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That I Did Always Love—God Fumbles at Your Spirit and Life Hath Immortality
Our souls closing to each other, the inevitable blindness between Maker and Fledgling. The only fence against the World is thorough knowledge of it. Many people often wonder why people victimize them, why someone might stalk then, and why someone will just not leave them along? There is a dialectical relationship between apathy and violence. To live in apathy provokes violence. Violence is the ultimate destructive substitute which surges in to fill the vacuum where there is no relatedness. There are degrees of violence, from the relative normal shock effect of many forms of modern art, through pornography and obscenity—which achieve their desired reaction through violence to our forms of life—to the extreme pathology of assassinations and the murders of the moors. When inward life dries up, when feeling decreases and apathy increases, when one cannot affect or even genuinely touch another person, violence flares up as a daimonic necessity for contact, a mad drive forcing touch in the most direct way possible. This is one aspect of the well-known relationship between sexual feelings and crimes of violence. To inflict pain and torture at least proves that one can affect somebody. In the alienated state of mass communication, the average citizen knows dozen of TV personalities who come smiling into one’s living room of an evening—but one oneself is never known. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
In this state of alienation and anonymity, painful for anyone to bear, the average person may well have fantasies which hover on the edge of pathology. The mood of the anonymous person is, if I cannot affect or touch anybody, I can at least shock you into some feeling, force you into some passion through wounds and pain; I shall at least make sure we both feel somethings, and I shall force you to see me and know that I also am here! Many deviant people have forced the group to take cognizance of one by destructive behavior; and though one is condemned, at least the community notices the individual. To be actively hated is almost as good as to be actively liked; it breaks down utterly unbearable situation of anonymity and aloneness. One cannot fully appreciate the nature of alienation without considering one specific aspect of modern life: it is routinization, and the repression of the awareness of the basic problems of human existence. We touch here on the universal problem of life. People have to earn their daily bread, and this always a more or less absorbing task. One has to take car of the many time and energy-consuming tasks of daily life, and is enmeshed in a certain routine necessary for the fulfillment of those tasks. One builds a social order, conventions, habits and ideas, which help one to perform what is necessary, and to live with one’s follow mortals with a minimum friction. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
It is characteristic of all culture that it builds a human-made, artificial World, superimposed on the natural World in which mortals live. However, mortals can fulfill oneself only if one remains in touch with the fundamental facts of one’s existence, if one can experience the exaltation of love and solidarity, as well as the tragic fact of one’s aloneness and of the fragmentary character of one’s existence. If a person is completely enmeshed in the routine and in the artifacts of life, one cannot see anything but the human-made, common sense appearance of the World, one loses one’s touch with the grasp of oneself and the World. Apathy is a curious state. Apathy seems to be a miracle of protection by which a personality in utter fiasco rests until it can do something else. The longer the situation goes unmet, the more apathy is prolonged; and it sooner or later becomes a character state. This affectlessness is a shrinking-up in the winds of continuous demands, a freezing in the face of hyperstimuli, letting the current go by since one fears one would be overwhelmed if one responded to it. No one who has ever ridden the subway at rush hour, with its cacophonous din and hordes of anonymous humanity, will be surprised at this. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
It is not difficult to appreciate how people living in a schizoid age have to protect themselves from tremendous overstimulation—protect themselves from the barrage of words and noise over the radio and TV, protect themselves from the assembly line demands of collectivized industry and gigantic factory-modeled multiversities. In a World where numbers inexorably take over as our means of identification, like flowing lava threatening to suffocate and fossilize all breathing life in its path; in a World where normality is defined as keeping your cool; where sex is so available that the only way to preserve any inner center is to learn to have intercourse without committing yourself—in such a schizoid World, which young people experience more directly since they have not had time to build up the defenses which dull the senses of their elders, it is not surprising that will and love have become increasingly problematic and even, as some people believe, impossible of achievement. Apathy is the withdrawal of the will and love, a statement that they do not matter, a suspension of commitment. It is necessary in times of stress and turmoil; and the present greater quantity of stimuli is a form of stress. We find in every culture the conflict between routine and the attempt to get back to the fundamental realities of existence. To help in this attempt has been one of the functions of art and religion, even though religion itself has eventually become a new routine. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Even the most primitive history of mortals shows us an attempt to get in touch with the essence of reality by artistic creation. Primitive mortals are not satisfied with the practical function of their tools and weapons, but strives to adorn and beautify them, transcending their utilitarian function. Aside from art, the most significant way of breaking through the surface of routine and of getting in touch with the ultimate realities of life is to be found in what may be called the general term of ritual. I am referring here to ritual in the broad sense of the word, as we find it in the performance of a Greek drama, for instance, and not only to rituals in the narrower religious sense. What was the function of the Greek drama? Fundamental problems of human existence were presented in an artistic and dramatic form, and participating in dramatic performance, the spectator—though not as a spectator in our modern sense of the consumer—was carried away from the sphere of daily routine and brought in touch wit oneself as a human being, with the roots of one’s existence. One touched the ground with one’s feet, and in this process gained strength by which one was brought back to oneself. Whether we think of the Greek drama, the medieval passion play, or an Indian dance, whether we think of Hindu, Jewish, or Christian rituals, we are dealing with various forms of dramatization of the fundamental problems of human existence, with an acting out of the very same problems which are thought out in philosophy and theology. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
What is left of such dramatization of life in modern culture? Almost nothing. Mortals hardly ever gets out of the realm of mortal-made conventions and things, and hardly every breaks through the surface of one’s routine, aside from grotesque attempts to satisfy the needs for a ritual as we see it practiced in lodges and fraternities. The only phenomenon approaching the meaning of a ritual, is the participation of the spectator in competitive sports; here at least, one fundamental problem of human existence is dealt with: the fight between mortals and the vicarious experience of victory and defeat. However, what a primitive and restricted aspect of human existence, reducing the richness of human life to one partial aspect! If there is a fire, or a car collision in a big city, scores of people will gather and watch. Millions of people are fascinated daily by reportings of crimes and by detective stories. They religiously go to movies in which crime and passion are the two central theme. All this interest and fascination is not simply an expression of bad taste and sensationalism, but of a deep longing for a dramatization of ultimate phenomena of human existence, life and death, crime and punishment, the battle between mortal and nature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, while Greek drama dealt with these problems on a high artistic and metaphysical level, our modern drama and ritual are crude and do not produce any cathartic effect. All this fascination with competitive sports, crime and passion, shows the need for breaking through the routine surface, but the way its satisfaction shows the extreme poverty of our solution. Conflicts occur at all levels of human experience. Rather than speak of mental health as a goal, we use the concept of self-actualization to describe the behaviors in healthy, happy, productive, and life-affirming people. Ways to uncover or freeing the hidden self are Sensitivity Training and Basic Encounter Groups. However, sometimes in society there are individuals or groups of people who know that they are collectively mentally ill and they do not seek help, instead they all band together and accept each other are they are, even when they are a danger to themselves and the community. It is usually not until they seriously hurt someone or are caught in some other criminal act that they are forced to seek help or incarcerated. As stated before, some people target individuals and hurt them because they want that person to know they exist and want to force that person to think about them by torturing and hurting that individual. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
Although people were becoming more and more aware of the orderly relation of the physical Universe, up until about two hundred years ago people were still tied to a spirit-demon model to explain their behavior. Psychology comes from two Greek words, psyche (soul, mind) and logos (orderly expression). Originally, it meant the orderly study of the soul or mind, but now it generally means the systematic study of behavior. Some psychologists prefer another definition: The systematic study of conscious or unconscious behavior. Modern psychology grew out of philosophical and physiological explanations of human behavior. Physiological explanations of human behavior are those which concentrate on the body, rather than the mind or emotion. Those who used the scientific method to study human beings began to assume they could be understood rationally, like the rest of the World, through a systematic study of their observable behavior. To a large extent psychology is the scientific study of behavior. Its goals are to develop a descriptive scientific language about behavior, to interpret and explain behavior, and to use the information this gained to improve the human condition. Inborn patterns and instincts exist within each person. When these come into conflict with social requirements and teachings, varying degrees of psychological disorder results. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
Some people enter an introduction psychology course feeling that psychology is relevant only to sick people. Others think it is an effective device to manipulate others. (That is the meaning people usually have in mind when they say, “Wow, did I ‘psych’ that person out!”) I am studying psychology because after being a victim of crimes starting from when I was a teenager up until the present, I wanted to know why an individual kept stalking and harassing me and even attempted to kill me when I did not really know this person. This person is much older than myself and was a customer at my job and for more than half of my life he and his friends have been terrorizing me and I wanted to know why. In therapy, they could not answer my questions, and in group therapy, I felt it was a little too much to open up about. I would ask my elders and was always told that I do not want to understand those people. Beside law enforcement handling the situation, as it is still under investigation, a person needs to understand why a person would attach themselves to one like that and not move on. Well, that question has now been answered. They want to be recognized and hurt you to get that recognition. For them, being hated and just as important as being loved. People who like to victimize others are emotionally disturbed, and their humanity is incomplete, for it has never astonished them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
It is not totally unheard of that monsters exit in our community and are allowed to spend years and decade preying on the unsuspecting, and are protected by people in power and allowed to continue abusing others, as if it is their God given right. Look at what is going on in Hollywood with certain actors who have taken advantage of men and women, and several of them, for decades and gotten away with it up until recent. Look Lawrence Gerard Nassar, who was accused of molesting at least 250 girls and young women and one young male, these claims date back nearly 30 years. And then, of course, there is the football coach Gerald Arthur Sandusky who was arrested and charged with 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys for over 15 years. You cannot tell me that of all these victims no one spoke up, no one went to the police, and that the community did not hear these victim’s stories, see their physical and emotion wounds, notice the changes in their behavior and/or appearance. Did not see their grades drop, and them engaging in risky behaviors as a way of acting out and seeking attention. It is even possible that the community harassed some of these victims and make fun of them for speaking up. While some of these abusers are still facing charges, others have been sentenced and because of the severity of their crimes, the number of victims, and their age they will spend life in prison. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Sometimes getting help is a lot harder than people realize because for one, people do not want to speak up, and also because when you reach out, sometimes people are put in place to silence you, shame you, or make you feel like it is your fault that you are a victim. Thankfully, there are organizations like Time’s Up for women. However, there are still no organizations dedicated to seeking justice for men. And also, some people are scared to talk to the police because they feel like someone might retaliate against them, which has happened to many victims. Many people actually die before they get help, some lose their minds, and others experience death by suicide. People say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but when you have been terrorized for more than half of your life, things start to look different. Some people think they only want their voice will be heard is by ending their life, that it is the only way they can escape, or that God wants them to be a martyr. Some people are more gifted than others. Whatever the case may be, we live in a society that needs balance. However, the more aware you are of yourself and your World, the more control you will have over your own life. Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that noting interest people more than people, even if it is only one’s own person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
The process of growth involved asking good questions and struggling for objective answers to stimulate better questions. Fully human people appreciate their own uniqueness and individuality. Many parents teach their children try to copy some imaginary perfect human being. However, each person is unique, and healthy people appreciate their own special qualities. Fully human people are aware of the common bond they have with all other people. They know that they are like other people in having physical and emotional needs that must be expressed and satisfied. They look for the common thread in all human experiences. They recognize that differences such as nationality or religion are artificially imposed and less important than the similarities among humankind. Also, if you have been a victim of crimes(s), sometimes you may even lose your family support, and even your friends may abandon you and turn on you. You would be surprised at how material gain, wealth, or money can buy loyalty. Some people tend to idolize celebrities and think that they are amazing people and love their fans and would never do anything to hurt a fan, but sometimes even a celebrity will use you if it means they get a second chance at their failing career. It may seem like no one is on your side, but keep your faith in God and keep trying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Fully human people know they are fully responsible for their own existence. They make their own choices as to who they will be. They look for no external system or authority to give their life meaning. Remember, God is inside of your and your body is his temple. Sometimes people use drugs and alcohol to escape reality on occasion, but they realize that these reduce their ability to be responsible for their own choices. Fully human people do not demand perfection but try to fulfill their own potential. They recognize their mistakes and accept this as much as their ability to succeed. They use neither their success nor their failures to prove that they are superior or inferior to other people. And although you may be reaching legal age, but or still a minor, or a young adult, listen to the advice you were given as a kid and stay away from strangers. Often the older, much older adults who want to be your friend may seem nice, but they probably have ulterior motives that you cannot sense because you are too young and do not have experience. And that is what some people are depending on. It takes tremendous courage to resist the lure of appearances. Fully human people value human beings above material goods. They reject any value system that places the accumulation of wealth above the welfare of people. They strongly feel that human rights are far more important than material rights. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
Without a consciousness of truth itself doubt of truth would be impossible. The anxiety of meaninglessness is conquered where the ultimate meaning is. We have to experience step after step the lack of meaning in the different levels of reality which we enter, works through, and leave. As long as we walk ahead on this road the anxieties of guilt and condemnation are also conquered. They are not absent. Guilt can be acquired on every level, partly through a failure to fulfill its intrinsic demands, partly through a failure to proceed beyond the level. However, as long as the certainty of final fulfillment is given, the anxiety of guilt does not become anxiety of condemnation. There is automatic punishment accord to the law of karma. Fully human people recognize they have a capacity for enjoyment and pleasure. They see life as time for fun. They are not afraid of pleasure and seek to share it with other people. This allows them to still possess a level of innocence and be open to spontaneous enjoyment of life. Fully human people try to be real and open in their relationships with others. They are willing to risk other people’s reactions to their open expression of feelings. They use openness and authenticity, not to manipulate or control, but to share knowledge of themselves with others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The true experience of the presence of power is the mystical element of the person-to-person encounter with God. The Savior is putting his name in our hearts. And we are feeling the pure love for Christ for others and ourselves. Our mortal life is designed by a loving God to be a test and source of growth for each of us. Since the beginning, the tests have not been easy. We face trails that come from having mortal bodies. All of us live in a World where Satan’s war against truth and against our personal happiness is becoming more intense. The World and our lives can seem to be in increasing commotion. However, the loving God who allowed these tests for us also designed a sure way to pass through them. We may be momentarily disheartened, remember, life is not meant to be easy. Trials must be borne and grief endured along the way. “For with God, nothing shall be impossible,” reports Luke 1.37. We are children of God and created in his image, entitled through our worthiness to receive revelation to help with our righteous endeavors. “The Lord is God, and the Spirit beareth record, and the record is true, and the truth abideth forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.39. We are promised that God’s Spirit will always be with us. Because of these promises, the Savior is the rock upon which we can stand safely and without fear in every storm we face. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
God knows and loves each one of us. He knows our names as we know his. He knows our troubles. He has experienced them. God’s name will be in our hearts and fixed in our memory. “Wise words, she said ‘We had better run for it now.’ A timely escape, we laugh until we fall down. Now we are writing on the bathroom walls, always sleeping on someone’s floor, walking around the streets like we rule them all. They know we kick around here. These days are ours. Somebody is knocking at the bathroom door. We always stay a little longer. Nobody hears what we say, hidden in the games that we play,” reports Emma Hewitt (These Day Are Ours). Throughout recorded history (and probably since before it was recorded) mortals have displayed some interesting and puzzling behaviors. These behaviors are varied, and yet have in common the desire or need or ability to get out of the human skin and experience something beyond. This technical definition of this is mortal’s self-transcending behavior. Mortals have always apparently always experienced or tried to experience some sort of shedding of the limitations of human existence, and one has used a number of techniques to do so. The First Reflection and the Second Reflection. The First involves the uses of bodily senses and reason. The subject is separated from the object being perceived by the subject, spectator view of the World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
The Second Reflection transcends or rises above science, technology, and objective knowledge. It s the attempt to reach beyond human thought into the realm of Being. True freedom is achieved when the self is conscious of the many rich possibilities of insight and development that are open to it. In other words, mortals are free only when one opens oneself up to hope, fidelity, and love and when one understands that freedom points beyond itself to transcendent reality. Love and intelligence are related to freedom, and they are the most concrete as well as the most creative things in the World. A correct understanding of Heavenly Father’s character can change how we see ourselves and others and help us to understand God’s tremendous love for his children and his great desire to help us become like him. An incorrect view of God’s nature can leave us feeling as if we are incapable of every making it back to his presence. However, redemption comes through the Holy Messiah—Freedom of choice (agency) is essential to existence and progression—Adam fell that mortals might be—Mortals are free to choose liberty and eternal life. People may feel like they are making a mark and just coy, but even God and tie and bend and break steel. “And because of the intercession for all, all mortals come unto God; wherefore, they stand in the presence of him, to be judged of him according to the truth and holiness which is in one,” reports 2 Nephi 2.10. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
What Mystery Pervades but Nature is a Stranger High from the Earth
We stood on the front porch, like dwarves underneath the columns. The blue light was suddenly soothing and the moment lost its proportions. It was like eternal dusk here in the country. I could hear the birds of the night, the distant unquiet waters of the lake. Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of nonbeing. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of nonbeing upon itself by affirming itself either as part of an embracing whole or in its individual selfhood. Courage always includes a risk, it is always threatened by nonbeing, whether the risk of losing oneself and becoming a thing within the whole of things or of the losing one’s World in an empty self-relatedness. Courage needs the power of being, a power transcending the nonbeing which is experienced in the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness, which is effective in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. The courage which takes this threefold anxiety into itself must be rooted in a power of being that is greater than the power of oneself and the power of one’s World. Neither self-affirmation as a part nor self-affirmation as oneself is beyond the manifold threat of nonbeing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Those who are mentioned as representatives of these forms of courage try to transcend themselves and the World in which they participate in order to find the power of being-itself and a courage to be which is beyond the threat of nonbeing. There are no exceptions to this rule; and this means that every courage to be has an open or hidden religious root. For religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being-itself. In some cases the religious root is carefully covered, in others it is passionately denied; in some it is deeply hidden and in others superficially. However, it is never completely absent. For everything that is participates in being-itself, and everybody has some awareness of this participation, especially in the moments in which one experiences the threat of nonbeing. This leads us to a final consideration, the double question of: How is the courage to be rooted in being-itself, and how much we understand being-itself in the light of courage to be? The first question deals with the ground of being as source of the courage to be, the second with the courage to be as key to the ground of being. Self-awareness makes human experience resonant, it imparts that simultaneous echo to all that we think and feel as the box of a violin reverberates with the sound of the strings. It gives depth and volume to what would otherwise be shallow and flat. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
One of modern psychology’s major goals is to better understand what controls human behavior and so to be better able to predict behavior accurately. We are all constantly predicting human behavior. For instance, if you could not predict the instructor would be there you, would come to class. One a date, you observe the behavior of your companion and predict the moment to express your affection. If you want to borrow money from a friend, you observe your friend’s behavior and predict the moment when your appeal will get you the results you want. If you forget an assignment, you predict what story will sound best to the instructor, so you can get a time extension. Each of us engages in prediction every day, based on past experience and present observation. In the same way, psychologist try to study behavior systematically to make predictions based on the best empirical evidence. Empirical data or evidence is that which is obtained by experiment or observation. Psychologists’ predictions are always probability statements, and they tend to be more accurate for groups than for individuals. Probability is the relative possibility or likelihood that an event will occur, the chance that it will happen. The average age of a college freshman class can be predicted with a high degree of success, even though one average-looking freshman might actually be only fifteen years old. A college instructor can predict with a fair degree of accuracy the probable grade distribution for a class, but it would be more difficult to predict which student will what grade. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The idea of predicting behavior is a frightening one to many people. You might be afraid that if you can predict your own behavior you will have no choice as to how you will act. However, this is not necessarily so. There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate causes. Suppose you know that having your mother nag you about studying bothers you so much that you are likely to refuse to study. You can ask her not to nag you about studying. Or you can try somehow to change your own reaction to her nagging. All of these choices grow out of your own awareness of the pattern: Mother nags = I refuse to study. If you are aware of patterns of behavior, you can predict what your future reactions will be if they follow past patters. Only then can you decide somehow to change the pattern. Therapy where the central position of the therapist is a forerunner is not acceptable. Therapy is for the benefit of the client, not for the therapist, and therefore the client should be the standard by which all things were judged; the client should set the tone and the pace of the therapy; one’s needs have to take priority. An object of vast importance in the phenomenal World of each individual is one’s self. Many years ago the significance of this in psychotherapy was driven home to many, in spite of an initial prejudice against anything so vague, so unobservable, so tainted with introspectionism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Clients persist in expressing themselves in terms such as these: “I feel I am not being my real self,” “I would not want anyone to know the real me,” “It feels good to let go and just be myself here,” “I think if I chip off all the plaster façade I have got a pretty solid self underneath.” Gradually, a therapist becomes aware that change in therapy is very vitally concerned with the self-yet how could this every become a part of psychological science? Psychotherapy is a relation of trust and respect, mutually felt and shown, which is something that one should experience in all relationship, regardless of if they are personal or professional. It is important for people to be able to trust someone who is evaluating them, just as it is important for one to be able to trust the person one is in a relationship with. Never idolize someone and be a puff piece for them. However, sometimes when you are nice and trying to inflate someone’s self-esteem, they may also take it as a sign that they can take advantage of you when there are actually no real feelings there. So, people reap what they sew. In psychotherapy, there is a constant attempt to foster growth. The growth, well-being, fullest functioning, and self-actualization of the client is the major goal. We state this idealistically, for it is not always so. In some psychotherapies the goal is group or social conformity, or getting the client to become normal, according to some socially determined definition of that word. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
A normal person may get along very well in society, since he or she follows all the rules and meets all the expectations, but one is not necessarily happy or healthy or full of oneself. Our prejudice in this matter leans us toward the assumption that a person, to be treated and helped by psychotherapy, has to be enabled to become more of the potential full human being one is inside. Again, becoming authentic and honest with oneself and with others is not a guarantee of happiness and tranquility. Recall that significant selfhood is a mixed blessing. Along with increased awareness and better functioning comes the disadvantages of being sensitive and involved with life. Patients need to find meaning even in the most meaningless of experiences. Try, for example, to find some sort of meaning in being in a prison (even if it is a mental one), awaiting death for a crime you cannot imagine committing. God put us on this Earth for many reasons, and one of them is to help the lost find meaning in their lostness, to help the dying find meaning in their death, to help the conflicted to find some sort of meaning in their conflict. Our attempts will add a new dimension to those of us who try to enable others to simply be real, to be more authentic, to experience their own significance as human beings. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Not all psychotherapies dwell in the past. Some form of Reality Therapy attempts to help the conflicted or hidden self to emerge by confronting it with reality and by helping the person to take on responsibility for being the person who lives one’s own life. Coming even further away from emphasis on the past and on determinism is the growing field of Behavior or Reinforcement Therapy. In operant conditioning, principles are applied to teach people learning theory to change behavior. It is found to be successful in developing competence and new skills among those with cognitive disabilities, schizophrenics, and in changing of habits. There has also been much success in treating autistic children. Though the behavioristic therapists believe in social or cultural determinism—and reject any notion of freedom—they may have much to say to us concerning how people can maximize their potentials. We should try to regulate human conduct by offering rewards for good behavior whenever possible instead of threatening punishment for breaches of the law. We should reshape our society so that we all would be trained from birth to want to do what society wants us to do. We have the techniques now to do it. Only by using them can we hope to maximize human potentiality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
If we are living in what some call the “age of disordered will,” wat underlies this disordered will? I believe it is a state of feelinglessness, the despairing possibility that nothing matters, a condition very close to apathy. Pamela H. Johnson, after reporting the murders on the moors of England, found herself unable to shake loose her conviction that “We may be approaching the state which the psychologists call affectlessness.” If apathy or affectlessness is a dominant mood emerging in our day, we can understand on a deeper level why love and will have become so difficult. While one might laugh at the meaningless boredom of people a decade or two ago, the emptiness has for many now moved from the state of boredom to a state of futility and despair which holds promise of dangers. The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if one is not growing toward something, one does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities. The feeling of emptiness or vacuity generally comes from people’s feeling that they are powerless to do anything effective about their lives or the World they live in. Inner vacuousness is the long-term, accumulated result of a person’s particular conviction about oneself, namely one’s conviction that one cannot act as an entity in directing one’s own life, or change other people’s attitudes toward one, or effectually influence the World around one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Thus, one gets the deep sense of despair and futility which so many people in our day have. And soon, since what one wants and what one feels can make no real difference, one gives up wanting and feeling. Apathy and lack of feeling are also defenses against anxiety. When a person continually faces dangers one is powerless to overcome, one’s final line of defense is at last to avoid even feeling the dangers. Our emptiness has been turning into despair and destructiveness, violence and assassination; it is now undeniable that these go hand in hand with apathy. “For more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens,” reported The New York Times in March, 1964, “watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. In April of the same yea, the Times said, in an impassioned editorial about another event in which a crowd urged a deranged youth who was clinging to a hotel ledge to jump, calling him “chicken” and “yellow”: “Are they any different from the wild-eyed Romans watching and cheering as men and beasts tore each other apart in the Colosseum? Does the attitude of that Albany mob bespeak a way of life for many Americans? If so, the bell tolls for us. In May of the same year, a Times article was headed “Rape Victim’s Screams Draw 40 But No One Acts.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
A number of similar events occurred during the next months which awakened us from our apathy long enough to realize how apathetic we had become, and how much modern city existence had developed in us the habit of uninvolvement and unfeeling detachment. I am aware how easy it is to exaggerate specific events, and I have no wish to overstate my case. Nevertheless, I do believe that there is in our society a definite trend toward a state of affectlessness as an attitude toward life, a character state. The anomie about which intellectuals had speculated earlier seemed now to emerge with a hideous reality on our very streets and in our very subways. What shall we call this state reported by so many of our contemporaries—estrangement, playing it cool, alienation, withdrawal of feeling, indifference, anomie, depersonalization? Each one of these terms expresses a part of the condition to which I refer—a condition in which men and women find themselves experiencing a distance between themselves and the objects which used to excite their affection and their will. I wish to leave this open for the moment what the sources of this are. When I use the term apathy, despite its limiting connotations, it is because its literal meaning is the closest to what I am describing: “want of feeling; lack of passion, emotion or excitement, indifference.” Apathy and the schizoid World go hand and had as cause and effect of each other. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Apathy is particularly important because of its close relation to love and will. It is so seductive. And behind its delicate probing frown is this conflict, this unadmitted and sinful power. What is it? Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is. The opposite of will is not indecision—which actually may represent the struggle of the effort to decide, but being uninvolved, detached, unrelated to the significant events. Then the issue of will never can arise. The interrelation of love and will inheres in the fact that both terms describe a person in the process of reaching out, moving toward the World, seeking to affect others or the inanimate World, and opening oneself to be affected; molding, forming, relating to the World or requiring that it relate to one. This is why love and will are so difficult in an age of transition, when all the familiar mooring places are gone. The blocking of the ways in which we affect others and are affected by them is the essential disorder of both love and will. Apathy, or a-pathos, is a withdrawal of feeling; it may begin as playing it cool, a studied practice of being unconcerned and unaffected. “I did not want to get involved,” was the consistent response of the thirty-eight citizens of Kew Gardens when they were questioned as to why they had to acted. Apathy, operating like Dr. Freud’s “death instinct,” is a gradual letting go of involvement until one finds that life itself has gone by. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
The division between the community and the political state has led to the projection of all social feelings into the state, which thus becomes an idol, a power standing over and above mortals. Mortals submits to the state as to the embodiment of one’s own social feelings, which one worships as powers alienated from oneself; in one’s private life as an individual one suffers from the isolation and loneness which are the necessary result of this separation. The worship of the state can only disappears if one takes back the social powers into oneself, and builds a community in which one’s social feelings are not something added to one’s private existence, but in which one’s private and social existence are one and the same. What is the relationship of mortals toward oneself? I have descried elsewhere this relationship as marketing orientation. In this orientation, mortals experience themselves as a thing to be employed successfully on the market. One does not experience oneself as an active agent, as the bearer of human powers. One is alienated from these powers. One’s aim is to sell oneself successfully on the market. One’s sense of self does not stem from one’s activity as a loving and thinking individual, but from one’s socioeconomic role. If things could speak, a typewriter would answer the question “Who are you?” by saying “I m a typewriter,” and an automobile, by saying “I am an automobile,” or more specifically by saying, “I am a Ford,” or “a Buick,” or “a Cadillac.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
If you ask a mortal “Who are you?”, one answers “I am a manufacturer,” “I am a clerk,” “I am a doctor”—or “I am a married man,” “I am the father of two kids,” and one’s answer has pretty the same meaning as that of the speaking thing would have. That is the way one experiences oneself, not as a mortal, with love, fear, convictions, doubts, but as that abstraction, alienated from one’s real nature, which fulfills a certain function in the social system. One’s sense of value depends on one’s success: on whether one can sell oneself favorably, whether one can make more of oneself than one started out with, whether one is a success. One’s body, mind and soul are one’s capital, and one’s task in life is to invest it favorably, to make a profit of oneself. Human qualities like friendliness, courtesy, kindness, are transformed into commodities, into assets of the personality package conducive to a higher price on the personality market. If the individual fails in a profitable investment of oneself, one feels that one is a failure; if one succeeds, one is a success. Clearly, one’s sense of one’s own value always depends on factors extraneous to oneself, on the fickle judgment of the market, which decides about one’s value as it decides about the value of commodities. One, like all commodities that can be sold profitably on the market, is worthless as far as one’s exchange value is concerned, even though one’s value may be considerable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The alienated personality who is for sale must lose a good deal of these sense of dignity which is so characteristic of mortals even in most primitive cultures. One must lose almost all sense of self, of oneself as a unique and induplicable entity. The sense of self stems from the experience of myself as the subject of my experiences, my thought, my feeling, my decision, my judgment, my action. It presupposes that my experience is my own, and not an alienated one. Things have no self and people who have become things can have no self. This selflessness of modern mortals has appeared to one of the most gifted and original contemporary psychiatrists, the late H.S. Sullivan, as being a natural phenomenon. He spoke of those psychologists who, like myself, assume that the lack of the sense of self is a pathological phenomenon, as of people who suffer from a delusion. The self for him is nothing but the many roles we play in relations to others, roles which have the function of eliciting approval and avoiding the anxiety which is produced by disapproval. Some people who are chasing after material gain realize that they have lost themselves, that they are just like an onion with layer after layer, and without a kernel. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
When people make the discovery that they have lost themselves, the dread of nonbeing seizes them and a panic might make them desire to land in hell, rather than to thrown back into the casting ladle of nonbeing. Indeed, with the experience of self disappears the experience of identity—and when this happens, mortals could become insane if they do not save themselves by acquiring a secondary sense of self; one does that by experiencing oneself as being approved of, worthwhile, successful, useful—briefly, as a salable commodity which one is because one is looked upon by others as an entity, not unique but fitting into one of the current patterns. Look backward, remembering that you proved your worthiness in your premortal state. You are a valiant child of God, and with his help, you can triumph in the battles of this fallen World. You have done it before, and you can do it again. Look forward. Your troubles and sorrows are very real, but they will not last forever. Your dark night will pass, because the Son did rise with healing in his wings. Disappointments comes to visit on occasions but is never allowed to stay. We are troubled, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. You may be exhausted, but do not ever give up. “So do not fear, for I am with your; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand,” reports Isaiah 41.10. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Even with your own painful wounds, you will instinctively reach out to others. This is part of life. It is why we are here. We are here to have a body and to be tried and tested. Some of those tests are physical; some of those tests are spiritual, and your trials here have been both physical and spiritual. By keeping God’s commandments, we can find joy even in the midst of our worst circumstances. The Lord Jesus Christ will bring you added strength and greater hope. For you, the righteous, the Healer of our souls, in his time and his way, will heal all your wounds. No injustice, no persecution, no trial, no sadness, no heartache, no suffering, no wound—however deep, however wide, however painful—will be excluded from the comfort, peace, and lasting hope of the Lord whose open arms and whose wounded hands will welcome us back into his presence. “Wherefore, thy soul shall be blessed, ad thou shalt dwell safely,” reports 2 Nephi 2.3. God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes. This day will come. “You crucify yourself. Look at what has happened, baby. Are you still by yourself because I cannot reach you lately? All you said was not enough. I could not wait forever. If I had stayed to hold you up, it would not make you better. I know you could, but you will no leave them. I know you are cool, but you will not listen. Look at what has happened, baby,” reports Emma Hewitt (Crucify). #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Each that We Lose Takes Part of Us—I Still Remember You and those Days Could Not Get Better
Alone—cut off from all the World and all things—I stand there. I want to lie on the floor face down in the manner of a priest at his ordination. I want to be a priest. I want to consecrate the host! I want this so badly that I ache for it. I do not want to do evil. However, the fact is, my fantasy of being a saint is dissolving. I know it for what it is and I cannot sustain it. God thinks of all these things, does he not? Once people first began to communicate, they began to form beliefs about the World around them. What sort of beliefs might they have had? Many primitive peoples probably believed that everything was controlled by some sort of spirit. If there was a store, the reason must be that the gods were angry. If crops were bad, then the first-born son must be sacrificed to appease the gods. A child born deformed was thought to be possessed by an evil spirit, and had to be killed. A person who was emotionally or physically ill must be possessed by a demon. People also assumed that forces or spirits controlled all their behavior. One could buy a witch’s services to invoke the spirits and increase sexual prowess, capture a lover, or bring misfortune to an enemy. Assumptions are ideas which one holds to be true without any proof that they are true—things that are taken for granted. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
In most primitive cultures even today, people assume that they have little choice in their own destiny, because it is controlled by good and evil spirits and by fate. In some cultures these assumptions are so strongly held that they can literally result in death. How? Anthropologist have reported observing such events in tribes where members were taught that if they violated certain taboos they would die. Taboos are negative rules, the thou shall nots of a society (from a Tongan word that means sacred, prohibited, inviolable). When an individual broke a taboo, the other members of the tribe assumed that the taboo-breaker would die as a result. In fact, they began to act as though the person were already dead. Imagine how you would feel if, even for a week, everyone acted as through you were about to die. Taboo-breakers assumed that they would die. Everyone around them thought so, too. And, in time, the taboo-breaker did die. If you were a member of that tribe, you might reach the seemingly logical conclusion that some external force or spirit had killed the taboo-breaker. One important way in which primitive people tried to understand their World was through their own experiences. However, many times their observations were based upon a limited awareness of themselves and the nature of their World. (“Spirits control me and everything around me.”) #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
By changing what mortals know about the World, mortals change the World they know; and by changing the World in which one lives, mortals change themselves. Although few of us believe in a taboo strongly enough to cause our own death, our personal beliefs can influence us in ways almost that important. People have always assumed a casual World. For centuries, people believed they and their World were controlled by spirits and demons. However, as they expanded their knowledge, they began to question the demon-spirit model of causality. Individuals began to exert control over their own environment—to predict when to plant crops, what seeds to use, the location of the best soil, and the best time to harvest. When crops failed, instead of sacrificing a first-born child to appease the gods who had been assumed to cause the failure, people sought better seeds or richer soil or an increased water supply and tried again. Many of our ideas about the World come from personal observation. We check these conclusions out with other people, and if most people agree with us, we assume our ideas are true. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Good sense is the most evenly shared thing in the World, for each of us think he or she is so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in all other respects are not in the habit of wanting more than they have. When people are in consensus about their assumptions, agreements become our common sense. Common sense can be a good source of information for making day-to-day decisions. However, sometimes it is based upon little evidence, limited information, and personal bias. When this happens, it can hinder our perception of reality. Psychologist base their theories on objective and systematic investigation, not just common sense. Their findings may often agree with our commonsense notions about behavior, but psychologists attempt to eliminate theories based on insufficient evidence or personal bias and accept only those theories that seem to have a basis in fact. Psychotherapy is one of the ways in which people can experience themselves authentically, more fully, as individual selves, and as selves-in-interaction. The word “psychotherapy” comes from two words: psyche, which is the self, soul, or behaving being, and therapeia, which means healing or treatment. Psychotherapy can be done by a wide variety of people, as indeed it is being done. Not only physicians, but nurses and technicians are being used in many hospitals as therapists or co-therapists in psychotherapy situations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Psychologist have been doing psychotherapy for decades. Clergy people of all religious persuasions have been doing counseling for years. In the past eighty years, most seminaries have begun to include courses in pastoral counseling in the requirements for graduation. In addition, social workers have been coming into their own as psychotherapist over the past sixty-five or seventy years. More and more, ordinary people with training in psychotherapy are being used, not just to fill the shortages in psychiatrically or psychologically trained roles, but because they are found to be very effective therapeutic agents. Psychotherapy, in general, is the process of relationship in which a person in conflict or with a problem in living discloses oneself to a person who is relatively healthy. Clients can be treated individually or in groups. In the process of self-disclosure, many aspects of the client’s conflict or self-alienation come to light. More specially, those who come for psychotherapy are usually people in conflict. Something, either within their conscious awareness or beneath it, is interfering with their fullest functioning. Their self-actualization is blocked or limited by conflicting needs or emotions. When they come to therapy, whether voluntarily or at the urging of friends, loved ones, or the court, they enter a relationship that involves self-disclosure and self-awareness. Many of the times the client is unprepared for what is expected of one. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Often, though, one knows what one must do when going to therapy, even if one is unsure of what to expect. There are all kinds of relationships, some therapeutic and others that are merely congenial or transactional. Psychotherapy, if it is to be effective, must be a work-project, but one that foes in a context of acceptance, understanding, insight, and caring. We who are professionally concerned with the happiness, growth, and well-being of our clients may be regarded as professional lovers. In the process of psychotherapy, the therapist must be a person who knows and loves and respects himself or herself, and who can let that self-love overflow into one’s relationships with clients. Acceptance, trust, respect, and concern are very important parts of any real and effective therapy relationship. They are also characteristics of a love relationship. So, we have a clue: those who love may be capable of growth-promoting relationship and self-actualizing relationships with others. Psychotherapy, then, is a relationship which involves the more subtle, softer-focus aspects that go into the making of a love and friendship relationship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
The self, cut off from participation in its World, is an empty shell, a mere possibility. It must act because it lives, but it must redo every action because acting involves one who acts in that upon which one acts It gives content and for this reason it restricts one’s freedom to make of oneself what one wants. In classical theology, both Catholic and Protestant, only God has this prerogative: He is a se (from himself) or absolute freedom. Nothing is in him which is not by him. Existentialism, on the basis of the message that God is dead, give mortals the divine “a-se-ity.” Nothing shall be in mortal which is not by mortal. However, mortals are finite, one is given to oneself as what one is. One has received one’s being and with it the structure of one’s being, including the structure of finite freedom. And finite from is not aseity. Mortals can affirm themselves only if they affirms not an empty shell, a mere possibility, but the structure of being in which one finds oneself before action and nonaction. Finite freedom has a definite stricture, and if the self tries to trespass on this structure it ends in the loss of itself. The nonparticipating hero is caught in a net of contingencies, coming partly from the subconscious levels of one’s own self, partly from the environment from which one cannot withdraw. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The assuredly empty self is filled with contents which enslave it just because it does not know or accept them as contents. This is true too of the cynic, as was said before. One cannot escape the forces of oneself which may drive one into complete loss of the freedom that one wants to preserve. This dialectical self-destruction of the radical forms of the courage to be as oneself has happened on a World-wide scale in the totalitarian reaction of the 20th century against the revolutionary Existentialism of the 19th century. The Existentialist protest against dehumanization and objectivation, together with its courage to be as oneself, have turned into the most elaborate and oppressive forms of collectivism that have appeared in history. It is the great tragedy of our time that Marxism, which had been conceived as a movement for the liberation of everyone, has been transformed into a system of enslavement for everyone, even those who enslave the others. It is hard to imagine the immensity of this tragedy in terms of psychological destruction, especially within the intelligentsia. The courage to be was undermined in innumerable people because it was the courage to be in the sense of the revolutionary movements of the 19th century. When it broke down, these people turned either to the neocollectivist system, in a frantic-neurotic reaction against the cause of their tragic disappointment, or to a cynical—neurotic indifference to all systems and every content. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is obvious that similar observations can be made on the transformation of the Nietzschean type of the courage to be as oneself into the Fascist-Nazi forms of neocollectivism. The totalitarian machines which these movements produced embodied almost everything against which the courage to be as oneself stands. They used all possible means in order to make such courage impossible. Although, in distinction to communism, this system fell down, its aftermath is confusion, indifference, cynicism. And this is the soil on which the longing for authority and for a new collectivism grows. To a large extent the development of Capitalism as proven that this principle works; and it is indeed a miracle that antagonistic co-operation of self-contained economic entities should result in a blossoming and ever-expanding society. It is true that the capitalistic mode of production is conducive to political freedom, while any centrally planned social order is in danger of leading to political regimentation and eventually dictatorship. While this is not the place to discuss the question of whether there are other alternatives than the choice between free enterprise and political regimentation, it needs to be said in this context that the very fact that we are governed by laws which we do not control, and do not even want to control, is one of the most outstanding manifestations of alienation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
We are the producers of our economic and social arrangements, and at the same time we decline responsibility, intentionally and enthusiastically, and await hopefully or anxiously—as the case may be—what the future will bring. Our own actions are embodied in the laws which govern us, but these laws are above us, and we are their slaves. The giant state and economic system are not any more controlled by mortals. They run wild, and their leaders are like a person on a runaway horse, who is proud of managing to keep in the saddle, even though one is powerless to direct the horse. What is modern mortal’s relationship to one’s fellow mortals? It is one between two abstractions, two living machines, who use each other. The employer uses the ones who he or she employs; the sales person uses his or her customers. Everybody is to everybody else a commodity, always to be treated with certain friendliness, because even if one is not of use now, one may be later. There is not much lover nor hate to be found in human relationships of our say. There is, rather, a superficial friendliness, and a more than superficial fairness, but behind that surface is distance and indifference. There is also a good deal of subtle distrust. When one mortal says to another, “You speak to Justin Harris; he is all right,” it is an expression of reassurance against a general distrust. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Even love and the relationship between the genders have assumed distance, indifference, and subtle distrust. The great sexual emancipation, as it occurred after the First World War, was a desperate attempt to substitute mutual sexual pleasure for a deeper feeling of love. Our patients the culture by living out consciously what the masses of people are able to keep unconscious for the time being. The neurotic is cast by destiny into a Cassandra role. In vain does Cassandra, sitting on the steps of the palace at Mycenae when Agamemnon brings her back from Troy, cry, “Oh for the nightingale’s pure song and a fate like hers!” She knows, in her ill-starred life, that the pain flooding the song of sorrow is hers alone, and that she must predict the doom she sees will occur there. The Mycenaeans speak of her as mad, but they also believe she does speak the truth, and that she has a special power to anticipate events. Today, the person with psychological problems bears the burdens of the conflicts of the times in one’s blood, and is fated to predict in one’s actions and struggles the issues which will later erupt on all sides in the society. The first and clearest demonstration of this thesis is seen in the sexual problems which Freud found in his Victorian patients was actually in the two decades before World War I. These sexual topics—even down to the words—were entirely denied and repressed by the accepted society at the time. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Sigmund Freud found that his optimistic feelings toward a patient were beneficial, try though as he might to control them. He had the scientist’s dedication to objectivity, to controlling any subjective feeling or bias. However, being first of all human being, Freud found that many times he reacted to his patients as a person, not as a scientist. However, the problems of sexual repression burst violently forth into endemic forms two decades later after World War II. In the 1920’s, everybody was preoccupied with sex and its functions. Not by the furthest stretch of the imagination can anyone argue that Freud cased this emergence. He rather reflected and interpreted, through data revealed by his patients, the underlying conflicts of the society, which the normal members could and did succeed in repressing for the time being. Neurotic problems are the language of the unconscious emerging into social awareness. When this turned out to be a disappointment the erotic polarity between the genders were reduced to a minimum and replaced by a friendly partnership, a small combine which has amalgamated its forces to hold out better in the daily battle of life, and to relieve the feeling of isolation and aloneness which everybody has. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The alienation between human and human results in the lose of those general and social bonds which characterize medieval as well as most other precapitalist societies. Modern society consists of atoms (if we use the Greek equivalent of individual), little particles estranged from each other but held together by selfish interests and by the necessity to make use of each other. Yet mortals are a social being with a deep need to share, to help, to feel as a member of a group. What has happened to these social strivings in mortals? They manifest themselves in the special sphere of the public realm, which is strictly separated from the private realm. Our private dealings with our fellow beings are governed by the principle of narcissism, each for oneself, God for us all, in flagrant contradiction to Christian teaching. The individual is motivated by narcissistic interest, and not by solidarity with and love for one’s fellow mortals. The later feelings may asset themselves secondarily as private acts of philanthropy or kindness, but they are not part of the basic structure of our social relations. Separated from our private life as individuals is the realm of our social life as citizens. In this realm the state is the embodiment of our social existence; as citizens we are supposed to, and in fact usually do, exhibit a sense of social obligation and duty. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
We pay taxes, we vote, we respect the laws, and in the case of war we are willing to sacrifice our lives. What clearer example could there be of the separation between private and public existence than the fact that the same person who would think of spending one thousand dollars to relieve the need of a stranger does not hesitate to risk one’s life to save this same stranger when in war they both happen to be soldiers in uniform? The uniform is the embodiment of our social nature—civilian garb, of our narcissistic nature. The vast majority of people mentioned they worry most about personal, economic, healthy or other issues; 52 percent are worried about the World population problems including wars—and 37 percent about the danger of Communism or the threat to civil liberties. However, on the other hand, almost half the population thinks that Communism is a serious danger, and that war is likely to occur within the next two years. These social concerns, however, are not felt to be a personal reality, hence are no cause for worry, although for a good deal of intolerance. It is also interesting to note that in spite of the fact that almost the whole population believes in God, there seems to be hardly anyone who is worried about their soul, salvation, their spiritual development. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
God is as alienated as the World as a whole. What causes concern and worry is the private, separate sector of life, not the social, universal one which connect us with our fellow mortals. This may have something to do with anxiety. Some therapists are impressed by the fact that in many of our patients anxiety is appearing not merely as a symptom of repression or pathology, but as a generalized character state. The problem of identity is also becoming a concern on every sophisticated person’s lips. The cultural values by which people have gotten their sense of identity have been wiped away. Our patients are aware of this before society at large was, and they do not have the defenses to protect themselves from its disturbing and traumatic consequences. All of these problems, to be sure, carry a certain momentum related to the ups and downs of fashion. However, it would fail entirely to do justice to the dynamic historical emergence of psychological problems and of social change to dismiss them as mere fashions. Psychological problems are a product of the sociohistorical changes in culture. There is no human nature but only a changing nature of mortals depending on the changes in the society, and we should call the conflicts of our patients not neurosis but sociosis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
We need not go all the way because it is still apparent that psychological problems are also produced by a three-cornered dialectical interplay of biological and individual and historical-social factors. Nevertheless, it is clear what a gross and destructive oversimplification it is to assume that psychological problems emerge out of the blue or simply because society is now aware of the problem, or to assume that the problems exist merely because we have found new words to diagnose them. We find new words because something of importance is happening on unconscious, unarticulated levels and is pushing for expression; and our task is to do our best to understand and express these emergent developments. Freud’s patients were mostly hysterics who, by definition, carried repressed energy which could be released by the therapist’s naming of the unconscious. Today, however, when practically all our patients are compulsive-obsessional neurotics (or character problems, which is a more general and less intense form of the same thing), we find that the chief block to therapy is the incapacity of the patient to feel. These patients are persons who can talk from now till doomsday about their problems, and are generally well-practiced intellectuals; but they cannot experience genuine feelings. This compulsive character has turned humans into living machines. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Wounds of the soul are not unique to the rich or the poor, to one culture, one nation, or one generation. They come to all and are part of the learning we receive from this mortal experience. Psychoanalysis is the best known (though least understood) of the psychotherapies. Research and other human experiences have promoted growth out of the classical methods. Though they are not necessarily the best or the most important, the insight that Freud have us concerning the unconscious, defensiveness and resistance, transference and working-through have all assisted us in developing a more humanistic and reality-oriented form of psychotherapy. We each understand that difficulties are a part of life, but when they come to us personally, they can take our breathe away. Without being alarmed, we need to be ready. Never give up—however deep the wounds of your soul, whatever their source, wherever or whenever they happen, and however short or long they persist, you are not mean to perish spiritually. You are meant to survive spiritually and blossom in your faith and trust in God. God did not create our spirits to be independent of him. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, through the incalculable gift of his Atonement, not only saves us from death and offers us, through repentance, forgiveness for our sins, but he also stands ready to save us from sorrows and pains of our wounded souls. Pray with all your heart. Strengthen your faith in Jesus Christ, in his reality, in his grace. His grace is sufficient for us. Remember, repentance is powerful spiritual medicine. Keep the commandments and be worthy of the Comforter remembering that the Savior promised he will not leave us. “And the fire will never leave us. Though the path divides between us, you always had the strength to walk alone. And the quiet hour would haunt you and the wilder winds, they called you. I almost had the strength to let you go. Why were you falling? Far, far away. I still remember you and those days could not get better. I keep it all, this will not fade, I will never let it. I know you gave it all so good, I cannot forget it. Still lost in you, on that day we will stay forever. Stay forever. And I know that time is speeding, experiences fleeting, I would give them all away to bring you home,” reports Emma Hewitt (Still Remember You). #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
You Love No One but Still You Lost My Heart Like the Petals from a Rose—My Soul is at Liberty and Became so Wondrous Dear!
To return to the inescapable question of Salvation, yes, I do remain rooted in a relativistic Universe, no matter how spectacularly defined I have become as to form and function, and I find myself within the same dimension. The German word for resolve is Entschossenheit, and it points to the symbol of unlocking what anxiety, subjection to conformity, and self-seclusion have locked. Once it is unlocked, one can act, but not accord to norms given by anybody or anything. Nobody can give directions for the actions of the resolute individual—no God, no conventions, no laws of reason, no norms or principles. We must be ourselves, we must decide where to go. Our conscience is the call to ourselves. It does not tell anything concrete, it is neither the voice of God nor the awareness of eternal principles. It calls us to ourselves out of the behavior of the average mortal, out of daily talk, the daily routine, out of the adjustment which is the main principle of the conformist courage to be as a part. However, if we follow this call we become inescapably guilty, not through moral weakness but through our existential situation. Having the courage to be as ourselves we become guilty, and we are asked to take this existential guilt upon ourselves. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Meaninglessness in all its aspects can be faced only by those who resolutely take the anxiety of finitude and guilt upon themselves. There is no norm, no criterion for what is right and wrong. Resoluteness makes right what shall be right. The essence of mortals is their existence. That idea can be the most despairing and the most courageous idea in all of Existentialism. What it says is that there is no essential nature of mortals, expect in the point that one can make of oneself what one wants. Humans create what they are. Nothing is given to them to determine their creativity. The essence of one’s being—the should-be, the ought-to-be, –is not something which one finds; one makes it. Mortals are what they make of themselves. And the courage to be as oneself is the courage to make of oneself what one wants to be. We are surrounded by things of whose nature and origin we know nothing. The telephone, radio, phonograph, and all other complicated machines are almost as mysterious to us as they would be to a mortal from a primitive culture; we know how to use them, that is, we know which button to turn, but we do not know on what principle they function, expect in the vaguest terms of something we once learned at school. And things which do not rest upon difficult scientific principles are almost equally alien to us. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
We do not know how bread is made, how cloth is woven, how a table is manufactured, how a glass is made. We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them. Our way of consumption necessarily results in the fact that we are never satisfied, since it is not our real concrete person which consumes a real or concrete thing. We this develop an ever-increasing need for more things, for more consumption. It is true that as long as the living standard of the population is below a dignified level of subsistence, there is a natural need for more consumption. It is also true tat here is a legitimate need for more consumption as mortals develop culturally and has more refined needs for better food, objects of artistic pleasure, books, etc. However, our craving for consumption has lost all connection with the real needs of mortals. Originally, the idea of consuming more and better things was meant to give mortals a happier, more satisfied life. Consumption was a means to an end, that of happiness. It now has become an aim in itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The constant increase of needs forces us to an ever-increasing effort, it makes us dependent on these needs and on the people and institutions by whose help we attain them. Each person speculates to create a new need in the other person, in order to force one into a new dependency, to a new form of pleasure, hence to one’s economic ruin. Wit a multitude of commodities grows the realm of alien things which enslave mortals. Mortals today are fascinated by the possibility of buying more, better, and especially, new things. One’s is consumption-hungry. The act of buying and consuming has become a compulsive, irrational aim, because it is an end in itself, with little relation to the use of, or pleasure in the things bought and consumed. To buy the latest gadget, the latest model of anything that is on the market, is the dream of everybody, in comparison to which the real pleasure in use is quite secondary. Modern mortals, if one dared to be articulate about one’s concept of Heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the World, showing new things and gadgets, and oneself having plenty of money with which to buy them. One would wander around open-mouthed with dreamy eyes in this Heaven of gadgets and commodities, provided only that there were every more and newer things to buy, and perhaps that one’s neighbors were just a little less privileged than he or she. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Significantly enough, one of the older traits of middle-class society, the attachment to possessions and property, has undergone a profound change. In the older attitudes, a certain sense of loving a possession existed between a mortal and their property. It grew on the individual. One was proud of it. One took good care of it, and it was painful when eventually one has to part from it because one could not use it anymore. There is very little left of this sense of property today. One loves the newness of the things bought, and is ready to betray it when something newer has appeared. There is this receptive orientation, in which the aim is to receive, to drink in, to have something new all the time, to live with a continuously open mouth, as it were. This receptive orientation is blended with the marketing orientation, while in the nineteenth century the hoarding was blended with the exploitative orientation. The alienated attitude toward consumption not only exists in our acquisition and consumption of commodities, but it determines far beyond this employment of leisure time. What are we to expect? If a mortal works without genuine relatedness to what one is doing, if one buys and consumes commodities in an abstractified and alienated way, how can one make use of one’s leisure time in an active and meaningful way? One always remains the passive an alienated consumer. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
People consume ball games, moving pictures, newspapers and magazines, books, lectures, natural scenery, social gatherings, in the same alienated and abstractified way in which one consumes the commodities one has bought. One does not participate actively, one wants to take in all there is to be had, and to have as much as possible of pleasure, culture and what not. Actually, one is not free to enjoy one’s leisure; one’s leisure-time consumption is determined by industry, as are the commodities one buys; one’s taste is manipulated, one wants to see and hear what one is conditioned to want to see and to hear; entertainment is an industry like any other, the customer is made to buy fun as one is made to buy dresses and shoes. The value of the fun is determined by its success on the market, not by anything which could be measured in human terms. In any productivity and spontaneous activity, something happens within myself while I am reading, looking at scenery, talking to friends, etcetera. I am not the same after the experience as I was before. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
In the alienated form of pleasure something happens within myself, and all that is left are memories of what I have done. One of the most striking examples for this kind of pleasure consumption is the taking of snapshots, which has become one of the most significant leisure activities. The Kodak slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest,” which since 1889 has helped so much to popularize photography all over the World, is symbolic. It is one of the earliest appears to the push-button power-feeling; you do nothing, you do not have to know anything, everything is done for you; all you have to do is press the button. Indeed, the taking of snapshots has become one of the most significant expressions of alienated visual perception, of sheer consumption. The tourist with one’s camera is an outstanding symbol of an alienated relationship to the World. Being constantly occupied with taking pictures, actually one does not see anything at all, except through the intermediary of the camera. The camera sees for the individual, and the outcome of one’s pleasures trip is a collection of snapshots, which are the substitute for an experience which one could have had, but did not have. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Our actual helplessness before the forces which govern us appears more drastically in those social catastrophes which, even though they have denounced as regrettable accidents each time, so far have never failed to happen: economic depressions and wars. These social phenomena appear as if they were natural catastrophes, rather than what they really are, occurrences made by mortals, but without intention and awareness. The anonymity of the social forces is inherent in the structure of the capitalist mode of production. In contrast to most other societies in which social laws are explicit and fixed on the basis of political power or tradition—Capitalism does not have such explicit laws. It is based on the principles that is only everybody strives for oneself on the market, the common good will come out of it, order not anarchy will result. There are, of course, economic laws which govern the market, but these laws operate behind the back of the acting individual, who is concerned only with one’s private interests. You can try to guess these laws of the market as a Calvinist in Geneva tried to guess whether God had predestined him for salvation or not. However, the law of the market, like God’s will are beyond the reach of your will and influence. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Science cannot explain why the World makes scientific sense. It cannot explain why we are here, or, now that we are here, what we should do about it. For a moment, let us imagine what thinking must have been like for the firs people who were aware that they were aware. They had no words to describe the World they were experiencing. Because we think in symbols, it is difficult for us to imagine what those early people, who had no symbols, thought, but we can try. The first people began to collect information about the World. They saw a large, bright object move across the sky. It had a profound effect upon their bodies. While it was there, they felt warm, and they could see. In its absence, the World became dark and cold. As time passed, those first human beings saw the trees drop their leaves and die. Then, magically, the trees came back to life in brilliant colors and alluring smells. Finally, those trees produced an object that was good to eat. Then the trees appeared to die, only to return to give birth again and again. Try to imagine how awed early people must have been by these simple events. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The first humans were becoming aware. However, they had no word-symbols to express that awareness in thought or speech. Then perhaps one day two human beings both made a similar sound while grabbing for the same fruit. They walked on apart, but perhaps one of these people heard yet another person make the same sound, and, magically, the picture of the fruit appeared in the mind of this early human being. It was probably through random events such as this that people began the process of naming objects and understanding their World. The limits of our language mean the limits of our World. A new World is the beginning of a new language. A new language is the seed of a new World. The relationship the artist and the neurotic, often considered mysterious, is entirely understandable from the viewpoint presented here. Both artist and neurotic speak and live from the subconscious and unconscious depths of their society. The artist does this absolutely, communicating what one experiences to one’s fellow people. The neurotic does this negatively. Experiencing the same underlying meanings and contradictions of one’s culture, one is unable to form one’s experiences into communicable meaning for oneself and one’s fellows. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Art and neurosis both have a predictive function. Since art is communication springing from unconscious levels, it presents to us an image of a person which is as yet present only in those members of the society who, by virtue of their own sensitized consciousness, live on the frontier of their society—live, as it were, with one foot in the future. The artist anticipates the later scientific and intellectual experience of the race. The water reeds and ibis legs painted in triangular designs on Neolithic vases in ancient Egypt were the prediction of the later development of geometry and mathematics by which the Egyptian read the stars and measured the Nile. In the magnificent Greek sense of proportion of the Parthenon, in the powerful dome of Roman architecture, and in the medieval cathedral, one can trace how, in a given period of history, art expresses the meanings and trends which are as yet unconscious, but which will later be formulated by the philosophers, religious leaders, and scientists of the society. The arts anticipate the future social and technological development by a generation when the change is more superficial, or by centuries when the change, as the discovery of mathematics, is profound. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
By the same token, we find the artists expressing the conflict in the society before these conflicts emerge consciously in the society as a whole. The artist—who is the antennae of the race—is living out, in forms that only one can create, the depths of consciousness which one experiences in one’s own being as one struggles with and molds one’s World. Here we are plunged immediately into the center of the issues for the World presented by our contemporary painters and dramatists and other artists is a schizoid World. They have presented the condition of our World which makes the tasks of living and willing peculiarly difficult. It is a World in which, amid all the vastly developed means of communication that bombard us on all sides, actual personal communication is exceedingly difficult and rare. The most significant dramatists of our time are those who take as their subject matter precisely this loss of communication between persons is all but destroyed. We live out our lives talking to tape recorder; our existence become more lonely as the digital assistants, radios and TV’s and computers and mobile phones and telephone extensions in our house become more numerous. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Ionesco has a scene in his play, The Bald Soprano, in which a man and a woman happen to meet and engage in polite, if mannered, conversation. As they talk they discover that they both came down to New York on the ten o’clock train that morning from New Haven, and, surprisingly, the address of both is the same building on Fifth Avenue. Lo and behold, they also live in the same apartment and both have a daughter seven years old. They finally discover to their astonishment that they are man and wife. We find the same situation among the painters. Cezanne, the acknowledged father of the modern art movement, a man who in his own life was as undramatic and bourgeois as only a middle-class Frenchman can be, paints this schizoid World of spaces and stones and trees and faces. He speaks to us out of the Old World of mechanics but forces us to live in the new World of free-floating spaces. Here we are beyond causes and effects, both come together in the simultaneity of an eternal Cezanne who is at the same time the formula of what he wanted to be and what he wanted to do. There is a rapport between Cezanne’s schizoid temperament and his work because the work reveals a metaphysical sense of the infirmary. In this sense to be schizoid and to be Cezanne come to the same thing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Only a schizoid man could paint a schizoid World; which is to say, only a man sensitive enough to penetrate to the underlying psychic conflicts could present out World as it is in its deeper forms. However, in the very grasping of our World by art there is also our protection from the dehumanizing effects of technology. The schizoid character lies in both the confronting of the depersonalizing World and the refusing to be depersonalized by it. For the artist finds deeper planes of consciousness where we can participate in human experience and nature below superficial appearances. The case may be clearer in Van Gogh, whose psychosis was not unconnected with his volcanic struggle to paint what he perceived. Or in Picasso, flamboyant as he may seem to be, whose insight into the schizoid character of our modern World is seen in the fragmented bulls and torn villagers in Guernica, or in the distorted portraits with mislocated eyes and ears—paintings not named but numbered. This is the first age in which the artist does not have a community; one must now, like all of us, make one’s own. The artist presents the broken image of mortals but transcends it in the very act of transmuting it into art. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
It is one’s creative act which gives meaning to the nihilism, alienation, and other elements of modern mortal’s condition. Thus the illness ceases to be an absurd fact and a fate, and becomes a general possibility of human existence. The neurotic and the artist—since both lived out the unconscious of the race—reveal to us what is gong to emerge endemically in the society later on. The neurotic feels that same conflicts arising from one’s experience of nihilism, alienation, and so on, but one is unable to give them meaningful form; one is caught between one’s incapacity to mold these conflicts into creative works on one hand and one’s inability to deny them on the other. The neurotic is the artiste manqué, the artist who cannot transmute one’s conflicts into art. To admit this as a reality not only gives us our liberty as creative persons but also the basis of our freedom as human beings. By the same token, confronting at the outset the fact of the schizoid state of our World may give us a basis for discovering love and will for our own age. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Yet, people use different kinds of ploys to avoid intimate confrontation and interaction with other people. Some of these actions are Rituals we all use casually: “Hi; nice weather; right?” “Think it will rain?” “Wonderful party; we sure enjoyed ourselves,” “How are things with you?” These are familiar sayings; we all use them. They are Rituals when we do not much care about the answers or when we use these words to fill in awkward gaps in out time- and space-structuring. After Rituals come the Pastimes, activities used to full up time or space: Homework, TV Viewing, Dating, Fixing the Car, Solitaire, Eating Dinner. In other words, any activity in which we engage for the express purpose, conscious or otherwise, of avoiding intimate encounter is simply a Pastime. When we view TV in order to not talk to our family or spouse, we are indulging in an action that is less than authentic or sincere. Finally, the Games themselves. These are complex maneuvers, usually motivated by unconsciousness, designed to being about some kind of Payoff. The Payoff may be a put-down of someone else, or even of yourself. The Payoff may be a breaking off of a relationship that is too threatening or anxiety-producing. The Payoff may be getting somebody else hurt or wounded. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
It is also time we all recognize that psychotherapists are human beings, nothing more. Sometimes therapists, out of their Child’s need for extra credit, or their Parent’s need to be authoritative, will encourage games in the process of therapy, without realizing that they are playing them. Any therapist who has excessive needs for respect or worship is falling into a manipulative trap and may be exploiting his or her clients for one’s own self-enhancement. This is hardly self-actualizing behavior. Of course, sometimes clients put their therapists in a god-like role, either because they need an authority-father-figure to relate to, or as a way of conning the therapist. Sometimes a client can build the therapist up by flattering him or her (“You are Uncommonly Perceptive, Doctor”) as a way of keeping the focus on him or her, or so the therapist, out of some distorted sense of obligation, will not dig any deeper into one’s life. Therapy is a situation that is liable to the same pitfalls as any other interpersonal relationship. We still should be impressed with the need for human beings to develop the ability to be intimate with each other. Self-Disclosure is important for optimum mental health, or psychological wholeness, comes about when a person is able to disclose important feelings, ideas, fears, wishes, or memories to at least one significant person. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Self-disclosure should be at the level of intimacy, that is, real authentic, un-defensive, and part of the very person being of the individual. This is important in order that we experience the feeling of closeness of being personal with one other human being. The surprising truth is that our weaknesses can be a blessing when they humble us and turn us to Christ. Discontent becomes divine when we humbly approach Jesus Christ with our want, rather than hold back in self-pity. In fact, Jesus’s miracles often begin with a recognition of want, need, failure, or inadequacy. The truth is that each of us is one generation away from Deity—each is a child of God. And just as God has done with both prophets and ordinary men and women through the ages, so Heavenly Father intends to transform us. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. God is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
However, then you see God is building quite a different house from the one you thought of. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but God is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. Because of our Savior’s atoning sacrifice, we can be made equal to the tasks that lie ahead. Divine discontent can move us to act in faith, follow the Savior’s invitations to do good, and give our lives humbly to him. “Behold, thou shalt not suffer these things which ye have seen and heard to go forth in the World, until the time cometh that I shall glorify my name in the flesh; wherefore, ye shall treasure up the things which ye have seen and heard, and show it to no mortal,” reports Ether 3.21. Modern cynics are not ready to follow anybody. They have no belief in reason, no criterion of truth, no set of values, no answer to the question of meaning. They try to undermine every norm put before them. Their courage is expressed not creatively but in their form of life. They courageously reject any solution which would deprive them of their freedom of rejecting whatever they want to reject. The cynics are lonely although they need company in order to show their loneliness. They are empty of both preliminary meanings and an ultimate meaning, and therefore easy victims of neurotic anxiety. Much compulsive self-affirmation and much fanatical self-surrender are expressions of the noncreative courage to be as oneself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, in the crucible of Earthly trials, patiently move forward, and the Savior’s healing power will bring you light, understanding, peace, and hope. “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each person should give what one has decided in one’s heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. A it is written: He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.6-9. We search for happiness. We long for peace. We hope for love. And the Lord showers us with amazing abundance of blessings. However, intermingled with the joy and happiness, one thing is certain: there will be moments, hours, days, sometimes years when our souls will be wounded. “Let you in, into my World. I gave you things you said you deserved, but you took all I had and through it back in my face. Through the hardest time was possible place. I know that I was not to blame. So go ahead and take everything. When it is over, I will still be standing because I was here from the start. You love no one, but still you lost my heart. With all my plans, you followed me. You crossed you heart and said you believed,” reports Gareth Emery and Emma Hewitt – Take Everything. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
It was a Boundless Place to Me as if I Breathed Superior Air–I Think that Earth Seems so to those in Heaven Now
Remember, this is an exposition of souls, a bartering of extraordinary revelations. Oh, let me get it straight. I triumph over death, and we gather here to listen to the personal memories. Many conflicts people see psychotherapists for generally are based upon some aspect of love or will gone wrong. Because of this, every therapist is, or ought to be, engaged in research all the time—research, as the word itself states, as a “search” for the sources. With experimental psychology, the data that is uncovered is impossible to formulate mathematically and it sometimes comes from people who represent psychological misfits of the culture. At the same time, philosophers insist that no model of mortal can be based centrally on data from neuroses or character disorders. And a rational person might agree to these cautions. However, neither these psychologist in their laboratories nor those philosophers in their studies can ignore the fact that we do get tremendously significant and often unique data from persons in therapy—data which are revealed only when the human being can break down the customary pretenses, hypocrisies, and defenses behind which we all hide normal social discourse. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
It is only in the critical situation of emotional and spiritual suffering—which is the situation that leads them to see therapeutic help—that people will endure the pain and anxiety of uncovering the profound roots of their problems. There is also the curious situation that unless we are oriented toward helping the person, one will not, indeed in some ways cannot, reveal the significant data. Unless the interviews are designed to help the person, you will get artifacts, not real data. True, the information we get from our patients may be hard or even impossible to codify more than superficially. However, this information speaks so directly out of the human being’s immediate conflicts and one’s living experience that its richness of meaning more than makes up for its difficult in interpretation. It is one thing to discuss the hypothesis of aggression as resulting from frustration, but quite another to see the tenses of a patient, one’s eyes flashing in anger or hatred, one’s posture clenched into paralysis, and to hear one’s half-stifled gaps of pain from reliving the time a score of years ago when one’s father whipped him, because through no fault of his own, his car was stolen—an event giving rise to a strong sense of displeasure which for that moment encompasses every parental figure in one’s whole World, including me in the room with him. Such data are empirical in the deepest meaning of the term. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
With respect to the question of basing a theory of mortals on data form misfits I would, in turn, challenge my colleagues: Does not every human conflict reveal universal characteristics of mortals as well as the idiosyncratic problems of the individual? Sophocles was not writing merely about one individual’s pathology when he showed us, step by step, through the drama of King Oedipus, the agonizing struggle of a mortal to find out “who I am and where I came from.” Psychotherapy seeks the most specific characteristics and events of the given individual’s life—and any therapy will become weakened in vapid, existential, cloudy generalities which forgets this. However, psychotherapy also seeks the elements of the human conflict of this individua which are basic to the perdurable, persistent qualities of every mortal’s experience as a human—and any therapy will tend to shrink the patient’s consciousness and make life more banal for one if it forgets that. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
Psychotherapy reveals both the immediate situation of the individual’s disturbance and the archetypal qualities and characteristics which constitute the human being as human. It is the latter characteristics which have gone awry in specific ways in a given patient and have resulted in the former, one’s psychological problems. The interpretations of a patient’s problems in psychotherapy is also a partial revelation of mortal’s self-interpretation of oneself through history in the archetypal forms in literature. Aeschylus’ Orestes and Goethe’s Faust, to take two diverse examples, are not simply portrayals of two given characters, one back in Greece in the fifth-century B.C. and the other in eighteenth-century Germany, but presentations of the struggles we all, of whatever century or race, go through in growing up, trying to find identity as individual beings, striving to affirm our being with whatever power we have, trying to love and create, and doing our best to meet all the other events of life up to and including our own death. One of the values of living in a transitional age—an age of therapy—is that it forces upon us this opportunity, even as we try to resolve our individual problems, to uncover new meaning in perennial mortals and to see more deeply into those qualities which constitute that human being as human. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
Our patients are the ones who express and live out the subconscious and unconscious tendencies in the culture. The neurotic, or person suffering from what we now call character disorder, is characterized by the fact that the usual defenses of the culture do not work for one—a generally painful situation of which one is more or less aware. The neurotic or the person suffering from character disorders is one whose problems are so severe that one cannot solve them by living them out in the normal agencies of the culture, such as work, education, and religion. Our patient cannot or will not adjust to the society. This, in turn, may be due to one or both of the two following interrelated elements. First, certain traumatic or unfortunate experiences have occurred in one’s life which make one more sensitive than the average person and less able to live with and manage one’s anxiety. Second, one may posses a greater than ordinary amount of originality and potential which push for expression and, when blocked off, make one ill. Life can sometimes be full of images of meaninglessness and despair. In some areas that is all people witness; in other regions the negativity is less unconditional. However, it seldom becomes beneficial: even comparatively optimistic solutions are undermined by doubt and by awareness of the ambiguity of all solutions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
It is astonishing that we can have so much widespread dysfunction in a country whose prevailing courage is the courage to be as a part in a system of political conformity. What does this mean for the situation of American and with it of humankind as a whole? One can easily play down the importance of the phenomenon. One can point to the unquestionable fact that even the largest crowds of people are an infinitely small percentage of the American population. One can dismiss the significance of the attraction unity that many have been calling an imported fashion, doomed to disappear very soon. This is possibly, but not necessarily entirely true. It may be that the comparatively few (few even if one adds to them all the cynics and despairing ones in our institutions of higher learning) are a vanguard which precedes a great change in the spiritual and social-psychological situation. It may be that the limits of the courage to be as a part have become visible to more people than the increasing conformity shows. If this is the meaning of appeal that Existentialism has on the stage, one should observe it carefully and prevent it from becoming the forerunner of a collectivist forms of the courage to be as a part—a threat which history has abundantly proved to exist. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
The combination of the experience of meaninglessness and the courage to be as oneself is the key to the development of spiritual life. Reality can be disrupted when the categories which constitute ordinary experience have lost their power. The category of substance is lost: souls are twisted like ropes; the casual interdependence of things is disregarded: things appear in a complete contingency; temporal sequences are without significance, it does not matter whether an event has happened before or after another event; the spatial dimensions are reduced or dissolved into a horrifying infinity. The organic structures of life are cut into pieces which are arbitrarily recomposed: limbs are dispersed, colors are separated from their natural carriers. The psychological process is reversed: one lives from the future to the past, and this without rhythm of any kind of meaningful organization. The World of anxiety is a World in which the categories, the structures of reality, have lost their validity. Everybody would be dizzy if causality suddenly ceased to be valid. Spirituality has been attacked as a forerunner of totalitarian systems. The answer that all totalitarian systems have started their careers by attacking religion is insufficient, for one could say that the totalitarian systems fought spirituality just because they tried to resist meaninglessness they thought it expressed. The real answer lies deeper. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Spirituality is not propaganda but revelation. We should welcome feelings of divine discontent that call us to a higher way, while recognizing and avoiding Satan’s counterfeit—paralyzing discouragement. This is a precious space into which Satan is all too eager to jump. We can choose to talk the higher path that leads us to seek for God and his peace and grace, or we can listen to Satan who bombards us with messages that we will never be enough; rich enough, smart enough, beautiful enough anything enough. Our discontent can become divine—or destructive. One way to tell divine discontent from Satan’s counterfeit is that divine discontent is not an invitation to stay in our conform zone, nor will it lead us to despair. I have learned that when I wallow in thoughts of everything I am not, I do not progress and I find it much more difficult to feel and follow the Spirit. It shows that the reality of our existence is as it is. It does not cover up the reality in which we are living. The question therefore is this? Is the revelation of a situation propaganda for it? If this were the case all religion would have to become dishonest beautification. The situation propagated by totalitarianism is dishonest beautification. It is an idealized naturalism which is preferred by some because in their minds, it removes the evil and sins they have committed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
People who are truly loving and have the spirit of God are able to see the meaninglessness of our existence, but at the same time they have the courage to face it and to express it in their souls and hearts. They have the courage to be themselves. “If anyone you lack wisdom, let one ask of God, that gives to all mortals liberally, and upbraided not; and it shall be given to one,” reports James 1.5. Confidence is not just the emotional state of an individual. It is a view of other people’s confidence, and of other people’s perceptions of other people’s confidence. It is also a view of the World—a popular model of current events, a public understanding of the mechanism of economic change as informed by the news media and popular discussions. High confidence tends to be associated with inspirational stories, stories about new business initiatives, tales of how others are getting rich. New era stories have tended to accompany the major booms in stock markets around the World. The economic confidence of times past cannot be understood without reference to the details of these stories. As years go by we forget these stories of the past, and thus we tend to be mystified by the causes of past stock market moves and macroeconomic fluctuations. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
The complexity of the different new era stories through time suggests that differences in confidence have had many effects on the economy beyond an impact on consumption and investment. Changes in these stories, like the young people making fortunes are a contemporary reenactment of the nineteenth-century Gold rush, will affect the expectations for personal success in business, for the success of entrepreneurial ventures, and for payoffs to human capital investments. The process of consumption is as alienated as the process of production. In the first place, we acquire things with money; we are accustomed to this and take it for granted. However, actually, this is a most peculiar way of acquiring things. Money represents labor and effort in an abstract form; not necessarily my labor and effort, since I can have acquired it by inheritance, by unknown means, by luck, or any number of ways. However, even if I have acquired it by my effort (forgetting for the moment that my effort might have brought me the money were it not for that fact that I employed mortals), I may have acquired it in a specific way, by a specific way, by a specific kind of effort, corresponding to my skills and capacities, while, in spending, the money is transformed into an abstract form of labor and can be exchanged against anything else. Provided I am in the possession of money, no effort or interest of mine is necessary to acquire something. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
If I have the money, I can acquire an exquisite painting, even though I may not have any appreciation for art; I can buy the best phonograph, even through I have no musical taste; I can buy a library, although I use it only for the purpose of ostentation. I can buy an education, even though I have no use for it except as an additional social asset. I can even give away the painting or the books I bought, and aside from a loss of money, I suffer no damage. Mere possession of money gives me the right to acquire and to do with my acquisition whatever I like. The human way of acquiring would be to make an effort qualitatively commensurate with what I acquire. The acquisition of bread and clothing would depend on no other premise than that of being alive; the acquisition of books and paintings, on my effort to understand them and my ability to use them. How this principle could be applied practically is not the point to be discussed here. What matters is that the way we acquire things is separated from the way in which we use them. The alienating function of money in the process of acquisition and consumption is beautifully described: Money transforms the real human and natural powers into merely abstract ideas, and natural powers into merely abstract ideas, and hence imperfections, and on the other hand it transforms the real imperfection and imaginings, the powers which only exist in the imagination of the individual into real powers. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Money transforms loyalty into vice, vices into virtue, the slave into the master, the master into the slave, ignorance into reason, and reason into ignorance. One who can buy as a mortal, and one’s relation to the World as a human one, and you can exchange love only for love, confidence for confidence, etc. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically trained person; if you wish to have influence on other people, you must be a person who had a really stimulating and furthering influence on other people. Every one of your relationships to mortals and to nature must be a definite expression of your real, individual life corresponding to the object of your will. If you love without calling forth love, that is, if your love as such does not produce love, if by means of an expression of life as a loving person you do not make of yourself a loved person, then your love is impotent, a misfortune. However, beyond the method of acquisition, how do we use things, once we have acquired them? With regard to many things, there is not even a pretense of use. We acquire them to have them. We are satisfied with useless possession. The expensive dining set manufactured by David Michael or the Baccarat Crystal Medicis Bronze Vase which we never use for fear they might break, the mansion with many unused rooms, the fleet of new and rare BMWs and Mercedes-Benz and the servants, like the ugly brick-a-brac of the lower-middle-class family, are so many examples of pleasure in use. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
However, this satisfaction is possessing per se was more prominent in the nineteenth century; today most of the satisfaction is derived from possession of things-to-be-used rather than of things-to-be-kept. This does not alter the fact, however, that even in the pleasure of things-to-be-used the satisfaction of prestige is a paramount factor. The car, the refrigerator, the television set are for real, but also for conspicuous use. They confer status of the owner. How do we use the things we acquire? Let us begin with food and drink. We eat bread made from 23-carat gold and champagne because it appeals to our phantasy of wealth and distinction—being so unique and luxurious. Actually, we eat a phantasy and have lost contact with the real thing we eat. Our palate, our body, are excluded from an act of consumption which primarily concerns them. We drink labels. We drink labels. With a bottle of Royal DeMaria Chardonnay Icewine 2000 we drink the picture of the pretty boy and girl who drink it in the advertisement, we drink the slogan of the pause the refreshes, we drink the great Canadian habit; least of all do we drink with our palate. All this is even worse when it comes to consumption of things whose whole reality is mainly the fiction the advertising campaign has created, like healthy soap or dental past. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The act of consumption should be a concrete human act, in which or sense, bodily needs, out aesthetic taste—that is to say, in which we as concrete, sensing, feeling, judging human beings—are involved; the act of consumption should be meaningful, human, productive experience. In our culture, there is little of that. Consuming is essentially the satisfaction of artificially stimulated phantasies, s phantasy performance alienated from our concrete, real selves. Most people have parents who encourage these kinds of behaviors. More importantly, their parents encouraged self-reliance, strong social conscience, autonomy, and self-respect. The parents, for the most part, liked their children. This appreciation and affection communicated itself to the children, and they grew up feeling secure and confident. The balance between autonomy and social responsibility was achieved in the interaction process of the growing up, of playing, of schooling, and of working. This was not so much a matter of parents causing or determining actualizing behavior; they simply created the kind of climate in which self-fulfillment blossomed. Since many of us have not had such a childhood, is it too late for us? #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
Too often, those of us who had bad breaks in childhood grow up bitter, cynical, or resentful, or we manipulate with the excuses theses negative experiences provide. We cop an ideological plea, which says: “What do you expect of me? I have had a rough life. I am not capable of honesty, openness, a good feeling about my fellow mortals.” We claim exemption from authentic and responsible living on the grounds that we are crippled or disadvantaged. Do you recall the song in the play and film West Side Story “Gee, Officer Krupke”? In this song members of a New York street gang tell a police officer that they cannot help being bad, because they were raised in slums, in broken homes, “my father was a junkie, my mother was a tramp.” Cute as the song is, it represents what a lot of manipulators do today: disavow any responsibility for being full-functioning, creative, and effective members of the human society with the excuse that they had a rough time of it in their childhood. Truly, a negative traumatic childhood may interfere or slow down the process of self-fulfillment. However, what of the mature, responsible person lying dormant beneath the excuses? The time for extolling and reinforcing excuses is past: the need of the times is for responsible, reality-oriented people. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Every now and then, we will recognize that we have been the instruments in the hands of God and we will be grateful to know that the Holy Ghost working through us is a manifestation of God’s approval. Divine discontent leads to humility, not to self-pity or the discouragement that comes from making comparisons in which we always come up short. Covenant-keeping people come in all sizes and shapes; their families, their life experiences, and their circumstances vary. “The Lord will be merciful unto them; yea, he will lengthen out their days and increase their seed,” reports Helaman 7.24. With Christ’s help, we can do all things. The scriptures promise that we will find grace to help in time of need. “And there is something we leave behind to join the ride. I could not wait but did not realize I would never come back. And the calling is taking over and it lasts more than awhile. This is another reason I will not be around to say good night, so do not write me I will call you. For all of my life I have been lost satellite. It is all a waste of time with me before I get it right. And I miss you paradise, although you are over, and I miss you paradise. I know you are over. I lie awake and I count the hours passing by. Too many questions that will not be answered here tonight, and they rise in waves before you and the force opens your eyes,” reports Emma Hewitt (Miss You Paradise). #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Therefore, as One Returned, I Feel Odd Secrets of the Line to Tell Before the Seal Unscrutinized by Eye
He looked at me for a long moment, as though he was seeing me with new eyes, but it was only his weariness. He was seeing what he wanted to see it me, and he thanked me again. This was truly one of the most baffling mortals I had ever met. And to think, he was her husband, and I had though him the perfect husband for her when we had first met. He reached out and took my hand before I could stop him. Could he not feel how hard it was? Only the thinnest layer of flesh was permeable. I was a monster. Yet he peered into my eyes as though plumbing for something separate from the Deadly Sins that prevailed with in me. We can speak of idolatry or alienation not only in relationship to other people, but also in relationship to oneself, when the person is subject to irrational passions. The person who is mainly motivated by one’s lust for power, does not experience oneself any more in the richness and limitlessness of a human beings, but one becomes a slave to one partial striving in oneself, which is projected into external aims, by which one is possessed. The person who is given to the exclusive pursuit of one’s passion for money is possessed by one’s striving for it; money is the idol which one worships as the projection of one isolated power of oneself, one’s greed for it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Many twenty first- century mortals have lost a meaningful World and a self which lives in meanings out of a spiritual center. The mortal-created World of objects has drawn into itself one who created it and who now lose their subjectivity in it. One has sacrificed oneself to one’s own productions. However, mortals are still aware of what he or she has lost or is continuously losing. Yet, they are still mortal enough to experience one’s dehumanization as despair. At this level, power is a sensational exaggeration made for the sake of profit and fame; it is a morbid play with negativities. In this sense, the neurotic person is an alienated person. One’s actions are not one’s own; while an individual is under the illusion of doing what he or she wants, one is actually driven by forces which are separated from oneself, which work behind the individual’s back; one is a stranger to oneself, just as one’s fellow mortals are a stranger to the individual who is consumed by greed, lust, and power. These type of people experiences the other and oneself not as what the really are, but distorted by the unconscious forces which operate in them. The insane person is the absolutely alienated person; one has completely lost oneself as the center of one’s own experience; one has lost the sense of self. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
What is common to all these phenomena—the worship of idols, the idolatrous worship of God, the idolatrous love for a person, the worship of a political leader or the state, and the idolatrous worship of the externalization of irrational passions—is the process of alienation. It is the fact that mortals do not experience themselves as the active bearer of one’s own powers and richness, but as an impoverished thing, dependent on powers outside of oneself, unto whom one has projected one’s living substance. As the reference to idolatry indicates, alienation is by no means a modern phenomenon. Suffice it to say that it seems alienation differs from culture to culture, both in the specific spheres which are alienated, and in the thoroughness and completeness of the process. Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total; it pervades the relationship of mortals to their work, to things they consume, to the state, to one’s fellow mortals, and to oneself. Mortals have created a World of human-made things as it never existed before. They have constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine they built. Yet this whole creation of theirs stands over and above them. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
One does not feel oneself as a creator and center, but as the servant of a Golem, which one’s hands have built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which one unleashes, the more powerless one feels oneself as a human being. Mortals confront themselves with one’s own forces embodied in things one has crated, alienated from oneself. They are owned by their own creation, and have lost ownership of oneself. They have lost ownership of themselves. Many individuals have built a golden calf, and says, “these are your gods who have brought you out of Egypt.” What happens to the worker? As the neurotic state progresses, they are unable to understand what is happening in our period. They are unable to distinguish the genuine from the neurotic anxiety. People begin to attack as a morbid longing for negativity what in reality is courageous acceptance of the negative. They decay what is actually the creative expression of decay. They reject as meaninglessness the meaningful attempt to reveal the meaninglessness of our situation. In industry the person becomes an economic atom that dances to the tune of atomistic management. Your place is just here, you will sit in this fashion, your arms will move x inches in a course of y radius and the time of movement will be .000 minutes. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Work is becoming more repetitive and thoughtless as the planners, the micromotionists, and the scientific managers further strip the workers of their rights to think and move freely. Life is being denied; need to control, creativeness, curiosity, and independent thought are being baulked, and the result, the inevitable result, is flight or fight on the part of the worker, apathy or destructiveness, psychic regression. The role of the manager is also one of alienation. It is true, one manages the whole and a part, but one too is alienated from one’s product as something concrete and useful. One’s aim is to employ profitably the capital invested by others, although in comparison with the older type of owner-manager, modern management is much less interested in the amount of profit to be paid out as dividend to the stockholder than it is in the efficient operation and expansion of the enterprise. Characteristically, within management those in charge of labor relations and of sales—that is, of human manipulation—gain, relatively speaking, an increasing importance in comparison with those in charge of the technical aspects of production. The manager, like the worker, like everybody, deal with impersonal giants: with the giant competitive enterprise; with the giant national market; with the giant consumer, who has to be coaxed and manipulated; with the giant unions, and the giant government. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
All these giants have their own lives, as it were. They determine the activity of the manager and they direct the activity of the worker and clerk. The problem of the manager opens up one of the most significant phenomena in an alienated culture, that of bureaucratization. Both big business and government administrations are conducted by bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are specialists in the administration of things and of mortals. Due to the bigness of the apparatus to be administered, and the resulting abstractification, the bureaucrats’ relationship to the people is usually one of complete alienation. They, the people to be administered, are objects whom the bureaucrats consider neither with love nor hate, but completely impersonally; the manager-bureaucrat must not feel, as far as one’s professional activity is concerned; one must manipulate people as though they were figures, or things. Since the vastness of the organization and the extreme division of labor prevents any single individual from seeing the whole, since there is no organic, spontaneous co-operation between the various individuals or groups within the industry, the managing bureaucrats are necessary; without them the enterprise would collapse in a short time, since nobody would know the secret which makes it function. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
Bureaucrats are as indispensable as the tons of paper gigabytes and terabytes consumed under their leadership. Just because everybody senses, with a feeling of powerlessness, the vital role of bureaucrats, they are given an almost godlike respect. If it were not for the bureaucrats, people believe, everything would go to pieces, and we would starve. Whereas, in the medieval World, the leaders were considered representatives of god-intended order, in modern Capitalism the role of the bureaucrat is hardly less sacred—since he or she is necessary for the survival of the whole. Karl Marx gave a profound definition of the bureaucrat saying: “The bureaucrat relates oneself to the World as a mere object of one’s activity.” It is interesting to note that the spirit of bureaucracy has entered not only business and government administration, but also trade unions and the great political socialist parities in England, Germany, and France. In Russia and America, too, the bureaucratic managers and their alienated spirit have conquered these countries, Russia and America could perhaps exist without terror—if certain conditions were given—but it could not exist without the system of total bureaucratization. However, somehow, many people feel that this is not a true safety; one has to suppress inclinations to accept the visions of bureaucrats as revelations, and some feel seriously threatened by it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
However, one does not feel spiritually threatened by something which is not an element of oneself. And since it is a symptom of the neurotic character to resist nonbeing by reducing being, one can turn to God for traditional safety. There should be no question of what Christian theology has to do in this situation. It should decide for truth against safety, even if the safety is consecrated and supported by the churches. Certainly there is a Christian conformism, from the beginning of the Church on, and there is a Christian collectivism—or at least semicollectivism, in several periods of Church history. However, this should not induce Christian theologians to identify Christian courage with the courage to be as a part. They should realize that the courage to be as a part—even if they rightly assume that neither of these forms of the courage to be gives the final solution. It is the endless compassion of God that allows us to see others for who they are. Through the lens of pure love, we see immortal beings of infinite potential and worth and beloved sons and daughters of Almighty God. Once we see through that lens, we cannot discount, disregard, or discriminate against anyone. In the Savior’s work, it is often by small and simple means that great things are brought to pass. We know that it requires repetitive practice to become good at anything. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
Because of your unique talents, abilities, and personality, you will help others become better and happier. Yes, life can be hard at times. Certainly we all have our times of despair and discouragement. However, regardless of our differences, we seek to embrace one another as sons and daughters of our beloved Heavenly Father. God loves his children enough to give them a blueprint for the architecture to happiness and meaning in this life and a way to experience eternal joy in the halls of glory in the life to come. Being truly self-actualized is considered the exception rather than the rule since most people are working to meet more pressing needs. A peak experience involves feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one every was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in one’s daily life by such experiences. These are moments of transcendence in which a person emerges feeling changed and transformed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
We have long believed that love and will are interdependent and belong together. Both are conjunctive processes of being—a reaching out to influence others, molding, forming, creating the consciousness of the other. However, this is only possible, in an inner sense, if one opens oneself at the same time to the influence of the other. The self-actualizer can appreciate the irony and the absurd in life, and especially in the behaviors of mortals in general, but one has no patience with ethnic jokes, sick jokes, cruelty jokes or those situations in which a particular person is made the butt of a joke. This sense of humor enables one to transcend unimportant concerns, and of course, enables one to laugh at oneself when one becomes foolish or ridiculous. Will without love becomes manipulation. Love without will in our own day becomes sentimental and experimental. Therefore, we must display more than average creativeness, originality, and inventiveness. We are not always artistic or mechanically oriented people, nor always involved in problem solving occupations. Even though work tends to be fairly ordinary, one displays innovative skills, more creativity, and a joy from strong encouragement to follow one’s own lead. There is a feeling of the everlasting going and coming, the eternal return, the growing and mating and dying and growing again, which is part of the spiritual process. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Human beings are part of this eternal going and returning, part of its sadness as well as its song. However, mortals, the seeker, is called by one’s consciousness to transcend the eternal return. Our own convictions are to seek the inner reality, with the belief that the fruits of future values will be able to grow only after they are sown by the values of our history. When the full results of our bankruptcy of inner values is brought home to us, it is especially important that we seek the source of love and will. Although we may not be well adjusted in the naïve sense of being always approved of or totally identified with our culture, we can still be well adjusted personally—that is, congruent and authentic in and to ourselves—even if we reject the ideals of social adjustment. So, it is not concerning that some may see others as eccentric or even somewhat odd when compared with the run-of-the-mill, conforming, look-alike people around us. Our value system results automatically from acceptance of ourselves and others. Most self-actualizers are not petty moralizers. What most people are offended by, what most people consider moral problems, are usually of no concern to self-actualizing people. Belief in the flexibility and potentiality of the human being is so strong that one assumes that, unless interfered with, people will usually be just fine. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Many people cannot identify with the theory of self-actualization because it seems to point to a state of excellence. Nonsense! No one’s life is flawless. We all have our own Hells we are trying to work ourselves out of, not day by day, but inch by inch. Self-actualizers are far from faultless. They are human. As a consequence of their kinship, deep feeling, sensitivity, and awareness, they suffer more of the pains of being alive. They also experience more of the joys! Because they find so much pleasure in being alive and being authentic, they often expect too much of the same kind of behavior from people who are less able to live the same way. This makes them frequently impatient, even somewhat resentful, concerning those they care about. The striking thing about love and will in or day is that, whereas in the past we were always held up to as the answer to life’s predicaments, we now have ourselves become the problem. It is always true that love and will become more difficult in a transitional age; and ours is an era of radical age; and ours is an era of radical transition. The old myths and symbols by which we oriented ourselves are gone, anxiety is rampant; we cling to each other and try to persuade ourselves that what we feel is love; we do not will because we are afraid that if we choose one thing or one person we will lose the other, and we are too insecure to take that chance. #Randolphharris 12 of 14
The bottom then drops out of the conjunctive emotions and processes—of which love and will are the two foremost examples. The individual is forced to turn inward; one becomes obsessed with the new form of the problem of identity, namely, Even-if-I-know-who-I-am, I-have-no-significance. I am unable to influence others. The next step can be apathy. And the following step may be violence. For no human being can stand the perpetually numbing experience of one’s own powerlessness. So great is the emphasis on love as the resolution to life’s predicament that people’s self-esteem ascended or feel depending on whether or not they had achieved it. Those who believed they had found it indulged in self-righteousness, confident in their visible proof of salvation as the Calvinist’s wealth used to be tangible evidence of one’s being numbered among the elect. Those who failed to find it felt not simply bereft to a greater or lesser extent, but, on a deeper and more damaging inner level, their self-esteem was undermined. They felt marked as a new species of pariah, and would confess in psychotherapy that they awoke in the small hours of the morning not necessarily especially lonely or unhappy but plagued with the gnawing conviction that thy had somehow missed the great success of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
And all the while, with the rising divorce rates, the increasing banalization of love in literature and art, and the fact that physical intimacy for many people has become more meaningless as it is more available, this love has seemed tremendously elusive if not an outright illusion. Some members of the community came to the conclusion that love is destroyed by the very nature of our bourgeious society, and the reforms they proposed had the specific purpose of making a World in which love is more possible. “You and me could be enough. We will ride the storm. When the skies get rough, I will stay though cold and dark. I will take your hand and I will pick you up. And I will give you love until the Worlds run dry and I will give you love. Never question why. No hesitation. I will be on your side and I will give you love. It is you and I. We have no need for the light of day, while the World is asleep, we will be miles away. To innocence, through right or wrong, you take my hand and you lead me on,” reports Emma Hewitt (Give You Love). In such a contradictory situation, the sexual form of live—lowest common denominator on the ladder of salvation—understandably became preoccupation; for sex, as rooted in mortal’s inescapable biology, seems always dependable to give at least a facsimile of love. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
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This World is Not Conclusion because a Sequel Stands Beyond Invisible as Music
Let your eyes drink me in. You are seeing colors you never saw before. You are realizing sensation you never even dreamt about. The foregoing discussion of the process of abstractification leads to the central issue of the effects of Capitalism on personality: the phenomenon of alienation. By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences oneself as an alien. One does not experience oneself as the center of one’s World, as the creator of one’s own acts—but one’s acts and their consequences have become one’s masters, whom one obeys, or whom one may even worship. “Yea, wo unto those that worship idols, for the devil of all devils delight in them. And, in fine, wo unto those who die in their sins; for they shall return to God, and behold his face, and remain in their sins,” reports 2 Nephi 9.37-38. Therefore, we should rediscover characteristics of the human soul and of mortal’s existential predicament which has been covered by the Essentialist tendency of modern thought. The material conditions of human existence allows one to derive religious faith from the desire of mortals to overcome finitude in a transcendent World. However, the alienated person is out of touch with oneself as one is out of touch with any other person. The courage to be as oneself is expressed in terms of a practical solipsism (the view of theory that the self is all that can be known to exist) that destroys any communication between mortal and mortal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
This form of alienation creates Nihilism. Nihilism presents the picture of a World in which human existence has fallen into utter meaninglessness. The split between subject and object from something which precedes both of them—life—and to interpret the objectified World as a self-negation of the creative life. This is the tragic self-destruction of life once technical reason has come into control. People become experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the World outside productively. The older meaning in which alienation was used was to denote an insane person; aliene in French, alienado in Spanish are older words for the psychotic, the thoroughly and absolutely alienated person. (“Alienist,” in English, is still used for the doctor who cares for the insane.) In the last century and a half the word “alienation” was used by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegal and Karl Marx, referring not to a state of insanity, but to a less drastic form of self-estrangement, which permits the person to act reasonably in practical matters, yet which constitutes one of the most severe socially pattern defects. In Marx’s system alienation is called that condition of mortal where one’s own act becomes to one an alien power, standing over and against one, instead of being ruled by the individual. This theater is full of discoveries in the deserts and jungles of the human soul. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
However, while the use of the word alienation in this general sense is a recent one, the concept is a much older one; it is the same to which the profits of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible referred as idolatry. It will help us to a better understanding of alienation if we begin by considering the meaning of idolatry. The prophets of monotheism did not denounce heathen religions as idolatrous primarily because they worshiped several gods instead of one. (However, we still should not judge other cultures because we do not understand them.) The essential difference between monotheism and polytheism is not one of the number of gods, but lies in the fact of self-alienation. Mortals spend their energy, their artistic capacities on building an idol, and then they worship this idol, which is nothing but the result of one’s own human effort. One’s life forces have flown into a thing and this thing, having become an idol, is not experienced as a result of one’s own productive effort, but as something apart from oneself, over and against the individual, which one worships and to which one submits. “Assur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, you are our gods; for in thee the fatherless find love,” reports Hosea XIV.8. Idolatrous mortals bows down to the work of one’s own hands. The idol represents one’s own life forces in an alienated form. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
The principle of monotheism, in contrast, is that mortals are infinite, that there is no partial quality in them which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is unrecognizable and indefinable; God is not a thing. If mortals are created in the likeness of God, they are created as the bearer of infinite qualities. In idolatry mortals bows down and submits to the projection of one partial quality in oneself. One does not experience oneself as the center from which living acts of love and reason radiate. One becomes a thing, one’s neighbor becomes a thing, just as his gods are things. “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of mortal’s hands. They have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like them; so is everyone that trusts in them,” reports Psalm 135.15-18. The individual self becomes an empty space and the bearer of something which is not oneself, something strange by which the self is estranged from itself. Monotheistic religions themselves, to a large extent, regressed into idolatry. Mortals projects their power of love and of reason unto God; one does not feel them any more as one’s own powers, and then one prays to God to give them back some of what one, mortals, has projected unto God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
In early Protestantism and Calvinism, the required religious attitude is that mortals should feel oneself empty and impoverished, and put their trust in the grace of God, that is, into the hope that God may return to one part of one’s own qualities, which one has put into God. This form of idealism and naturalism are alike in their attitude to the existing person; both of them eliminate one’s infinite significance and makes one a space through which something else passes. Both philosophies are expressions of a society which was devised for the liberations of humanity, but which fell under the bondage of objects it itself had created. The safety which is guaranteed by well-functioning mechanism for the technical control of nature, by the refined psychological control of the person, by the rapidly increasing organizational control of society—this safety is bought at a high price: mortals, for whom all this was invented as a means, becomes a means oneself in the service of means. Every act of submissive worship is an act of alienation and idolatry in this sense. What is frequently called love is often nothing but this idolatrous phenomenon of alienation; only that not God or an idol, but another person is worshiped in this way. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
The loving person in this type pf submissive relationship, projects all his or her love, strength, thought, into the other person, and experiences the loved person as a superior being, finding satisfaction in complete submission and worship. This does not only mean that one fails to experience the loved person as a human being in his or her reality, but the one does not experience oneself in one’s full reality, as the bearer of productive human powers. Just as in the case of religious idolatry, one has projected all one’s richness into the other person, and experiences this richness not any more as something which is unique to the individual, but as something alien from oneself, deposited in somebody else, deposited in somebody else, with which one can get in touch only by submission to, or submergence in the other person. The same phenomenon exists in the worshiping submission to a political leader, or to the state. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
The leader and the state actually are what they are by the consent of the governed. However, they become idols when the individual projects all one’s powers into them and worships them, hoping to regain some of one’s powers by submission and worship. Yet, people should fight against economic dehumanization, and struggle for creativity, instead of allowing humanity to slip into the spatial realm of dead objects. In the Rousseau’s theory of the state, as in contemporary totalitarianism, the individual is supposed to abdicate one’s own rights to protect them unto the state as the only arbiter. In Fascism and Stalinism, the absolutely alienated individual worships at the altar of an idol, and it makes little difference by what names this idol is known: state, class, collective, or what else. “Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched person that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities,” reports 2 Nephi 4.17. We must save life from the destructive power of self-objectivation. Philosophers generally struggle for the preservation of the person, for the self-affirmation of the self, in a situation in which the self is more and more lost in this World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
Philosophers wanted to indicate a way for the courage to be as oneself under conditions which annihilate the self and replace it by a thing. Therefore, it is important to have a continuing freshness of appreciation. Self-actualizers are seldom bored, stale, mediocre and people find that impressive. They constantly find novelty, wonder, beauty, and delight in the World. Even repeated experiences are new and delightful. Passionate, intimate love, for example, is never just a routine’ each coming together is a refreshing, re-vivifying experience quite unlike the experience of Deficiency-Motivated or self-alienated person who says mist experiences, sexual or otherwise, “Thank God that is over!” The self-actualizer is mature, capable of innocent delight in and appreciation of simple things: flowers, art, butterflies, people, a good cup of coffee. They experience more Peak or Oceanic feelings than the ordinary person. The self-actualizing people is overwhelmed wit a feeling of joy at being alive. One feels totally; all systems are involved—intellect, emotion, physical sense. One person described it thus: “I was a drop of water in the gigantic ocean, infinitesimal and insignificant, but totally aware that the gigantic ocean, infinitesimal and insignificant, but totally aware that the gigantic ocean is made up of simple drops of water.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
Experience is a paradoxical sensation: being at once tiny and all-encompassing, being nothing and being everything, being helpless and being all-powerful, being weak and being super-strong. It is not a religious or supernatural experience, though it resembles the mystical experiences described by St. Francis, William Blake, Sarah Winchester, and others. It also resembles the transcending experiences reported by some people who are experiencing an elevated state of consciousness, though self-actualizing people generally have no use for stimulants. It seems to be a feeling experience; yet, during the few seconds the person is involved in it, centuries of time may seem to pass. Moreover, self-actualizing people report that it is a growing experience. They feel that they have come more real, more authentic, more of what they were before. We achieve the abundant life by becoming true disciple of Jesus Christ—by following in his ways and engaging in his work. The healing hands of Jesus Christ reach out to all who seek him. Believing and loving God and striving to follow Christ can change our hearts, soften our pain, and fill our souls with exceedingly great joy. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Believing God leads to faith in him and developing trust in his word. Faith causes our hearts to grow in our love for God and others. As that love grow, we are inspired to emulate the Savior as we continue our own great journey on the path of discipleship. They have a strong kinship feeling for other people. Healthy, authentic people feel engaged with and related to other people. They seldom become hermits. They are part of the human race and value the association. This allows the feelings of kinship to humankind as a whole and to individual persons in particular. Feelings of pleasure come from the company of others. Other people are drawn toward these people, too. The benefit derived from these kinship associations is not exploitive, at least not from the self-actualizer’s side of it. Their interpersonal relationships are profound. Because they trust more, empathize and associate more with other people than the typical person, they seem to develop greater love, and are able to break down the barriers that we all build up. Their love is warm and comfortable, seldom clinging and possessive. It is possible to have many acquaintances and casual contacts, but usually a small, select circle of deep friendships. So seeking friends who exhibit similar traits is a priority. It is the love of God that rescues, restores, and revives. God knows you. You are his child. He loves you. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
Even when you think that you are not lovable, God reaches out to you. This very day—every day—God reaches out to you, desiring to heal you, to life you up, and to replace the emptiness in your heart with an abiding joy. God desires to sweep away any darkness that clouds your life and fill it with the sacred and brilliant light of his unending glory. Differences in class, color, creed, or personality are accepted by these people as part of the rich variety of humankind. There is a surprising lack of racist or ethnocentric prejudice among them. The scriptures teach us that without faith it is impossible to please God: for one the comes to God must believe that he is. In my experience, these people value individuals as individuals and tend to emphasize the common bonds existing among human beings rather than the superficial differences. Their only prejudice seems to be in the direction of preferring other Being-Motivated people. Although they respect other people and their opinions, they tend to draw them out and try to enable them to become more of what they can become. Their relationships with others have a therapeutic quality about them; they do other people good by being with them. The love of God enters their hearts, when awaking in the morning, and stays throughout the day. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Therefore, it is important to voice prayers of gratitude at evening’s end. This is the inexpressible love Heavenly Father has for us. Separate means from the ends. The means is as enjoyable as the end. The doing is as satisfying as the accomplishing. Getting there is half the fun, is a good cliché to describe the outlook God wants us to have. This again shows the impulsive rather than the compulsive quality of self-actualizing people. Being self-actualizing allows people the ability to take off for a weekend drive and enjoy wherever they go; whereas other people set a goal and if they do not attain it, feel that nothing was done or enjoyable. “I took a ride, fallen in the state that I am in, away from the lights, an ending before so we can begin now. And it is all I see, this scene is burnt out so meet me tonight and we will leave behind all that we have been. Do not let it slide further away with our eyes closed, in circles again when I am waiting and hoping for you to say that we will go. And then we will ride out, a silent escape that I am craving. I figured out, for all our mistakes we could win. It is all I see…these dreams call out. It is all I need and I need this now,” reports Emma Hewitt (State that I am In). #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Perhaps the Kingdom of Heaven has Changed when the Summer Folded Her Miracle?
There are a number of ways in which a person can be helped to cultivate a set of values that represent the fullest expression of who one is and which are fairly workable within the limits of the society in which one lives. There are motives that are universal to each member of the species of Homo Sapiens. At the core level are the physiological motives, those tensions created by tissue needs—hunger, thirst, elimination, air, and so on. Few humans and animals ignore them. After these are put into proper perspective, into a relatively regulated process, humans are motivated by needs for safety, for love and belongingness, for esteem and ego-identity, and for self-actualization. The self-actualizing person, our model of mental and emotion health, is a person who recognizes first of all one’s terrestrial nature as well as one’s divine nature. One is a person whose value system is based on this recognition of one’s many-sided nature. An individual appreciates one’s natures, one tries to gear one’s life to the optimum meeting of all his or her needs, the individual recognizes these needs in others and one tries to create a World in which he or she and all others can meet their needs. The contemporary social character seems to touch upon the deepest level of the modern personality; it is the most appropriate if one is concerned with the interaction between the contemporary socioeconomic structure of the average individual. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
There is also a level of alienation, which is one of the fundamental economic features of Capitalism, the process of quantification and abstraction. The modern business person not only deals with millions of dollars, but also with millions of customers, thousands of stockholders, and thousands of workers and employees; all these people become so many pieces in a gigantic machine which must be controlled, whose effects must be calculated; each mortal eventually can be expressed as an abstract entity, as a figure, and on this basis economic occurrences are calculated, trends are predicted, decisions are made. Today, when only about 40 percent of our working population is self-employed, the rest for somebody else, and a mortal’s life is dependent on someone who pays one a wage or a salary. However, we should say something, instead of someone, because a worker is hired and fired by an institution, the managers of which are impersonal parts of the enterprise, rather than people in personal contact with the mortals they employ. Let us not forget another fact: in pre-capitalistic society, exchange was to a large extent one of the goods and services; today, all work is rewarded with money. The close fabric of economic relations is regulated by money, the abstract expression of work—that is to say, we receive different quantities of the same for different qualities; and we give money for what we receive—again exchanging only different qualities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Practically nobody, with the exception of the farm population, could live for even a few days without receiving and spending money, which stands for the abstract quality of concrete work. In the modern industrial enterprise, when it comes to the division of labor, the worker is not in touch with the is not in touch with the whole product at any point, unlike in the past when there was more vertical integration. Now days, the worker is engaged in the performance of one specialized function, and while he or she might shift in the course of time from one function to another, one is still not related to the concrete product as a whole. The worker develops a specialized function, and the tendency is such, that the function of the modern industrial worker can be defined as working in a machine like fashion in activities for which machine work has not yet been devised or which would be costlier than human work. The only person who is in touch with the whole product is the manager, but to he or she the product is an abstraction, whose essence is exchange value, while the worker, for whom it is concrete, never works on it as a whole. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Undoubtedly without quantification and abstraction modern mass production would be unthinkable. However, in a society in which economic activities have become the main preoccupation of mortals, this process of quantification and abstractification has transcended the realm of economic production, and spread to the attitude of mortals to things, to people, and to oneself. We are starting to relate to ourselves as objects: one can relate to oneself to it in its full concreteness, then the object appears with all its specific qualities, and there is no other object which is identical with it. And one can relate oneself to the object in abstract ways, that is, emphasizing only those qualities which it has in common with all other objects of the same genus, and this accentuating some and ignoring other qualities. The full and productive relatedness to an object comprises this polarity of perceiving it in its uniqueness, and at the same time in its generality; in its concreteness, and at the same time in its abstractness. In Western culture this polarity has given way to an almost exclusive reference to the abstract qualities of things and people, and to a neglect of relating oneself to their concreteness and uniqueness. We are supposed to have an efficient perception of reality and a comfortable relationship with it so we can detect what is real and authentic and gravitate toward it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
However, many people are now dividing reality and unreality into mutually exclusive compartments. They no longer know and appreciate the facts of existence because they are minimizing the importance of imagination, fantasy, dreaming, and fiction. Instead of forming abstract concepts where it is necessary and useful, everything, including ourselves, is being abstractified; the concrete reality of people and things to which we can relate with the reality of our own person, is replaced by abstractions, by ghosts that embody different quantities, but not different qualities. It is quite customary to talk about a three-million-dollar house, a hundred-thousand-dollar car, a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch, and this not only from the standpoint of the manufacturer or the consumer in the process of buying it, but as the essential point in the description. When one speaks of the three-million-dollar house, one is not primarily concerned with its usefulness or beauty, that is, with its concrete qualities, but one speaks of it as a commodity, the main quality of which is its exchange value, expressed in a quantity, that of money. This does not mean, of course, that one is not concerned also with the usefulness or beauty of the house, but it does mean that its concrete (use) value is secondary to its abstract (exchange) value in the way the object is experiences. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The famous line by Gertrude Stein “a rose is a rose is a rose,” is a protest against this abstract form of experience; for most people a rose is just not a rose, but a flower in a certain price range, to be bought on certain social occasions; even the most beautiful flower, provided it is a wild one, costing nothing, is not experienced in its beauty, compared to that of the rose, because it has no exchange value. In other words, things are experienced as commodities, as embodiments of exchange value, not only while we are buying or selling, but in our attitude toward them when the economic transaction is finished. A thing, even after it has been bought, never quite loses its quality as a commodity in this sense; it is expendable, always retaining its exchange value quality. A good illustration of this attitude is to be found in the behavior displayed by a homeowner, Justin. During one of the first days after they had moved into a new house they just had built for them, he got a call from a real estate agent, saying that some people were interested in buying that particular house and wanted to look at it. Although he knew that it was most unlikely that the family would want to sell their new home a few days after they had moved in, he could not resist the temptation to know whether the value of the house had risen since they had bought it. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Justin spent one or two valuable hours showing the real estate agent around the house. He writes: “Very interested in fact we can get an offer for more than we have invested into this house. Nice coincidence that offer comes before we moved all our furniture in. All agree it will be good for our family’s morale to learn that the house will sell for a good deal more than we spent to have it built. Let us see what happens.” In spite of all the pride and pleasure in the new house, it had still retained its quality as a commodity, as something exchangeable, and to which no full sense of possession or use had been attached yet because it had not been lived in. The same attitude is obvious in the relationship of people to the cars they buy; the car never becomes fully a thing to which one is attached, for many people, but retains its quality as a commodity to be exchanged in a successful bargain; thus, cars are sold after a year or two, long before their use value is exhausted or even considerably diminished. This abstraction takes place even with regard to phenomena which are not commodities sold on the market, like a flood disaster; the newspaper will headline a flood, speaking of a “million-dollar catastrophe,” emphasizing the abstract quantitative element rather than the concrete aspects of human suffering. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
However, the abstactifying and quantifying attitude goes far beyond the realm of things. People are also experienced as the embodiment of a quantitative exchange of value. To speak of a man as being “worth one hundred and fifty million dollars,” is to speak of him not any more as a concrete human person, but as an abstraction, whose essence can be expressed in a figure. It is an expression of the same attitude when a newspaper headlines an obituary with the words “Rifle Heiress Dies.” Actually a woman has died, a woman with certain human qualities, with hopes and frustrations, wit a husband and children. It is true that she manufactures guns, or rather, that she owned and managed a corporation in which workers served machines manufacturing guns; but if it is said that a “Rifle Heiress Dies,” the richness and concreteness of a human life is expressed in the abstract formula of economic function. The same abstractifying approach can be seen in expressions like “Mr. Ford produced so many automobiles,” or this or that general “conquered a fortress”; or if a person has a house built for oneself, he or she says, “I built a house.” Concretely speaking, Mr. Ford did not manufacture the automobiles; he directed automobile production which was executed by thousands of workers. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The general never conquered the fortress; he was sitting in his headquarters, issuing orders, and his soldiers did the conquering. The man did not build the house; he paid the money to an architect who made the plans and to contractors who did the building. All this is not said to minimize the significance of the managing and directing operations, but in order to indicate that in this way of experiencing things, sight of what goes on concretely is lost, and an abstract view is taken in which one function, that of making plans, giving orders, or financing an activity, is identified with the whole concrete process of production, or of fighting, or of building, as the case may be. The same process of abstractification takes place in all other spheres. A Newspaper recently printed a news item under the heading: “B.Sc. + PhD. = $3 million.” The information under this somewhat baffling heading was that statistical data showed that a student of engineering who had acquired his Doctor’s degree will earn, in a lifetime, $3 million more than a person who has only the degree of Bachelor of Sciences. As far as this is a fact it is an interesting socioeconomic datum, worth reporting. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The economic equation is mentioned because the way of expressing the fact as an equation between a scientific degree and a certain amount of dollars is indicative of the abstractifying and quantifying thinking in which knowledge is experienced as the embodiment of a certain exchange value on the personality market. It is to the same point when a political report in a news magazine states that the President Trump administration feels it has so much “capital of confidence” that it can risk some unpopular measures, because it can afford to lose some of the confidence capital. Here again, a human quality like confidence is expressed in its abstract form, as if it were a money investment to be dealt with in terms of a market speculation. How drastically commercial categories have entered even religious thinking is show in the following passage by Bishop Sheen, in an article on the birth of Christ. “Our reason tells us that if anyone of the claimants (for the role of God’s son) came from God, the least that God could do to support His Representative’s claim would be to preannounce His coming. Automobile manufacturers tell us when to expect a new model,” so writes the author. Or even more drastically, Billy Graham, the evangelists declared, “I am selling the greatest product in the World; why should not it be promoted as well as soap?” #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The process of abstractification, however, has still deeper roots and manifestations than the ones described so far, roots which go back to the very beginning of the modern era; to the dissolution of any concrete frame of reference in the process of life. In a primitive society, the World is identical with the tribe. The tribe is in the center of the Universe, as it were; everything outside is shadowy and has no independent existence. In the medieval World, the Universe was much wider; it was seen with the Earth as the center and mortals as the purpose of Creation. Everything had its fixed place, just as everybody had one’s fixed position in feudal society. With the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, new vistas opened up. The Earth lost its central place, and became one of the satellites of the Sun; new continents were found, new sea lanes discovered; the static social system was more and more loosened up; everything and everybody was moving. Yet, until the end of the nineteenth century, nature and society had not lost their concreteness and definiteness. Mortal’s natural and social World was still manageable, still has definite contours. However, with the progress in scientific thought, technical discoveries and the dissolution of all traditional bonds, this definiteness and concreteness is in the process of being lost. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Whether we think of our new cosmological picture, or of theoretical physics, or of atonal music, or abstract art—the concreteness and definiteness of our frame of reference is disappearing. We are not any more the center of the Universe, we are not any more the purpose of Creation, we are not any more the masters of a manageable and recognizable World—we are a speck of dust, we are a nothing, somewhere in space—without any kind of concrete relatedness to anything. We speak of millions of people being killed, of one third or more of our population being wiped out if a third World War should occur; we speak of trillions of dollars piling up as a national debt, of thousands of lights years as interplanetary distances, of interspace travel, of artificial satellites. Tens of thousands work in one enterprise, hundreds of thousands live in hundreds of cities. The dimension with which we deal are figures and abstractions; they are far beyond the boundaries which would permit of any kind of concrete experience. There is no frame of reference left in which is manageable, observable, which is adapted to human dimensions. While our eyes and ears receive impressions only in humanly manageable proportions, our concept of the World has lost just that quality; it does not any longer correspond to our human dimensions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
This is especially significant in connection with the development of modern means of destruction. In modern war, one individual can cause the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, and animals. One could do so by pushing a button; one may not feel the emotional impact of what one is doing, since one does not know how they people whom one kills; it is almost as if one act of pushing the button or pulling the plug and their death had no real connection. The same person would probably be incapable of even cursing, not to speak of killing, a helpless person. In the latter case, the concrete situation arouses in one a conscience reaction common to all normal people; in the former, there is no such reactions, because the act and one’s object are alienated from the doer, one’s action is not that individual’s any more, but has, so to speak, a life and a responsibility of its own. Science, business, politics, have lost all foundations and proportions which make sense humanly. We live in figures and abstractions; since nothing is concrete, nothing is real. Everything is possible, factually and morally. Science fiction is not different from science fact, nightmares and dreams from the events of next year. Mortals have been thrown out from any definite place whence one can overlook and manage one’s life and the life of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Mortals are driven faster and faster by the forces which originally were created by them. In this wild whirl mortals thinks, figures, busy with abstractions, ore and more remote from concrete life. People used to have the ability to accept themselves, other people, and nature as they are. They did not experience extended morbid psychological guilt, anxiety, shame, anger, or chagrin. The emotions were there as they were in most people, but extreme degrees and prolongation are becoming more common. Many people are replacing their humanity with idolatry of money. Some of these people no longer enjoy eating, they think a shake, pill, or tea can adequality nourish them. Virtual intimate encounters are replacing passionate relationships. Pills and coffee and other substance are meant to replace sleep. Machines, computers, and robots are replacing workers. Physical activity is being replaced by virtual reality and medical procedures for weight loss are increasingly common. Many people are also more defensive than they should be. They are particularly disgusted by bodily functions, as they do not see them as normal and natural. They are car more about what other people might say about them and no longer seem to behave spontaneously and naturally. #RandolpHarris 14 of 19
The Existentialist point of view is being lost. Existentialism is a philosophical movement stressing individual existence and holding that mortals are totally free and responsible for their acts. The existence of mortals in their World is being put into brackets. Mortals become pure consciousness, a naked epistemological subject; the World (including mortal’s psychosomatic being) becomes an object of scientific inquiry and technical management. Mortals in their existential predicament disappear. It is, therefore, quite adequate that behind the sum lies the problem of the nature of this sum which is more than consciousness—namely existence in time and space and under the conditions of finitude and estrangement. The Existentialist point of view deals with confrontation of human sin and divine forgiveness. However, much like during the Middle Ages, some people, in this technological era are so removed from spirituality that they believe in the doctrines of justification and predestination. As children of God, we are supposed to stress the unconditional character of the divine judgment and the free character of God’s forgiveness. We are also supposed to be suspicious of any analysis of human existence, that weaken the divine-human relationship. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Reasonable management of oneself and one’s World are part of what is required in the industrial and technological era. Existence is resolved into essence. The World is reasonable as it is. Existence is a necessary expression of essence. History is the manifestation of essential being under the conditions of existence. Its course can be understood and justified. A courage which conquers the negativities of the individual life is possible for those who participate in the universal process in which the absolute mind actualizes itself. The anxieties of fate, guilt, and doubt are overcome by means of an elevation through the different degrees of meanings toward the highest, the philosophical intuition of the universal process itself. We must unite the courage to be as a part (especially of a nation) wit the courage to be as oneself (especially as a thinker) in a courage which transcends both and has a mystical background. History is not a place where the individual can reach happiness. Either the individual must elevate oneself above the universal process to the situation of the intuiting philosopher or the existential problem of the individual is not solved. Self-actualizing, authentic people often act on impulse, on the basis of wanting to. Doing something because it feels good is not quite the same as infantile gratification-seeking or compulsive behavior. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Self-actualizers experience each moment as precious and valuable, as something to be enjoyed merely because it exists. They don the cloak of conformity voluntarily and with good grace because certain conforming behaviors may be important to people who are important to and loved by these self-actualizing people, not because they care whether people will talk if they do not. Their ethics tend to be humanistic; that is, they value human life, human experience, and they define good and evil in terms of what benefits and what detracts from human happiness. “Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have exploited no one. I do not say this to condemn you; I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.2. It is important to remain problem-centered rather than self-centered. Self-actualizing people focus their energies and attention on things outside themselves, although the opposite may seem to be the case. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
We are not mean to be seen as God’s perfect, bright-shining examples, but to been seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of God’s grace. People who are driven by their id are usually so hung-up on holding together a slipping sense of self-worth that one has not the time or energy for anybody else’s problems expect insofar as other people and their problems can help define one’s sense of self. Self-actualizing people have such a healthy self-appreciation and self-respect that they have time and energy to deal sincerely and genuinely with matters outside themselves. They are usually engaged in the larger issues of human experience, appear to have a goal or mission in life, and work on large-scale problems like poverty, bigotry, hostility, warfare, ecology, and so on. These individuals are Being-Motivated (or Growth-Motivated), as opposed to being Deficiency-Motivated. They express their fullness rather than attempt to fill voids. They have a sense of detachment. Self-actualizers like their own company and often enjoy privacy. Solicitude does not disturb or panic them. They can easily transcend the petty demands of environment, yet remain completely part of the World and its people. They are autonomous. B-Motivation enables these individuals to strike out on their own and to live their own lives. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
D-Motivators are busy making up for deficiencies, compensating, or engaging in futile competition. Self-actualizing people need other people, but retain the right to make important decisions autonomously. When they seek out others for company, companionship, or advice, they tend to gravitate toward others with similar motivations. Your faith in Jesus Christ gives life enduring meaning. Remember, we are on a journey to exaltation. Sometimes we have experiences that yield more happiness than others, but it all has purpose with the Lord. We are a covenant people. If there is a distinguishing feature about self-actualizers it is that we make covenants. We need to be known as a covenant-keeping people as well. Making promises is easy, but to follow through and do what we have promised is another matter. We can remain true to our word by staying to the course, being constant and consistent. We are able to keep the faith and be faithful to the end despite success or failure, doubt or discouragement. The ability to draw near the Lord is another characteristic as it fulfills our hearts. We do whatever we promise to do with all out might—even when we might not feel like it. “And charity suffers long, and is kind, and does not envy, and is not puffed up, seeks not one’s own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, and rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” reports Moroni 7.45 #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Enlightened to a Larger Pain by the Contrast with the love–Was there Ever a Society where this Miracle Happened?
I went down to meet him. The evening was all aglow and full of the scent of the kitchens of the Quarter. I motioned for the guards to let him come back. He was in a frantic state. He was wearing the same three-piece white suit as yesterday, short now open, tie gone, and he was all rumpled and smudged with dirt and his hair was mussed. Drastic changes in industrial technique, economy, and social structures have occurred in Capitalism between the nineteenth and twenty first centuries. The changes in the character of mortals are no less drastic and fundamental. Capitalism in the United States of America is not only more powerful and more advanced than in Europe, it is also the model toward which European Capitalism is developing. It is such a model not because Europe is trying to imitate it, but because it is the most progressive form of Capitalism, freed from feudal remnants and shackles. The feudal heritage has, aside from its obvious negative qualities, many human traits which, compared with the attitude produced by pure Capitalism, are exceedingly attractive. European criticism of the United States of America is based essentially on the older human values of feudalism, inasmuch as they are alive in Europe. It is a criticism of the present in the name of a past which is rapidly disappearing in Europe itself. The difference between Europe and the United States of America in this respect is only the difference between an older and a newer phase of Capitalism, between Capitalism stilled blended with feudal remnants and a pure form of it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
The most obvious change from the nineteenth to the twenty first century is the increased use of steam engine, of the combustion motor, of electricity, the use of atomic energy, ethanol, and solar power. The development is characterized by the increasing replacement of manual work by machine work, and beyond that, of human intelligence by machine intelligence. While in 1850 mortals supplied 15 percent of the energy for work, animals 79 percent, and machines 6 percent, the ratio in 2019 is 3 percent, 1 percent and 96 percent respectively. In the twenty first century we find an increasing tendency to employ automatically regulated machines which have their own brains, and which bring about a fundamental change in the whole process of production. The technical change in the mode of production is caused by, and in its turn necessitates, an increasing concentration of capital. The decrease in number and importance of smaller firms is in direct proportion to the increase of big economic colossi. Currently, of the 2,400 independent American corporations covering most stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange, 30 companies control 47 percent of the assets of all the companies represented. Many of the largest nonbanking corporations control a vast majority of all the nonbanking corporate wealth. For instance, respectively 200 companies could control 300,000 smaller companies. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
It must further be remembered that the influence of one of these huge companies extends far beyond the assets under its direct control. Smaller companies which sell to or buy from the larger companies are likely to be influenced by them to a vastly greater extent than by other smaller companies with which they might deal. In many cases the continued prosperity of the smaller company depends on the favor of the larger and almost inevitably the interests of the latter become the interests of the former. The influence of the larger company on prices is often greatly increased by its mere size, even though it does not begin to approach a monopoly. Its political influence may be tremendous. Therefore, if roughly half of the corporations and smaller companies it is fair to assume that very much more than half of industry is dominated by these great units. This concentration is made even more significant when it is recalled that a result of it, approximately 3,250 individuals out of a population of three hundred and twenty-five million are in a position to control and direct most of the American wealth and industry. This concentration of power has been growing since 1933, and has yet to stop. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
The number of self-employed entrepreneurs has decreased considerably. While in the beginning of the nineteenth century approximately 80 percent of the occupied population were self-employed entrepreneurs, around 42 percent are now incorporated in this category. The eleven largest companies in America employ 20.18 million people. As these figure already indicate, with the concentration of enterprises goes an enormous increase of employees in these big enterprises. Altogether, nearly 50 percent of the United States of America’s population is middle class, 25 percent of American household are considered low income. With the increase in the importance of the giant enterprises, another development of utmost importance has occurred: the increasing separation of management from ownership. Another fundamental change from the nineteenth-century to contemporary Capitalism is the increase in significance of the domestic market. Our whole economic machines rests upon the principle of mass production and mass consumption. While in the nineteenth century the general tendency was to save, and not to indulge in expenses which could not be paid for immediately, the contemporary system is exactly the opposite. Everybody is coaxed into buying as much as one can, and before one has saved enough to pay for one’s purchases. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
The need for more consumption is strongly stimulated by advertising and all other methods of psychological pressure. This development does hand in hand with the rise of the economic and social status of the working class. Especially in the United States of America, but all over Europe, the working class has participated in the increased production of the whole economic system. The salary of the worker, and one’s social benefits, permit one a level of consumption which would have seemed fantastic one hundred and fifty-six years ago. One’s social and economic power has increased to the same degree and this not only with regard to salary and social benefits, but also to one’s human and social role in the factory. The disappearance of feudal factors means the disappearance of irrational authority. Nobody is supposed to be higher than one’s neighbor by birth, God’s will, natural law. Everybody is equal and free. Nobody may be exploited or commanded by virtue of a natural right. If one person is commanded by another, it is because the commanding one bought the labor or the services of the commanded one, on the labor market; one commands because they are both free and equal and thus could enter into a contractual relationship. However, with irrational authority—rational authority became obsolete, too. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
If the market and the contract regulates relationships, there is no need to know what is right and what is wrong and good and evil. All that is necessary is to known that things are fair—that the exchange is fair, and that things work—that they function. Another decisive fact which the twenty first century mortal experiences is the miracle of production. One commands forces thousands of times stronger than the ones nature ad given them before; steam, oil, electricity, have become their servants and beasts of burden. One crosses the oceans, the continents—first in weeks, then in days, now in hours and even minutes. One seemingly overcomes the law of gravity, and files through the air one converts deserts into fertile land, makes rain instead of praying for it. The miracle of production leads to the miracle of consumption. No more traditional barriers keep anyone from buying anything one takes a fancy to. One only needs to have the money. However, more and more people have the money—not for genuine pearls perhaps, but for the synthetic ones; there are even ethically sourced diamonds created in laboratories; people buy Fords that look like Cadillacs, for the affordable dress which look like the expensive ones, for cigarettes which are the same for millionaires and for the working person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Everything is within reach, can be bought, can be consumed. Where was there ever a society where this miracle happened? Mortals work together. Millions stream into the industrial plants and the offices—they come in cars, airplanes, helicopters, in subways, in buses, in trains—they work together, according to a rhythm measured by the experts, with methods worked out by the experts, not too fast, not too slow, but together; each a part of the whole. The evening stream flows back: they read the same newspaper, they listen to the radio, they see the movies, the same for those on the top and for those at the bottom of the ladder, for the intelligent and the less advances, for the educated and those still learning. Produce, consume, enjoy together, in step, without asking questions. That is the rhythm of their lives. What kind of mortal, then does our society need? Wat is the social character suited to twenty-first-century Capitalism? It needs mortals who co-operate smoothly in large groups; who want to consume more and more, and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs mortals who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority, or principle, or conscience—yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without friction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
How can mortals be guided without force, led without leaders, be prompted without any aim—expect the one to be on the move, to function, to go ahead? Let us approach this from the point of what we do when we live our lives. Each of us is born to certain situations or statuses in one’s life. Attached to each of these, whether we are born to them or whether we acquire them as we grow, is a set of behaviors that go with the statuses. People expect certain things, say, from a teacher, a carpenter, a doctor, a welder. Those things we expect from them makes up the roles of social interaction. Among the many things we do, then, is to perform certain expected behaviors. The authentic, fully functioning, self-actualizing person is one who plays those roles to the best of one’s ability and gets personal satisfaction from doing it. One tires to concentrate on playing only the roles that are consistent with who one is. That is, the healthy person is one who is able to sort out the various roles one may play, select for concentrating on those that are personally meaningful to one and expressive of one’s selfhood, and act out the role behavior well and satisfyingly. However, what about those roles this healthy person gets stuck with? What happens, for example, when such a guy—call him Justin—discovers that he has gotten this girl—Jill—pregnant? What about the situation if they decide to marry? #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
Already there are two new positions being forced on them, spouse and parent, and the roles will be forced on them, too. Our answers may seem callous, but let us explore this situation. Justin and Jill are human beings. As such, they have certain potential and actual skills. Thinking, reasoning, logic, and prediction are some of these skills, as well as loving, kissing and passion of physical intimacy. In many cases spontaneous pregnancies are more conscious than either party is willing to admit. Psychologists know, for instance, that many times young ladies will forget to take their birth patrol pills or other precautions before the physical intimacy. Some are unconsciously motivated to force a married or to get back at parents. Some are indulging in self-defeating behavior. However, mature, self-actualizing people like Justin and Jill are aware of the outcomes of their behavior and able to involve themselves with these outcomes to follow through pretty healthily with their involvements. Sometimes there is an understandable amount of disappointment or self-criticism, but the decision to accept the role they now find facing them is usually taken with a healthy degree of good humor. The decision the couple makes may be not to marry or to seek some other solution. However, the important thing is the decisions involve the fullest, most authentic engagement of the persons and their experiences. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Another way of saying this is that self-actualizing people enjoy the novelty and challenge of different situations. Even critical situations like surprises bundles of joy can be opportunities for growth and chances to display fullest selfhood. After all, life is much more than play-acting. It involves a constant round of choice-making experiences. The self-actualizing person tries to live an authentic, fully aware life, by dealing realistically and honestly with oneself, others, and the decisions one makes. How can this be done? How can a person be authentic, real and unpretentious when for much of one’s childhood one is taught to be otherwise? In the absence of a wholesale change of social attitudes to encourage authenticity, the only hope at present apparently is possessed n the freedom of the person to become more fully what one is. Suppose a person does not know he or she is free? Most of us do not. We get caught up in the bag of thinking of ourselves as determined by something—biology, destiny, God, culture—and one of the most difficult things to do is to convince someone that one is a free, moral agent, that one can live one’s life in one’s own terms, that one has choices which may be hidden but which are nonetheless freely his or hers. If a person will conscientiously study one’s own life, one’s choices, one’s preferences, one will find, we believe, that a startling amount of what one has done is one’s own thing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Most of one’s preferences, one will find, are products of one’s value systems; thus preferences are automatic choices as unique to an individual as one’s value system are. To believe otherwise is to deny the richness and variability of life and to limit one’s freedom to make choices based on one’s individual character. The trick is, of course, to enable a person to develop and operate on the basis of one’s own value system. The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. Existential in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one’s existence. This includes temporal, spatial, historical, psychological, sociological, biological conditions. And it includes the finite freedom which reacts to these conditions and changes them. An existential knowledge is a knowledge in which these elements, and therefore the whole existence of one who knows, participate. This seems to contradict the necessary objectivity of the cognitive act and the demand for detachment. However, knowledge depends on its object. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
There are realms of reality or—more exactly—of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. However, it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. However, by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing existential knowledge is based on an encounter in which a new meaning is created and recognized. The knowledge of another person, the knowledge of history, the knowledge of a spiritual creation, religious knowledge—all have existential character. This does not exclude theoretical objectivity on the basis of detachment. However, it restricts detachment to one element within the embracing act of cognitive participation. You may have a precise detached knowledge of another person, one’s psychological type and one’s calculable reactions, but in knowing this you do not know the person, one’s centered self, one’s knowledge of oneself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Only in participating in oneself, in performing an existential break-through into the center of one’s being, will you know one in the situation of your break-through to one. This is the first meaning of existential, namely existential as the attitude of participating with one’s own existence in some other existence. The other meaning of existential designates a content and not an attitude. It points to a special form of philosophy: to Existentialism. We have to deal with it because it is the expression of the most radical form of the courage to be as oneself. However, before going into it we must show why both an attitude and a content are described with words which are derived from the same word, “existence.” The existential attitude and the Existentialist content have in common an interpretation of the human situation which conflicts with a nonexistential interpretation. The latter assets that mortals are able to transcend, in knowledge and life, the finitude, the estrangement, and the ambiguities of human existence. The right thing to do with Godly habits is to immerse them in the life of the Lord until they become such a spontaneous expression of our lives that we are no longer aware of them. Love means that there are no visible habits—that your habits are so immersed in the Lord that you practice them without realizing it. “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God,” reports 2 Corinthians 9.11. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
An existential attitude instigates a philosophy of existence. The knowledge of that which concerns us infinitely is possible only in an attitude of infinite concern, in an existential attitude. At the same time there is a doctrine of mortals which describes the estrangement of mortals from their essential nature in terms of anxiety and despair. Mortals in the existential situation of finitude and estrangement can reach truth only in an existential attitude. Mortals have no place of pure objectivity above finitude and estrangement. One’s cognitive function is as existentially conditioned as one’s whole being. This is the connection of the two meanings of existential. Sometimes it is also important for us to understand that dream figures are like Angels. They look human, but their World is the realm of imagination, where the natural and moral laws of actual life are suspended. “Now if a mortal desired to serve God, it is one’s privilege; or rather, if one believes in God it is one’s privilege to serve him; but if one does not believe in God there was no law to punish one,” reports Alma 30.7. However, God will lead you directly through every barrier and right into the chamber of the knowledge of himself. The proof that our relationship is right with God is that we do our best whether we feel inspired or not. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
No matter how difficult something you or a loved one faces, is should not take over your life and be the center of all your interest. Challenges are growth experiences, temporary scenes to be played out on the background of a pleasant life. Do not become so absorbed in a single event that you cannot think of anything else or care for yourself or for those who depend on your. Remember, much like the mending of the body, the healing of some spiritual and emotional challenges takes time. The Lord wants us to be patient in afflictions, for we shall have many; but endure them for he is with us until the end. As we are patient, we will come to understand what the statement, “I am with thee” thee means. God’s love brings joy and peace. “Cannot take a step, then take my hand. If you love me, you will wait. Something up ahead, just do not be scared. If you love me, stay with me. More than a life of this panic. If you love me, you will wait for me. Our dream will not surely be forgotten. If you love me, just stay with me. If you need another love song just tell me, I can write it. If you need another spaceship, just tell me, I can find it,” reports Steve Brain (Wait for Me). It is love that finds the body and in human relationship a route toward eternity. May every blessing find you. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Reflection on the Mysteries of the Soul—To Know Just How He Suffered Would be Dear
Open the celestial doors, guardians of the galaxy, so that we may see the treasure of beauty that she brings. Let there be Heaven on Earth, a harmonic galaxy. I was bitterly full of desire. It was unspeakable to need someone in this way. I closed my eyes and listened to the night. Ravenous, repulsive creatures singing magnificently. And working the soft fertile Earth, creatures of such loathsomeness I could not dwell on it. And the clatter of the riverfront train unendingly. And then the absurd song of the calliope on the riverboat that took the tourists up and down the waterway as they feasted and laughed and dance and sang. I believe I caused the infirmary myself. In my attempt to penetrate the other World I met its natural guardians, the embodiment of my own weakness and faults. In my case the personal self had grown porous because of my dimmed consciousness. I wanted to enter death without going mad and I stood before the Sphinx: either thou into the abyss or I! If you say they are fair game, then they are fair game, and that is good enough for me, Beloved Boss. I cannot tell my own heart and soul what I am feeling now, how much I crave this little battle. I cannot find the words, it is so raw, so rooted inside me! It goes way back into the human part of me that is not going to die, does it not? Then came illumination. A larger and more comprehensive self emerged and I could abandon the previous personality with its entire entourage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
I saw this earlier personality could never enter transcendental realms. A new life began for me and from now on I felt different from other people. A self that consisted of conventional lies, shams, self-deceptions, memory images, a self like that of other people, grew in me again but behind and above it stood a greater and more comprehensive self which impressed me with something of what is eternal, unchanging, immortal and inviolable and which ever since that time has been my protector and refuge. I lay amongst the flowers, and there were no thorns on the roses. Time had stopped. And the distant commotions of the house did not matter. She was fulfilled. She was the vampire in my dream. She was the Perfect Pearl, caught speechless in the miracle and staring down at me, wondering only what had become of me, as another fledgling of mine had done long ago—but understand dangers are only temporary. When the internal battles are waged, they struggle often takes its toll, as in all battles, on the battlefield itself. The battlefield is the person. Christians will recall St. Paul complaining that he was often at odds with himself. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The conflicts that go on inside each of us are the mixed motives we have, the competing needs, the differing ideas and attitudes. They are not competing or differing selves struggling it out. We are whole persons, but there are many conflicting elements in each of us. Sometimes the rational part of us is in fierce competition with the emotional or the physiological parts. The result often seems to be a disintegration of the self, or behavior that seems to point to disintegration. To settle the conflicts, we often compromise parts of our selfhood. At times we play as if there were no conflict. “I am alright, Jack!” and “Stiff upper lip” are some of the terms our British cousins employ to portray a stolid, unperturbed façade, while inside the battle goes on. The romantic movement has produced a concept of individuality which is equally to be distinguished from the medieval concept and from that of the Enlightenment and contains elements of both. The individual is emphasized in one’s uniqueness, as an incomparable and infinitely significant expression of the substance of being. Not conformity but differentiation is the end of the ways of God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Self-affirmation of one’s uniqueness and acceptance of the demands of one’s individual nature are the right courage to be. This does not necessarily mean willfulness and irrationality, because the uniqueness of one’s individual nature are the right courage to be. This does not necessarily mean willfulness and irrationality, because the uniqueness of one’s individuality is possessed by its creative possibilities. However, the danger is obvious. The romantic irony elevated the individual beyond all content and made one empty: one was no longer obliged to participate in anything seriously. In a person like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Friedrich von Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part. Such a turn was prepared by the other side of romantic thought, the emphasis on the collectives and semicollectives of the past, the ideal of the organic society. Organism, as has so often happened in the past, became the symbol of a balance between individualization and participation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
However, its historical function in the early 19th century was to express not the need for a balance, but the longing for the collectivist pole. It was used by all reactionary groups of this period who, be it for political or for spiritual reasons or both, tried to re-establish a new Middle Ages. In this way the romantic movement produced both a radical form of the courage to be as oneself and the (unfulfilled) desire for a radical form of the courage to be as a part. Romanticism as an attitude has outlived the romantic movement. So-called Bohemianism was a continuation of the romantic courage to be as oneself. Bohemianism continued the romantic attack on the established bourgeoisie and its conformism. Both the romantic movement and its Bohemian continuation have decisively contributed to present-day Existentialism. However, Bohemianism and Existentialism have received elements of another movement in which the courage to be as oneself was pronounced naturalism. The word naturalism is used in many different ways. For our purpose it suffices to deal with that type of naturalism in which the individualistic form of the courage to be as oneself is effective. The phrase romantic naturalist seems to be a contradiction in terms. The self-transcendence of romantic imagination and the naturalistic self-restriction to the empirically given appear to be separated by a deep gap. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
However, naturalism means the identification of being with nature and the consequent rejection of the supernatural. This definition leaves the question of the nature of the natural wide open. Nature can be described mechanistically. It can be described organologically. It can be described in terms of necessary progressive integration or of creative evolution. It can be described as a system of laws or of structures as a mixture of both. Naturalism can take its pattern from the absolutely concrete, the individual self as we find it in mortals, or from the absolutely abstract, the mathematic equations which determine the character of power fields. All this and much more can be naturalism. However, not all of these types of naturalism are expressions of courage to be as oneself. Only if the individualistic pole in the structure of the natural is decisive can naturalism be romantic and amalgamate with Bohemianism and Existentialism. This is the case in the voluntaristic types of naturalism. (If nature (and for naturalism this means “being”) is seen as the creative expression of an unconscious will or as the objectivation of the will to power or as the product of the elan vital, then the center of will, the individual selves, are decisive for the movement of the whole. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
In individuals’ self-affirmation life affirms itself or negates itself. Even if the selves are subject to an ultimate cosmic destiny they determine their own being in freedom. A large section of American pragmatism belongs to this group. In spite of American conformism and its courage to be as a part, pragmatism shared many concepts with that perspective more widely known in Europe as the philosophy of life. Its ethical principle is growth, its educational method is self-affirmation of the individual self, its preferred concept is creativity. The pragmatist philosophers are not always aware of the fact that courage to create implies the courage to replace the old by the new—the new for which there are no norms and criteria, the new which is a risk and which, measured by the old, is incalculable. Their social conformity hides from them what in Europe was expressed openly and consciously. They do not realize that pragmatism in its logical consequence (if not restricted by Christian or humanistic conformity) leads to that courage to be as oneself which is proclaimed by the radical Existentialist. The pragmatist type of naturalism is in its character, though not in its intention, a follower of romantic individualism and a predecessor of Existentialist independentism. The nature of the undirected growth is not different from the nature of the will to power and of the elan vital. However, the naturalists themselves are different. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The European naturalists are consistent and self-destructive; the American naturalists are saved by happy inconsistency: they still accept the conformist courage to be as a part. One of the goals of significant selfhood is that all the players play together. When a person is living authentically, one of the things that comes through is that all one’s systems are “Go” and that they work in some sort of integrated, total fashion. It all sounds so mysterious, so mystical or magical. Is it? There may be nothing magical at all. It is living your authentic existence, being truly, fully, real-ly all that you are. Authentic being means being oneself, honestly, in one’s relation with one’s fellows. It means taking the first step at dropping pretenses, defenses, and duplicity. It means an end to play it cool, an end to using one’s behavior as a gambit designed to disarm the other fellow, to get one to reveal oneself before you disclose yourself to that individual. This invitation is fraught with risk, indeed, it may inspire terror in some. Yet, while some honesty with others (and thus with oneself) may yield scars, it is likely to be an effective preventative both of mental illness and of certain kinds of physical sickness. Honesty can be literally a health-insurance policy. Mental illness is not something that comes from being dishonest and alienated from your fullest experience of self; mental illness is being dishonest and alienate from self and others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
When you are split off from who you are and thus from others, this psychopathology (sickness of the psyche or behaving self). If you are playing false with yourself and if this causes you to play false with others, you are not effectively functioning, nor actualizing yourself. “Grow exceedingly in the knowledge of God; yea, do begin to keep his statues and commandments, and walk in truth and uprightness before him,” reports Helaman 6.34. And thus we see that the Spirit of the Lord will begin to withdraw from mortals, because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts. The self in conflict often displays behaviors that other people cannot predict, and may be alarmed by. Sometimes, the behavior takes the simple form of forgetfulness. At other times, it may resemble the anxiety-possessed behavior described in the various neurotic classifications. In a number of cases, the person acts out behaviors that resemble the stereotyped “crazy” behavior of those who are labeled psychotic. If the person living falsely, inauthentically, in continual self-alienation is labeled mentally ill, then what do we call the person who is functioning fully, experiencing maximally, living and loving in the most satisfying manner possible? The term authenticity describes the reality-oriented personal and social life of the healthy person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Closely related to this sense of intellectual and moral conscience is another trait characteristic of the nineteenth century: the sense of pride and mastery. If we look today at the pictures of the nineteenth-century life, the moral with the beard, the tall silk hat and walking cane, we are easily struck by the ridiculous and negative aspect of nineteenth-century male pride—a man’s vanity and naïve belief in oneself as the highest accomplishment of nature and of history; but especially if we consider the absence of this trait in our own time, we can see the beneficial aspects of this pride. Mortals had the feeling of having put oneself into the saddle, so to speak, of having freed oneself from domination by natural forces, and for the first time in history having become their master. One had freed oneself from the shackles of medieval superstition, had even succeeded in the hundred years between 1814 and 1914 in creating one of the most peaceful periods history has ever known. One felt oneself to be an individual, subject only to the laws of reason, following only one’s own decisions. The exploitative and hording attitude caused human suffering and lack of respect for the dignity of mortals; it caused Europe to exploit Africa and Asia and her own working class ruthlessly without regard for human values. The other pathogenic phenomenon of the nineteenth century, the role or irrational authority and the need to submit to it, led to the repression of thoughts and feelings which were tabued by society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The most obvious symptom was the repression of physical intimacy and all that was natural in the body, movements, dress, architectural style, and so on. This repression resulted, as Dr. Freud thought, in various forms of neurotic pathology. The courage to be as oneself in all these groups has the character of the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self in spite of the elements of nonbeing threatening it. The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the Universe. One mediates the power of being which are concentrated in one. One has them within oneself in knowledge and one transforms them in action. One directs the courage of one’s life, and one can stand tragedy and death in a heroic affect and a love for the Universe which one mirrors. Even the loneliness is not absolute loneliness because the contents of the Universe are in one. If we compare this kind of courage with that of the Stoics we find that the main point of difference is in the emphasis of the uniqueness of the individual self in the line of thought which starts in the Renaissance and is guided by the romantics to the present. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
In Stoicism it is the wisdom of the wise mortal which is essentially equal in everyone of which one’s courage to be arises. In the modern World it is the individual as individual. Behind this change is possessed the Christian valuation of the individual soul as eternally significant. However, it is not this doctrine which gives the courage to be to modern mortals but doctrines of the individual in one’s quality as mirror of the Universe. “His people easy to be entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity; and they were quick to hearken unto the Word of the Lord—yea, if my days could have been in those day, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my people,” reports Helaman 7.7-8. Enthusiasm for the Universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the Universe and for mortals as its center is alive. The anxiety of guilt is removed: the symbols of death, judgment, and hell are put aside. Everything is done to deprive them of their seriousness. The courage of self-affirmation will not be shaken by the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. In later romanticism another dimension of the anxiety of guilt and its conquest was opened up. The destructive trends in the human soul were discovered. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The second period of the romantic movement, in philosophy as well as in poetry, broke away from the ideas of harmony which were decisive from the Renaissance to the classicists and early romantics. A kind of demonic realism was born, which was tremendously influential on Existentialism and depth of psychology. The courage to affirm oneself must include the courage to affirm one’s own demonic depth. This contradicted radically the moral conformism of the average Protestant and even of the average humanist. However, it was avidly accepted by the Bohemian and the romantic naturalists. The courage to take the anxiety of the demonic upon oneself in spite of its destructive and often despairing character was the form in which the anxiety of guilt was conquered. However, this was possible only because the personal quality of evil had been removed by the preceding development and could not be replaced by the cosmic evil, which is structural and not a matter of personal responsibility. The courage to take the anxiety of guilt upon oneself has become the courage to affirm the demonic trends within oneself. This could happen because the demonic was not considered unambiguously negative but was thought to be part of the creative power of being. The demonic as the ambiguous ground of the creative is a discovery of the later period of romanticism, which over the bridges of Bohemianism and naturalism was brought to the Existentialism of the 20th century. Its confirmation in scientific terms was depth psychology. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
In some respects all of these forms of individualistic courage to be are forerunners of the radicalism of the 20th century, in which the courage to be as oneself was brought to most powerful expressions in the Existentialist movement. The survey given shows that the courage to be as oneself is never completely separated from the other pole, the courage to be as a part; and even more, overcoming isolation and facing the danger of losing one’s World in the self-affirmation of oneself as an individual are a way toward something which transcends both self and World. Ideas like the microcosm mirroring the Universe, or the monad representing the World, or the individual will to power expressing the character of will to power in life itself—all these point to a solution which transcends the two types of the courage to be. We need to emphasize the necessity for abolishing exploitation and transforming the working person into an independent, free and respected human being. If economic suffering were abolished, and if the working people were free from the domination of the capitalist, all the beneficial achievement of the nineteenth century would come to their full fruition, while the vices would disappear. Complete freedom from irrational authorities will usher in a new millennium. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The working class, instead of falling behind in the economic development of the whole society, should have an increasing share in national wealth, and it is a perfectly valid assumption that provided no major catastrophe occurs, there will, in about one or two generations, be no more marked poverty in the United States of America. Closely related to the increasing abolishment of economic suffering is the fact that the human and political situation of the worker has changed drastically. People can no longer be ordered around, fired, abuse, as one was one hundred years ago. Looked upon from the standards of a World Class Leader, we have achieved almost everything which seems to be necessary for a saner society, and indeed, may people who still think in terms of the past century are convinced that we continue to progress. Consequently they also believe that the only threat to further progress lies in authoritarian societies, like California which, with its ruthless economic exploitation of workers and businesses for the sake of quicker accumulation of capital and the ruthless political authority necessary for the continuation of exploitation, resembles in many ways the early form of Capitalism, where workers were forced to work and mistreated and not looked at as human. However, we are not in danger of becoming slaves anymore, but of becoming robots. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
There is no overt authority which intimidates us, but we are governed by the fear of the anonymous authority of conformity. We do not submit to anyone personally; we do not go through conflicts with authority, but we have also no convictions of our own, almost no individuality, almost no sense of self. Quite obviously, the diagnosis of our pathology cannot follow the lines of the nineteenth century. We have to recognize the specific pathological problems of our time in order to arrive at a vision of that which is necessary to save the Western World from increasing insanity. “Excuse me, if I right all my wrongs. Excuse me, if I give up on being strong. I have been running blind, weighed down by denial. Still you were there right beside me. Never thought I would have someone like you. Never thought you would be the one to save me. Now I am ready to believe you always. Say I am worthy and I can finally say I agree. How I try to defy?” reports RAM and Susana (Someone Like you). Obedience means that I have completely placed my trust in the atonement, and my obedience is immediately met by the delight of the supernatural grace of God. “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my finger for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me,” reports Psalm 144.1-2. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
It is painful work to get in step with God and to keep pace with him—it means getting your second wind spiritually. The individual person is merged into a personal oneness with God, and God’s stride and his power alone are exhibited. We have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants. “Dusk till dawn this is where we belong, waiting for the Sun. Night till day, this is what I would say, our light will not fade away. I cannot breathe, I am falling to my feet, you are that I believe. Stay with me. I cannot see the fire next to me because you are all that I believe,” reports John O’Callaghan featuring Deidre McLaughlin (Stay With Me). If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul’s needs for body, individuality, imagination, and exploration. Eventually we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy. Still another way to be spiritual and soulful at the same time is to hear the words of formal religion as speaking to and about the soul. It further signals incarnation of the divine within moral life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
Randolph Harris II International Institute 