potential: Crisis workers at the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center fill out a questionnaire, often called a lethality scale, to estimate the caller is under, relevant personality characteristics, how detailed the suicide plan is, the severity of symptoms, and the coping resources available to the caller. Assessing and mobilizing the caller’s resources: Although they may view themselves as ineffectual and helpless, people who are suicidal usually have many strengths and resources, including relatives and friends. It is the counselor’s job to recognize, point out, and activate those resources. Formulating a plan: Together the crisis worker and caller develop a plan of action. In essence, they are agreeing on a way out of the crisis, an alternative to suicidal action. Most plans include a series of follow-up counseling session over the nest few days or weeks, either in person at the center or by phone. Each plan also requires the caller to take certain actions and make certain changes in one’s personal life. Counselors usually negotiate a non-suicide contract with the caller—a promise not to attempt suicide, or at least a promise to reestablish contact if the caller again considers suicide. Although popular, the usefulness of such contracts has been called into question in recent ears. In addition, if callers are in the midst of a suicide attempt, counselors will try to find out their whereabouts and get medical help to them immediately. Although crisis intervention appears to be sufficient treatment for some suicidal people, longer-term therapy is needed for most. Id the crisis intervention center does not offer this kind of therapy, the counselors will refer the clients elsewhere. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Many clinicians believe that crisis intervention techniques should also be applied to problem other than suicide. Crisis intervention has emerged during the past three decades as a respected form of treatment for such wide-ranging problems as teenage confusion, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual assault victimization, and spouse abuse. As Third Wave produced a mass society, the Fourth Wave de-massified us, moving the entire social system to a much higher level of the diversity and complexity. This revolutionary process, much like the biological differentiation that occurs in evolution, helps explain one of today’s most widely noted political phenomena—the collapse of consensus. From one end of the industrial World to the other we hear politicians lamenting the loss of “national purpose,” the absence of the good old “Drunkirk spirit,” the erosion of “national unity,” and the sudden, bewildering proliferation of high-powered splinter groups. The latest buzzword in Washington is “single issue group,” referring to the political organizations springing up by the thousands, usually around what each perceives a single burning issue: abortion, gun control, rights for various groups of people, school busing, nuclear power, and so on. So diverse are these interests at both the national and local levels that politicians and officials can no longer keep track of them. Mobile-home owners organize to fight for country zoning changes. Farmers battle power transmission lines. Retired people mobilize against school taxes. Feminists, Chicanos, strip miners, and anti-strip miners organize, as do single parents and anti-prom crusaders. A Midwest magazine even reports formation of an organization a particular Liberation Movement. Simultaneously, national ass organizations are having the trouble holding together. Local churches are not following the national lead any more. A labour expert reports that instead of a single unified political drive by the AFL-CIO, affiliated unisons are increasingly mounting their own campaigns for their own ends. The electorate is not merely breaking two splinters. The splinter groups themselves are increasingly transitory, springing up, dying out, turning over more and more rapidly, and forming a testy, hard to-analyze flux. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

In Canada, says one government official, “we now assume the life-span of the voluntary organizations will be six to eight months. There are more groups and they are more ephemeral.” In this way, acceleration and diversity combine to create a totally new kind of body politic. These same developments also sweep into oblivion our nations about political coalitions, alliances, or united fronts. In a Third Wave society a political leader could glue together half a dozen major blocs, and expect the resulting coalition to remain locked in position for many years. Today, it is necessary to plug together hundreds, even thousands, of tiny, short-lived as well. It may cleave together just long enough to elect a president, then break apart again the day after election, leaving him or her without a base of support for one’s programs. This de-massification of political life, reflecting all the deep trends we have discussed in technology, production, communications and culture, further devastates the politicians’ ability to make vital decision. Accustomed to juggling a few well-recognized and clearly organized constituencies, they suddenly find themselves besieged. On all sides, countless new constituencies, fluidly organized, demand simultaneous attention to real but narrow and unfamiliar needs. Specialized demands flood in to legislatures and bureaucracies through every crack, with every mailbag and messenger, over the transom and under the door. This tremendous pile-up of demands leaves no time for deliberation. Furthermore, because society is changing at an accelerating pace and a decision delayed may be far worse than no decision at all, everyone demands instant response. Congress, as a result, is kept so busy. The men and women meet each other coming and going and it does not allow for a coherent train of thought. Circumstances differ from country to country, but what does not differ is the revolutionary challenge posed by the Forth Wave to obsolete Second Wave institutions—too slow to keep up with the pace of change and too undifferentiated to cope with the new levels of social and political diversity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Designed for a much slower and simpler society, our institutions are swamped and out of synch. Nor can this challenge be met by merely tinkering with the rules. For it strikes at the most basic assumption of the Third Wave political theory: the concept of representation. Thus the rise of diversity means, that although our political systems are theoretically founded on majority rule, it may be impossible to form a majority even on issues crucial to survival. In turn, this collapse of consensus means that more and more governments are minority governments, based on shifting and uncertain coalitions. The missing majority makes a mockery of standard democratic rhetoric. It forces us to question whether, under the convergence of speed and diversity, any constituency can ever be “represented.” In a mass industrial society, when people and their needs were fairly uniform and basic, consensus was an attainable goal. In a de-massified society, we not only lack national purposes, we also lack regional, statewide, or citywide purpose. The diversity in any congressional district or parliamentary constituency, whether in France or Japan or Sweden, is so great that its “representative” cannot legitimately claim to speak for a consensus. One cannot represent the general will for the simple reason that there is none. What, then, happens to the very notion of “representative democracy”? To ask this question is not to attack democracy. (We shall shorty see how the Fourth Wave opens the way to an enriched and enlarged democracy.) However, it makes one fact inescapably plain: not only our Third Wave institutions but the very assumptions on which they were based are obsolete. Built to the wrong scale, unable to deal adequately with transnational problems, unable to deal with interrelated problems, unable to keep up with the accelerative drive, unable to cope with the high levels of diversity, the overloaded, obsolete political technology of the industrial age is breaking up under our very eyes. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

New wealth systems do not come often, and they do not travel alone. Each carries with it a new way of life, a civilization. Not just new business structures but new family formats; new kinds of music and art; new foods, fashions and standards of physical beauty; new values; and new attitudes toward religion and personal freedom—all of which interact with and shape the emerging new wealth system. American today is spearheading just a new civilization built around a revolutionary way of creating wealth. For better and worse, billions of lives around the World are already being changes by this revolution. Nations and whole regions of the globe are rising or declining as they feel its impact. Today millions of people around the World dislike or even hate America. Some fanatics wish to incinerate the United States of America and everyone in it. (That is why it is important to create community, love thy neighbour, and have national pride.) The reason they give for hating us range from its Middle Eastern policies, and its refusal to sign various international treaties to what they regard as its imperial ambitions. Yet even if given peace reigned in the Middle East, even if all the World’s terrorists turned pacifists and democracies flowered like dandelions, the rest of the World would still view the United States of America with trepidation at best. This is because the new wealth system the United States of American is developing, by its very nature, threatens old, embedded financial and political interests around the World. Moreover, in the United States of America the rise of the new wealth systems has been accompanied by controversial changes in the roles of women, marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and other groups. Because America’s emergent culture promotes greater individuality, it is seen as a threat to community. Worse yet, because it has loosened come of the traditional gender, moral, political, religious, and lifestyle constraints placed on the individual during earlier economic eras, it is seen as dangerously seducing the young into nihilism, license and decadence. In short, the combination or revolutionary wealth and the social cultural changes so far associated with it may have more to do with global anti-Americanism than the usual litany of reasons cited by the media. The revolutionary wealth system, however, as we will see, is no longer an American monopoly. Other nations are racing to catch up. And it is not clear how long the United States of America will retain its lead. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Can there be Such a thing on Earth as a Paradise without Sin?

Many of us think we want happiness out of life. However, happiness can be a distraction. With all the changes and challenges one faces each day, there has never been a greater need to take the time to determine one’s priorities, and then with renewed focus, align one’s daily actions with one’s purpose or goals. The hedonic treadmill (also known as hedonic adaption) is a theory positing that people repeatedly return to their baseline level of happiness, regardless of what happens to them. This is dew to the law of diminishing returns. It is an economic law stating that if one input in the production of a commodity is increased while all other inputs are held fixed, a point will eventually be reached at which additions of the input yield progressively smaller, or diminishing, increased of output. Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true need, it becomes much more cruel to de deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and when humans were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them. Studies have shown that our circumstances do not account for most of our happiness. Each person has a happiness set point, which refers to one’s genetically determined predisposition for happiness. This set point for happiness is responsible for about 50 percent of the difference in happiness from person to person. There is an enabling power from God that allows mortals to obtain a blessing in this life to gain eternal life and exaltation after they have exercised faith, repented, and given their best effort to keep the commandments. Such divine help or strength is given through the mercy and love of God. Every mortal person needs divine grace because of Adam’s Fall and also because of the weakness of human beings. The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

When discussing primeval lakes, which are giant precursors of living organisms, we must start by considering the phenomenon of catalysis. The phenomenon was first observed in 1822 by the German chemist J. W. Dobereiner. He even incorporated his discovery in a working device—a kind of automatic lighter—in which a jet of hydrogen would start to burn in air without the intervention of a spark or match. All that was necessary, he found, was to direct the unlighted jet against a surface covered with powdered platinum metal. For some reason, mysterious to Dobereiner and his contemporaries, this caused the hydrogen to ignite, that is, to combine spontaneously with the oxygen of the air, which it would not do at room temperature in the absence of the catalyst, platinum. Since Dobereiner’s discovery, many substances that catalyze specific chemical reactions have been found. The presence of powdered platinum, nickel, or iron oxide in the reaction chamber is essential in one stage of the preparation of commercial sulfuric acid if the process is to take place at more than a snail’s pace. Copper chromite, vanadium pentoxide, and manganese dioxide also serve as important catalysts in the chemical industry. In fact, much of the success of many industrial chemical processes depends on finding just the right catalyst for the reaction involved. What does the catalyst do? Well, one thing it does not do is get used up or chemically changed in the reaction it promotes. The same amount of catalytic material, possessing exactly the same molecular configuration, remains at the end of the process as entered the reaction chamber. This is quite different from the result of stimulating a chemical rection by the kind of energy-rich substance we have previously referred to. Such energy contributing molecules do not emerge unscathed from the chemical reactions in which they participate. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Instead, their molecular structure changes under the influence of the forces set up during the reaction; it is in this way that they provide the additional energy needed to push or pull the atoms of the reacting molecules into their new configurations. However, catalysts do not contribute energy to the reacting ingredients; unless suitable energy balance is provided by other means, catalysts are powerless to act. In fact, the catalyst appears not to make possible any chemical reactions that cannot occur in its absence—it just speeds them up. Consider Dobereiner’s experiment, for example. In a mixture of hydrogen gas and air at room temperature there will be an occasional combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms (to form a water molecule), but this does not happen often enough to produce the bulk heating of the mixed gasses necessary to sustain combustion. In the presence of platinum, the combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms proceeds so much more rapidly that the gas heats up and bursts into flame. Much of the mystery that once surrounded the phenomenon of catalysis has been solved. We now know that the catalyst produces its effect by causing the molecules of the reacting ingredients to come into a form of contact with each other possessing a degree of atomic intimacy and precise orientation that would only rarely be achieved in the random, undirected encounters among these molecules in uncatalyzed reactions. In Dobereiner’s experiment, for example, hydrogen and oxygen are “adsorbed” onto the surface of the platinum—that is, the interaction of their electric charges with those of the metal is such as to bind the gaseous atoms lightly to the platinum surface. The redistribution of the electric charge of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms resulting from the surface binging turns out to be such nature as to make it easy far adjacent bound atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to slide together in an intimate configuration that would normally be difficult to achieve because of the shielding effect of the usual arrangement of their extranuclear charge. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Once one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms come together on the surface in this way, very strong forces of electrical interaction among them cause further rearrangement of their charge into the stable configuration characteristic of the water molecule. In this process the relatively small interaction forces between adsorbed atoms come together on the surface in this way, very strong forces of electrical interaction among atom cause further rearrangement of their charge into the stable configuration characteristic of the water molecule. In this process the relatively small interaction forces between adsorbed atoms and platinum are broken, and the new molecule of water escapes from the metal surface, which is then available to perform the same marriage ceremony for the next hydrogen/oxygen arrivals. In the example given, the catalyst promoted the combination of simpler into more complex chemical forms. Just as frequently, however, catalytic action encourages the breakdown of complex molecules into simpler ones. Iron, for example, will catalyze the reduction of hydrogen peroxide, H2O2, into water and oxygen. The particular reaction that will occur in any specific situation depends on the details of the interaction among catalyst and starting ingredients and on the workings of the physical laws of chemistry which determine the relative probabilities for the various possible molecular configurations. It is appropriate at this point to return to our primeval pools and relate what we have learned about catalytic activity to their chemical development. In and among the clays and sands of the lake bottoms it would be natural for some catalytically active metal ores and compounds to be occasionally exposed. Depending upon the specific nature of these materials, one or another class of possible chemical transformation would be selectively encouraged. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Because a tiny amount of catalytic material can have a large effect on the speed of a reaction, appreciable contributions to the individuality of behavior of the various pools could result from differences in their catalytic ingredients to small as to be easily overlooked in a not-too-sophisticated survey of the “starting conditions” in the pools. This is part of the explanation for the temperamental performance we are investigating. For if we eliminate the cases of individuality attributable to inorganic catalysts in the lake beds, we find much more uniformity than before in the chemical behaviour of our primordial pools. Nevertheless, some of the most dramatic exceptions to regularity in behaviour still persists. A mystery remains to be explained. Having achieved partial success in accounting for seemingly erratic chemical behaviour by recourse to the peculiarly powerful effects of catalysis, let us now look more deeply into this phenomenon in search of additional factors that might have an unsuspected influence on early chemical activity. A clue is provided by modern evidences for the unusual effectiveness of catalysts when they are incorporated in organic compounds. For reasons that are only partly understood, integration into an organic configuration frequently enhances tremendously the efficacy of a simply catalytic substance. It has already been mentioned, for example, that iron catalyzes the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. However, if the iron is first incorporated in the compound catalase, in which it is chemically combined with a suitable protein and porphyrin, another organic substance that occurs frequently in plants and animals, its catalytic effect for the hydrogen peroxide transformation is multiplied 10 billion times! It is unlikely that large amounts of highly efficient catalysts were present in the primordial pools. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

However, it seems probable that, in the random, undirected combination of the available molecular components, occasionally a configuration that resulted served as a relatively effective catalyst for a specific mode of linking of some of the other components floating around in the pool. Each such accidentally formed catalytic molecule would then have a sizable multiplying effect on the formation of the related substance. This would account for some sudden, though probably small, changes in the course of chemical developments in the pool. However, even more interesting results would occasionally appear. For suppose that the accidentally formed catalyst we are postulating promotes a chemical reaction whose products include more of the catalyst itself (autocatalysis). The result would be a chain reaction. A small amount of catalyst A would encourage a small amount of the available raw materials to react, yielding a small amount of product B and some more A. The increased quantity of catalyst A would cause a second similar, but more extensive reaction. Still more A would lead to still larger reactions, etcetera. Increases in the rates of formation of A and B by factors of millions or billions could easily ensue. In an efficient autocatalytic chain reaction, the runway acceleration of the chemical activity would probably be limited only by exhaustion of one of the raw materials. Thus, in a few days, weeks, or months (even unlimited amounts of the most efficient catalyst would not necessarily produce more rapid, “explosive” reactions. If, as in the processes of most interest to us, energy must be supplied to sustain the reaction, its availability would probably pace the activity. This would be especially likely if the principal source of energy were random thermal interactions with surrounding molecules.), rather than in the centuries usually required for major changes in the chemical activity of a primordial pool, an apparently brand-new characteristic of the pool could appear, whereby specific types of molecules would thenceforth be formed practically instantaneously (in geologic terms, at least) to the extent permitted by the availability of the necessary raw materials. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The essential idea is that substance A may catalyze the formation of substance B, which then enters into reactions that rapidly synthesize products C, C’, and C”, for example. One of these, says C’, may be a catalyst for a reaction yielding substances D, D’, and D”. D”, then, may catalyze the formation of E, which finally reacts with available raw materials to produce A, completing the chain. The intermediate products may well include the constituents of carbohydrates, fats, oils, or nucleic acids, as well as inorganic molecules. In a particularly favourable autocatalytic chain, one of the intermediate reactions might even be of a photochemical nature, whereby a quantum of ultraviolent light excites one of the interacting molecules and permits the formation of energy-rich product. (Such photelectric effects are known to occur to facilitate many simple chemical reactions, and they should have been much more prevalent in primordial times when the absence of the shielding ozone layer permitted the sun’s high-energy ultraviolet rays to bombard the Earth’s surface.) By the participation in the reaction chain of such intermediate products, complex final products possessing a total energy content greater than that of the starting ingredients could be produced. Thus the autocatalytic principle possesses a range and versatility adequate to account for a wide variety of patterns of chemical activity in enclosed bodies of water. It was in such a manner that sudden and seemingly unpredictable individuality would have developed in the chemical “personalities” of the carious primeval pools. Of course, today’s scientist would emphasize the point that the diversity of chemical behaviour produced by autocatalysis was not fundamentally unpredictable but was instead a consequence of small differences in the starting conditions or previous histories of the pools. Such differences would then account for the sudden appearance, at some stage of development, of a particular kind of autocatalytic chain in one pool rather than in another. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

This kind of argument is, of course, sound in principle. However, the tremendously large multiplying factors involved in the chemical chain reactions, once started, mean that the differences in initial conditions responsible for substantial differences in the subsequent chemical development of two pools could be almost infinitesimal, lying well below the threshold of detection by “practical” techniques. A most rare and improbable event—the dropping from the sky of a single exotic particle or the fortuitous coming together in the pool of a number of molecules in a particular way that might not again occur in another million years—could get the process started. Thus, the kind of behaviour we are describing here would have seemed to unsophisticated human observers, if there had been any, as clear evidence of nonphysical, vitalistic purposiveness in the behaviour of the primordial pools. The stage we have reached in our narrative—characterized by large numbers of chemically active pools of warm water, each continually receiving supplies of simple organic compounds from the atmosphere, supplemented by inorganic gases and dissolved solids from the Earth, with some of the pools exhibiting remarkable efficiency in assembling these available ingredients into more complex organic molecules—represents the total accomplishment towards the development of life achieved during the first one of two billion years of the history of the newborn Earth. We still have a long way to go. In the next report, we will concern ourselves with the natural processes whereby the isolated pools of three of four billion years ago may have given birth to the progenitors of the living cells that ultimately became the principal architectural feature of plants and animals. Success is a journey, not a destination. Nothing in the World is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

Athletes are—and always have—notorious for the lengths to which they will go to enhance their performance. Rigorous training, special dietary regimes, regulated sleeping patterns, performance-enhancing substances such as steroids—all have been integral parts of athletic training programs. Celibacy is another common feature of a sportsman’s discipline, necessary to avoid the debilitating consequences and wasteful emotions of pleasures of the flesh. (It may be a good idea for high school and college sports to try this, so players will not be distracted by broken hearts during the season.) Usually, its advocates promoted it as a way to store up precious vital energy, the vital bodily fluid that determinedly chaste men could transform into a God-given, performance-enhancing substance. This was true for the ancient Greeks, the Victorians, and the Cherokees, among others, and it remains true for Indian wrestlers and the footballer players, soccer stars, boxers, and other male athletes who prefer to stockpile their precious vital energy rather than yield it up in a single self-indulgent spasm. One might ask: is love also the ultimate principle for social ethics? And we must answer affirmatively, because the encounter of social groups is an encounter in which reunion of the separated is the telos, just as it is in the person-to-person encounter. However, there is a decisive difference. Social groups are power groups with no personal center. They have a changing organizational center in terms of their government. However, they have no personal center. This means that there are great differences in the way love is effective in social ethics. Any attempt to identify the problems of personal ethics and social ethics (as does legalistic pacificism, for example) ignores the reality of power in the social realm, and so confuses the organizational centeredness of historical group with the personal centeredness of a person. A discussion of the problems indicated by this statement requires the development of a philosophy of power. This we cannot do within the framework of the present study. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The religious source of the moral demands is love under the domination of its agape quality, in unity with the imperative of justice to acknowledge every being with personal potential as a person, being guided by the divine-human wisdom embodied in the moral laws of the past, listening to the concrete situation, and acting courageously on the basis of these principles. Out of such decisions in the power of love, new insights would grow. And they might transform the given tables of laws into something more adequate for our situation as a whole as well as for innumerable individual situations. Should this occur, love as the ultimate principle of the moral demands would be powerfully vindicated. The completely moral life—that is, the meticulous observance of all of the rules—leads, for both the individual and the group, to a rigidity that falls increasingly at odds with a changing World. Yet boundary violations, if reckless—recklessness measurable, usually, only after the act and its consequences—destroy the individual and destroy the social order. The individual becomes an outlaw, the group becomes a mob. Well, then, how much? What is the rule to guide us in the judicious breaking of rules? What is the wise measure of violation? Pain is one thing. Not the worst thing. It is not even very important. Worse is to play it safe, never to risk everything for the one big thing that comes only once, that looms, for a moment only, and then is gone. Once and once only. There is just a moment when we can go for it, leap, spend it all; or be prudent, hang back, listen to the cautious voices around us, and see that one big thing disappear forever. The one big thing, that is the issue, to go for it or not. That one big thing—costing not less than everything—big enough maybe to justify a crime, our one chance to climb up and out of meaninglessness. Time is running out and I cannot see—but I dread—what lies beyond. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Am I really struggling toward a moral decision? Or am I scrambling for a credible begging of the question? What a fallible calculus this is, even to the most disinterested—and I am the most interested of all. Should I then disqualify myself, put it in the hands of a wise human? I distrust wise humans. Anyway I know I could control the outcome by knowing the leanings of the wise human in whose hands I would place it. (You see? I am a wise human myself.) Should I leave it to God? I am still building my faith in God. There is no escape from arbitrariness. In the hands of the most interested party lies the full responsibility for a disinterested decision. May God have mercy on those whose fate is in my hands. The ache of love, the unquenchable burning, one can feel it. It seeks union, will be satisfied by nothing less than everything. It will burn on and on within the human heart until one is left in ashes. The only cure is the waning of love that follows upon the fusion that love so insistently demands. Disorder rules our lives sometimes. We carry on, wander through the days like a sleepwalker. Years of longing, years of standing at the verge, inching closer. Vertigo. Dragged by desire, trying to stay the fall. Then one tries to reason one’s way out of a maze of guilt and longing. One stumbles in the dark, trying to find a way to live, knowing that anything one finds will be provisional, fallible, revocable, but knowing also there is nothing else for it unless one is willing to follow someone else’s rules. Duty, faithfulness, self-restraint, all admirable traits, but how is one to know whether biding by them bespeaks a free choice of the good or a conformity to the group driven by fear? A caring for others or quaking at the consequences of pursuing self-interest? If we are too frightened to be bad, we would not wish our goodness to be recognized as issuing from cowardice, would derive it rather from love, courage, honour. One promises fidelity to a spouse. Is it every justified to violate that promise? When? In what circumstances? Or should one ask, rather, is it every justified, over the course of a lifetime, never to violate that promise? #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Moral rules are the tools the holders of power use to extend their power and subjugate everybody else from doing wrong; and the moral human defends, unwittingly, by way of one’s morality, the existing social order with its accrued and always increasing evils. Creative change in a society issues from violation great enough to alter the social structure, but not so great as to bring it down altogether. One wants a society of law that allows some laws to be ignored. It is those violations we let stand that organize the ongoing transformation of social structure. The observance of rules, with a wise measure of slippage, coupled with the violation of rules, with an ironic measure of prudence, created flexibility, strengthens the group, and thereby creates the possibility of nonviolent change in the social order. The luxury cruise is a bore but not an escape. Too much blue hair, too much high-pitched cackle straining from the lilt of youth, unknown or varying legal jurisdiction. The knifelike prow cuts through the dark water like a plow crossing an endless plain. A slow regular rise and fall, a steady furled-back ribbon. This furrow closes over, leaves no trace. The problem is in me, clings to me. No solution in sight. People nearby. Promenaders. Voices are lowered as they pass close to me. I do not turn from the rail, remain fixed on the dark water. Are they concerned by my posture, my trance? Do they wonder if I meditate a leap? Do I? Very deep here. Fathoms, fathoms, miles, the Marianas Trench, five miles of water straight down. I picture the deepening strata, the dolphin, the fish, the monsters, the leviathan, and on down. At five hundred feet the marlin, and on down where no light reaches and no life moves. Nothing. Nothing except some slimy, sightless, eyeless thing, and what sort of life is that? #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

And on down in eternal darkness to the final black bottom and nothing there except, perhaps, the rotting timbers of ancient shipwreck and, more modern mishap, the silent hull of a submarine with its entombed now-skeleton warriors, their bony hands on the controls of now-eternally-motionless torpedoes. The light around me fails, the water is black, a phosphorescent edge to the endless, transient furrow. Voices recede, die away. Nothing now but the rush of wind, and water. Without looking I know myself to be alone. No one would hear the splash. Or the cry. How cold would it be? How long would I last? When would I be missed? Why do I imagine this? What am I doing with these images? What is real? Am I watching flickering shadows on the wall of a cave? Are joys and sorrows but electrical currents in a network of brain cells? Is love real? The water. This dark water. That is real. And what is water? Something cold, wet, the embrace of death, the downward pull, the choking, the bursting lungs. However, someone else, some ghostlike other, standing beside me, looking down, seeing what I see, might say: “It is molecules of H2O: that is what it really is.” And if one’s interest were its chemistry, its boiling point, its dissolved salts, one would be right. And still different would be its reality for swimmers, or for a marine biologist. My interest is life—weary. Lovesick, lovesick. There is no real reality. The real from one perspective is illusion from another. Reality is made, not given. Atoms are no more final than fish, and melancholy yearning is as real as those sightless monsters in the remote depths below me. After a suicide attempt, most victims need medical care. Some are left with sever injuries, brain damage, or other medical problems. Once the physical damage is treated, psychotherapy or drug therapy may begin, on either an inpatient or outpatient basis. Unfortunately, even after trying to kill themselves, many suicidal people fail to receive systematic psychotherapy. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

In a random survey of several hundred teenagers, 9 percent were found to have made at least one suicide attempt, and of those, only half had received later psychological treatment. Similarly, in another study, one-third of adolescent attempter reported that they had not received any help after trying to end their lives. In some cases, health-care professionals are at fault. In others, the person who has attempted suicide refuses follow-up therapy. The goals of therapy are to keep people alive, help them achieve a nonsuicidal state of mind, and guide them to develop better ways of handling stress. Various therapies have been employed, including drug, psychodynamic, cognitive, group, and family therapies. Treatment appears to help. Studies have found that 30 percent of suicide attempters who do not receive treatment try again, compared with the 16 percent of patients in treatment. It is not clear, however, whether any one approach is more effective than others. Furthermore, there is little agreement in the sociology of delinquency. (This is because the concept itself is confused and so leads to confusing statistics.) However, one correlation that is generally agreed on is that: Juvenile delinquency, unlike adult crime, is more frequent in years of economic prosperity than in years of depression. Now, this would seem to contradict the other, and rather prima facie, theory of poverty as the important condition. The paradox is softened by pointing out that in prosperity there is more employment of women, more divorce, more money to buy drugs and liquor. These factors make sense, but let me raise some further considerations. First, there is the possibility that the prosperous well-paying jobs do not filter down evenly to the poorest groups, who tend much more to be unemployable. This certainly seems to be our situation today. Second, in a high-standard economy, there is a vast difference between having a little extra money and being accustomed to the well-paid standard. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

As our Manchester forefathers used to say, you do a disservice to the undeserving poor by giving them money, because they will get into trouble. Consider the concrete situations: Even if the parents re suddenly getting better pay, the young are getting merely a little extra spending money, and this, in a society in which there is suddenly a lot of money, must work out as follows: The underprivileged kids get around more and are exposed to the expensive glamour, but this is precisely not attainable by them unless they take short cuts. Meantime, those who have the new money are more careless with it: they leave their cars unlocked, buy pleasures of the flesh, drink too much. And the spiteful feeling is increased, that those who are better off are squares, enemies, and fair victims of the gang. In boom time, that is, there is effectually more exclusion than ordinarily. During depression, contrariwise, there is more community because many others are in the same boat. The street is occupied by kids used to other mores, to whom the gang values are pointless. This leads to friction, but also to other friendships and other “things to do.” However, above all, as everybody knows who was unemployed during the Great Depression, the recession of 2001 and 2010, and the current COVID pandemic, it is easier to be decently poor when prices are low and the pressure to maintain appearances is diminished. Things get nearer to a human scale and life makes more sense. Likewise, at such times political activity is more common, an education that increases self-esteem in a worthwhile way. This whole picture would be quite different if the underprivileged and somewhat unemployable families had a pretty good secure income over a long period. They would then be members of society at least as consumers, and would eventually become as employable as the average. Such a condition would at once diminish certain kinds of underprivileged delinquency, exempli gratia, thefts, malicious mischief, certain spiteful assaults, and maybe truancy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Simply to subsidize the poor might be the most cost-effective way of coping with their juvenile delinquency. To re-establish in general what one calls the social balance, there should be proposed a high long-time subsidy for all unemployed. This would not be inflationary, and the time director of price control for the Open Policy Agent (OPA) one should know. The popular bright idea to diminish delinquency is to penalize the parents; and perhaps the effective method would be, rather, to give them money to spend, a kind of prize! Third Wave governments and parliamentary institutions were designed to make decisions at a leisurely pace, suited to a World in which it might take a week for a message to travel from Boston or New York to Philadelphia before it is read. Today is an Ayatollah seizing hostages in Teheran or coughs in Qom, officials in Washington, Moscow, Paris, or London may have to respond with decisions within minutes. The extreme speed of change catches governments and politicians off guard and contributes to their sense of helplessness and confusion, as the press makes plain. “Only three months ago,” writes Advertising Age, “the White House was telling consumers to shop hard before spending their bucks. Now the government is going all out to prod consumers into spending more freely.” Meanwhile it is getting to the point that even the Middle-Class and Upper Middle-Class need financial support. For instance, Princeton University, one of the top Universities in the World, is increasing graduate fellowship and stipend rates by an average of 25 percent to about $40,000 for doctoral candidates during the 10-month academic years. This is the University’s largest one-year increase in graduate student stipend rates to help support graduate students. The estimated cost of attendance for 2022-23 is $79,900 and includes Tuition: $57,690. Room charge: $11,000. Not only that, but petroleum prices are exploding, but not the speed of developments. However, economists are saying when the recession hits, it will be with “stunning speed and severity.” However, home prices and rents are still expected to rise, so it is a good time to invest in a house before rates and rents continue to rise. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Social change, too, is accelerating and putting additional pressure on the political decision-makers. In the United States of America, “as long as the migration of industry and population was gradual…it helped to unify the nation. However, within the past two years the process has burst beyond the bounds that can be accommodated by existing political institutions.” The politicians’ own careers have accelerated, often catching them by surprise. As recently as 1990, Joe Biden forecast that within his lifetime, no Black woman would ever be appointed to a high political post in the American government. Perhaps this explains why what happened to Anita Hill happened and why Kamala Harris is vice president. In the United Sates, Joe Who? shot into the White House some would say by force. What is more, although President Trump seemed to be winning, but the media and democrats really took advantage of him. It was Biden, not the outgoing Trump, who was battered with questions of how he would help the American people, about national policy, the energy crisis, the pandemic, and other issues who seemed to have no coherent speeches, other than “put me in office so we can break the glass ceiling for women, Black women, and Asian woman all at the same time, and I will pay off your student loan debt and give you $2,000 a month to get through the pandemic.” Yet, most people still have student load debts, college tuitions are soaring, and no pandemic relief has come to many in a year. The lame-duck Biden instantaneously has become, for practical purposes, a dead duck, because political time is now compressed, history moving too fast to permit for the traditional delays. Similarly, the “Honey Trap” with the press that this president has been enjoying is starting to see some truncation, as people start to wonder if this political party helping Americans, does really having the first this and that, and our feelings and emotions mean more than being rational and a patriotic American and doing what is best for our country? #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

The media is also starting to forecast a short career for the President because he does not seem to be coherent enough, nor display leadership skills to properly communicate with the public, handle events, deal with troubles and more information when he cannot even remember what he is saying or what team he is rooting for. This hotting up of the pace of political life, reflecting the generalized speedup of change, intensifies today’s political and government breakdown. Put simply, our leaders—forced to work through Third Wave institutions designed as fast as events require. Either the decisions come too latte or indecision takes over. Fiscal policy has been virtually unusable because it takes too long to get appropriate measures through Congress, even when a majority exits and it is sometimes because of the federal judges. The acceleration of change has overpowered the decisional capacity of our institutions, making today’s political structure obsolete, regardless of party ideology or leadership. These institutions are inadequate not only in terms of scale and structure but in terms of speed as well. And even this is not all. Not only do ordinary mortals find it hard to answer these questions, so do the experts. Corporate CEOs succeed one another like passengers pushing through a rush-hour turnstile: merging, divesting, kowtowing to the stock market; pursuing core competence one month, synergy the nest the latest management fad month later. They study the most recent economic forecasts, but many economists themselves are befuddled as they wander around in a cemetery of dead ideas. To decode this new World, we need to cut through the chatter of rear-window economists and business pundits who prattle about “business fundamentals.” We need to probe below the obsolete obvious. We must focus on the unexplored deep fundamentals, on which the so-called fundamental themselves depend. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Once we do, thing look different, les crazy, and previously unnoticed opportunities pop out of the shadows. Chaos, it turns out, is only part of the story. And chaos itself generates new ideas. Tomorrow’s economy, for example, will present significant business opportunities in fields like hyper-agriculture, neurostimulation, customized health care, nanoceuticals, bizarre new energy sources, streaming payment systems, smart transportation, flash markets, new forms of education, non-lethal weapons, desktop manufacturing, programmable money, risk management, privacy invasion sensors that tell us when we are being observed—indeed, sensors of all kinds—plus a bewildering myriad of other goods, services and experience. We cannot be sure when these will or will not turn profitable or how they will converge. However, understanding the deep fundamentals will reveal the existence, even now, of new needs and previously unidentified industries and sectors—a huge “synchronization industry,” for example, and a loneliness industry.” To forecast the future of wealth, we also need to look not just at the work we do for money but at the unpaid work all of us also do as “prosumers.” (Just think about how much unpaid output we all produce every day.) Many of us even have “third jobs” without even knowing it. Because prosuming is set to explode, the future of the money economy can no longer be understood, let alone forecast, apart from that of the prosumer economy. The two, in fact, are inseparable. Together they form a wealth system. And once we understand this—and the channels by which the two feed each other—we gain piercing insights into our private lives now and into the future. An age which has found a surer and swifter way to destroy the human species has done so because it gave so much enquiry, so much thought, to the nature of the atom. Why cannot it give fraction of that enquiry and that thought to the nature of mind, when the consequences would be so much more useful? #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Is there, can there be, such a thing on Earth as a paradise without sin? It does not now exist and it can exist in the future only if it is also a paradise without people. It was the Stocis who wrote that the wise human will not waste one’s energy and years in futile political endeavours if one fines one’s environment too corrupt. One need not be a materialist to reach the conclusion that perfect solutions of social, economic, or religious problems simply do not exist; there are only pallitives, not panaceas. The quietude on this planet grows less and less; the noise and turmoil more and more. The need of this inner life becomes greater but the possibility of realizing it becomes smaller. Yet the problem is not a new one’ only a recurring one. The course of nihilism, as travelled by the intelligent classes of our time, ends either in bitter communistic materialism or unprincipled anarchic amoralism or retrogressive Catholic or Hindu mysticism. However, do any of these neurasthenic terminals offer an adequate solution of the modern humans’ problem, comfortable home for the modern consciousness? Whoever is fully alive to twenty-first century needs and trends, cannot say tht they do. What can we gain by moving back in time? The crossroads at which we stand must be faced, not run away from. The attempt to renounce our times and leave our century will be severely defeated by the grim facts of these times, the harsh events of this century. There is probably no sanctuary in medievalism. Neither reason nor goodwill were able to force Europe to adopt a wiser and purer form of religion, so utter impoverishment and bloody war had to force her to think. Only an overwhelming realization that such a change is supremely urgent, supremely essential, and supremely fundamental, if civilized society is not to break down completely, will compel this reconstruction. And the situation created by entry into the postwar period provides this required but dearly bought realization. And what is trye of Europe, which suffered most during the war, will be true in a lesser degree of other parts of the World. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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Poverty Becomes Misery and the Poor Belong to Society Less and Less!

Integrity is honesty carried through the fibers of the being and the whole mind. The most certain way to succeed is always be in touch with the unlimited potential and the expanse of this marvelous instrument called the human kind. We have already found our attention drawn to isolated bodies of water as the possible sites of chemical activity basic to the aggregation of the simplest organic molecular units into more complex forms. We shall find further concentration on these primeval lakes to be profitable; for we have not yet exhausted the possibilities they offer for the development of organizations of matter leading toward life. There is a question that is sure to bother many readers as we continue to focus attention upon isolated bodies of water as the sites of major events of early chemical history. From what has gone before, it is clear that we are going to speak glibly of processes continuing for many millions of years. Yet geological evidence, at least that pertaining to more recent eras, would hardly justify our assigning a longevity of more than a few thousand years at the most to a typical enclosed body of water. The resolution of this seeming contradiction is one familiar to geologists. It is assumed that the actual sequences of events was an intermittent one: periods of hundreds or a few thousand years of chemical activity in the favourable environment of an enclosed pool were interspersed among dormant periods of hundreds of thousands or millions of years during which the partially developed organic sediments of earlier times were “out of action”—perhaps covered by volcanic material or trapped in the interior of a newly extruded mountain range. (This may well be an oversimplification. It is possible that important steps in the chemical development of complex from simpler organic forms occurred during these “inert” stages—under the influence of heart, pressure, and the juxtaposition of previously processed organic materials.) Initiation of new activity occurred when the restless stirrings of the Earth’s crust exposed some of this material again. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Perhaps circumstances then led to the formation of a new lake that dissolved the old deposits and introduced them into a further round of chemical processing; perhaps instead the old organic material, on reexposure, was picked up by the wind or by streams and carried to remote regions, part of it settling in existing lakes and seas and there by affecting the course of chemical history in these new domains. Thus, while for simplicity the follow discussion will treat the situation as though a typically chemically active body of water had indefinite longevity, the reader must understand that a long series of successive periods of activity and dormancy is in fact implied. The existence of such a pattern of sporadic activity will not affect our argument except to emphasize again that the processes with which we are concerned must have required an extremely long period of time for their completion. Fortunately, the one or two billion years that geologists allow us for these developments is also an extremely long period of time. In addition to the pattern of intermittency, some other features need to be added to the picture of an organically active lake. The concentration of the simple organic molecules that rained down from the sky and their ensuing gradual combination into more complex forms is only part of what must have gone on in these ancient chemical plants. There must also have been much activity involving inorganic materials. Dissolved minerals from the lake bed and nearby mountains must have introduced metallic compounds into water; volcanic gases escaping from the Earth’s interior must have contributed substantial quantities of hydrogen sulfide, H2S, and carbon dioxide, CO2. Under the accelerating influence of heat from volcanic activity presumably existing near the more interesting early pools, a bewildering variety of chemical transformations must have slowly occurred. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Certain chemical transformations would have had especial importance for the developments that lay ahead. This would have been true, for instance, of reactions resulting in the formation of energy-rich molecules. Very frequently such energy-supplying components are needed to cause small molecules to join and form the larger ones that we know are of major importance in the lifelike structures whose development we are attempting to trace. Reference has already been made, for example, to their role in providing the motive power required to hook amino acids together. It is, of course, unlikely that random interactions in the primitive lakes would have resulted in significant quantities of anything as effective as the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules that provide most of the energy for the metabolism of modern organisms. However, some kinds of configurations capable of transferring energy to other interacting substances would have occasionally formed. We shall have more to say later on about such important energy-rich molecules. Of course, there was nothing very biological about any of this early activity. Most of the transformation yielded compounds that we would regard as uninteresting by-products, in the sense of not contributing to the development of forms of organization of matter pertinent to life. Even so interesting a process as the linking together of several amino acids, for all its pioneering importance, still fell far short of the creation of the gigantic, precisely designed protein molecules of modern times. It the period of which we are speaking sophisticated molecular architecture could have hardly have existed. Countless primitive, proteinlike and nucleic acid-like molecules must have been formed, but surely nothing that would be accepted today as suitable construction material by any self-respecting living cell. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

With this general view of the “starting conditions,” let us see if we can trace some of the early developments that led to the gradual appearance of more complex organic materials. If we have such mobility in time and space that we could go back and determine the chemical composition of, say, a thousand of the primordial pools and repeat the measurements every hundred years, we would soon be struck by a curious circumstance: we would find the pools developing “individualities” of their own. Among the almost limitless number of possible chemical combinations of the simple organic and inorganic constituents present in the pools, we would find that some pools would “specialize” in some of these combinations and other pools would specialize in others. As inquiring scientists, we would then find it necessary to search for a nonvitalistic, purely physical explanation of this unexpected “purposiveness” of behaviour of our primitive chemical plants. A part of the explanation of the growing diversity in the chemical content of the pools would be easy to find: the pools did not all start out alike. Geological and metrological accidents led to differences in the dissolved minerals, in the continuing supply of volcanic gasses, in the concentration of the original atmospherically derived organic materials, in the extent and temperature of local hot spots, and the like. These differences would, by normal operation of the physically based laws of chemistry, affect the relative probabilities of different possible reactions and thereby, with the passage of time, contribute individuality to the chemical character of the pools The development of this degree of understanding would bring us to a critical point in our imaginary investigation. If we were not careful, we would be apt to assume that we had found the complete explanation for the growing diversity in the chemical composition of the pools, and move on to some other aspect of this study. This would be a mistake, for it would cause us to miss an important discovery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

If we have just continued our observations for another few centuries, we would sooner or later have stumbled across examples of sudden and dramatic changes in the chemical activity of the pools that could not be accounted for satisfactorily by detectable differences in the reacting ingredients. From time to time a pool would seem suddenly to develop a mind of its own; for it would take off on a new course of chemical activity featured by the rapid generation of complex products that it had previously manufactured in insignificant amounts, if at all. We shall find the explanation of this phenomenon more difficult than the earlier determination of the individuality-contributing effects of the starting conditions of the pools and more rewarding in terms of its contribution to our ultimate understanding of processes important to life. Learning should be suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity and joy. We worry about what our students will be tomorrow, yet we forget that they are somebody today. Teach them to do the right thing. Morality is living by the rules, but not all rules are compatible. Following one’s passionate heart to one’s true love is the right thing. Another right thing is fidelity. Teaching one that jealously, pain, and despair are wrong. Which of these two right things is more right than the other? Rules are too plentiful, too various. They contradict each other. It is impossible to obey all the rules all the time. Were I to try, I could locate my most outrageous conduct within a set of rules so adroitly chosen as to permit anything. Nevertheless, even so, I want to be decent about this. Is that a cop-out? Is “decency” but the refuge of the coward who quails at the hard choice of right and wrong? I want to be fair to others, but fair also to myself. Fairness is equality in the distribution of goods—as when a mother divides a cake in equal portions for her several children. However, what is equality is not possible? What is a clear gain for the one is a clear and unavoidable loss to the other? #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

It is raining. The light is gray. The raindrops streaking the window create an intimate whispering invitation. We are pretty clear about theft, murder, the beating of children, the torture of animals. It is in the quagmire of pleasures of the flesh, in the love and the caring that may or may not spring up around it, the promises we make the betrayals that follow those promises, the evasions we practice, the lies we tell—here, here is the agony of conscience, the confusion, the hunger for a god to tell us what is right and what is wrong. However, may the answer is right before us. Drop all this sophistry. You know what is right. Do it. The answer stares you in the face: obey the rules. The obvious rules, the simple, in-you-face rules. Have we not always known that we cannot have everything? Accept the boundaries, live within their limits and restrictions, and the problem of morality will have been solved. However, even the obvious must be examined. Is it sound? If this solution should come to be generally adopted, what consequences would follow? The person who is serious and conscientious about rule-observing is the perfectly moral human. Upright. Open. Nothing to hide. You know what one stands for, good as one’s word, one can count on this individual. One gets to work on time, never calls in sick, is prudent with one’s assets, exact in the contractual obligations, never shades figures on one’s tax returns. If this individual took a few discreet liberties here and there, no one would know, but this individual would know. One respects the rules, endows them with authority. No one has to keep an eye on this living soul. A careful and prudent individual, temperate, always looking more toward the rules one must be careful to obey than toward the ever-changing World with its shifting dangers and opportunities. One never flirts with an attractive individual, mindful that the slightest step in that direction might lead to adultery. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

What sort of World would it be if everybody were like that? Would it be an improvement on the World we have? Might it be Heaven? Certainly it would be different. We would have no more Newsoms, Bidens, Clintons for sure nor Kennedys, nor Roosevelts. It might be that no one I really love would be there. It would be a static society—or rather, one striving to be static, but slipping progressively out of touch with the changes taking place, unstoppably, around it and within it. And as that discrepancy increased, the efforts of the group to save itself, and its rules, by arresting change would become more rigid, more desperate, more punitive. A Grand Inquisitor would preside over the Tribunal, sentence miscreants to the pyre. Does not all creativity originate in boundary violation, in breaking through to realms outside the old limits? The stupid and the cautious tend to obey the rules: the stupid because they fail to recognize how easily the rules may be subverted with impunity, the cautious because they fear the group’s ability to punish. The intelligent and the bold tend to violate the rules: seeing the loopholes, the endless opportunities for evasion and concealment, and perceiving, further, how far the change—resistant rules have lagged behind a changing social reality, how benighted therefore some of these rules have come to be still asserting, as they do, a horse-and-buggy morality in an age of superhighways, they take liberties—so easily they may not even notice. Snap, crackle, and pop they did not, for Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) designed his cornflakes to sooth and numb all taste buds, from tongue to toe. The successful physician, a Seventh-Day Adventist greatly influenced by Sylvester Graham, had such a strong aversion to pleasures of the flesh that he spent the nine decades of his life without ever indulging in it. “The reproductive act,” Kellogg declared, “is the most exhausting of all vital acts. Its effect upon the undeveloped person is to retard growth, weaken the constitution and dwarf the intellect.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Dr. Kellogg never risked this. Even during his honeymoon, he and his new wife spent a chaste but bonding six weeks revising his books, Plain Facts about Sexual Life and The Proper Diet of Man. Afterward, Dr. Kellogg never faltered. If he felt any temptation, he must have staved it off with one of the many pleasures of the flesh-muting tools he urged on others: a spiceless, wholesome diet, routine exercise, hard work, daily bathing, and religion. In his own long life and marriage, Dr. Kellogg practiced what he preached. After one pretty young woman jilted him, he unexpectedly proposed to and married Ella Eaton, a king and intellectual nurse-in-training at his sanitarium. The honeymoon produced only clean copies of this manuscripts, and soon afterward, the chase, childless Kelloggs announced they planned to open their home to needy children. Forty-two children later, the Kellogg family was also a societal experiment: Could Kellogg love, and moral instruction salvage, even disadvantaged, abused youngsters from slums? Sadly, the answer seemed to be no. Most of the successful junior Kelloggs cam from good family backgrounds, while most tragically hopeless cases slouched forward into equally dissolute adulthood. Ella and John, their virginal foster and adoptive parents, lived together in their mansion, publicly respectfully of each other, privately affectionate, perpetually celibate. Much besides forty-two little people bound them together: their committed Christianity; their obsession with proper vegetarian eating and food preparation; their profound interest in child-rearing. After two decades of marriage, however, Ella fell ill and effectively withdrew into her own rooms, dying over twenty years later without ever having emerged again into the Kellogg World. Nothing suggests her virginity tormented her any more than his did John. What is certain, however, is that the Kelloggs constructed a unique marital relationship based on mutual respect, shared ideals and goals, and an unshakable will to avoid pleasures of the flesh, and they died as celibate as they had been born. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

There is, however, one answered question, namely, what is the function of the formulated laws for moral action? They appear abundantly in sacred texts that consecrate them and provide them with an almost unconditional validity. We must now ask: what is their significance within the structure developed up to this point? The answer lies in the word “wisdom.” They represent the wisdom of the past about humans, their relations to others and to oneself, one’s predicament in temporal existence, and the telos or inner aim of one’s being. Wisdom, in the later centuries of the ancient World, became (like logos) a divine power, mediating between God and the World and between God and humans. It was (again like logos) a principle of the divine self-manifestation in nature and history. According to the book of Job, God made the World while looking at “Wisdom” which was beside Him. In history it has inspired humans and showed them the right way; it has had revelatory power and it became embodied in Jesus as the Christ. Wisdom, in this sense, is the source of the tables of laws in many religions and cultures. From the point of view of humans, revelations, mediated by wisdom, are the result of both accumulated experiences and revelatory visions. As such, they are tremendous weight, but do not possess unconditional validity. They guide the conscious in concrete situations, but none of them, taken as law, has absolute validity. Even the Ten Commandments express not only living souls’ essential nature but also the wisdom and the limitations of an early feudal culture. Certainly there is risk in deviating from the wisdom embodied in a concrete tradition. However, there is also risk in accepting a tradition without questioning it. The former is an external and an internal risk, the latter only an internal risk. The former brings isolation and attack, the latter safety and praise. However, accepting or trespassing traditional morals is justified only if done with self-scrutiny, often in the pain of a spilt conscience, and with the courage to decide even when the risk of error is involved. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Most human beings follow the guidance of the moral tradition when they obey the moral imperative. Everyone needs such guidance for one’s daily life and its innumerable large and small ethical questions. A considerable amount of moral habit is necessary in order to fulfill the demands of an average existence. Therefore, the tables of laws, which are commandments of the divine-human wisdom of all generations, are gifts of grace, although they can become destructive when elevated to absolute validity and substituted for agape and its power to listen to the voice of the “now.” You hear economists saying the that the economy is doing well, and for many it is. The political attitude toward poverty is no longer part of their fighting economy theory. As labour economists, they do not have solidarity with the poor. When poverty used to be discussed by socialists—these same people younger—they theory was that in the capitalist system labour as a whole must be at the bottom and must become poorer, because the failing return on investment and its pressure on wages, because of the concentration of ownership and control and the increase of inequality, and the periodic crises and unemployment. Therefore the fight against poverty was solidary; it was the fight to improve the whole system in order to improve the position of labour. However, now the rate of interest does not fall; they system cushions its crises; there is high employment (with significant exceptions) or insurance. There is certainly a concentration of monopolistic control, but either inequality is less (that is debatable) or, certainly, workers on a fairly high standard do not much bother who has millions. Thus, nostalgic solidarity with poverty turns into philanthropy—and even into exclusion, on issues where the less affluent are unassimilable into the abundant system. One of the speakers at this conference where poverty was the theme, a labour leader, was asked whether the new income pyramid did not resemble a middle-aged gentleman. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

I did not once hear the word “proletariat,” and that made sense. For the word had been used, bitterly and nobly, in a different theory: “producers of offspring,” paid by the iron law of wages just enough to reproduce labour. Our present poor are more like the ancient Roman proletariat, producers of offspring kept on the dole for political reasons. It was clear, too, why the word “do-gooder” had fallen into mild disrepute. It used to refer, like “muckraking,” to quixotic attempts to reform the system; not it is diminishing suffering, accepting the system. (Muckraking, in turn, has become the protest of Angry Young Men.) For those excluded from the high standard and its organization, it is becoming harder to maintain any American standard at all. It is characteristic of systems geared to high pay that is hard to work for low pay. There are fewer such jobs; those there are subject to grueling exploitation without benefit of union. Low pay generally means much harder work under worse conditions. Prices are, of course, geared to the high standard; and the use of any commodity tends to be increasingly tied up with the use of many other commodities and services that cost money. For instance, it is very grim to be poor and run a jalopy. The insurance costs three times as much as the car. The old car, which is safe at 50 miles per house, is effectually barred from parkways made for cars at 65 miles per hour. The prince of gasoline pays for the parkways. The price of repairs is geared to the new cars. It costs money to have any job at all, but transportation and lunches, presentable clothes and laundry, are priced for good wages. Unless one is capable of a different, incentive or community culture altogether, a poor person can afford little recreation. The popular culture is high priced and one gets the dregs of it. One’s poverty tend to degenerate into unintelligence. One cannot afford presentable shoes for the kids to go to school; they are ashamed and will not go. Thus, poverty becomes misery, and the poor belong to society less and less. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Rose Ashby walks to the dry cleaner’s to pick up her old but finest dinner dress. Although shaken at the cost of having it cleaned, Rose tells the sympathetic girl behind the counter, “Do not worry. It does not matter. I will not be needing the money any more.” Walking through the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, she still wishes it had been Miami. The west costs of the fountain-of-youth peninsulas is not as warm as the east. If only Chet had left more insurance money, Rose could have afforded Miami. In St. Petersburg, Rose failed to unearth de Leon’s promised fount. Last week, she told the doctor she felt lonely and depressed. He said she should perk up. She had everything to live for. What does he know? Has he lost a husband like Chet and his left breast to cancer to cancer all in one year? Has he suffered arthritis all his life? Were his ovaries so bad he had to undergo a hysterectomy? Did he have to suffer through menopause just to end up alone without family or friends? Did he have to live in a dungeon? Is his furniture worn, his carpet threadbare? What does he know? Might his every day be the last one for him? As Rose turns into the walk to her white public housing cinderblock apartment building, fat Mrs. Green asks if she is coming to the community center that evening. Who needs it? The social worker did say Rose should come. Since Rose was in such good healthy, she could help those not so well as she. Help them do what? Finger-paint like children? Make baskets like insane people? Sew? Who can see to sew? Besides, who would appreciate it? Who would thank her? Who could she tell about her troubles? Who cares? When she told the doctor she could not sleep, he gave her the prescription but said that all elderly people have trouble sleeping. What does he know? Does he have a middle-aged daughter who can only think about her latest divorce, or grandchildren who only acknowledge her birthday check by the endorsement on the back? Are all his friends dead and gone? Is all the money from his dead husband’s insurance used up? What does he know? Who could sleep in this dungeon? Who could deal with the noise from the street gang that moved in? Who has to live in fear about be assaulted, robbed, living on the streets, or becoming sick from the deplorable conditions? #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

Back in her apartment, Rose washes and sets her hair. It is good she had to do it herself. Look at this hair. So thin, so sparse, so frowsy. What would hair dressers think? Then make-up. Base. Rouge. Lipstick. Bright red. Perfume? No! No cheap perfume for Rose today. Remember the bottles of Joy Chet would but for her? He always wanted to have the best. He would boast that she had everything, and that she never had to work a day in her life for it. “She doesn’t have to lift her little finger,” Chet would say, puffing on his cigar. Where is the joy now? Dead and gone. With Chet. Rose manages a wry laugh at the play on words. Slipping into her dinner dress, she looks into the dresser mirror. “It’s good you can’t see this face now, Chet. How old and ugly it looks.” Taking some lavender notepaper from the drawer, she stands at the dresser to write. Why didn’t anyone warn her the growing old was like this? It is so unfair. But they don’t care. People don’t care about anyone except themselves. Leaving the note on the dresser, she suddenly feels excited. Breathing hard now, she rushed to the sink—who could call a sink in the counter in the living room a kitchen?—and gets a glass of water. Trying to relax, Rose arranges the folds in her skirt as she settles down on the chaise. Carefully sipping the water as she takes all the capsules so as to not smear her lipstick, Rose quietly begins to sob. After a lifetime of tears, these will be her last. Her note on the dresser is short, written to no one and to everyone. You don’t know what it is like to have to grow old and die. In the New World society, the elderly are more likely to commit suicide than people in any other age group. About 19 of every 100,000 persons over the age of 65 in the United States of American commit suicide. Elderly persons commit over 19 percent of all suicides in the United States of America, yet they account for only 12 percent of the total population. Many factors contribute to this high suicide rate. As people grow older, all too often they become ill, lose close friends and relatives, lose control over their lives, and lose status in our society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Such experiences may result in feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, depression, or inevitability among aged persons and so increase the likelihood that they will attempt suicide. In one study, 44 percent of elderly people who committed suicide gave some indication that their act was prompted by the fear of being placed in a nursing home. Also, the suicide rate of elderly people who have recently lost a spouse is relatively high. The risk is greatest during the first years of bereavement, but it remains high in later years as well. Elderly persons are typically more determined than younger person in their decision to die and they give fewer warnings of their intent, so their success rate is much higher. Apparently one of every four elderly persons who attempts suicide succeeds. Given the resolve of aged persons and their physical decline, some people argue that older persons who want to die, are clear in their thinking, should be allowed to carry out their wishes. However, clinical depression appears to play an important role in as many as 60 percent of suicides by the elderly, suggesting that more elderly persons who are suicidal should be receiving treatment for their depressive disorders. The suicide rate among the elderly in the United States of America is lower in some ethic groups. Although Native Americans have the highest overall suicide rate, for example, the rate among elderly Native Americans is relatively low. The aged are held in high esteem by Native Americans and looked to for the wisdom and experience they have acquired over the years, and this may help account for their low suicide rate. Such high regard is in sharp contrast to the loss of status often experienced by elderly European Americans. Similarly, the suicide rate is only one-third as high among elderly African Americas as among elderly European Americans. One reason for this low suicide rate may be the pressures of assailing African Americans: “only the strongest survive.” Those who reach an advanced age have overcome great adversity and often feel proud of what they have accomplished. Because reaching the golden years is not in itself a form of success for capitalistic Americans, their attitude toward aging is more negative. Another possible explanation is that mature African Americans have successfully overcome the rage that prompts many suicides in younger African Americans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Our political institutions also reflect an out-of-date organization of knowledge. Every government has ministries or departments devoted to discrete fields such as finance, foreign affairs, defense, agriculture, commerce, post office, or transportation. The United States of America’s Congress and other legislative bodies have committees similarly set aside to deal with problems in these fields. What no Third Wave government—even the most centralized and authoritarian—can solve is the inter-weave problem: how to integrate the activities of all these units so they can produce orderly, wholistic programs instead of a mishmash of contradictory and self-canceling effects. If there is one thing we should have learned in the past few decades, it is that all social and political problems are interwoven—that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from another—itself a product of the industrial mentality—creates only confusion and disaster. Yet the organizational mentality—creates only confusion and disaster. Yet the organizational structure of government mirrors precisely this Third Wave approach to reality. This anachronistic structure leads to interminable jurisdictional power struggles, to the externalization of costs (each agency attempting to solve its own problems at the expense of another), and to the generation adverse side effects. This is why each attempt by government to cure a problem leads to a rash of new problems, often worse than the original one. Governments typically attempt to solve this inter-weave problem through further centralization—by naming a “czar” to cut through the red tape. One makes big changes, blind to their destructive side effects—or one piles on so much additional red tape oneself that one is soon dethroned. For centralization of power no longer works. Another desperation measure is the creation of innumerable interdepartmental committees to coordinate and review decisions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

The result, however, is the construction of yet another set of baffles and filters through which decisions have to pass—and a further complexification of the bureaucratic labyrinth. Our existing governments and political structures are obsolete because they view the Old World through the Third Wave lenses. In turn, this aggravates another problem. It is an inexorable fact, which no politician can controvert by other facts but only by windy oratory and glib promises, that the causes of international tension friction and war will never be removed except by removing the egotisms, the greeds, the wraths, and other negatives from humans’ nature. Until then, we shall get rid of one old cause only to find a new one springing up in its train. Until they inwardly recognize and publicly realize the overriding importance of thought and feeling in these matters, their remedies will be illusory, their hopes denied, and their forebodings fulfilled by the course of events. Those who are led by religious enthusiasts to expect a miraculous conversion of humankind to goodwill peace and wisdom overnight, expect the impossible and are preparing themselves for bitter disappointment. Human character grows gradually; it does not improve by magical transformation. It is better to be realistic, to face the unpalatable truth, than to surrender ourselves to wishful thinking and be deceived thereby. For emotion and passion are still the real rulers of humankind, say what you will. How society has always had its problems and even more so in our times. However, the larger the number of problems, the larger number of agencies seeking to solve them grows. Why do we have to solve every problem with which the World is confronted? Why can we not leave the alone, indifferent, and attended solely to our own problems? Why must we meddle in affairs we ill understand? The answer is that we fail to see that the World is itself the great problem for which there is no solution. There can be no perfect solution to the World’s troubles because there can be no permanent one. All changes, all is transient. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

There would be more peace in countries and between nations, in families and between neighbours, if people stopped meddling in other people’s affairs or interfering in each other’s lives or fanatically forcing their doctrinaire ideas and beliefs where these are repugnant. Love is the one remedy for all ills. We must be lovers and at once the impossible becomes possible. Our history for these 1,000 years has not been the history of kindness but of selfishness. Love would put a new face on this weary old World, in which we dwell as enemies too long. Love will accomplish that which force could never achieve. Once or twice in history, kindness has been tried in illustrious instances, with signal success. Love is victorious in attack, and invulnerable in defense; Heaven arms with love those it would not see destroyed. Censorious minds have doubtless much to pick on which is wrong or rotten in our society, but until they have something better to replace it with, some really worthwhile alternative, of what use is the destruction and liquidation of that which has been built up? The spiritual progress of human beings’ winds upward by devious routes, by slow wanderings, and by periodic lapses. However, its ultimate character as progress remains assured. Slowly, out of all these wartime reflections and peacetime crises, these dangers, agonies, and calamities, the World is becoming aware that it must find for its day-to-day activities a strong support, a better faith, and a truer ideology. Many leaders such as Churchill, and even the Pope, have talked of a new World to be built. Their aims are excellent but it will not suffice to change things externally alone; people must be educated aright, which means they must be educated in truth. The time to sit in seclusion or to enjoy one’s inner peace all alone will then have gone. Service and Action will be the keynote. The justification of the higher philosophy is what it can do ultimately, not merely what it can think. It alone has a sane view because it alone knows the need of a sound foundation in correct thinking plus an active effort afterwards, erected on such a foundation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

How hard this ultimate teaching is as a way of life until one becomes habituated to it! For one has to feel that all the World is but a dream, even horrid wars, and yet one will have to know it as actual and act as though it were real. For ultimately it is real. Just as all the events, people, and objects of a dream are after all nothing but mind, in essence, because they are ideas and Mind is their reality, so in this World we have to understand that that which is regarded Mind, unified, all around us is the real. It is because ignorant people concentrate only on their material beliefs, taking body and environment as matter, and regarding everything as individual and separate, that they can never get at this higher realization. If one remembers that all golden rings, watches, tie pins, and so on, are in essence only one substance—gold—so one may remember that all bodies, things, and events are in essence also one substance—Mind. The actualized Christians are the people who holds firmly to this double “vision” or rather understanding and has made it one’s own by unremitting effort. So much progress that humans hope for from a science-based, politically guided civilization turns out to be a chimera. There is no good that science gave them without its costly price, no promise held out by political shifts without its revelation of the evil in humans. Real peace, true progress, genuine prosperity can come only by a different road. Those utopians who look for a quick abatement of human selfishness—and a consequent quick abatement of all the ghastly evils, sins, and comes which come out of it—look in vain. However, what cannot come quickly on a mass scale can, and will, come from scattered individuals. First the killing instinct will have to go, then the fighting instinct will have to follow. To eliminate the frictions in the World it would be necessary to eliminate those between human beings. Those who do not know that human evolution moves through double rhythms of ascension and declension, talk cheerfully of an increasing spiritual revival moving triumphantly to the complete change of our species. However, the fact is that what we aww are vestiges of medieval faith rather than a rising spirituality. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Even if the World crashed in a nightmare of hate, evil, and ruin all around us, those who gave their allegiance to Goodness and Wisdom were not wrong not their efforts a total failure. The nations can use nuclear energy to explode bombs or they can use it to power engines: they must choose between these two alternatives. If they try to evade the choice and to have both, they will end my losing both in the annihilation of nuclear war. As of now, we grapple with truth, lies, markets, and money. Today’s wealth revolution will unlock countless opportunities and new life trajectories, not only for creative business entrepreneurs but for social, cultural, and educational entrepreneurs as well. It will open fresh possibilities for slashing poverty both at home and around the globe. However, it will accompany this invitation to a glowing future with a warning: Risks are not merely multiplying but escalating. The future is not for the fainthearted. Today emails and blogs bombard us, they are life for so many people and businesses. EBay marks marketers of us all. Corporate and government megascandals burst into the headlines. Drugs are belatedly pronounced too dangerous and yanked off the market. Robots go to Mars and land with exquisite precision. Meanwhile, criminal street gangs from Los Angeles roam across Central America and build a quasi-army. To escape—or at least forget—what appears like chaos, millions turn to television, where “reality TV” fakes reality. Thousands form “flash mobs” and gather to have pillow fights, popcorn, and movie nights. Elsewhere, players of online games pay thousands of dollars in real money for nonexistent, virtual swords that their virtual selves can use to win virtual castles or maidens. Irreality spreads. More important, institutions that once lent coherence, order and stability to society—schools, hospitals, families, courts, regulatory agencies, trade unions—flail about in crisis. And it is against this background that America’s trade deficit soars to unprecedented levels. Its national budget staggers like it is coming around from general anesthesia. The World’s finance ministers wonder out loud if they should risk triggering a global depression by recalling the billions they lent to Washington. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Meanwhile, China, we are told-again and again—is certain to become the next World Superpower, dethroning the United States of America and tearing apart the rules-based international system that America and its allies have built since the end of World War II. The United States of America faces myriad conventional and unconventional threats from organizations from abroad. Yet, China wants to achieve the World’s next superpower by primarily going after economic, industrial, and technological targets that will offer competitive advantage to Chinese economic and technological sectors. Where it is these blueprints may have been borrowed from America’s enameled steel, stainless steel, or anodized aluminum flat files. In order to surpass the United States of America, China needs to continue its economic growth and technologically outmatch the United States of America and the result of the World. Already China under current president Xi Jinping is a global superpower. With the World’s second-largest economy, a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, a modernized armed force, and an ambitious space program, China has the potential to become number one. One of the things needed in this World to generate capital is people. China has 1.42 billion, that is compared to the 333 million Americans. That is important because while China has all these people, their GDP is approximately $15 trillion (USA), and the United States of America has a GDP of 21 trillion. This is important because as more Chinese grow out of poverty and start working, this will increase their GDP. However, it is also interesting to note the America has a much smaller population and still a higher GDP. China has an army of 4,015,000 personnel, and America has an America of 2,233,050. To stay number one, America will need to produce more college graduate with high paying jobs to build up GDP and also bulk up its army. In this case, visually, numbers do matter. Nonetheless, the combination of economic high-wire acts and institutional failures leaves individuals back home face-to-face with potentially devastating personal problems. They question if they will ever receive the pensions for which they have worked, or whether they can afford the rocketing costs of gasoline and health care. They agonize about appalling schools. They worry about whether crime, drugs, and an anything-goes morality will destroy civil life. How, everyone wants to know, will this seeming chaos affect out wallets? Will we even have a wallet? #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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