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Bear in Mind that Even Impossibility is Often Temporary!
When you look directly at an insane person, all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that one is insane, which is not to see one at all. To see one, you must see what one saw. In a World of accelerant change, next year is nearer to us than next month was in a more leisurely era. This radically altered fact of life must be internalized by decision-makers in industry, government and elsewhere. Their time horizons must be extended. To plan for a more distant future does not mean to tie oneself to dogmatic programs. Plans can be tentative, fluid, subject to continual revision. Yet flexibility need not mean shortsightedness. To transcend technocracy, our social horizons must reach decades, even generations, into the future. This requires more than a lengthening of our formal plans. It means an infusion of the entire society, from top to bottom, with a new socially aware future-consciousness. One of the healthiest phenomena of recent years has been the sudden proliferation of organizations devoted to the study of the future. This recent development is, in itself, a homeostatic response of society to the speed-up of change. Within a few year we have seen the creation of future-oriented think tanks like the Institute for the Future; the Commission on the Year 2000, and the Harvard Program on Technology and Society; the appearance of futurist journals in England, France, Italy, Germany and the United States of America; the spread of university courses in forecasting and related subjects; the spread of university courses forecasting and related subjects; the convocation of international futurist meetings in Oslo, Berlin, and Kyoto; the coalescence groups like Futuribles, Europe 2000, Mankind 2000, the World Future Society. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Future centers are to be found in West Berlin, in Prague, in London, in Moscow, Rome and Washington, in Caracas, even in the remote jungles of Brazil at Belem and Belo Horizonte. Unlike conventional technocratic planners whose horizons usually extend no further than a few years into tomorrow, these groups concern themselves with change fifteen, twenty-five, even fifty years in the future. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. The management of change is the effort to convert certain possibilities into probables, in pursuit of agreed-on preferables. Determining the probably calls for science of futurism. Delineating the possible calls for an art of futurism. Defining the preferable calls for a politics of futurism. The Worldwide futurist movement today does not yet differentiate clearly among these functions. Its heavy emphasis is on the assessment of probabilities. Thus in many of these centers, economists, sociologists, mathematicians, biologist, physicists, operations researchers and others invent and apply methods for forecasting future probabilities. At what date could aquaculture feed half the World’s population? What are the odds that electric cars will supplant gasoline automobile in the next fifteen years? What changes are most probably in leisure patterns, urban governments, race relations? Stressing the interconnectedness of disparate events and trends, scientific futurists are also devoting increasing attention to the social consequences of technology. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The Institute for the Future is, among other things, investigating the probable social and culture effects of advanced communications technology. The group at Harvard is concerned with social problems likely to arise from bio-medical advances. Futurists in Brazil examine the probable outcomes of various economic development policies. The rationale for studying probable futures is compelling. It is impossible for an individual to live through a single working day without making thousands of assumptions about the probable future. The commuter who calls to say, “I will be home at six” bases one’s prediction on assumptions about the probability that the train will run on time. When mother sends Johnny to school, she tacitly assumes the school will be there when he arrives. Just as a pilot cannot steer a ship without projecting its course, we cannot steer our personal lives without continually making such assumptions, consciously or otherwise. Societies, too, construct an architecture of premises about tomorrow. Decision-makers in industry, government, politics, and other sectors of society could not function without them. In periods of turbulent change, however, these socially-shaped images of the probable future become less accurate. The breakdown of control in society today is directly linked to our inadequate images of probable futures. Of course no one can “know” the future in any absolute sense. We can systematize and deepen our assumptions and attempt to assign probabilities to them. Even this is difficult. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Attempts to forecast the future inevitably alter it. Similarly, once a forecast is disseminated, the act of dissemination (as distinct from investigation) also produces a perturbation. Forecasts tend to become self-fulfilling or self-defeating. As the time horizon is extended into the more distant future, we are forced to rely on informed hunch and guesswork. Moreover, certain unique events—assassinations, for example—are, for all intents and purposes, unpredictable at present (although we can forecast classes of such events). Despite all thus, it is time to erase, once and for all, the popular myth that the future is “unknowable.” The difficulties ought to chasten and challenge, not paralyze. We should admit into our thinking the idea of approximations, that is, that there are varying degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy of estimate. A rough idea of what lies ahead is better than none, and for many purposes extreme accuracy is wholly unnecessary. We are not, therefore, as helpless in dealing with future probabilities as mist people assume. The British social scientist Donald G. MacRae correctly assert that “modern sociologists can in fact make a number of comparatively short term and limited predictions with a good deal of assurance.” Apart from the standard methods of social science, however, we are experimenting with potentially powerful new tools for probing the future. These range from complex ways of extrapolating existing trends, to the construction of highly intricate models, games and simulations, the preparation of detailed speculative scenarios, the systematic study of history for relevant analogies, morphological research, relevance analysis, contextual mapping and the like. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
In comprehensive investigation of technological forecasting, Dr. Erich Jantsch, formerly a consultant to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a research associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has identified scores of distinct new techniques either in use or in the experimental stage. The Institute for the Future in Middletown, Connecticut, a prototype of the futurist think tank, is a leader in the design of new forecasting tools. One of these is Delphi—a method largely developed by Dr. Olaf Helmer, the mathematician-philosopher who is one of the founders of the IFF. Delphi attempts to deal with very distant futures by making systematic use of the “intuitive” guesstimates of large numbers of experts. The work Delphi has led to a further innovation which has special importance in the attempt to prevent future shock by regulating the pace of change. Pioneered by Theodore J. Gordon of the IFF, and called Cross Impact Matrix analysis, it traces the effect of one innovation on another, making possible, for the first time, anticipatory analysis of complex chains of social, technological and other occurrences—and the rates at which they are likely to occur. We are, in short, witnessing a perfect extraordinary thrust toward more scientific appraisal of future probabilities, a ferment likely, in itself, to have a powerful impact on the future. It would be foolish to oversell the ability of science, as yet, to forecast complex events accurately. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Yet the danger today is not that we will overestimate our ability; the real danger is that we will under-utilize it. For even when our still-primitive attempts at scientific forecasting turn out to be grossly in error, the very effort helps us identify key variables in change, it helps clarify goals, and it forces more careful evaluation of policy alternatives. In these ways, if no others, probing the future pays off in the present. If we are to shift the planner’s time horizon and infuse the entire society with a greater sense of tomorrow, anticipating probably futures, however, is only part of what needs doing. For we must also vastly widen our conception of possible futures. To the rigorous discipline of science, we must add the flaming imagination of art. Today as never before we need a multiplicity of visions, dreams and prophecies—images of potential tomorrows. Before we can rationally decide which alternative pathways to choose, which cultural styles to pursue, we must first ascertain which are possible. Conjecture, speculation and the visionary view thus become as coldly practical a necessity as feet-on-the-floor “realism” was in an earlier time. This is why some of the World’s biggest and most touch-minded corporations, once living embodiment of presentism, today hire intuitive futurists, science fiction writers and visionaries as consultants. A gigantic European chemical company employs a futurist who combines a scientific background with training as a theologian. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
An American communications empire engages a future-minded social critic. A glass manufacturer searches for a science fiction writer to imagine the possible corporate forms of the future. Companies turn to these “blue-skyers” and “wild birds” not for scientific forecasts of probabilities, but for mind-stretching speculations about possibilities. Corporations must not remain the only agencies with access to such services. Local government, schools, voluntary associations and others also need to examine their potential futures imaginatively. One way to help them do so would be to establish in each community “imaginetic centers” devoted to technically assisted brainstorming. These would be places where people noted for creative imagination, rather than technical expertise, are brought together to examine present crises, to anticipate future crises, and to speculate freely, even playfully, about possible futures. What, for example, are the possible futures of urban transportation? Traffic is a problem involving the movement of humans and objects through spaces? To speculate about this question, an imaginetic center might enlist artists, sculptors, dancers, furniture designers, parking lot attendants, and a variety of other people who, in one way or another, manipulate space imaginatively. Such people, assembled under the right circumstances, would inevitably come up with ideas of which the technocratic city planners, the highway engineers and transit authorities have never dreamed of. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Musicians, people who live near airports, jackhammer people and subway conductors might well imagine new ways to organize, mask or suppress noise. Groups of young people might be invited to ransack their minds for previously unexamined approaches to urban sanitation, crowding, ethic conflict, care of the aged, or a thousand other present and future problems. In any such effort, the overwhelming majority of ideas put forward will, of course, be absurd, funny or technically impossible. Yet the essence of creativity is a willingness to play the fool, to toy with the absurd, only later submitting the stream of ideas to harsh critical judgment. The application of the imagination to the future thus requires an environment in which it is safe to err, in which novel juxtaposition of ideas can be freely expressed before being critically sifted. We need sanctuaries for social imagination. While all sorts of creative people ought to participate in conjecture about possible futures, they should have immediate access—in person or via telecommunications—to technical specialists, from acoustical engineers to zoologists, who could indicate when a suggestion is technically impossible (bearing in mind that even impossibility is often temporary). Scientific expertise can employ skilled specialists not to predict the future, but examine alternative futures to show the choices open. An appropriate model, for example, could help a group of imagineers visualize the impact on a city if its educational expenditures were to fluctuate—how this would affect, let us say, the transportation system, the theaters, the occupational structure and healthy of the community. Conversely, it could show how changes in these other factors might affect education. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The rushing stream of wild, unorthodox, eccentric or merely colorful ideas generated imagination must, after they have been expressed, be subjected to merciless screening. Only a tiny fraction of them will survive this filtering process. These few, however, could be of the utmost importance in calling attention to new possibilities that might otherwise escape notice. As we move from poverty toward affluence, politics changes from what mathematicians call a zero sum game into a non-zero sum game. In the first, if one player wins another must lost. In the second, all players can win. Finding non-zero sum solutions to our social problems requires all the imagination we can muster. A system for generating imaginative policy ideas could help us take maximum advantage of the non-zero opportunities ahead. If congruence fails for a well-ordered society, it seems bound to fail everywhere. On the other hand, it is by no means a foregone conclusion even in this instance that the right and the good are congruent. For this relation implies that the members of a well-ordered society, when they appraise their plan of life by the principles of rational choice, will decide to maintain their sense of justice as regulative of their conduct toward one another. The requisite match exists between the principles of justice that would be agreed to in the absence of information and the principles of rational choice that are not chosen at all and applied with full knowledge. Principles accounted for in strikingly different ways nevertheless fit together when those of justice are perfectly realized. Of course, this congruence has its explanation in how the contract doctrine is set up. However, the relation is not a matter oof course and its basis needs to be worked out. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
When we reflect on their psychological origins, we sometimes doubt the soundness of our moral attitudes. Thinking that these sentiments have arisen in situations marked say by submission to authority, we may wonder whether they should not be rejected altogether. Since the argument for the good of justice depends upon the members of a well-ordered society having an effective desire to act justly, we must allay these uncertainties. Imagine then that someone experiences the promptings of one’s moral sense as inexplicable inhibitions which for the moment one is unable to justify. Why should one not regard them as simply neurotic compulsions? If it should turn out that these scruples are indeed largely shaped an accounted for by the contingences of early childhood, perhaps by the course of our family history and class situation, and that there is nothing to add on their behalf, then there is surely no reason why they should govern our lives. However, of course to someone in a well-ordered society there are many things to say. One can point out to one the essential features of the development of the sentiment of justice and how eventually the morality of principles is to be understood. Moreover one’s moral education itself has been regulated by the principles of right and justice to which one would consent in an initial situation in which all have equal representation as moral persons. As we have seen, the more conception adopted is independent of natural contingencies and accidental social circumstances; and therefore the psychological process by which one’s moral sense has been acquired conform to principles that one oneself would choose under conditions that one would concede are fair and undistorted by fortune and happenstance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Nor can someone in a well-ordered society object to the practices of moral instruction that inculcate a sense of justice. For in agreeing to principles of right the parties in the original position at the same time consent to the arrangements necessary to make these principles effective in their conduct. Indeed, the adaptability of these arrangements to the limitations of human nature is an important consideration in choosing a conception of justice. Thus no one’s moral convictions are the result of coercive indoctrination. Instruction is throughout as reasoned as the development of understanding permits, just as the natural duty of mutual respect requires. None of the ideals, principles, and precepts upheld in the society takes unfair advantage of human weakness. A person’s sense of justice is not a compulsive psychological mechanism cleverly installed by those in authority in order to insure one’s unswerving compliance with rules designed to advance their interests. Nor is the process of education simply a casual sequence intended to bring about as an end result the appropriate moral sentiments. As far as possible each stage foreshadows in its teaching and explanations the conception of right and justice at which it aims and by reference to which we will later recognize that the moral standards presented to us are justified. These observations are evident consequences of the contract doctrine and the fact that its principles regulate the practices of moral instruction in a well-ordered society. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Following the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness, we can say that by acting from these principles persons are acting autonomously: they are acting from principles that they would acknowledge under conditions that best express their nature as free and equal rational beings. To be sure, these conditions also reflect the situation of individuals in the World and their being subject to the circumstances of justice. However, this simply means that the conception of autonomy is that fitting for human beings; the notion suited to superior or inferior natures is most likely different. Thus moral education is education for autonomy. In due course everyone will know why one would adopt the principles of justice and how they are derived from the conditions that characterize one’s being an equal in a society of moral persons. It follows that in accepting these principles on the basis we are not influenced primarily by tradition and authority, or the opinions of others. However necessary these agencies may be in order for us to reach complete understanding, we eventually come to hold a conception of right on reasonable grounds that we can set out independently for ourselves. Now on the contract view the notions of autonomy and objectivity are compatible: there is no antinomy between freedom and reason. Both autonomy and objectivity are characterized in a consistent way by reference to the original position. The idea of the initial situation is central to the whole theory and other basic notions are defined in terms of it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Thus acting autonomously is acting from principles that we would consent to as free and equal rational beings, and that we are to understand in this way. Also, these principles are objective. They are the principles that we would want everyone (including ourselves) to follow were we take up together the appropriate general point of view. The original position defines this perspective, and its conditions also embody those of objectivity: its stipulations express the restrictions on arguments that force us to consider the choice of principles unencumbered by the singularities of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The veil of ignorance prevents us from shaping our moral view to accord with our own particular attachments and interests. We do not look at the social order from our situation but take up a point of view that everyone can adopt on an equal footing. In this sense we look at our society and our place in its objectively: we share a common standpoint along with others and do not make our judgments from a personal slant. Thus our moral principles and convictions are objective to the extent that they have been arrived at and tested by assuming this general standpoint and by assessing the arguments for them by the restrictions expressed by the conception of the original position. The judicial virtues such as impartiality and considerateness are the excellences of intellect and sensibility that enable us to do these things well. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If it moves the minds and hearts of an increasing number of humans, Christian faith may work wonders. However, if professed Christians forsake Heaven as their destination and come to fancy that the state may be converted into the terrestrial paradise—why they are less wise than Marx. Christians in politics can make a difference. Human plant, and God, using many people, brings the crop. In recent years many Christians have urged a more direct approach for bringing needed social change: simply elect Christians to political office. One spokes persons has even suggested a religious version of affirmative action; if, for example, 24 percent of the people are born again, then at least 24 percent of the officeholders should be born again. Others have argued that Christians should “take dominion” over government, with those in public office speaking “for God as well as for the American people.” On the surface this shortcut might seem to some an appealing answer to America’s declining morality. It is, however, simplistic and dangerous triumphalism. To suggest that electing Christians to public office will solve all public ills is not only presumptuous and theologically questionable, it is also untrue. Today’s misspent enthusiasm for political solutions to the moral problems of our culture arises from a distorted view of both politics and spirituality—too low a view of the power of a sovereign God and too high a view of the ability of humans. The idea that human systems, reformed by Christian influence, pave the road to the Kingdom—or at least, to revival—has the same utopia n ring that one finds in Marxist literature. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
This idea about human systems, which are reformed by Christian influence being the path to the Kingdom of God also ignores the consistent lesson of history that shows that laws are most often reformed as a result of powerful spiritual movements. I know of no case where a spiritual movement was achieved by passing laws. In addition, history puts the lie to the notion that just because one is devout, one will be a just and wise ruler. Take the nineteenth-century leader who forged a unified Germany from a cluster of minor states. Otto von Bismarck-Schonhausen was a committed Christian who regularly read the Bible, spoke openly of his devotion to God, and claimed divine guidance in response to prayer. “If I were no longer a Christian, I would not serve the king another hour,” he once declared. Yet Mr. Bismarck was also the ruthless architect of Deutaschland Uber Alles (Germany Over All), a Worldview that allegedly started two World wars. Historians describe Mr. Bismarck as a Machiavellian master of political duplicity who specialized in blood and iron. Power can be just as corrupting—or confusing—to the Christian as to the non-Christian. And the results in some ways are more horrible when power corrupts men or women who believe they have a divine mandate. Their injustices are then committed in God’s name. This is why an eminent conservative historian has suggested that “religious claims in politics should vary inversely with the power or prospects for power one has.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
It is a fair distinction: Prophets should make religious claims. Political leaders should not—otherwise they can become ayatollahs. So the first test for public office should not be a spiritual one. The celebrated claim that “the ability to hear from God should be the number one qualification of U.S. presidency” is dangerously misguided. The Church’s mission is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to elect politicians. The Church is neutral in matters of party politics. This applies in all of the many nations in which it is established. The Church encourages its members to play a role as responsible citizens in the communities, including become informed about issues and voting in elections. It expects its members to engage in the political process in an informed and civil manner, respecting the fact that members of the Church come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and may have differences of opinion in partisan political matters. Request candidates for office not to imply that their candidacy or platforms are endorsed by the Church, and reserves the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interest of the Church. Politicians, like those in any other specialized field, should be selected on the basis of their qualifications and abilities as well as on their moral character. Even in Israel’s theocracy, Jethro advised Moses to select “capable men…who fear God,” to help in governing the Jewish nation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Mr. Jethro’s advice makes sense. If terrorists were to take control of an airport, would we want police officers who were merely devout Christians handling the situation, or would we choose those who had specialized training in hostage negotiations? Luther had it right when he said he would rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian. The triumphalist mindset also fails to make the crucial distinction between a Christian’s function as a private citizen and as an officeholder. As private citizens, Christians are free to advocate their Christian view in any and every form. In American that is a fundamental constitutional right. Christian citizens should be activists about their faith, striving by their witness to “Christianize” their culture—not by the force of the sword, but by the force of their ideas. However, Christians elected to public office acquire a different set of responsibilities. Now they hold the power of the sword, which God has placed with government to preserve order and maintain justice. Now they act not for themselves but for all whom they serve. For this reason, they cannot use their office to evangelistically “Christianize” their culture. Their duty is to ensure justice and religious liberty for all citizens and beliefs. This does not mean they can compromise their faith or their first allegiance to God; they should speak freely of their Christian faith and witness Christian values in their lives. However, they cannot use their offices to seek a favoured position for Christianity of the church. “We have this treasure in Earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us,” reports 2 Corinthians 4.7. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
The Christian state is one that gives no special public privilege to Christian citizens but seeks justice for all as a matter of principle. At the turn of the century a towering Dutch theologian, Abraham Kuyper, was elected prime minister of the Netherlands. His opponents voiced fears of theocratic oppression. Instead, his administration was a model of tolerance and public pluralism as Kuyper affirmed proportional representation, that the legitimate rights of all be fully represented. If we Christians today understood this distinction between the role of the private Christians citizen and the Christian in government, they might sound less intimidating. If secularists understood correctly the nature of Christian public duty they would not fear, but welcome responsible Christian political involvement. If they keep the commandments of the Lord, I believe many of today’s adults will be active participants in temporal blessings. With prosperity will come a unique challenge—a test that will try many to their spiritual core. As you step into this new World of property and engage in converting your education and skills into financial success, you will always have to distinguish between wants and needs. You will have two choices. Will your motivation to build and acquire the blessings of the Lord be for personal gratification, for the recognition of humans, and for power, influence, and self-aggrandizement? Or will your motivation be to glorify God, to work to help usher in the growth and expansion of His Church? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The Lord is not telling us that we should not be prosperous or that prosperity is a sin. On the contrary, He has always blessed His obedient children However, He is telling us that we should seek prosperity only after we seek, find, and serve Him. Then, because our hearts are right, because we love Him first and foremost, we will choose to invest our resources wisely in preparing for the Kingdom of God. If you choose to seek riches for the sake of riches, you will fall short. You will never be satisfied. You will be empty, never finding true joy and lasting happiness. The trial of your faith in the next few years will likely not be that you lack the material things of this World. Rather it will be in choosing what to do with the temporal blessing you receive. Every situation in human life can be approached from two possible points of view. The first is the limited one and is that of the personal self. The second is the larder one and is that of Universal Self. The larger and longer view always justifies itself in the end. Each Overself is like a circle whose center is in some individual but whose circumference is not in any individual. We must not imagine that the subordination of this personal identity leads to any loss of consciousness—rather the reverse. Humans become more, not less, for one emerges into the fullness and freedom of one Universal life. One thinks of oneself as: “I, A. B., am a point within the Overself,” whereas before one only thought: “I am A.B.” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The higher self keeps the same kind of individuality without being separate that each facet of diamond keeps. The light which shines through it shines equally through all facets alike, remaining one and the same. The individuality is beyond personality—its level is higher. The one must prompt while the other must watch the pitiless destruction of its wishes and hopes, its values and desires, until only the pure being of individuality is left. It is a kind of impersonal being but it is not utterly devoid of all individuality. As a wave sinks back into the sea, so the consciousness which passes out of the personal self sinks back into its higher individuality. This is the general mind being our small personal minds, the one behind the many. God has saved for the final inning some of His strongest children, who will help bear off the Kingdom triumphantly. Birds nest in my arms, on my shoulder, behind my knees, by my heart there are quail, they must think I am a tree. The swans think I am a fountain, they all come down and drink when I walk. When sheep stroll by, they pass over me, and perched on my fingers, the sparrows eat, the ants think I am the Earth, and humans think I am nothing. Believers shall declare the glory of Thy Kingdom, and talk of Thy might; to make known to the sons of man His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His Kingdom. Thy Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generation. The Lord upholdeth all who fall, and raiseth up all who are bowed down. God will put you on the heart of someone to restore you and bless you big time, in the name of Jesus Christ! Amen. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Those Who Can Give Justice are Owed Justice!
There is no yesterday, so what is left is today. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. The signs of the Kingdom of God are like a human planting a seed. We do our part; but then God makes the seed grow. For it is God who produces the signs of His Kingdom on this Earth. We are merely the instruments. The Kingdom of God will transform places of hopelessness in the kingdom of man. Justice and hope will be found where there was once only inequity and despair. When we consider the basis of equality, the features of human beings in virtue of which they are to be treated in accordance with the principles of justice, what are our relationships with other human persons supposed to be like? We examine what determines the range of application of conceptions of justice. We may distinguish three levels where the concept of equality applies. The first is to the administration of institutions as public systems of rules. In this case equality is essentially justice as regularity. It implies the impartial application and consistent interpretation of rules according to such precepts as to treat similar cases similarly (as defined by statutes and precedents) and the like. Equality at this level is the least controversial element in the commonsense idea of justice. The second and much more difficult application of equality is to the substantive structure of institutions. Here the meaning of equality is specified by the principles of justice which require that equal basic rights be assigned to all persons. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Presumably this excludes animals; they have some protection certainly but their status is not that of human beings. However, this outcome is still unexplained. We have yet to consider what sort of beings are owed the guarantees of justice. This brings us to the third level at which the question of equality arises. The natural answer seems to be that it is precisely the moral persons who are entitled to equal justice. Moral persons are distinguished by two features: first they are capable of having (and are assumed to have) a conception of their good (as expressed by a rational plan of life); and second they are capable of having (and are assumed to acquire) a sense of justice, a normally effective desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum degree. We use the characterization of the persons in the original position to single out the kind of beings to whom the principles chose apply. After all, the parties are though of as adopting these criteria to regulate their common institutions and their conduct toward one another; and the description of their nature enters into the reasoning by which these principles are selected. Thus equal justice is owed to those who have the capacity to take part in and to act in accordance with the public understanding of the initial situation. One should observe that moral personality is here defined as a potentiality that is ordinarily realized in due course. It is this potentiality which brings the claims of justice into play. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
We see, then, that the capacity for moral personality is a sufficient condition for being entitled to equal justice. This fact can be used to interpret the concept of natural rights. For one thing, it explains why it is appropriate to call by this name the rights that justice protects. These claims depend solely on certain natural attributes the presence of which can be ascertained by natural reason pursuing common sense methods of inquiry. The existence of these attributes and the claims based upon them is established independently from social conventions and legal norms. The propriety of the term “natural” is that is suggests the contrast between the rights identified by the theory of justice and the rights includes the idea that these rights are assigned in the first instance to persons, and that they are given a special weight. Claims easily overridden for other values are not natural rights. Now the rights protected by the first principle have both of these features in view of the priority rules. This justice as fairness has the characteristic marks of a natural rights theory. Not only does it ground fundamental rights on natural attributes and distinguish their bases from social norms, but it assigns rights to persons by principles of equal justice, these principles having a special force against which other values cannot normally prevail. Although specific rights are not absolute, the system of equal liberties is absolute practically speaking under favourable conditions. Nothing beyond the essential minimum is required. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Whether moral personality is also a necessary condition, I shall leave that aside. I assume that the capacity for a sense of justice is possessed by the overwhelming majority of humankind, and therefore this question does not raise a serious problem. That moral personality suffices to make one a subject of claims is the essential thing. We cannot go far wrong in supposing that the sufficient condition is always satisfied. Even if the capacity were necessary, it would be unwise in practice to withhold justice on this ground. The risk to just institutions would be too great. It should be stressed that the sufficient condition for equal justice, the capacity for moral personality, is not all stringent. When someone lacks the requisite potentiality either from birth or accident, this is regarded as a defect or deprivation. There is no race or recognized group of human beings that lacks this attribute. Only scattered individuals are without this capacity, or its realization to the minimum degree, and the failure to realize it is the consequence of unjust and impoverished social circumstances, of fortuitous contingencies. Furthermore, while individuals presumably have varying capacities for a sense of justice, this fact is not a reason for depriving those with a lesser capacity of the full protection of justice. Once a certain minimum is met, a person is entitled to equal liberty on a par with everyone else. A greater capacity for a sense of justice, as shown say in a greater skill and facility in applying the principles of justice and in marshaling arguments in particular cases, is a natural asset like any other ability. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The special advantages a person receives for its exercises are to be governed by the difference principle. Thus is some have a preeminent degree the judicial virtues of impartiality and integrity which are needed in certain positions, they may properly have whatever benefits should be attached to these offices. Yet the application of the principle of equal liberty is not affected by these differences. It is sometimes thought that basic rights and liberties should vary with capacity, but justice as fairness denies this: provided the minimum for moral personality is satisfied, a person is owed all the guarantees of justice. First of all, when considering the basis of equality, it may be objected that equality cannot rest n natural attributes. There is no natural feature with respect to which all human being are equal, that is, which everyone has (or which sufficiently many have) to the same degree. If we wish to hold a doctrine of equality, it might appear we must interpret it in another way, namely as a purely procedural principle. Thus to say that human beings are equal is to say that none has a claim to preferential treatment in the absence of compelling reasons. The burden of proof favours equality: it defines a procedural presumption that persons are to be treated alike. Departures from equal treatment are in each case to be defended and judged impartially by the same system of principles that hold for all; the essential equality is thought to be equality of consideration. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
There are several difficulties with this procedural interpretation. For one thing, it is nothing more than the precept of treating similar cases similarly applied at the highest level, together with an assignment of the burden of proof. Equality of consideration puts no restrictions upon what grounds may be offered to justify inequalities. There is no guarantee of substantive equal treatment, since slave and caste systems (to mention extreme cases) may satisfy this conception. The real assurance of equalities lies in the content of the principles of justice and not in these procedural presumptions. The placing of the burden of proof is not sufficient. However, further, even if the procedural interpretation imposed some genuine restrictions on institutions, there is still the question why we are to follow the procedure in some instances and not others. Surely it applies to creatures who belong to some class, but which one? We still need a natural basis for equality so that this class can be identified. Moreover, it is not the case that founding equality on natural capacities is incomplete with an egalitarian view. All we have to do is to select a range property (as I shall say) and to give equal justice to those meeting its conditions. For example, the property of being in the interior of the unit circle is a range of property points in the plane. All points inside this circle have this property although their coordinates vary within a certain range. And they equally have this property, since no point interior to a circle is more or less interior to it than any other interior point. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Now whether there is a suitable range property for singling out the respect in which human beings are to be counted equal is settled by the conception of justice. However, the description of the parties in the original position identifies such a property, and the principles of justice assure us that any variations in ability within the range are to be regarded as any other natural asset. There is no obstacle to thinking that a natural capacity constitutes the basis of equality. How then can it seem plausible that founding equality on natural attributes undermines equal justice? The notion of a range property is too obvious to be overlooked. There must be a deeper explanation. The answer, I think, is that a teleological theory is often taken for granted. Thus, if the right is to maximize the net balance of satisfaction, say, then rights and duties are to be assigned so as to achieve this end. Among the relevant aspects of the problem are human’s different productive skills and capacities for satisfaction. It may happen that maximizing aggregate welfare requires adjusting basic rights to variations in these features. Of course, given the standard utilitarian assumptions, there is a tendency to equality. The relevant thing, however, is that in either case the correct natural basis and the appropriate assignment of rights depend upon the principle of utility. It is the content of the ethical doctrine, and the fact that it is a maximizing notion, that allows variations in capacity to justify unequal fundamental rights, and not the idea that equality is founded on natural attributes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
An examination of perfectionism would, I believe, lead to the same conclusion. However, justice as fairness is not a maximizing theory. We are not directed to look for differences in natural features that affect some maximand and therefore serve as possible grounds for different grades of citizenship. Although agreeing with many teleological theories in the relevance of natural attributes, the contract view needs much weaker assumptions about their distribution to establish equal rights. It is enough that a certain minimum is generally fulfilled. First of all, when considering some other points, it should be noted that the conception of moral personality and the required minimum may often prove troublesome. While many concepts are vague to some degree, that of moral personality is likely to be especially so. However, these matters are, I think, best discussed in the context of definite moral problems. The nature of the specific issue and the structure of the available general facts may suggest a fruitful way to settle them. In any case, one must not confuse the vagueness of a conception of justice with the thesis that basic rights should vary with natural capacity. The minimal requirements defining moral personality refer to a capacity and not to the realization of it. A being that has this capacity, whether or not it is yet developed, is to receive the full protection of the principles of justice. Since infants and children are thought to have basic rights (normally exercised on their behalf by parents and guardians), this interpretation of the requisite conditions seems necessary to match our considered judgments. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Moreover, regarding the potentiality as sufficient accords with the hypothetical nature of the original position, and with the idea that as far as possible the choice of principles should not be influenced by arbitrary contingencies. Therefore it is reasonable to say that those who could take part in the initial agreement, were it not for fortuitous circumstances, are assured equal justice. Now of course none of this is literally argument. I have not set out the premises from which this conclusion follows, as I have tried to do, albeit not very rigorously, with the choice of conceptions of justice in the original position. Nor have I tried to prove that the characterization of the parties must be used as the basis of equality. Rather this interpretation seems to be the natural completion of justice as fairness. The problem of those who have lost their realized capacity temporarily through misfortune, accident, or mental stress can be regarded in a similar capacity of children in connection with paternalism. However, those are more or less permanently deprived of moral personality may present a difficulty. It is assumed that the account of equality would not be materially affected. First of all, the simplicity of the contract view of the basis of equality is worth emphasizing. The minimum capacity for the sense of justice insures that everyone has equal rights. The claims of all are to be adjudicated by the principles of justice. Equality is supported by the general facts of nature and not merely by a procedural rule without substantive force. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Nor does equality presuppose an assessment of the intrinsic worth of persons, or a comparative evaluation of their conceptions of the good. Those who can give justice are owed justice. When other accounts of equality are examined, the advantages of these straightforward proposition become more evident. For example, one might think that equal justice means that society is to make the same proportionate contribution to each person’s realizing the best life which one is capable of. Offhand this may seem an attractive suggestion. It suffers however from serious difficulties. For one thing it not only requires a method of estimating the relative goodness of plans of life, but it also presupposes some way of measuring what counts as an equal proportionate contribution to persons with different conceptions of their good. The problem in applying this standard are obvious. A more important difficulty is that the greater abilities of some may give them a stronger claim on social resources irrespective of compensating advantages to others. One must assume that variations in natural assets will affect what is necessary to provide equal proportionate assistance to those with different plans of life. However, in addition to violating the principle of mutual advantage, this conception of equality means that the strength of human’s claims is directly influenced by the distribution of natural abilities, and therefore by contingencies that are arbitrary from a moral point of view. The basis of equality in justice as fairness avoids these objections. The only continency which is decisive is that of having or nor having the capacity for a sense of justice. By giving justice to those who can give justice in return, the principle of reciprocity is fulfilled at the highest level. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
A further observation is that we can now more fully reconcile two conceptions of equality. Some writers have distinguished between equality as it is invoked in connection with the distribution between equality as it is invoked in connection with the distribution of certain goods, some of which will almost certainly give higher status or prestige to those who are more favoured, and equality as it applies to the respect which is owed to persons irrespective of their social position. Equality of the first kind is defined by the second principle of justice which regulates the structure of organizations and distributive shares so that social cooperation is both efficient and fair. However, equality of the second kind is fundamental. It is defined by the first principle of justice and by such natural duties as that of mutual respect; it is owed to human beings as moral persons. The natural basis of equality explains its deeper significance. The priority of the first principle over the second enables us to avoid balancing these conceptions of equality in an ad hoc manner, while the argument from the standpoint of the original position shows how this precedence comes about. The consistent application of the principle of fair opportunity requires us to view persons independently from the influences of their social position. However, how far should this tendency be carried? It seems that even when fair opportunity (as it has been defined) is satisfied, the family will lead to unequal chances between individuals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Is the family to be abolished then? Taken by itself and given a certain primacy, the idea of equal opportunity inclines in this direction. However, within the context of the theory of justice as a whole, there is much less urgency to take this course. The acknowledgment of the difference principle redefines the grounds for social inequalities as conceived in the system of liberal equality; and when the principle of fraternity and redress are allowed their appropriate weight, the natural distribution of assets and the contingencies of social circumstances can more easily be accepted. We are more ready to dwell upon our good fortune now that these differences are made to work to our advantage, rather than to be downcast by how much better off we might have been had we had an equal chance along with others if only all social barriers had been removed. The conception of justice, should it be truly effective and publicly recognized as such, seems more likely than its rivals to transform our perspective on social World and to reconcile us to the dispositions of natural order and the conditions of human life. Last of all, we should recall here the limits of a theory of justice. Not only are many aspects pf morality left aside, but no account is given of right conduct in regard to animals and the rest of nature. A conception of justice is but one part of a moral view. While I have not maintained that the capacity for a sense of justice is necessary in order to be owed the duties of justice, it does seem that we are not required to give strict justice anyway to creatures lacking this capacity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
However, it does not follow that there are no requirements at all in regard to them, not in our relations with the natural order. Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the forms of life which of animals are capable clearly imposes duties of compassion and humanity in their case. These beliefs, however, are outside the scope of the theory of justice, and it does not seem possible to extent the contract doctrine so as to include them in a natural way. A correct conception of our relations to animals and to nature would seem to depend upon a theory of the natural order and our place in it. One of the tasks of metaphysics is to work out a view of the World which is suited for this purpose; it should identify and systematize the truths decisive for these questions. How far justice as fairness will have to be revised to fit into this larger theory it is sound as an account of justice among persons, it cannot be too wrong when these broader relationships are taken into consideration. Technocrats, experts in science or technology who have a lot of power in or influence with the government of industry, suffer from econo-think. They look at the World and analyze the way the World works by comparing the cost of an action with the benefit generated. Except during war and dire emergency, they start from the premise that even non-economic problems can be solved with economic remedies. Social futurism challenges this root assumption of both Marxist and Keynesian managers. In its historical time and place, industrial society’s single-minded pursuits of material progress served the human race well. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
As we hurtle toward the super age of information, however, a new ethos emerges in which other goals begin to gain parity with, and even supplant those of economic welfare. In personal terms, self-fulfillment, social responsibility, aesthetic achievement, hedonistic individualism, and an array of other goals vie with and often overshadow the raw drive for material success. Affluence serves as a base from which humans begin to strive for varied post-economic ends. At the same time, in societies arrowing toward super-age of information, economic variables—wages, balance of payments, productivity—grow increasingly sensitive to change in the non-economic environment. Economic problems are plentiful, but a whole range of issues that are only secondarily economy break into prominence. Racism, the battle between the generations, crime, cultural autonomy, violence—all these have economic dimensions; yet none can be effectively treated by econocentic measures alone. The move from manufacturing to health-care and social assistance, the psychologization of both goods and services, and ultimately the shift toward experiential production all tie the economic sector much more tightly to non-economic forces. Consumer preference turn over in accordance with rapid life style changes, so that the coming and going of subcults is mirrored in economic turmoil. Super-age of information production requires workers skilled in symbol manipulation, and computer information science, so that what goes on in their heads becomes much more important than in the past, and much more dependent upon computers, technology, and algorithm. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Because many more American corporations are investing part of their sizeable portfolios in companies selected not for economic payout alone, but for their potential contribution to solving urban problems, providing jobs for hard-core unemployed, in organizing literacy and job-training programs, and scores of other unfamiliar activities, including worrying about water, air, and noise pollution, improving the aesthetic appearance of the company’s trucks and equipment, and fostering experimental preschool learning programs in underserved communities, and supporting cultural groups; although this is accurately signaling the direction of change, none of this necessarily implies that big companies are growing altruistic; it merely underscores the increasing intimacy of the links between the economic sector and powerful cultural, psychological, and social forces. While these forces batter at our doors, however, most technocratic planners and managers behave as though nothing had happened. They continue to act as though the economic sector were hermetically sealed off from social and psychocultural influences. Indeed, econocentric premises are buried so deeply and held so widely in both capitalist and communist nations, that they distort the very information systems essential for management of change. For example, all modern nations maintain elaborate machinery for measuring economic performance. We know virtually day by day the directions of change with respect to productivity, prices, investment, and similar factors. Through a set of “economic indicators” we gauge the overall health of the economy, the speed at which it is changing, and the overall directions of change. Without these measures, our control of the economy would be far less effective. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
By contrast, we have no such measures, no set of comparable “social indicators” to tell us whether the society, as distinct from the economy, is also healthy. We have no measures of the “quality of life.” We have no systematic indices to tell us whether people are more or less alienated from one another; whether education is more effective; whether art, music and literature are flourishing; whether civility, generosity or kindness are increasing. Gross National Product is our Holy Grail, but we have no environmental index, no census statistics to measure whether the country is more livable from year to year. On the surface, this would seem a purely technical matter—something for statisticians to debate. Yet it has the most serious political significance, for lacking such measures it becomes difficult to connect up national or local policies with appropriate long-term social goals. The absence of such indices perpetuates vulgar technocracy. Little known to the public, a polite, but increasingly bitter battle over this issue has begun in Washington. Technocratic planners and economists see in the social indicators idea a threat to their entrenched position at the ear of the political policy maker. In contrast, the need for social indicators has been eloquently argued by such prominent social scientists as Dr. Bertram M. Gross and Wayne State University, Eleanor Sheldon and Wilbert Moore of the Russell Sage Foundation, Daniel Bell and Raymond Bauer of Harvard. We are witnessing, says Gross, a “widespread rebellion against what has been called the ‘economic philistinism’ of the Untied States government’s resent statistical establishment.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
This revolt has attracted vigorous support from political and government officials who recognize our desperate need for a post-technocratic social intelligence system. In the near future, we can expect the same revolt to break out in other World capitals as well, once again drawing a line between technocrats and post-technocrats. The danger of future shock, itself, however, points to the need for new social measures not yet even mentioned in the fast-burgeoning literature on social indicators. We urgently need, for example, techniques for measure the level of transience in different communities, different populations groups, and in individual experience. It is possible, in principle, to design a “transience index” that could disclose the rate at which we are making and breaking relationships with the things, places, people, organizations and informational structures that comprise our environment. Such an index would reveal, among other things, the fantastic differences in the experiences of different groups in society—the static and tedious quality of turnover in the lives of others. Government policies that attempt to deal with both kinds of people in the same way are doomed to meet angry resistance from one or the other—or both. Similarly, we need indices of novelty in the environment. How often do communities, organizations or individual have to cope with first-time situations? How many of the articles in the home of the average working-class family are actually “new” in function or appearance; how many are traditional? #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
What level of novelty—in terms of things, people or any other significant dimension—is required for stimulation without over-stimulation? How much more novelty can children absorb than their parents—if it is true that they can absorb more? In what way is gaining related to lower novelty tolerances, and how do such differences correlate with the political and intergenerational conflict now tearing the techno-societies apart? By studying and measuring the invasion of newness, we can begin, perhaps, to control the influx of change into our social structures and personal lives. And what about choice and over choice? Can we construct measures of the degree of significant choice in human lives? Can any government that pretends to be democratic not concern itself with such an issue? For al the rhetoric about freedom of choice, no government agency in the World can claim to have made any attempt to measure it. The assumption simply is that more income or affluence means more choice and that more choice, in turn, means freedom. Is it not time to examine these basic assumptions of our political systems? If we are to prevent future shock and build a humane super-age of informational society, post-technocratic planning must deal with precisely such issues. A sensitive system of indicators geared to measuring the achievement of social and cultural goals, and integrated with economic indicators, is part of the technical equipment that any society needs before it can successfully reach the next stage of eco-technological development. It is an absolute precondition for post-technocratic planning and change management. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
This humanization of planning, moreover, must be reflected in our political structures as well. To connect the super-age of information social intelligence system with the decisional centers of society, we must institutionalize a concern for the quality of life. Thus it has been proposed by people in the social indicators movement that there is a creation of a Council of Social Advisers to the President. Such a Council, as they see it, would be modeled after the already existing Council of Economic Advisers and would perform parallel functions in the social field. The new agency would monitor key social indicators precisely the way the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) keeps its eye on economic indices, and interpret changes to the President. It would issue an annual report on the quality of life, clearly spelling out our social progress (or lack of it) in terms of specified goals. This report would thus supplement and balance the annual economic report prepared by the CEA. By providing reliable, useful data about our social condition, the Council of Social Advisers would begin to influence planning generally, making it more sensitive to social costs and benefits, less coldly technocratic and econocentric. Proponents differ as to whether the Council of Social Advisers ought to be organizationally independent or become a part of a larger Council of Economic and Social Advisers. All sides agree, however, on the need for integrating economic and social intelligence. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
The establishment of such councils, not merely at the federal level but at state and municipal levels as well, would not at the federal level but at state and municipal levels as well, would not solve all our problems; it would not eliminate conflict; it would not guarantee that social indicators are exploited properly. In brief, it would not eliminate politics from political life. However, it would end recognition—and political force—to the idea that the ais of progress reach beyond economics. The designation of agencies to watch over the indicators of change in the quality of life would carry us a long way toward that humanization of the planner which is the essential first stage of the strategy of social futurism. Replace fear with faith—faith in God and the power of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we think of the future, we should be filled with faith and hope. Always remember that Jesus Christ—the Creator of the Universe, the architect of our salvation, and the head of this Church—is in control. He will not permit His work to fail. He will be victorious over all darkness and evil. And He invites us all, members of His church and others who are the honest in heart, to join in the battle for the souls of God’s children. Along with all else we will do in life, we must also dedicate and consecrate our heart, might, mind, and strength to His cause, walking in faith and working with conviction. Face the future with optimism. I believe we are standing on the threshold of a new era of growth, prosperity, and abundance. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I think the next few years will bring a resurgence in the World economy as new discoveries are made in communication, medicine, energy, transportation, physics, computer technology, and other fields endeavor. Many of these discoveries, as in the past, will be the result of the spirit whispering insights into and enlightening the minds of truth-seeking individuals. With these discoveries and advances will come new employment opportunities and prosperity for those who work hard and especially for those who strive to keep the commandments of God. This has been the case in other significant periods of national and international economic growth. People, we rainclouds closer to the sun and full of life soaking up the knowledge of the Earth and storing it within ourselves, moving on to spread truth through the World. We clouds are loved and feared, ready to explore and give new life to a dying planet. Beautiful clouds, casting shadows of love, shadows of dignity, shadows of healing. Giving of ourselves to promote life, while realizing our ability to destroy rainclouds, we are nature, natural! People, we rainclouds are closer to the run and full of life. May the Father of mercies who dwells on high, in His mighty compassion, remember the loving, upright and blameless souls and all the holy communities in America who laid down their lives for the sanctification of the divine name. Even as they were devoted and faithful in life, so in death they were not parted. They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions to do the will of their Master and the desire of their Rock. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
May our God remember them for good with other righteous of the World, and bring retribution for blood of His servants which has been shed, in accordance with the promise given in the in the Law of Moses, reiterated in the Books of the Prophets and again stated in the Sacred Writings: Sing aloud, O ye nations, for God des bring to judgment those who shed the blood of His servants. Wherefore should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Let the retribution of Thy servants’ blood be made known among the nations in our sight. For God, the Avenger of bloodshed, will not forget the cry of the humble. He will judge among the nations, and crushing evil, will emerge triumphant. Happy are they that dwell in Thy house; they will ever praise Thee. Happy is the people who thus fare; yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. I will extol Thee, my God, O King, and I will bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever. Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall laud Thy works to another, and shall declare thy might acts. On the majestic glory of Thy splendor, and on Thy wonderous deeds will I meditate. And humans shall proclaim the might of Thy tremendous acts, and I will recount Thy greatness. They shall make known the fame of Thy great goodness, and shall exult in Thy righteousness. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, long forbearing, and abundant in kindness. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works. All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy faith one shall bless Thee. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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In the Hearts of the People Today there is a Deep Longing for Peace!
A gift to the wrong person is darkness, and when darkness is gone, it it best to forget it. Write out of love; write out of instinct; write out of reason. However, always for money. In an atomic war, there would be neither conqueror nor vanquished. During such a bombardment, both sides would suffer the same fate. A continuous destruction would take place and no armistice nor peace proposals would bring it to an end. In the hearts of people today there is a deep longing for peace. When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an inner experience with unlimited possibilities. It is only when this really happens, that the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of human’s hearts, that humanity can be saved from perishing. Before Constantine’s Christianizing of the Roman empire, all Christians were advised to avoid civil office because of the idolatrous emperor worship it demanded. (In some instances that concern is as relevant today as it was in ancient Rome.) Even after Constantine, church policy restricted members of the clergy from holding office. The American colonists wrote similar prohibitions into several state constitutions, which remained in effect until 1978, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Tennessee restrictions as a violation of a minister’s First Amendment right. There were few exceptions over the centuries; when they were made, it was to protect religious liberty, as, for example, when anti-Catholic legislation was being enacted in Hungary; the priests were released to engage in politics “for the sake of safeguarding religion or promoting the common good.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Despite the Tennessee case and the fact that the United States Constitution contains no such prohibition, the tradition remains strong. Few clergy have held major offices in Western democracies. In the Catholic church, Pope John Paul’s rejection of the tiara of temporal authority was a clear signal: ecclesiastical goals would not be sought through political means. Thus it was consistent that John Paul II in 1980 ordered priests out of secular office entirely. Five-term Congressman Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest and outspoken liberal, quietly resigned. In Nicaragua, however, three priests defined the papal order. This has been a major cause of the rift not only within the church, but it has compromised the integrity of the church. Those priests may say they are acting in civil capacity but can they really disavow responsibility for the expulsion of missionaries, restriction on the free press, including Iglesia, the official Catholic newspaper? The cleric in public office can hardly avoid such doublemindedness. And presenting two faces to the World inevitably damages the work that should be of primary concern: the witness of the church. Regardless of one’s stand on abortion, for example, no one could seriously imagine Sister Agnes Mary Mansour as commissioner of Health and Welfare in Michigan, supervising state-funded abortions while in conscience maintaining her vows to a church that forbids abortion. Definitions of integrity have been stretched in recent years, but not that far. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Any priest or minister who feels called to seek public office should, as a citizen, be free to undertake that vocation. However, doing so means that one must leave the pulpit, resigning all ecclesiastical functions. One must make it clear that one is acting as a private citizen seeking office to fulfill civic, not spiritual goals. (In many denominations, however, the priestly office cannot actually be resigned.) However, if the clergy should not hold office, should the institutional church be silent on political issues? This is perhaps the most sensitive question of all. The Church acts as the conscience of society. The soul of the New World civilization is Christianity. So the Church must address moral issues in society and measure public actions by biblical standards of justice and righteousness. However, there are pitfalls. One of the greatest is the tendency Christians have to believe that because the Bible is “on their side” they can speak with authority on every issue. Many church bureaucracies have succumbed to this temptation in recent decades, spewing out position papers on everything from public toilet facilities to nuclear war. The New Right has engaged in such excesses with its scorecards covering the gamut of issues from trade legislation to the Panama Canal. When Christians use the broad brush, they become simply another political interest group, pontificating on matters about which they are often woefully uninformed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
A case in point was the United States Catholic bishops’ position paper on nuclear war. It hardly seems necessary to convene a conference to announce that it is a moral issue to unleash weapons that would annihilate millions. The bishops did, however, and they went on to conclude that the deterrent posture of the United States of America was unsatisfactory from a moral point of view. That could be true—particularly if one realizes that our missiles are aimed at Soviet cities, just as Soviet missiles are aimed at U.S. cities, and Korean often launches missiles over Japan to try to see how close they can come to hitting the United States of America as their nuclear technology increases, then there is also a threat from the Middle East directed at America. However, deterrence itself is not immoral by definition; deterrence is impeding another nation’s hostile act. The existence of a nuclear weapon (as with a police officer’s gun) may prevent a much greater evil. At this stage we have the choice of two risks: the one lies in continuing the mad atomic-arms race with its danger of an unavoidable atomic war in the near future; the other in the renunciation of nuclear weapons, and in hope that the United States of America and the Soviet Union, and the peoples associated with them, will manage to live in peace. The first holds no hope of a prosperous future; the second does. We must risk the second. Any moral analysis must take into account the complexity of modern nuclear strategy and the actual efficacy to deterrence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
To determine the efficacy, one cannot simply consider just numbers of bombs or throw-weight, but targeting studies and the whole range of strategic options; what would remain after a surprise attack; what defenses neutralize attacking missiles; what would the communications capacity be, and the like. Ironically, the country that renounces a first strike (the more moral position, as the bishops would no doubt agree) has need for a much larger deterrent capability (which the bishops decry as immoral). The logical consequences of their paper is a Catch-22. At the present time when violence, clothed in life, dominates the World more cruelly than it ever has before, I still remain convinced that truth, love, peaceableness, meekness, and kindness are the violence which can master all other violence. While the bishops certainly could have commented on the immorality of unleashing nuclear war, they simply did not have all the facts necessary to render an authoritative judgment beyond that. This was summed up by a University of Chicago professor who agreed personally with the bishops’ position, but concluded that they could not determine whether deterrence was immoral because such judgment depended on facts “which are secret—and thus, unknown to the bishops.” In the hearts of the people today there is a deep longing for peace. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an inner experience with unlimited possibilities. It is only when this really happens, that the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of human’s hearts, that humanity can be saved from perishing. Is the human spirit able to achieve those things which, in our distress, we must expect of it? We must not underestimate its strength. Through human history this strength has made itself manifest. It is to the strength of the human mind that we owe the humanitarianism that is at the origin of a progress towards a higher way of life. When we are animated by humanitarianism, we are faithful to ourselves and capable of creation. Russell Kirk, a Catholic layman himself, has described the delegates to such conferences as “utopians…wondrously unaware of the limits of politics.” Certainly the heated controversy resulting from the bishops’ attempt to formulate United States of America’s defense policy called their own competence into question of policy, must about which the church demonstrably lacked expertise, bishop Kirk mused that he would “as soon go to a bartender for medical advice as to a church secretary for political wisdom.” Poland’s Catholic bishops seem to have understood the need to deal with issues within their particular competence better perhaps than the United States counterparts. When Polish government engaged in one of its periodic purges of political dissidents in 1985, the bishops quickly condemned the persecution. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
A clear issue of human rights was at stake, and the moral question was unambiguous. They added, however, that “the Church is not and does not, want to be a political force [but it] has the right to give moral assessments, even in questions of political affairs when the basic rights of the individual or the salvation of the soul demands it. The Polish bishops understood the restraints imposed on the church when it speaks as the church. This is a crucial distinction. It is one thing for an individual Christian to address whatever issue one’s conscience dictates, but the church as a body, which purports to speak God’s truth, should speak only to those matters in which fidelity to holy Scripture itself makes it necessary to speak out: Issues where human life or dignity, religious liberty, or justice are involved. Even then, the church should claim no superior wisdom except in those areas where it is uniquely able to bring biblically informed truth to the debate. There are controversial issues in which the principle is unmistakable and the command of the hour comes through loud and clear. On these issues the church must make pronouncements. However, there are other general issues in which facts and motives are mixed consequences contradict the principles involved and equally dedicated and knowledgeable Christians disagree. In these cases the church should remain silent, letting individual Christians and Christian groups decide for themselves what Christian witness means. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
For the church to sponsor a political party, engage in lobbying, form coalitions with secular pressure groups and become entangled in the decisions of private business corporation, would be to take a position on precisely those issues in which the religious significance is unclear, ambiguous or non-existent. An excellent example, one that stands in distinct contrast to the pastoral letter on nuclear policy, was the 1987 Vatican statement on human life and biomedical ethics. It spoke forthrightly to a clear biblical issue on which the church has special competence and about which the secular World was grossly confused. It has been perhaps the single most useful document issued thus far to clarify moral questions in the growing debate over reproductive technology. Politics is not the church’s first calling. Evangelism administering the sacraments, providing discipleship, fellowship, teaching the Word, and exhorting its members to holy living are the heartbeat of the church. When it addresses political issues, the church must not do so at the risk of weakening its primary mission. As mainline churches discovered in the sixties, the faster they churned out partisan statements, the faster they emptied their pews. And while the Christian citizens can afford to be as partisan as they wish, Christian pastors cannot. If they are, they may soon discover they have compromised both their own witness and that of the church. An extreme example was the case of the bishop who presided at the May 1987 funeral of former CIA Director William Casey. Because President Reagan, former President Nixon, and a host of other government officials were in the congregation, this bishop used the occasion to attack U.S. foreign policy in Central America, for which the deceased Mr. Casey was an outspoken proponent. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
It was in such a deplorably bad taste that the incident, reported Worldwide, resulted in an adverse reaction not against U.S. policy, but against the church. Grieving families should receive spiritual comfort, not a political harangue against their loved one’s views. Admittedly a fine line exists here. It is clearly partisan for a pastor to stand in a pulpit and endorse a particular candidate, as some clergymen endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1980, and others endorsed Ronald Reagan 1984. However, what about Cardinal O’Connor’s statement in the same campaign that a Catholic could not in conscience vote for a candidate who supported abortion? His remarks were reported as a partisan rebuke of the views of two of his New York parishioners, Governor Mario Cuomo and vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Admittedly, the cardinal’s timing made his remarks suspect, but they could also be regarded as no more than a statement of elementary logic. Since the Catholic church believes that the taking of unborn lives violates God’s law, could a Catholic in conscience logically vote for one who willfully violated that law? While I believe an open pulpit endorsement of a candidate is improper, I also feel that—if made responsibly from the right motivations—a cleric’s statement that Christians should not support candidates who reject basic human rights is justified. Within these limits, then, we can conclude that Christians, both individually and institutionally, have a duty, for the good of society as a whole, to bring the values of the kingdom of God to bear within the kingdoms of man. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
It is fair to say, however, that Christians have not done a particularly good job at this task. Often they have terrified their secular neighbours, who see Christian political activists as either backwoods bigot or religious ayatollahs attempting to assault them with Bible verses or religious magisteriums. In a pluralistic society it is not only wrong but unwise for Christians to shake their Bibles and arrogantly assert that “God says…”That is the quickest way for Christians, a distinct growing majority in civil affairs, to lose their cases altogether. Instead, positions should be argued on their merits. If the case is sound, a majority can be persuaded; that is the way democracies and free nations are supposed to work. I am often asked to meet with government officials concerned with criminal-justice policies. They are frustrated. The more prisons are built—at great expense—the more the crime rate goes up. So whenever I suggest restitution as an inexpensive and effective alternative to prison for nonviolent offenders, politicians are receptive. However, only after I have cited the facts of the position (for instance, only one tenth of the cost of incarceration is statistically effective in reducing recidivism) do I explain that the source of restitution was God’s laws prescribed to Moses at Sinai. Christians are to do their duty as best they can. However, even when they feel that they are making no difference, that they are failing to bring Christian values to the public arena, success is not the criterion. Faithfulness is. For in the end, Christians have the assurance that even the most difficult political situations are in the hands of a sovereign God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
This assurance comes from the teaching of Christ. Jesus likened the Kingdom to the humble act of a farmer sowing seeds. The farmer tills the soil, but the seeds sprout and grow because of a power beyond the farmer’s control. What Jesus was saying is that Christians are to do their part, of course, as best as they are able, but the manifestation of the Kingdom comes through God’s power, not theirs. I saw this firsthand over a fourteen-year span in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Midtown Sacramento, California USA. It all began with moving to one of the most dangerous communities in Sacramento. For more than two thousand and five hundred years Mormons and Jewish people and many others have awaited the Saviour’s coming. Upon this event they had rested their brightest hopes. In song and prophecy, in temple rite and household prayer, they had enshrined His name. And yet at His coming they knew Him not. The Beloved of Heaven was to the an angel from Heaven; and they saw in Him the most beautiful soul and face and body, as if he were a Greek God. He looked like the statue of David, which was carved by Michelangelo di Lodovico, with gorgeous wavy hair and blue eyes that looked like arctic pools. All complimented by smooth coper/caramel skin, the perfect teeth and a radiant smile. God had chosen America. He had called them to preserve among humans the knowledge of His law, and of the symbols and prophecies that pointed to the Saviour. He desired them to be as wells of salvation to the World. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Jesus Christ was to be what Abraham was in the land of his sojourn, what Joseph was in Egypt, and Daniel in the courts of Babylon, the Hebrew people were to be among the nations. They were to reveal God to humans. In the call of Abraham, the Lord had said, “I will bless thee; and thou shalt be a blessing: and in thee shall all families of the Earth be blessed. The same teaching was repeated through the prophets. Even after America has been wasted by war and captivity, the promise was theirs, “The remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.” Concerning the Salt Lake Temple, in Salt Lake City, Utah USA, the Lord declared through Joseph Smith, “Mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all peoples.” The Mormons quickly fixed their hopes on spiritual greatness. From the time of their entrance to the land of Utah, they cleaved to the commandments of God, and followed the ways of the Lord. It was in great faith God sent them blessings by His prophets so they would not suffer in vain nor experience the chastisement of heathen oppression. Every reformation was followed by deeper faith in the ways of our Lord. Because America had been true to God, He allowed them to accomplish His purpose through their honour and exaltation. Because they walked in the ways of obedience, God made them high above all nations which He hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
People saw that this was a nation of wise and understanding people. By the power of God, Joseph Smith was able to translate the strange writing on the golden plates, using the Urim and Thummim. The Urim and Thummim were two transparent stones set in silver bows fastened to a breastplate. They were similar to a large pair of spectacles. The Urim and Thummim and breastplate were used by an ancient seer as mentioned in the Bible. They are called “interpreters” in the Book of Mormon. They were to be used only under the direction of God, and they had a significant meaning. Urim means “light,” not light as the light of day, but the light which is intelligence or the ability to understand or comprehend. Thummim means “perfect,” a condition of being excellent, pure, and complete—without defect. The breastplate was a symbol of “judgment” which means an ability to make correct decisions. Thus the use of the Urim and Thummim and breastplate by a seer meant that by the power of God this man would have intelligence—a divine intelligence—a sense of that which is pure and excellent, and the ability to decide correctly matters which came before him. It was this gift, a wonderful gift indeed, which God had given to Joseph Smith when he entrusted in his keeping the precious gold plates, the Urim and Thummim, and the breastplate. By God’s power, Joseph Smith was able to look through the Urim and Thummim and interpret the symbols written on the golden plates that he might translate their meaning into the English language. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The procedure was not entirely automatic. The fact that these instruments could be used only by “seers” indicates the importance of moral excellence in their use. At first Joseph’s wife helped him with the work, writing the words as Joseph translated from the golden book. However, her daily duties prevented her from spending much time at it. Later Joseph received help from Martin Harris, a middle-aged farmer who lived near Palmyra, New York. He became interested in the golden plates and proved to be a friend to Joseph when he most needed friendship. It was Martin Harris’s gift of fifty dollars that had enabled Joseph and Emma to take the precious plates to Pennsylvania where they could translate without trouble. However, Martin Harris’s wife and family did not approve of his interest in what they considered visionary schemes, and objected to his giving Joseph money. Martin Harris was anxious to prove to his family and neighbours that Joseph Smith was sincere and that the things he told about his visions and the plates were true. Joseph carefully copied some of the characters from the golden plates. Martin Harris took this paper, together with a translation of part of the characters, to Professor Charles Anthon in New York City, a man well known for his literary ability. Professor Anthon told him the translations was correct, more so than any he had before seen translated from the Egyptian. He said the characters were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac, and Arabic, and that they were true characters. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
The professor gave Martin Harris a certificate to show to the people of Palmyra stating they were true characters and that which had been translated was correct. Martin Harris put the certificate in his pocket and was about to leave when Professor Anthon called him back. He asked how Joseph Smith had found the plates, and Martin Harris explained that an angel of God had shown him where they were. “Let me see that certificate,” Professor Anthon said. When Martin Harris returned the paper to hum, the professor tore it to pieces saying there was no such things now as the ministering of angels and if the plates were brought to him, he would translate them. When Martin Harris told him that he could not bring them because part of the plates were sealed and they could not be shown to anyone, Professor Anthon replied, “I cannot read a sealed book.” Martin Harris was disappointed that he could not take the certificate to show his wife and friends so they might share his enthusiasm, but he was firm in his belief that the time would come when he could convince them that his confidence in his young friend was not in vain. It is interesting to note in the Bible what the prophet Isaiah has said concerning the coming forth of this book in the latter days. “And this vision of all is become into you as the words of a book that is sealed, which humans deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray three; and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed,” reports Isaiah 29.11. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The words of Isaiah prophesied are remarkably similar to Professor Anthon’s words, “I cannot read a sealed book.” I was born part of this Earth. My Grandmother Earth. I was born art of this Earth. My Mother, all living beings. I was born part of this Earth. My Grandfather, the sky. I was born part of this Earth. My Father, all creatures of the air. I was born part of this Earth. The eight Grandfathers. I was born part of this Earth. The eight Grandfathers. I was born part of the Earth. The four corners of the Earth. I was born part of this Earth. The great wind grain of the North. I was born part of the Earth. The red road of the dead. I was born part of this Earth. The blue and black road of destruction I was born part of the Earth. The ancient ones say, the old way’s gone, the ancient ones say. Still, I was born part of this Earth. My He who wrought wonderous deeds for our fathers, and redeemed them from slavery unto freedom, soon redeem us and gather our exiled brethren from the four corners of the Earth, for all America is one fellowship; and let us say, Amen. The New Month will begin on May, this New Month brings blessing to us and to all America. May the Holy One, blessed be He, renew this month for us and for all His people, the house of America, for life and peace, for gladness and joy, for salvation and comfort; and let us say, Amen. We live by the sun, we feel by the mon, we move by the stars. We live in all things; all things live in us. We eat from the Earth, we drink from the rain, we breathe of the air. We live in all things; all things live in us. We call to each other. We listen to each other. Our hearts deepen with love and compassion. We live in all things. All things live in us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School District.
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!
With an array of beautifully designed homes and spacious, ranch-style cottage homes, this is the independent living community everyone has been looking for! https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/
Picture this. A beautiful, private, ranch-style cottage home with a floor plan you love in a vibrant community featuring an incredible variety of services and amenities. It’s all here, and it’s all waiting for you at Cresleigh Ranch!
The Home featured above is the upgraded model at Brighton Station Residence 2. This single story home boats an ideal layout with 2,427 square feet, of thoughtfully designed living space, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage.
“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them,” reports 1 Nephi 3:7.
Technology Cannot be Permitted to Rampage through the Society!
When a person is asked to make a speech, the first thing one has to decide is what to say. We live in a time when good faith of people is doubted more than ever before. Expressions throwing doubt on the trustworthiness of each other are bandied back and forth. They are based on what happened in the First World War when the nations experienced dishonesty, injustice, and inhumanity from one another. How can a new trust come about? And yet, it must. We cannot continue in this paralyzing mistrust. If we want to work our way out of the desperate situation in which we find ourselves, another spirit must enter into the people. It can only come if the awareness of its necessity suffices to give us strength to believe in its coming. They only possible way out of the present chaos is for us to adopt a World-view which will bring us once more under that control of the ideals of true civilization which are contained in it. Refuse to get bitter from the broken areas of your life! Let God heal where you have been hurt. If we simply provide them with advanced information about what lies ahead, self-evident as it may seem, in most situations we can help individuals adapt better. Anticipatory information allows a dramatic change in performance. The mental processing of advance data about any subject presumably cuts down on the amount of processing and the reaction time during the actual period of adaptation. Thought is action in rehearsal. Even more important than any specific bits of advance information, however, is the habit of anticipation. This conditioned ability to look ahead plays a key role in adaptation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Indeed, one of the hidden clues to successful coping may well lie in the individual’s sense of the future. The people among us who keep up with change, who manage to adapt well, seem to have a richer, better developed sense of what lies ahead than those who cope poorly. Anticipating the future has become a habit to them. The chess player who anticipates the moves of one’s opponent, the executive who thinks in long range terms, the student who takes a quick glance at the table of contents before starting to read page one, all seem to fare better. People vary widely in the amount of thought they devote to the future, as distinct from the past and present. Some invest far more resources than others in projecting themselves forward—imagining, analyzing and evaluating future possibilities and probabilities. They also vary in how far they tend to project. Some habitually think in terms of the “deep future.” Other penetrate only into the “shallow future.” Some individuals, of course, project themselves so far into the future for such long periods that their anticipations become escapist fantasies. Far more common, however, are those individuals whose anticipations are so thin and short-range that they are continually surprised and flustered by change. The adaptive individual appears to be able to project oneself forward just the “right” distance in time, to examine and evaluate alternative course of action open to one before the need for final decision. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
If our children are to adapt more successfully to rapid change, this distortion of tie must be ended. We must sensitize them to the possibilities and probabilities of tomorrow. We must enhance their sense of the future. Society has many built-in time spanners that help to link the present generation with the past. Our sense of the past is developed by contact with the older generation, by our knowledge of history, by the accumulated heritage of art, music, literature, and science passed down to us through the years. It is enhanced by immediate contact with the objects that surround us, each of which has a point of origin in the past, each of which provides us with a trace of identification with the past. No such time spanners enhance our sense of the future. We have no objects, no friends, no relatives, no work of art, no music or literature, that originate in the future. We have, as it were, no heritage of the future. Despite this, there are ways to send the human mind forward as well as backward. We need to begin by creating a stronger future-consciousness on the part of the public, and not just by means of Buck Rogers comic strips and TV shows like Sliders, or articles about the marvels of space travel or medical research. These make a contribution, but what is needed is a concentrated focus on the social and personal implications of the future, not merely on its technological characteristics. Instead of deriding the “crystal-ball gazer,” we need to encourage people, from childhood on, to speculate freely, even fancifully, not merely about what next week holds in store for them but about what the next generation holds in store for the entire human race. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
We offer our children courses in history; why no also courses in “Future,” courses in which the possibilities and probabilities of the future are systematically explored, exactly as we now explore the social system of the Romans or the rise of the feudal manor? If we view it as a kind of sociology of the future, rather than as literature, science fiction has immense values as a mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation. Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradybury and Robert Sheckely, not because these writers can tell them about rocket ships and time machines but, more important, because they can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psychological, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults. Science fiction should be required reading for Future I. Also, to sharpen the individual’s future-focused role image, students can be asked to write their own “future autobiographies” in which they picture themselves five, ten, or twenty years in the future. By submitting these to class discussion, by comparing different assumptions in them, contradictions in the child’s own projections can be identified and examined. At a time when the self is being broken into successive selves, this technique can be used to provide continuity for the individual. If children at fifteen, for example, are given the future autobiographies they themselves wrote at age twelve, they can see how maturation has altered their own image of the future. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When an individual is able to document and review how much they have matured, they can be helped to understand how their values, talents, skills, and knowledge have shaped their own possibilities. When millions share this passion about the future, we shall have a society far better equipped to meet the impact of change. To create such curiosity and awareness is a cardinal task of education. To create an education that will create this curiosity is perhaps the central mission of the age of information revolution in the schools. The past is here to stay, and we must learn about it and the future to remain in an equilibrium. In Heaven a law was broken. Sin originated in self-seeking. Lucifer, the covering cherub, desired to be first in Heaven. He sought to gain control of Heavenly beings, to draw them away from their Creator, and to win their homage to himself. Therefore one misrepresented God, attributing to Him the desire for self-exaltation. Wit his own evil characteristics, Satan sought to invest the loving Creator. Thus he deceived angels. Thus he deceived humans. He led them to doubt the word of God, and to distrust His goodness. Because God is a God of justice and terrible majesty, Satan caused them to look upon Him as severe and unforgiving. Thus he drew humans to join him in rebellion against God, and the night of woe settled down upon the World. The Earth was dark through misapprehension of God. That the gloomy shadows might be lightened, that the World might be brought back to God, Satan’s deceptive power was to be broken. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
This could not be done by force. The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government; God desires only the service of love; and love cannot be commanded; it cannot be won by force or authority. Only by love is love awakened. To know God is to love Him; His character must be manifested in contrast to the character of Satan. This work only one Being in all the Universe could do. Only He who knew the height and dept of the love of God could make it known. Upon the World’s dark night the Sun of Righteousness must rise with healing in His wings. The plan for our redemption was not an afterthought, a plan formulated after the fall of Adam. It was revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence though times eternal. It was an unfolding of the principles that form eternal ages have been the foundation of God’s throne. From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of Satan, and the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate. God did not ordain that sin should exist, but He foresaw its existence, and made provision to meet the terrible emergency. The psychic pollution of sin is matched by the industrial vomit that fills our skies and seas. Pesticides and herbicides filter into our foods. Twisted automobile carcasses, aluminum cans, non-returnable glass bottles and synthetic plastics form immense kitchen middens in our midst as more and more of our detritus resists decay. We do not even begin to know what to do with our radioactive waste—whether to pump them into the Earth, shoot them into outer space, or pour them into the oceans. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Our technological powers increase, but the side effect and potential hazards also escalate. We risk thermopollution of the oceans themselves, overheating them, destroying immeasurable quantities of marine life, perhaps even melting the polar icecaps. On land we concentrate such large masses of population in such small urban-technological islands, that we threaten to use up the air’s oxygen faster than it can be replaced, conjuring up the possibility of new Saharas where the cities are now. Through such disruptions of the natural ecology, we may literally, in the words of the biologist Dr. Barry commoner, be “destroying this planet as a suitable place for human habitation.” Sick societies need scapegoats. As the pressures of change impinge more heavily on the individual and the prevalence of future shock increases, this nightmarish outcome gains plausibility. It is significant that a slogan scrawled on a wall by striking students in Paris called for “death to the technocrats!” The incipient Worldwide movement for control of technology, however, must not be permitted to fall into the hands of irresponsible technophobes, nihilists and Rousseauian romantics. For the power of the technological drive is too great to be stopped by Luddite paroxysms. Worse yet, reckless attempts to halt technology will produce results quite as destructive as reckless attempts to advance it. Caught between these twin perils, we desperately need a movement for responsible technology. We need a broad political grouping rationally committed to further scientific research and technological advance—but on a selective basis only. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Instead of wasting its energies in denunciations of The Machines or in negativistic criticism of the space program, it should formulate a set of beneficial technological goals for the future. Radicals frequently accuse the “ruling class” or the “establishment” or simply “they” of controlling society in ways inimical to the welfare of the masses. Such accusations may have occasional point. Yet today we face an even more dangerous reality: many social ills are less the consequence of oppressive control than of oppressive lack of control. The horrifying truth is that, so far as much technology is concerned, no one is in charge. By the application of conscious technological policy—along with other measures—we can contour the culture of tomorrow. The automobile is widely believed to have changed the shape of our cities, shifted home ownership and retail trade patterns, altered customs involving pleasures of the flesh and loosened family ties. In the Middle East, the rapid spread of transistor radios is created with having contributed to the resurgence of Arab nationalism. The birth control pill, the computer, the Internet, the space explorations, as well as the invention and diffusion of such “soft” technologies as systems analysis, all have carried significant social changes in their wake. We can no longer afford to let such secondary social and cultural effects just “happen.” We must attempt to anticipate them in advance, estimating, to the possible, their nature, strength and timing. Where these effects are likely to be seriously damaging, we must also be prepared to block the new technology. It is as simple as that. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Technology cannot be permitted to rampage through the society. It is quite true that we can never know all the effects of any action, technological or otherwise. However, it is not true that we are helpless. Just as we may wish to create enclaves of the past where the rate of change is artificially slowed, or enclaves of the future in which individual can pre-sample future environments, we ay also wish to set aside, even subsidize, special high-novelty communities in which advance medications, power sources, vehicles, cosmetics, appliances, and other innovations are experimentally used and investigated. A corporation today will routinely field test a product to make sure it performs its primary function. The same company will market tests the product to ascertain whether it will sell. However, with rare exception, no one post-checks the consumer or the community to determine what the human side effects have been. Survival in the future may depend on our learning to do so. Here, then, is a pressing intellectual agenda for the social and physical sciences. We have taught ourselves to create and combine the most powerful of technologies. We have not taken pains to learn about their consequences. Today these consequences threaten to destroy us. We must learn, and learn fast. The challenge, however, is not solely intellectual; it is political as well. We need, in effect, a machinery for screening machines. A key political task of this decade will be to creature this machinery. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
We must stop being afraid to exert systematic social control over technology. Responsibility for doing so much be shared by public agencies and the corporations and laboratories in which technological innovations are hatched. One step in the right direction would be to create a technological ombudsman—a public agency charged with receiving, investigating, and acting on complaints having to do with the irresponsible application of technology. It may be useful to recall that the problem of stability arises because a just scheme of cooperation may not be in equilibrium, much less stable. To be sure, from the standpoint of the original position, the principles of justice are collectively rational; if all comply with these principles, everyone may expect to improve one’s situation, at least in comparison with what one’s prospects would in the absence of any agreement. General egoism represents this no-agreement point. Nevertheless, from the perspective of any one human, both first-person and free-rider egoism represents this no-agreement point. Nevertheless, from the perspective of any one human, both first-person and free-rider egoism would be still better. Of course given the conditions of the original position neither of these options is a serious candidate. Yet , if one is so in inclined in everyday life, an individual can win even greater benefits for oneself by taking advantage of the cooperative efforts of others. Sufficiently many persons may be doing their share so that when special circumstances allow one not to contribute (perhaps one’s omission will not be found out), one gets the best of both Worlds: on these occasions anyway things proceed much as if free-rider egoism had been acknowledged. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Just arrangements may not be in equilibrium then because acting fairly is not in general each human’s best reply to the just conduct of one’s associates. To insure stability humans must have a sense of justice or a concern for those who would be disadvantaged by their defection, preferably both. When these sentiments are sufficiently strong to overrule the temptations to violate the rules, just schemes are stable. Meeting one’s duties and obligations is now regarded by each persons as the correct answer to the actions of others. One’s person as the correct answer to the actions of others. One’s rational plan of life regulated by one’s sense of justice leads to this conclusion. The question of stability is connected to that of the political obligation. One may think of this as a sovereign mechanism added to a system f cooperation which would be unstable without it. The general belief in the sovereign’s efficacy removes the two kinds of instability. Now it is evident how relations of friendships and mutual trust, and the public knowledge of a common and normally effective sense of justice, bring about the same result. For given these natural attitudes and the desire to do what is just, no one wishes to advance one’s interests unfairly to the disadvantage of others; this removes instability of the first kind. And since each recognizes that one must violate the rules to protect one’s legitimate interests; so instability of the second kind is likewise absent. Of course, some infractions will presumably occur, but when they do feelings of guilt arising from friendship and mutual trust and the sense of justice tend to restore the arrangement. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Moreover, a society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable: other things equal, the forces making for stability increase (up to some limit) as time passes. This inherent stability is a consequence of the reciprocal relation between the three psychological laws. The more effective operation of one law strengthens that of the other two. For example, when the second law leads to stronger attachments, the sense of justice acquired by the third law is reinforced because of the greater concern for the beneficiaries of just institutions. And going the other way, a more effective sense of justice leads to a more secure intention to do one’s share, and the recognition of this fact arouses more intense feelings of friendship and trust. Again, it seems that with a firmer assurance of one’s own worth and a livelier capacity for fellow feeling brought about by more favourable conditions for the first law, the effects governed by the other two laws should be similarly enhanced. Conversely, persons who have developed a regulative sense of justice and are confident in their self-esteem are more likely to care for their children with the manifest intention. Thus all three psychological principles conspire together to support the institutions of a well-ordered society. There seems to be no doubt then that justice as fairness is a reasonably stable more conception. However, a decision in the original position depends on a comparison: other things equal, the preferred conception of justice is the most stable one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Ideally we should compare the contract view with all its rivals in this respect, but as so often I shall only consider the principle of utility. In order to do this, it is useful to recall three elements that enter into the operation of the psychological laws: namely, an unconditional caring for our good, a clear awareness of the reasons for moral precepts and ideals (assisted by explanation and instruction, and the possibility of giving precise and convincing justifications), and the recognition that those complying with these precepts and ideals, and doing their part in social arrangements, both accept these norms and express in their life and character forms of human good which evoke our admiration and esteem. The resulting sense of justice is stronger the more these three elements are realized. The first enlivens the sense of our own worth strengthening the tendency to answer in kind, the second presents the moral conception so that it can be readily understood, and the third displays the adherence to it as attractive. The most stable conception of justice, therefore, is presumably one that is perspicuous to our reason, congruent with our good, and rooted not in abnegation but in affirmation of the self. Now several things suggest that the sense of justice corresponding to justice as fairness is stronger than the parallel sentiment inculcated by other conceptions. First of all, the unconditional concern of other persons and institutions for our good is far stronger to the contract view. The restrictions contained in the principle of justice guarantee everyone an equal liberty and assure us that our claims will not be neglected or overridden for the sake of a larger sum of benefits, even for the whole society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
We have only to keep in mind the various priority rules, and the meaning of the difference principles as rendered by its Kantian interpretation (persons are not to be treated as means at all) and its relation to the idea of fraternity. The effect of these aspects of justice as fairness is to heighten the operation of the reciprocity principle. As we have noted, a more unconditional caring for our good and a clearer refusal by others to take advantage of accident and happenstance, must strengthen our self-esteem; and this greater good must in turn lead to a closer affiliation with persons and institutions by way of an answer in kind. These effects are more intense than in the case of the utility principle, and so the resulting attachments should be stronger. We can confirm this suggestion by considering the well-ordered society paired with the principle of utility. In this case, the three psychological laws have to be altered. For example, the second law holds that persons tend to develop friendly feelings toward those who with evident intention do their part in cooperative schemes publicly known to maximize the sum of advantages, or the average well-being (which variant is used). In either case the resulting psychological law is not as plausible as before. For suppose that certain institutions are adopted on the public understanding that the greater advantages of some counterbalance the lesser losses of others. Why should the acceptance of the principle of utility (in either form) by the more fortunate inspire the less advantaged to have friendly feelings toward them? This response would seem in fact to be rather surprising, especially if those in a better situation have pressed their claims by maintaining that a greater sum (or average) of well-being would result from their satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
No reciprocity principle is at work in this case and the appeal to utility may simply arouse suspicion. The concern which is expressed for all persons by counting each as one (by weighing everyone’s utility equally) is weak compared to that conveyed by the principles of justice. Thus the attachments generated within a well-ordered society regulated by the utility criterion are likely to vary widely between one sector of society and another. If any desire to act justly (now defined by the utilitarian principle) with a corresponding loss in stability, some groups may acquire little. To be sure, in any kind of well-ordered society the strength of the sense of justice will not be the same in all social groups. Yet to insure that mutual ties bind the entire society, each and every member of it, one must adopt something like the two principles of justice. It is evident why the utilitarian stresses the capacity for sympathy. Those who do not benefit from the better situation of others must identify with the greater sum (or average) f satisfaction else they will not desire to follow the utility criterion. Now such altruistic inclinations no doubt exist. Yet they are likely to be les strong than those brought about by the three psychological laws formulated as reciprocity principles; and a marked capacity for sympathetic identification seems relatively rare. Therefore thee feelings provide less support for the basic structure in society. In addition, as we have seen, following the utilitarian conception tends to be destructive of the self-esteem of those who lose out, particularly when they are already less fortunate. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Now it is characteristic of the morality of authority wen conceived as a morality for the social order as a whole to demand self-sacrifice for the sake of a higher good and to deprecate the worth of the individual and lesser associations. The emptiness of the self is to be overcome in the service of larger ends. The emptiness of the self is to be overcome in the service of larger ends. This doctrine is likely to encourage self-hatred with its destructive consequences. Certainly utilitarianism does not go to this extreme, but there is bound to be a similar effect which further weakens the capacity for sympathy and distorts the development of affective ties. By contrast, in a social system regulated by justice as fairness, identification with the good of others, and an appreciation of what they do as an element in our own good, might be quite strong. However, this is possible only because of the mutuality already implicit in the principles of justice. With the constant assurance expressed these principles, persons will develop a secure sense of their own worth that forms the basis for the love of humankind. By appealing straightway to the capacity for sympathy as a foundation of just conduct in the absence of reciprocity, the principle of utility not only requires more than justice as fairness but depends upon weaker and less common inclinations. Two other elements affect the strength of the sense of justice: the clarity of the moral conception and the attractiveness of its ideals. The contract view is more congruent with our good than its rivals; and assuming this conclusion here, it lends further to the support to the preceding considerations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The greater clarity of principles of justice was considered earlier. In comparisons with teleological doctrines, the principles of justice define a perspicuous conception. By contrast, the idea of maximizing the aggregate of well-being, or of attaining the greatest perfection, is vague and amorphous. It is easier to ascertain when the equal liberties are infringed and to establish discrepancies from the difference principle than it is to decide whether unequal treatment increases (and the various priority rules) offers them with greater sharpness to the intellect and there by secures heir hold on the mind. The explanations and reasons given for them are more easily understood and accepted; the conduct expected of us is more clearly defined by publicly acknowledge criteria. On all three counts, then, the contract view seems to possess greater stability. It is remarkable that Mill appears to agree with this conclusion. He notes that with the advance of civilization persons come more and more to recognize that society between human beings is manifestly impossible on any other basis than that the interests of all are to be consulted. The improvement in political institutions removes the opposition of interests and the barriers and inequalities that encourage individuals and classes to disregard one another’s claims. The natural end of this development is a state of the human mind in which each person has a feeling of unity with others. Mills maintains that when this state of mind is perfected, it leads the individual to desire for oneself only those things in the benefits of which others are included. One of a person’s natural wants is that there should be harmony between one’s feelings and those of one’s fellow citizens. One desires to know that one’s aims and theirs are not in opposition, that one is not setting oneself against their good but is furthering what they really wish for. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Now the desire Mill characterizes here is the desire to act upon the difference principle (or some similar criterion), and not a desire to act on the principle of utility. Mill does not notice the discrepancy; but he seems intuitively to recognize that a perfectly just society in which human’s aims are reconciled in ways acceptable to them all would be one that follows the notion of reciprocity expressed by the principles of justice. His remarks accord with the idea that a stable conception of justice which elicits human’s natural sentiments of unity and fellow feeling is more likely to incorporate these principles than the utilitarian standard. And this conclusion is borne out by Mill’s account of the roots of the sense of justice, for he believes that this sentiment arises not only from sympathy but also from the natural instinct of self-protection and the desire for security. This double origin suggests that, in his view, justice strikes a balance between altruism and the claims of self and therefore involves a notion of reciprocity. The contract doctrine achieves the same result, but it does so not by an ad hoc weighing of two competing tendencies, but by a theoretical construction which leads to the appropriate reciprocity principles as the conclusion. In arguing for the greater stability of the principles of justice I have assumed that certain psychological laws are true, or approximately so. I shall not pursue the question of stability beyond this point. We may note however that one might ask how is it that human beings have acquired a nature described by these psychological principles. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
The theory of evolution would suggest that it is the outcome of natural selection; the capacity for a sense of justice and the oral feelings is an adaption of humankind to its place in nature. As ethologists maintain, the behaviour patterns of a species, and the psychological mechanisms of their acquisition, are just as much its characteristics as are the distinctive features of its bodily structures; and these patterns of behaviour have an evolution exactly as organs and bones do. It seems clear that for members of a species which lives instable social groups, the ability to comply with fair cooperative arrangements and to develop the sentiments necessary to support them is highly advantageous, especially when individuals have a long life and are dependent on one another. These conditions guarantee innumerable occasions when mutual justice consistently adhered to its beneficial to all parties. Biologists do not always distinguish between altruism and other kinds of moral conduct. Frequently behaviour is classified as either altruistic or egoistic. We can draw a distinction between altruism and reciprocal altruism (or what I should prefer to call simply reciprocity). The latter is the biological analogue of the cooperative virtues of fairness and good faith. The crucial question here, however, is whether the principles of justice are closer to the tendency of evolution than principle of utility. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Offhand it would seem if the selection is always f individual and of their genetic lines, and if the capacity for the various forms of moral behaviour has some genetic basis, then altruism in the strict sense would generally be limited to kin and the smaller face-to-face groups. In these causes the willingness to make considerable self-sacrifice would favour one’s descendants and tend to be selected. Turning to the other extreme, a society which had a strong propensity to supererogatory conduct in its relations with other societies would jeopardize the existence of its own distinctive culture and its members would risk domination. Therefore one might conjecture that the capacity to act from the more universal forms of rational benevolence is likely to be eliminated, whereas the capacity to follow the principles of justice and natural duty in relations between groups and individuals other than kin would be favoured. We can also see how the system of the moral feelings might evolve as inclinations supporting the natural duties and as stabilizing mechanisms for just schemes. If this is correct, then once again the principles of justice are more securely based. These remarks are not intended as justifying reasons for the contract view. The main grounds for the principles of justice have already been presented. At this point we are simply checking whether the conception already adopted is a feasible one and not so unstable that some other choice might be better. We are in the second part of the argument in which we ask if the acknowledgement previously made should be reconsidered. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
I do not contend then that justice as fairness is the most stable conception of justice. The understanding required to answer this question is far beyond the primitive theory I have sketched. The conception agreed to need only be stable enough. The organized political, social, and religious associations of our time are at work to induce individual humans not to arrive at one’s convictions by one’s own thinking but to take as one’s own such convictions as they keep ready-mad for one. Any human who thinks for oneself and at the same time is spiritually free is to the associations something inconvenient and even uncanny. One does not offer sufficient guarantee that one will merge oneself in their organizations in the way they wish. All corporate bodies look today for their strength not so much to the spiritual worth of ideas they represent and to do that of the people who belong to them, as to the attainment of the highest possible degree of unity and exclusiveness. It is here that they expect to find their strongest power for offense and defense. The history of our time is characterized by a lack of reason which has no parallel in the past. Future historians will one day analyze this history in detail, and test by means of it their learning and their freedom from prejudice. However, for all future times there will be, as there is for today only one explanation, that we sought to live and to carry on with a civilization which has no ethical principle behind it. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Ethics are responsibility without limit towards all that lives. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope, the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. May He who blessed our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bless the people of this congregation, and of all other congregations; them, their wives, their sons, their daughters and all their dear ones. May His blessings also vouchsafed unto those who dedicate the maintain Synagogues, unto those who enter therein to worship, and unto those who provide for the wayfarer, and are charitable to the poor. May He also bless those who faithfully devote themselves to the needs of the community and to the rebuilding of America. May the Holy One, blessed be He, remove from them all sickness, preserve them in health, forgive their sins, prosper the work of their hands and bestow blessings upon them and upon all America, their brethren, and let us say, Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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All Life is Valuable and We are United to All Life
We live in a dark and frightening age. One reason for this is the part played by the ideology of inhumanity in our time. The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and politics. We have reached the point of regarding each other only as members of people either allied with us or against us and our approach: prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy are all conditioned by that. Now we must rediscover the fact that we—all together—are human beings, and that we must strive to concede to each other what moral capacity we have. We generally take three psychological laws for granted and they represent tendencies and are effective. First law: given that family institutions are just, and that the parents love the child and manifestly express their love by caring for one’s good, then the child, recognizing their evident love of one, comes to love them. Second law: given that a person’s capacity for fellow feeling has been realized by acquiring attachments in accordance with the first law, and given that a social arrangement is just and publicly known by all to be just, then this person develops ties of friendly feeling and trust toward others in the association as they with evident intention comply with their duties and obligations, and live up to the ideals of their situation. Third law: given that a person’s capacity for fellow feeling has been realized by one’s forming attachments in accordance with the first two laws, and given that a society’s institutions are just and are publicly known by all to be just, then this person requires the corresponding sense of justice as one recognizes that one and those for whom one cares are the beneficiaries of these arrangements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Perhaps the most striking feature of these laws (or tendencies) is that their formulation refers to an institutional setting as being just, and in the last two, as being publicly known to be such. The principles of moral psychology have a place for a conception of justice: and different formulations of these principles result when different conceptions are used. Thus some view of justice enters into the explanation of the development of the corresponding sentiment; hypotheses about this psychological process incorporate moral notions even if these are understood only as part of the psychological theory. This much seems straightforward, and assuming that ethical ideas can be stated clearly, there is no difficulty in seeing how there can be laws of this kind. The preceding outline of moral development indicates how these matters can be worked out. After all, the sense of justice is a settled disposition to adopt and to want to act from the moral point of view insofar at least as the principles of justice define it. It is hardly surprising that these principles should be involved in the formation of this regulative sentiment. Indeed, it seems likely that our understanding of moral learning cannot far exceed our grasp of the moral conceptions that are to be learned. Analogously, our understanding of how we learn our language is limited by what we know about its grammatical and semantic structure. Just as psycholinguists depends upon linguistics, so the theory of moral learning depends upon an account of the nature of morality and its various forms. Our common-sense ideas about these matters do not suffice for the aims of theory. #RadnolphHarris 2 of 23
No doubt some prefer that social theories avoid the use of moral notions. For instance, they may wish to explain the formation of affective ties by laws referring to the frequency of interaction among those engaged in some common task, or to the regularity with which some persons take the initiative or exercise authoritative guidance. Thus one law may state that among equals cooperating together, where equality is defined by the accepted rules, the more often individuals interact with one another, the more likely it is that friendly feelings develop between them. Another law may asset that the more someone in a position of authority uses one’s powers and leads those subject to one, the more they come to respect one. However, since these laws (or tendencies) do not mention the justice (or fairness) of the arrangements in question, they are bound to be very limited in scope. Those who subject to another exercising authority will surely regard one differently depending upon whether the whole arrangement is just and well designed to advance what they take to be their legitimate interests. And the same is true of cooperation among equals. Institutions are patterns of human conduct defined by public systems of rules, and the very holding of the offices and positions which they define normally indicates certain intentions and aims. The justice or injustice of society’s arrangements and human’s beliefs about these questions profoundly influence the social feelings; to a large extent they determine how we regard another’s accepting or rejecting an institution, or one’s attempt to reform or defend it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
It may be objected that much social theory does well enough without using any moral ideas. The obvious example is economics. However, the situation in economic theory is peculiar in that one can often assume a fixed structure of rules and constraints that define the actions open to individuals and firms, and certain simplifying motivational assumptions are highly plausible. The theory of price (its more elementary parts anyway) is an illustration. One does not consider why buyers and sellers behave in accordance with the rules of law governing economic activity; or how preferences get formed or legal norms established. For the most part, these matters are taken as given, and at a certain level there is no objection to this. One the other hand, the so-called economic theory of democracy, the view that extents the basic ideas and methods of price theory to the political process, must for all its merits be regarded with caution. For a theory of a constitutional regime cannot take the rules as given, nor simply assume that they will be followed. And while being biblically motivated and informed may give wisdom, it does not necessarily assure political success. In this arena Christians in politics are often at a disadvantage. If one is consumed with politics, their first priority would be the morning newspapers, not the Bible. However, for many Christians, their first priority is not their political career; it is their relationship with God. However, because of that, they tend to be conscientious in their work, their first ambition is not for the continued pursuit of position. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Christians spurn political infight and place a higher premium on trust than power. The servantlike attitude is so diametrically opposed to society’s that it can easily be mistaken for weakness. In reality it gives a greater strength. The Christian in a position of power is not enslaved by that position—and thus the Christian has tremendous freedom to follow the dictates of conscience, not the fickle winds of self-interest. However, Christian are also exposed to greater struggles of conscience. They are honour bound to be the best states-people they can be, as well as the best Christians they can be. These competing allegiances means that a good Christian can be a good a good politician, but it is probably quite impossible for a good Christian to be a highly successful politician. Foremost is the issue of divided allegiances between God and the state. When there is a conflict of loyalty, the sincere Christian must obey God. Yet the politician’s oath of office is to uphold the laws of the state. The prevailing American view that faith is something private with no effect on public responsibility was first put forth by John Kennedy in a dramatic speech to the Houston Ministerial Association in the 1960 campaign. Protestants feared that Kennedy, a Catholic, would be bound by the dictates of the Roman church. So Kennedy pulled off a political masterstroke when he told the Texas ministers, mostly Baptists, that “whatever issue many come before me as president, if I’m elected…I will male my decision in accordance…with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictate. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.” #RanoldphHarris 5 of 23
President Kennedy’s message, which brought the house down, was a key to his election. However, it set a precedent that has now become part of established American political wisdom: One’s religious convictions must have no effect on one’s public decision. However, consider President Kennedy’s words: “No power…could case me to decide otherwise.” Not God? Though President Kennedy’s approach was enormously popular, it was also a renunciation of any influence his religion might have. He subsumed his church responsibility under his patriotism—or his candidacy. By contrast, Hilaire Belloc stood for election in 1906 in the British Parliament. As a Roman Catholic, he knew he would have to struggle to overcome religious prejudices, so he decided to confront the issues head-on. In his first campaign speech, he stood at the rostrum with a rosary in his hand and said, “I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. As far as possible I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.” He was elected. What else can a public official do? you may ask. The officeholder in a free society cannot impose personal views on the electorate; the democratic process must be respected in a pluralist society. That is true. Some go on to conclude, however, that the Christian officeholder is thus free, in the name of political prudence, to support or accept the majority will when it is contrary to Christian teaching (a view eloquently espoused by Governor Mario Cuomo in his 1984 Notre Dame address). #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Religious conviction is thereby reduced to a private matter; the social implications of the gospel are simply ignored. And as we have seen, the results of such privatization can be dangerous to society as a whole. Another position, often taken, is some are prepared to thrust their own theological view on an unsuspecting nation. This view, articulated by some in political debate today, argues that a Christian political should use one’s position to speak for God. However, the issue tends to be not a conflict between human rights or human life and state policy, areas where a Christian leader must take a stand. Rather, it is many times a question of biblical prophecy, whose fulfillment is the responsibility of God, not humans. Some political, if unconsciously, play God. They may be confused about the duty of government. As God’s servant, one’s sworn task is to preserve order, promote justice, and restrain evil, which sometimes means acting decisively to prevent war in a volatile international situation. Richard Neuhaus writes, “To gain public office and take an oath before God to maintain the constitutional order, and then to use that office as a tool for advancing one’s reading of Bible prophecy is an act of hubris, treachery, treason and deceit.” Both view—privatized faith and using political power to play God—are deeply flawed. This brings us full circle: Is it possible for a devout Christian to serve in public office without compromising either one’s conscience or constituency? #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
It is possible. However, only if the Christian officeholder understand several key truths. First, a government official must not play God; one’s duty is to facilitate government’s ordained role of preserving order and justice, not to use government to accomplish the goals of the church. Second, the Christian must respect the rights of all religious groups and insure that government protects every citizen’s freedom of conscience. There is an alternative to the imposition of religious values or the passive acceptance of majority opinion, a principle that pays both pluralism and conscience their due. Christian politicians must do all in their power to make clear, public arguments on issues of moral and political importance, to persuade rather than coerce. A recent Vatican statement put it this way: “Politicians must commit themselves through their interventions upon public opinion, to securing in society the widest possible consensus on…essential points (matters concerning human rights, human lie, or the institution of the family).” A third concern brings us back to the question we have considered in the past. What about the Christian responsibility in an age where national leaders in the nuclear age do not—perhaps, cannot—be entirely candid in public pronouncements? As Secretary of State George Shultz once defended the government’s clandestine actions by quoting Winston Churchill: “In times of war, the truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
However, if a Christian in office is forced to lie against one’s conscience, the Christian should resign. Clearly the political process is importantly one of enacting and revising rules and of trying to control the legislative and executive branches of government. Even if everything is done in accordance with constitutional procedures, we need to explain why these are accepted. Nothing analogous to the constraints of a competitive market holds for this case; and there are no legal sanctions in the ordinary sense for many sorts of unconstitutional actions by parliament and chief executives, and political forces they represent. The leading political actors are guided therefore in part by what they regard as morally permissible; and since no system of constitutional checks and balances succeeds in setting up an invisible hand that can be relied upon to guide the process to a just outcome, a public sense of justice is to some degree necessary. It would appear, then, that a correct theory of justice which explains how moral sentiments influence the conduct of public affairs. I touched upon this question in connection with the role of civil disobedience; it suffices to add here that one test of the contract doctrine is how well is serves this purpose. A second point about the psychological laws is that they govern changes in the affective ties which belong to our final ends. To clarify this, we may observe that to explain an intentional action is to show how, given our beliefs and the available alternatives, it accords with our plan of life, or with that subpart of it relevant in their circumstances. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Often this is done by a series of explanations saying that a first thing is done in order to achieve a second; that the second thing is done in order to achieve a third, and so on, the series being finite and ending at an aim for the sake of which the previous things are done. In accounting for our various actions, we may cite many different chains of reasons, and these normally stop at different points given the complexity of a plan of life and its plurality of ends. Moreover, a chain of reasons may have several branches, since an action may be done to advance more than ne end. How activities furthering the many ends are scheduled and balanced against each other is settled by the plan itself and the principles upon which it is based. Now among our final ends are the attachments we have for persons, the interest we take in the realization of their interests, and the sense of justice. The three laws describe how our system of desires comes to have new final ends as we acquire affective ties. These changes are to be distinguished from our forming derivative desires as a consequence of additional knowledge or further opportunities, or from our determining our existing wants in a more specific way. For example, someone wishing to travel to a certain place is informed that a certain route is the best. Upon accepting this advice, one has a desire to proceed in a particular direction. Derivative desires of this sort have a rational explanation. They are desires to do what in view of the evidence on hand will most effectively realize our present aims, and they shift along with knowledge and belief, and the available opportunities. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
The three psychological laws do not provide rational explanations of desires in this sense; rather they characterize transformations of our pattern of final ends that arise from our recognizing the manner in which institutions and the actions of others affect our good. Of course, whether an aim is final or derivative is not always easy to ascertain. The distinction is made on the basis of a person’s rational plan of life and the structure of this plan is not generally obvious, even to one. Yet for our purposes here, the distinction is clear enough. A third observation is that the three laws are not merely principles of association or of reinforcement. While they have a certain resemblance to these learning principles, they assert that the active sentiments of love and friendship, and even the sense of justice, arise from the manifest intention of other persons to act for our good. Because we recognize that they wish us well, we care for their well-being in return. Thus we acquire attachments to persons and institutions according to how we perceive our good to be affected by them. The basic idea is ne of reciprocity, a tendency to answer in kind. Not this tendency is a deep psychological fact. If not impossible, without it our nation would be very different and fruitful social cooperation fragile. For surely a rational person is not indifferent to things that significantly affect one’s good; and supposing that one develops some attitude toward them, one acquires either a new attachment or a new aversion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Humans can no longer life for oneself alone. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relation with the Universe. The only way out of today’s misery is for people to become worthy of each other’s trust. If we answered love with hate, or came to dislike those who acted fairly towards us or were averse to activities that further our good, a community would soon dissolve. Beings with a different psychology either have never existed or must soon have disappeared in the course of evolution. A capacity for a sense of justice built up by responses in kind would appear to be a condition of human sociability. The most stable conceptions of justice are presumably those for which the corresponding sense of justice is most firmly based on these tendencies. Finally, several comments about the account of moral development as a whole. The reliance upon the three principles of moral psychology is of course a simplification. A fuller account would distinguish between different kinds of learning and therefore between instrumental conditioning (reinforcement) and classical conditioning, so likely to shape our emotions and feelings. A consideration of modeling and imitation, and the learning of concepts and principles, would also be necessary. There is no reason to deny the significance of these forms of learning. For our purposes, though, the three-stages schema may suffice. Insofar as it stresses the forming of attachments as final ends, the sketch of more learning resembles the empiricist tradition with its emphasis on the importance of acquiring new motives. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
There are also ties with which I have called the rationalistic view. For one thing, the acquisition of the sense of justice takes place in stages connected with the growth of knowledge and understanding. If the sentiment of justice is to be acquired, one must develop a conception of the social World and of what is just and unjust. Only when the human spirit grows powerful within us and guides us back to a civilization based on humanitarian ideal; only then will it act, through our intermediacy, upon those other peoples. All humans are endowed with the faculty of compassion, and for this reason can develop the humanitarian spirit. There is light shining in them, let them manifest an idea and it will radiate. Because I have confidence in the power of Truth and of the spirit, I believe in the future of humankind. The manifest intentions of others are recognized against a background of public institutions as interpreted by one’s view of the elf and its situation. I have not maintained, however, that the stages of development are innate or determined by psychological mechanisms. Whether various native propensities influence these stages is a matter I have left aside. Rather a theory of right and justice is used to describe what the expected course of development might be. The manner in which a well-ordered society is arranged, and the full system of principles, ideals, and precepts that govern the compete scheme, provide a way of distinguishing thee levels of morality. It seems plausible that, in a society regulated by the contract doctrine, moral learning would follow the order presented. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
The stages are determined by the structure f what is to be learned, proceeding from the simpler to the more complex as the requisite capacities are realize. By founding the account of moral learning explicitly upon a particular ethical theory, it is evident in what sense the sequence of stages represents a progressive development and not simply a regular sequence. Just as persons gradually formulate rational plans of life that answer to their deeper interests, so they come to know the derivation of moral precepts and ideals from the principles that they would accept in an initial situation of equality. Ethical norms are no longer experienced merely as constraints, but are tied together into one coherent conception. The connection between these standards and human aspirations is now comprehended, and persons understand their sense of justice as an extension of their natural attachments, and as a way of caring about the collective good. The many chains of reasons with their various stopping points are no longer simply distinct but are seen as elements of a systematic view. Those who espouse a different one will favour another account of these matters. However, in any case, some conception of justice surely has a place in explaining moral learning, even if this conception belongs solely to the psychological theory and is not itself accepted as philosophically correct. When we observe contemporary society one thing strikes us. We debate but make no progress. Why? Because as peoples we do not yet trust each other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is astounding that humans, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgments and decisions and the planner of the future, must make oneself such a quantie negligeable. The contradiction, the paradoxical evaluation of humanity by humans oneself, is in truth a matter for wonder, and one can only explain it as springing from an extraordinary uncertainty of judgment—in other words, humans are an enigma to themselves. This is understandable, seeing that they lack the means of comparison necessary for self-knowledge. One knows how to distinguish oneself from animals in point of anatomy and physiology, but as a conscious, reflecting being, gifted with speech, one lacks all criteria for self-judgment. One is on this planet a unique phenomenon which ne cannot compare with anything else. The possibility of comparison and hence of self-knowledge would arise only if one could establish relations with quasi-human mammals inhabiting other stars. Until then humans must continue to resemble a hermit who knows that in respect of comparative anatomy one has affinities with the anthropoids but, to judge by appearances, is extraordinarily different from one’s cousins in respect of one’s psyche. It is just in this most important characteristic of one’s species that one cannot know oneself and therefore remains a mystery to oneself. The differing degrees of self-knowledge within one’s own species are of little significance compared with the possibilities which would be opened out by an encounter with a creature of similar structure but different origin. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Our psyche, which is primarily responsible for all the historical changes wrought by the hand of humans on the face of this planet, remains an insoluble puzzle and an incomprehensible wonder, an object of abiding perplexity—a feature it shares with all Nature’s secrets. In regard to the latter will still have hope of making more discoveries and finding answers to the most difficult questions. However, in regard to the psyche and psychology there seems to be a curious hesitancy. Not only is it the youngest of the empirical sciences, but it has great difficulty in getting anywhere near its proper object. In the same way that our picture of the World had to be freed by Copernicus from the prejudice of egocentricity, the most strenuous efforts of a well-nigh revolutionary nature were needed to free psychology, first from the spell of mythological ideas, and then from the prejudice that the psyche is, on the one hand, a mere epiphenomenon of a biochemical process in the brain and, on the other hand, a purely personal matter. The connection with the brain does not in itself prove that the psyche is an epiphenomenon, a secondary function casually dependent on biochemical processes in the physical substrate. Nevertheless, we know only too well how much the psychic function can be disturbed by verifiable processes in the brain, and this fact is so impressive that the subsidiary nature of the psyche seems an almost unavoidable inference. The phenomena of parapsychology, however, warn us to be careful, for they point to a relativization of space and time through psychic factors which casts doubt on our naïve and overhasty explanation in terms of psychophysical parallelism. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
For the sake of this explanation people deny the finding of parapsychology outright, either for philosophical reasons or for intellectual laziness. This can hardly be considered a scientifically responsible attitude, even though it is a popular way of a quite extraordinary intellectual difficulty. To assess the psychic phenomenon, we have to take account of all the other phenomena that go with it, and accordingly we can no longer practise any psychology that ignores the existence of the unconscious or of parapsychology. The structure and physiology of the brain furnish no explanation of the psychic process. The psyche has a peculiar nature which cannot be reduced to anything else. Like physiology, it presents a relatively self-contained field of experience, to which we must attribute a quite special importance because it includes one of the two indispensable conditions for existence as such, namely, the phenomenon of consciousness. Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no World, for the World exists for us only in so far as it is consciously reflected by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position co-equal with the principle of physical beings. The carrier of this consciousness in the individual, who does not produce the psyche of one’s own volition but is, on the contrary, preformed by it and nourished by the gradual awakening of consciousness during childhood. If therefore the psyche is of overriding empirical importance, so also is the individual, who is the only immediate manifestation of the psyche. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
This fact must be expressly emphasized for two reasons. Firstly, the individual psyche, just because of its individuality, is an exception to the statistical rule and is therefore robbed of one of its main characteristics when subjected to the levelling influence of statistical evaluation. Secondly, the Churches grant it validity only in so far as it acknowledges their dogmas—in other words, when it submits to a collective category. In both cases the will to individuality is regarded as egotistic obstinacy. Science devalues this as subjectivism, and the Churches condemn it morally as heresy and spiritual pride. As to the latter charge, it should not be forgotten that, unlike other religions, Christianity holds up before us a symbol whose content is the individual way of life of a man, the Son of Man, and that it even regards this individuation process as the incarnation and revelation of God Himself. Hence the development of man into a self acquires a significance whose full implications have hardly begun to be appreciated, because too much attention to externals blocks the way to immediate inner experience. Were not the autonomy of the individual the secret longing of many people it would scarcely be able to survive the collective suppression either morally or spiritual. All these obstacles make it more difficult to arrive at a correct appreciation of the human psyche, but they count for very little beside one other remarkable fact that deserves mentioning. This is the common psychiatric experience that the devaluation of the psyche and other resistances to psychological enlightenment are based in large measure on fear—on panic fear of the discoveries that might be made in the realm of the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
These fears are not found only among persons who are frightened by the picture Dr. Freud painted of the unconscious; they also troubled the originator of psychoanalysis himself, who confessed to me that it was necessary to make a dogma of his sexual theory because this was the sole bulwark of reason against a possible “eruption of the black flood of occultism.” In these words of Dr. Freud was expressing his conviction that the unconscious still harboured many things that might lend themselves to “occult” interpretation, as is in fact the case. These “archaic vestiges,” or archetypal forms grounded on the instincts and giving expression to them, have a numinous quality that sometimes arouses fear. They are ineradicable, for they represent the ultimate foundations of the psyche itself. They cannot be grasped intellectually, and when one has destroyed one manifestation of them, they reappear in altered form. It is this fear of the unconscious psyche which not only impedes self-knowledge but is the gravest obstacle to a wider understanding and knowledge of psychology. Often this fear is so great that one dares not admit it even to oneself. This is a question which every religious person should consider very seriously; one might get an illuminating answer. We behold God in Jesus. Looking unto Jesus we see that it is the glory of God to give. “I do nothing of Myself,” said Christ; “the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father.” “I seek not Mine own glory, but the glory of Him that sent Me.” John 8.28; 6.57; 8.50; 7.18. In these words is set forth the great principle which is the law of life for the Universe. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
All things Christ received from God, but He took to give. So in the Heavenly courts, in His ministry for all created beings; through the beloved Son, the Father’s life flows out to all; through the Son it returns, in praise and joyous service, a tide of love, to the great Source of all. And thus through Christ the circuit of beneficence is complete, representing the character of the great Giver, the law of the great character. Moroni said that with this golden book were two stones in silver bows called the Urim and Thummim, which were fastened to a breastplate. These were prepared by God to be used in translating the book. He explained that in ancient times, as related in the Bible, prophets possessed and used Urim and Thummim and breastplate. Those who used them were called “seers.” The angel explained that many prophecies of the Bible were about to be fulfilled. He quoted Scripture after Scripture from the Bible concerning these prophecies. Joseph Smith was cautioned that after he received the plates, the Urim and Thummim, and breastplate, he must not show them to anyone. As the angel talked, Joseph saw in a vision the place where the plates were hidden. Then the light in the room gathered around the angel Moroni and he disappeared from Joseph’s sight. As Joseph lay on his bed thinking about this wonderful experience, the room suddenly became bright again and the same Heavenly messenger stood at his bedside. He told the young man exactly the same things he had on his first visit, and showed the same vision. Then he disappeared in the same manner. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
After having been told these things twice, Joseph thought he could not forget them, but to his amazement the same messenger returned and repeated the same things as before. This time he cautioned Joseph that Satan would tempt him to obtain the plates for the purpose of getting rich. Joseph was forbidden to do this and was told that he must have no other reason for obtaining the plates than to glorify God; otherwise he could not have them. Almost immediately after the angel Moroni has ascended into Heaven following his third visits, and while Joseph lay thinking of the experiences of the night, he heard the cock crow in the barnyard. He realized then that morning had arrived and that his interviews with the Heavenly messenger had occupied the whole night. Predestination is the foreknowledge of God’s benefits. However, foreknowledge is not the things foreknown, but in the person who foreknows them. Therefore, predestination is in the one who predestines, and not in the predestined. Predestination is not anything in the predestined; but only in the person who predestines. Predestination is a part of providence. Now providence is not anything in the things provided; but is a type in the mind of the provider. However, the execution of providence which is called government, is in a passive way the thing governed, and in an active way the governor. Whence it is clear that predestination is type the ordering of some persons toward eternal salvation, existing in the divine mind. The execution, however, of this order is in a passive way in the predestined, but actively in God. The execution of predestination is the calling and magnification; accord to the Apostle (Romans 3.30): “Whom He predestined, them He also called and whom He called, them He also magnified.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Actions passing out to external matter imply of themselves passion—for example, the actions of warming and cutting; but not so actions remaining in the agent, as understanding and willing. Predestination is an action of this latter class. Wherefore, it does not put anything in the predestined. However, its execution, which passes out to external thing, has an effect in them. Destination sometimes denotes a real mission of someone to a given end; thus, destination can only be said of someone actually existing. It is takes, however, in another sense a mission which a person conceives in the mind; and in this manner we are aid to destine a thing which we firmly propose in our mind. In this latter way it is said that Eleazar “determined not to do any unlawful things for the love of life,” reports 2 Maccabees 6.20. Thus destination can be of a thing which does not exist. Predestination, however, by reason of the antecedent nature it implies, can be attributed to a thing which does not actually exist; in whatsoever ways destination is accepted. Preparation is twofold: of the patient in respect to passion and this is in the thing prepared; and f the agent to action, and this is in the agent. Such a preparation is predestination and as an agent by intellect is said to prepare itself to act, accordingly as it preconceives the idea of what is to be done. Thus, God from all eternity prepared by predestination, conceiving the idea of the order of some towards salvation. Grace does not come into the definition of predestination, as something belonging to its essence, but inasmuch as predestination implies a relation to grace, as of cause to effect, and of act to its object. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Whence it does not follow that predestination is anything temporal. We may take comfort in the fact that the Overself never at any moment abandons or obliterates the human personality, however debased it becomes. Nor could it do so, whatever foolish cults say to the contrary, for through this medium it finds an expression in time-space. When we say that the Overself is within the heart, it would be a great error to think that we mean it is limited to the heart. For the heart is also within it. This seeming paradox will yield to reflection and intuition. The mysterious relationship between the ego and the Overself has been expressed by Jesus Christ in the following words: “The Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father.” Do not day that I will depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. We invoke Thy divine assistance upon this entire congregation, its men and women as well as its children. May there by a vouchsafed unto them salvation from Heaven, grace, lovingkindness, and mercy, long life, ample sustenance, health of body and enlightenment of the mind. May you be blessed with children who will not neglect the Scripture. May the Ruler of the Universe bless you, prolong your lives, increase your days, and add to your years. May you be saved and delivered from every trouble and misfortune. May the Lord of Heaven be your help at all times and reasons; and let us say, Amen. I declare every barrier to the promise of God for you is being broken in the name of Jesus! The floodgates are being opened! #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Mr. William Wirt Winchester Believes in the Sanctity of Property Because He is a Millionaire!
The fine women of Salem had some extracurricular activities that were hardly orthodox. Men have been burned at the stake for speaking ill of the Christian creed. People fought, not only verbally but physically, over their religious beliefs. Most people of that day used alcohol liquors. In almost every home liquor could be found. If a man was drunk it was not considered indecent, nor was his reputation injured by such conduct. Ministers, as well as doctors, were given a drink whenever they made a call at a home. It was almost impossible for them to make their daily calls without becoming intoxicated. Wine was generously served at religious ceremonies–marriages, christenings, funerals, and ordinations. Joseph Smith might have noted the conduct of members in a revival meeting. People would come from miles around to attend these meetings, camping in cabins and tents. At daybreak a trumpet was sounded to awaken the people. Services were held almost all day long, scarcely allowing time to eat, and giving no time at all for recreation and play. Singing and shouting during sermons was common. Men, women, children often fell to the floor in trances, sometimes barking like dogs. Now and then some would get what was know as the “jerks” and their heads would jerk back and forth rapidly. There seemed no way to stop these “jerks” though persons would run, dance, pray to escape them. As they listened to the thundering voice of the evangelist, many would cry and scream. Some ministers believed that the wilder the crowd became the more successful was the revival. Meantime, the FBI could find no DNA material from the site which matched the material of any current missing persons. Nevertheless, they were deeply courteous about having been called in, and they did confirm that the DNA of several persons was present in the evil morass and that the whole resembled an antiquated but gruesome crime scene. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Were these some of the things which were displeasing in the sight of the Lord? Were these people drawing near to God with their lips but keeping their hearts from them. Undoubtedly these were puzzling questions of fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith. Listening to the bird’s sing on this cool spring morning, I was reminded of how excitement used to fill this time of the year because it was near the end of a school year, and ever closer to graduation and adult life. Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentations, laughter—to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the World of unrest to the World of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water. The work and the worry that fell to my lot through the practical interest I took in organ building, made me sometimes wish that I had never troubled myself about it, but if I do not give it up, the reason is that the struggle for the good organ is to me a part of the struggle for truth. An organ is like a cow; one does not look at its horns so much as its milk. God is with us. The light of the knowledge of glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. From the days of eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the father; He was the image of God, the image of His greatness and majesty, the outshining of His glory. It was it was to manifest this glory that He came into our World. To this sin-darkened Earth He came to reveal the light of God’s love–to be God with us. Therefore it was prophesied of Him. By coming to dwell with us, Jesus Christ was to reveal God both to humans and to angels. He was the Word of God—God’s thoughts made audible. If we are not grateful to God, we can never see the greatness in our lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
When we start to appreciate, we will begin to elevate! Some people regard logical thinking as the deadest and driest of our activities and may therefore be repelled by the privileged position. However, logical thinking—Reasoning—is valid and no one can deny it (philosophically speaking). You cannot, as we already know, prove that there are no proofs. However, if you wish to regard all human ideals as illusions and all human love as biological by-products, you can. That is, you can do so without running into flat self-contradiction and nonsense. Whether you can do so without extreme umplausibility—without accepting a picture of things which no one really believes—is another matter. Besides reasoning about matters of fact, humans also make moral judgments—“I ought to do this”—“I ought not to do that”—“This is good”—“That is evil.” Two views have been held about moral judgments. Some people think that when we make them we are not using our Reason, but are employing some different power. Other people think that we make them by our Reason. I myself hold this second view. That is, I believe that the primary moral principles on which all others depend are rationally perceived. We “just see” that there is no reason why my neighbour’s happiness should be sacrificed to my own, as we “just see” that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. If we cannot prove either axiom, that is not because the irrational but because they are self-evident and all proofs depend on them. Their intrinsic reasonableness shines by its own light. It is because all morality is based on such self-evident principles that we say to a human, when we would recall one to right conduct, “Be reasonable.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
However, this is by the way. For our present purposes it does not matter which of these two views you adopt. The important point is to notice that moral judgments raise the same sort of difficulty for Naturalism as any other thoughts. We always assume in discussions about morality, as in all other discussions, if they can be fully accounted for by some non-moral and non-rational cause, that the other human’s views are worthless. When two humans differ about good and evil we soon hear tis principle being brought into play. “Mr. William Wirt Winchester believes in the sanctity of property because he is a millionaire”—“He believes in Pacifism because he is a coward”—“He approves of corporal punishment because he is a necrophile.” Such taunts may often be untrue: but the mere fact that they are made by the one side, and hotly rebutted by the other, shows clearly what principle is being used. Neither side doubts that if they were true, they would decisive. No one (in real life) pays attention to any oral judgment which can be shown to spring from non-moral and non-rational causes. The Freudian and the Marxist attack traditional morality precisely on this ground—and with wide success. All humans accept the principle. However, of course, what discredits particular moral judgments must equally discredit moral judgments as a whole. If that fact that humans have such ideas as ought and ought not at all can be fully explained by irrational and non-moral causes, then those ideas are an illusion. The Naturalist is ready to explain how the illusion arose. Chemical conditions produce life. Life, under the influence of natural selection, produces consciousness. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Conscious organisms which behave in one way live longer than those which behave in another. Living longer, they are more likely to have offspring. Inheritance, and sometimes teaching as well, pass on their mode of behaviour to their young. Thus in every species a pattern of behaviour is built up. In the human species conscious teaching plays a larger part in the building it up, and the tribe further strengthens it by killing individuals who to not conform. They also invent gods who are said to punish departures from it. Thus, in time, there comes to exist a strong human impulse to conform. However, since this impulse is often at variance with the other impulses, a mental conflict arises, and the human expresses it by saying “I want to do A but I ought to do B.” This account may (or may not) explain why humans do in fact make moral judgments. It does not explain how they could be right in making them. It excludes, indeed, the very possibility of their being right. For when humans say “I ought” they certainly think they are saying something, and something true about the nature of the proposed action, and not merely about their own feelings. However, if Naturalism is true, “I ought” is the same sort of statement as “I itch” or “I am going to be sick.” In real life when a human says “I ought” we may reply, “Yes. You are right. That is what you ought to do,” or else, “No. I think you are mistaken.: However, in a World of Naturalists (if Naturalist really remembered their philosophy out of school) the only sensible reply would be, “Oh, are you?” All moral judgments would be statements about the speaker’s feelings, mistaken by him for statements about something else (the real moral quality of actions) which does not exist. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Such a doctrine, I have admitted, is not flatly self-contradictory. The Naturalist can, if one chooses, brazen it out. One can day, “Yes. I quite agree that there is no such thing as wrong and right. I admit that no moral judgment can be ‘true’ or ‘correct’ and, consequently, that no one system of morality can be better or worse than another. All ideas of good and evil are hallucinations—shadows cast on the outer World by the impulses which we have been conditioned to feel.” Indeed many Naturalists are delighted to say this. However, then they must stick to it; and fortunately (though in consistently) most real Naturalists do not. A moment after they have admitted that good and evil are illusion, you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionise, liquidate, live and die for the good of the human race. A Naturalist like Mr. H. G. Wells spent a long life doing so with passionate eloquence and zeal. However, surely this is very odd? Just as all the books about spiral nebulae, atoms and cave men would really have led you to suppose that the Naturalists claimed to be about to know something, so all the books in which Naturalists tell us what we ought to do would really make you believe that they thought some ideas of good (their own, for example) to be somehow preferable to others. For they write with indignation like humans proclaiming what is good in itself and denouncing what is evil in itself, and not at all like humans recording that they personally like concentrated cranberry juice, but some people prefer sweetened cranberry juice. Yet if the “oughts” of Mr. Wells and, say, Franco are both equally the impulses which Nature has conditioned each to have and both tell us nothing about any objective right or wrong, whence is all the fervour? Do they remember while they are writing thus that when they tell us we “ought to make a better World” the words “ought” and “better” must, on their own showing, refer to an irrationally conditioned impulse which cannot be true or false any more than a vomit or a yawn? #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
My idea is that sometimes they do forget. That is their glory. Holding a philosophy which excludes humanity, they yet remain human. At the sight of injustice they throw all their Naturalism to the winds and speak like humans and like human of genius. They know far better than they think they know. However, at other times, I suspect, they are trusting in a supposed way of escape from their difficulty. It works—or seems to work—like this. They say to themselves, “Ah, yes. Morality”—or “bourgeois morality” or some such addition—“Morality is an illusion. However, we have found out what modes of behaviour we are pressing you to adopt. Pray, do not mistake us for moralists. We are under an entirely new management” …just as if this would help. It would help if only we grant, firstly, that life is better than death and, secondly, that we ought to care for the lives of our descendants as much as, or more than, for our own. And both these are moral judgments which have, like all others, been explained away by Naturalism. Of course, having been conditioned by Nature in a certain way, we do feel thus about life and about posterity. However, the Naturalists have cured us of mistaking these feelings for insights into what we once called “real value.” Now that I know that my impulse to serve posterity is just the same kind of thing as my fondness for cheese—now that its transcendental pretensions have been exposed for a sham—do you think I shall pay much attention to it? When it happens to be strong (and it has grown considerably weaker since you explained to me its real nature) I suppose I shall obey it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
When it is weak, I shall put my money into cheese. There can be no reason for trying to whip up and encourage the one impulse rather than the other. Not now that I know what they both are. The Naturalists must not destroy all my reverence for conscience on Monday and expect to find me still venerating it on Tuesday. There is no escape along these lines. If we are to continue to make moral judgments (and whatever we say we shall in fact continue) then we must believe that the conscience of humans is not a product of Nature. Only if it is an offshoot of some absolute “on its own” and is not a product of non-moral, non-rational Nature. We must acknowledge the supernatural source for our ideas of good and evil. In other worse, we now know something more about God. If you hold that moral judgment is a different thing from Reasoning you will express tis new knowledge by saying “We now know that God has at least one other attribute than rationality.” If, like me, you hold that moral judgment is a kind of Reasoning, then you will say, “We now know more about the Divine Reason.” And with this we are almost ready to begin our main argument. However, before doing so it will be well to pause of the consideration of some misgivings of misunderstandings which may have already arisen. Happiness is related to good and bad life events, but the impact is smaller than you might imagine. The reason for this is that happiness tends to come from within a person. Subjective well-being is affected by our goals, choices, emotions, values, and personality. The way you perceive, interpret, and manage events is as important as the nature of the events themselves. People who are good a dodging the life’s rough, unsparing treatment (hard knocks) tend to create their own “luck.” As a result, they are happier and seem to negotiate life’s demands more smoothly. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It is tempting to think that wealth brings happiness. However, does it? To a small degree wealthier people are happier than poorer people. Yet, the overall association between money and happiness is weak. In fact, people who win lotteries are often less happy than they were before, and imagine how much unhappier ill begotten gain might make them. Instant riches usually bring new stresses into a person’s life that tend to cancel out any beneficial effects of wealth. Essentially, money can make it possible to buy the good things in life, but money cannot buy a good life. Happiness usually must become from other sources More educated people tend to be a little happier than the less educated. However, this is most likely just another way of saying that there is a small connection between wealth and happiness. Higher education generally results in higher income and more social status. As education levels rise, more parents ae intellectually equipped to assume some responsibilities now delegated to schools. With the move toward knowledge-based industy and the increase of leisure, we can anticipate a small but significant tendency for highly educated parents to pull their children at least partway out of the public education systems, offering them home instruction instead. This trend will be sharply encouraged by improvements in computer-assisted education, Cisco Telepresence, electronic video recording, holography and other technical fields. Parents and students might sign short-term “learning contracts” with the nearby school, committing them to teach-learn certain courses or course modules. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Students might continue going to school for social and athletic activities or for subjects they cannot learn on their own or under the tutelage of parents or family friends. Mobile education is also a proposal, which would take students out of the classroom not merely to observe but to participate in significant community activity. Curricula would be shaped by students and community groups as well as professional educators. The former United States Commissioner of Education, Harold Howe, II, has also suggested the reverse: bringing the community into the school so that local stores, beauty parlors, prints shops, architecture firms, be given free space in the schools in return for free lessons by the adults who run this. President Trump and other want to keep the schools and class rooms open, so children are being supervised by adults during work hours, which allows the parents to work and the kids to get an education. This reduces crime rates and helps increase income earnings in the future for students. School also serves as a nice social club for children where they make life long friends and memories. Also, school provides nutrition for students and proper nutrition helps to raise the IQ of students and keeps them healthy. Children also learn how to respect authority figures and learn that behaviour has bad consequences, whereas good behaviour and hard work is rewarded. People who live in the age of information must have new skills in three crucial areas: learning, relating, and choosing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Students will need an enhanced human adaptability. By instructing students how to learn and unlearn and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education. Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the person who cannot read; one will be the human who has not learned how to learn. By speeding the turnover of people in our lives, we allow less time for trust to develop, less time for friendships to ripen. Thus we witness a search for ways to cut through the polite “public” behaviour directly to the sharing of intimacy. Presented with numerous alternatives, an individual chooses the one most compatible with one’s values. As overchoice deepens, the person who lacks a clear grasp of one’s own values (whatever these may be) is progressively disabled. Worse yet, students are seldom encouraged to analyze their own values and those of their teachers and peers. Millions pass through the education system without once having been forced to search out the contradictions in their own value systems, to probe their own life goals deeply, or even to discuss these matters candidly with adults and peers. Students hurry from class to class. Teachers and professors are harried and grow increasingly remote. Even the “bull session”—informal, extra-curricular discussion about pleasures of the flesh, politics, or religion that helps participants identify and clarify their values—grown less frequent and less intimate as transience rises. Married people report a greater happiness than people who are divorces, separated, or single. It could be that happiness people are simply more likely to get married than to remain sleepless in Seattle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
However, better explanation for this association is that marriage partners can act as emotional and economic buffers against the hardships of life and a faithful marriage also helps keep people chaste in the eyes of the Lord, in most cases, as long as you are not sleeping with the enemy. There is a beneficial association between happiness and holding spiritual beliefs. Religious beliefs may add to feelings of purpose and meaning in life, resulting in greater happiness. Marriage between partners is a vital part of God’s plan. The Lord has said, “Whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 49.15. Since the beginning, marriage has been a law of the gospel. Marriages are intended to last forever, not just for our mortal lives. Adam and Eve were married by God before there was any death in the World. They had an eternal marriage. They taught the law of eternal marriage to their children and their children’s children. As the years passed, wickedness entered the hearts of the people and the authority to perform this sacred ordinance was taken from the Earth. Through the Restoration of the gospel, eternal marriage has been restored to Earth. Many people in the World consider marriage to be only a social custom, a legal agreement between two people in love together. However, to Latter-day Saints, marriage is much more. Our exaltation depends on marriage, along with other principles and ordinances, such as faith, repentance, baptism, and receiving the gift of the holy Ghost. We believe that marriage is the most sacred relationship that can exist between two loving people. This sacred relationship affects our happiness now and in the eternities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Heavenly Father has given us the law of eternal marriage so we can become like Him. The Lord has said: “In the celestial glory there are three Heavens or degrees: and in order to obtain the highest, a human must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if one does not, one cannot obtain it,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-3. Another possibility is that church membership may simply provide social support that softens that impact of life’s negative events. Incubation is the term applied to the sleeping in a temple—usually a special shrine or sanctuary used for healing and healing-dreams and dream-oracles alone—as a means of healing. This was practiced by ancient Greek and Babylonians. It was also frequently practiced in ancient Egypt at the temples of Isis and Serapis with effects similar to those of hypnotism. Five hundred years before Christ at the temple of Epidaurus, where the inspiring spirit or god was Aesculapius (the patron saint of modern medicine still), sick patients were put to sleep by priests at the foot of the Aesculapius’ statue. In many cases, they awoke suddenly cured. That the real effectiveness of incubation was not the work of a departed spirit but of Nature in the sleep state combined with the sufferer’s faith, was shown by the custom which still prevails in Greece. Here sleep in a temple of Aesculapius was simply replaced by sleep in the church associated with a Christian saint. Consider a cut had and how Nature at once sets to work to repair the damage. The anatomist tells us that the leucocytes in the blood automatically build a bridge of tissue over the wound’s surface. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
However, what orders the leucocytes to make the needed adjustments? What shows them how to make it? There is obviously an intelligence behind them, a mind within the body outside and apart from the conscious mind. There are miracles in Nature, and at this time, happenings to which science possesses no key. The human consciousness, for instance, is capable of manifesting power which contradict psychological knowledge, just as the human body is capable of manifesting phenomena which contradict medical knowledge. Both powers and phenomena may seem miraculous, but they really issue forth from the hidden laws of human’s own being. The process take pace in the dark only to us. This life-force, this invisible energy, is behind and within, around and above the physical body. Under certain circumstances its rea can be seen and traced out and its recuperative healing power drawn upon. It forms an aura, the etheric or vital body of light, but not the still more elusive and subtle divine body of Light nor the aura of various colours, the astral body. The stereotype of the crotchety antiquated person who id dissatisfied with everything is inaccurate. Life satisfaction and happiness generally do not decline with age. People are living longer and staying healthier, which has greatly delayed age-related declines. When declines do occur, mature people seem better able to cope with them. The hindrances which wrong bodily regimes put in one’s Quest are not only physical but also psychic, emotional, and mental. The condition of a human’s health, the medical state of one’s body, may contribute to one’s spiritual outlook, may enfeeble or enliven one’s faith. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
If union with the Overself-consciousness is to be achieved, or progress to that goal made, the body ought also to share in the benefits received. It too ought to be freer from discordant elements, organs, or operations. The wise student will recognize that one gains more than one loses by such sacrifices as this discipline of the body calls for. The benefits of resisting custom’s dominance are both disproportionate and durable, with a value so high as to make the discipline bearable and the sacrifices smaller. Wen one hears about these ascetic-sound regimes a chill sets in. However, what is it that rebels against them? It is the ego, the weakness of human will. Yet the rebellion is ill-founded, for the body is not tortured by being brought under control—only its perverted, exaggerated, or enslaving appetites suffer by doing so. The regimes themselves are sensible and are not fantastical fads. They are simply indication of the quester’s need to live more carefully than other people, and to change habits which are bad. They are hygienic recommendations offered to those who want to advance their spiritual journey more quickly. The bodily cells are so pervaded with toxic materials, clogged with them, so contaminated by them, that this purificatory work is an essential preliminary to the mystical work, proper for most aspirants except those who have the inborn capability of quickly rising to an intense concentration which frees the cells from such poisons. There is a mass of improperly digested, half-decayed food material lying in the intestines in a fermenting condition, while farther on here are accumulated deposits of petrified impurities on the lining of the colon and the membrane of the bowels. These substances are rejected by they body, which suffers by their presence but is unable to free itself from the without conscious and willing co-operation on the part of its owner. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
The body’s physiological processes are clogged and encumbered by them and its nervous system and brain organ polluted by the inferior blood brought to nourish them. To achieve this aim, a certain preparation as well as purification of the body is required. The spine must be cleared of adhesions, congestions, distortions, shrinkings, and nerve branch pressures. The tissues and blood have to be cleansed of the toxic material accumulated in them. The salvation which frees a human from enslavement to one’s lower nature is necessary and good, but it goes only part of the way to fulfilling one’s needs. One’s fleshly body also requires salvation. It ought to be freed from its poisoned, clogged, and unnatural condition. If it is saturated wit destructive acids or clogged wit decaying material, the body cannot respond so freely to the subtle forces, nor can the brain and nervous system respond so freely if they are stupefied by alcohol or drugs. As the consciousness evolves to a higher level, so the body it functions through must become more refined in quality and purified in nature. Mental equilibrium, deep prayer, cannot be attained without changing the habits which obstruct it. Even if the requisite purification of the body’s cells and blood from all toxins has been achieved, a human must still refrain from starting on those ways which caused toxemia. There is a common error that drugs and medicines are enough to keep us in good health. They are not. The only things that can do so are correct living habits, righting thinking habits, and proper eating habits. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
A knowledge of personal hygiene will keep us in better health than a hundred boxes of pills. We must learn to conform to the laws of hygienic living—mental and physical—if we want to achieve a sound mind in a should body. We may not break those laws with impunity, nor believe that because we have been spiritually healed once we are exempt from the always. The desire to gain purity must provide the power to follow the regimes needed for it. The sediment of egotism in the mind and animality in the flesh cannot be cleared out unless this desire grows strong and remains enduring. The mental courage to cast out those wrong habits of living which unenlightenment of spiritual hygiene has allowed one to pick up, must show itself. People who are satisfied with their jobs tend to be happier, but the association is weak. If fact, it probably just reflects the fact that job satisfaction is a large part of greater life satisfaction. With respect to happiness and personality, it may be fair to paraphrase Paris Hilton, “I am a star and I was born to shine. I am happy, powerful, strong and confident.” To a degree, some people are more temperamentally disposed to be happy, regardless of life events. In general, happier people also tend to be extraverted (outgoing), optimistic, and worry-free. This combination probably influences the balance of beneficial and negative emotions. In general, if they are meeting their personal goals, people tend to be happy. If you feel you are making progress, on a day-to-day basis, on smaller goals that relate to long-term, life goals, this is especially true. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
However, achieving one’s goals does not always lead to happiness. Consider the highly successful person who is absorbed in one’s accomplishments. All it may take is a crisis, like a child’s illness or the death of a friend, to make life feel meaningless. However, if the person begins to act with integrity, meaning can be restored and the crisis resolved. Thus, optimal human functioning involves integrity as well as an ability to accomplish goals. “Doing well,” they say, is associated with happiness. In contrast, “being yourself” is associated with leading a meaningful life. In short, if we are to live with integrity, the goals we purse must express our core interests and values. Examples of the kinds of personal projects (short-term goals) and long-term goals that occupy us: for architect’s the job is usually spent on location. When a project is located nearby, architect may leave the office periodically to stop by the project site. Some short-term goals involved checking in with building developers and engineers to ensure the client’s objectives are met, review projects, and check on any potential obstacles in construction. Many architects believed that if they did great work, somehow society would recognize the contributions and value they were making to the World and reward them with an endless stream of passion projects to grow their firm. However, the truth when it comes to long term goals, running an architecture firm is exactly the same as running any other business. You have to work just as hard to win business as you do to deliver it. An important long-term goal to remember is that your costs of running a business increase over the years. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Your money goals should define the revenues and profits you will need to accommodate these increased costs, and support the growth you want. Also another long-term goal should be to become innovative and sometimes that requires a history lesson. For an architecture firm, stepping back into the past the Victorian America and seeing what was popular back them, like butler’s pantries, multiple parlors, patio spaces, and yards with green spaces, mixed with some modern style designs is a long-term way to stay relevant. People goals typically focus on who you want to work with. This can include the employees you want on your staff, and it may also include the type of clients you want to attract. Sometimes working with non-profits has provided some firms with not only a great sense of fulfillment but also a deeper connection to their local community. Working with one firm allowed the nonprofit client to connect with an ideal prospect and close a $6,000,000 group up non-profit project, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis pandemic. Who we work with can greatly affect our enthusiasm and motivation on the job, so setting goals around who we choose to work with can have an immense impact on our attitude towards our work. Such goals are crucial because overall well-being is a combination of happiness and meaning. Pursuing goals that are inconsistent with personal interests and values can leave a person feeling uneasy, bothered, and uncomfortable. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Happier persons tend to be married, comfortable with their work, extraverted, religious, optimistic, and generally satisfied with their lives. They also are making progress toward their goals. However, attain goals that do not express our deeper interests and values may add little to happiness. When, then, makes a good life? Purpose and meaning are important sources of well-being at any point in life. As we have seen, a good life is one that is happy and meaningful. We are most likely to experience a meaningful life when we act with integrity. It is interesting that while achievement and external goals may preoccupy younger persons, integrity becomes increasingly important later in life. “To thine own self be true” may seem like a cliché, but it is actually not a bad place to begin a search for a happy and a satisfying life. “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Let all things be done decently and in order,” reports 1 Corinthians 14.33 and 40. Our little World is the lesson book of the Universe. God’s wonderful purpose of grace, the mystery of redeeming love, is the theme into which “angels desire to look,” and it will be their study throughout endless ages. Both the redeemed and the unfallen beings will find in the cross of Christ their science and their song. It will be seen that the glory shining in the face of Jesus is the glory of self-sacrificing love. In the light from Calvary it will be seen that the law of self-renouncing love is the law of life for Earth and Heaven; that the love which “seeketh not her own” has its source in the heart of God; and that in the meek and lowly One is manifested the character of Him who dwelleth in the light which no human can approach unto. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Sometimes, when a bird cries out, or the wind sweeps through a tree, or an angel whispers in a far-off farm, I hold still and listen a long time. My World turns and goes back to the place where, a thousand forgotten years ago, the bird and the blowing wind were like me, and were my brothers. My soul turns into a tree, and an animal, and a cloud bank. Then changed and odd it comes home and asks me questions. What should I reply? Faithful art Thou, O Lord our God, and faithful are Thy words, for no word of thine shall remain unfulfilled. Thou art a faithful and merciful God and King. Blessed art Thou, O Lord God, who art faithful in fulfilling Thy words. Please be merciful unto America, for it is the fountain of our life, and mayest Thou soon in our day deliver Zion that is grieved in spirit. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makest America rejoice with her children. Make us rejoice, O Lord our God, with Elijah the prophet, Thy servant, and with the kingdom of the house of David, Thine anointed. Soon may Elijah come and bring joy to our hearts. May no stranger occupy David’s throne and may no usurper inherit his glory. For by Thy holy name Thou hast promised unto one that one’s light will never be extinguished. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Shield of America. We give Thee thanks and bless Thee, O Lord our God, for the Torah, and for the worship of this day and for the prophets, as well as for this Sabbath day which Thou, O Lord our God, hast given us for holiness and for rest, for glory and delight. Evermore may Thy name be continually praised by every living being. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
It’s May 1st which means it’s halfway to Halloween! We are hard at work dreaming up a new experience for Halloween 2021 that will feature a projection mapped show on the front of the mansion. Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
“Lord God,” said Mrs. Sarah Winchester, as the flames rose and the fire crackled. “We got a dead girl, a huge mansion that is too big to heat, too big to maintain, too expensive to sale, a bunch of weird books, and a regular tomb of gold with an empty iron coffin in it, and a half-ghost boy standing here. Now this translation just arrived. ‘Here sleeps Annie Winchester, whose mortal hands once made the most beautiful cameos, even for emperors and and kings. Guard me, ye gods and goddesses whose images I render so well. A curse on those who attempt to disturb my resting place.'”
Watch your step in the séance room! There are three exits in this room, The main door, a secret passageway leading into an unfinished closet, and this door that opens to an 8-ft drop into the kitchen below.
Self-Guided Mansion Tour:
👉 Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Popular Idea that “You Cannot Legislate Morality” is a Myth!
When the human mind is made obsolete by advancing technology, the soul may not be far behind. The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future. In the quickening race to put humans and machines on the planets, tremendous recourses are devoted to making possible a “soft landing.” Every sub-system of the landing craft is exquisitely designed to withstand the shock of arrival. Armies of engineers, geologists, physicists, metallurgists and other specialists concentrate years of work on the problem of landing impact. Failure of any sub-system to function after touch-down could destroy human lives, not to mention billions of dollars worth of apparatus and tens of thousands of human-years of labour. Today over seven billion human beings, the total population of technology-rich nations, are speeding toward a rendezvous with the super-age of information. Must we experience mass future shock? Or can we, too, achieve a “soft landing?” We are rapidly accelerating our approach. The craggy outlines of the new society are emerging from the mists of tomorrow. Yet even as we speed closer, evidence mounts that one of our most critical sub-systems—education—is dangerously malfunctioning. What passes for education today, even in our “best” school and colleges, is hopeless anachronism. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Parents look to education to fit their children for life in the future. Teachers warn that lack of an education will cripple a child’s chances in the World of tomorrow. Government ministries, churches, the mass media—all exhort young people to stay in school, insisting that now, as never before, one’s future is almost wholly dependent upon educations. Yet for all this rhetoric about the future, our schools face backward toward a dying system, rather than forward to the emerging new society. Their vast energies are applied to cranking out people who focus on information technology tooled for survival in a system that will long out live most people. The Information Age is the ideal that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of this current era in human civilization. The Information Age, also called the Computer Age, The Digital Age, and the New Media Age, is coupled tightly with the advent of personal computers. Companies whose businesses are built on digitized information have become valuable and powerful in a relatively short period of time. Just as land owners held the wealthy and wielded power in the Agrarian Age and manufacturers such as Henry For and Cyrus McCormick accumulated fortunes in the Industrial Age, the current Information Age has spawned its own breed of wealthy influential brokers, from Microsoft’s Bill Gates, John Tu and David Sun who are the founders of Kingston Technology, Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of NantWorks, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, and of course Jeff Bezos, co-founder and CEO of Amazon. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
To help avert future shock, we must create a super-age of information educational system. And to do this, we must search for our objectives and methods in the future, rather than in the past. Every society has its own characteristic attitude toward past, present and future. This time-bias, formed in response to the rate of change, is one of the least noticed, yet most powerful determinants of social behaviour, and it is clearly reflected in the way the society prepares its young for adulthood. In stagnant societies, the past crept forward into the present and repeated itself in the future. In such a society, the most sensible way to prepare a child was to arm one with the skills of the past—for these were precisely the same skills one would need in the future. “With the ancient is wisdom,” the Bible admonished. Thus farther handed down to son all sorts of practical techniques along with a clearly defined, highly tradition set of values. Knowledge was transmitted not by specialist concentrated in schools, but through the family, religious institutions, and apprenticeships. Learner and teacher were dispersed throughout the entire community. The key to the system, however, was its absolute devotion to yesterday. The curriculum of the past was the past. The mechanical age smashed all this, for industrialism required a new kind of human. It demanded skills that neither family nor church could, by themselves, provide. It forced an upheaval in the value system. Above all, it required that humans develop a new sense of time. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Mass education was the ingenious machines constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adult it needed. The problem was inordinately complex. How to pre-adapt children for a new World—a World of cognitive kills such as conducting independent research, assessing information for credibility, applying concepts to new situations, and self-critiquing one’s own abilities are central to our success in today’s working World—and, more important, to our lives as human beings. People have to get used to machines, computers, crowded living conditions, collective discipline, a World in which time is to be regulated not by the cycle of sun and moon, but by the computer and the clock. The solution is an educational system that, in its very structure, simulates this new World. This system did not emerge instantly. Even today it retains throwback elements from pre-industrial society. Yet the whole idea of assembling masses of stents (raw material) to be processed by teachers (workers) in a centrally located school (factory) is a stoke of industrial genius. Although this is the age of information, many of the same concepts in industrialism apply. The whole administrative hierarchy of education, as it has grown up, follows the model of industrial bureaucracy. The very organization of knowledge into permanent disciplines is grounded on the drive to learn, for its own sake. Bells ring to announce the change of time, but schools are not bound by bells and walls. The inner life of the school thus becomes an anticipatory mirror, a perfect introduction to the age of information. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
The most criticized features of education today—the regimentation, lack of individualization, the rigid systems of seating, grouping, grading, and marking, the authoritarian role of the teacher—are precisely those that made the mass public education so effective an instrument of adaptation for its place and time. Young people passing through this educational machine emerge into an adult society whose structure of jobs, roles, and institutions resemble that of the school itself. The schoolchild does not simply learn facts that one could use later on; one lives, as well as learns, a new way of life modeled after one one would lead in the future. The primary goal is now to help one incorporate the computer into K-12 curriculum. To this extent the book cannot be taken in isolation. The ideas and skills have changed to engage the latest digital technologies. The method of distribution is now a blend between face-to-face and some other combination of virtual interfaces, and a text-plus-multimedia based learning. Thus the focus of education itself has begun to shift, ever so slowly, away from the past and toward the present. An educated workforce can help lift people out of poverty, recue premature mortality, strengthen gender equality, and promote civic participation. Works need breadth of skills such as literacy and numeracy as well as the ability to think critically and to solve problem collaboratively. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
In the digital age, citizens must be prepared to respond to the challenges presented by globalization, climate change, health epidemics, and economic uncertainty. Employers will be seeking out a workforce of possessing analytical skills and interpersonal skills. For example, children will no longer be asked why does it rain, but expected to memorize and recite a series of steps for ow precipitation occurs. As our planet speeds toward 10 billion people (likely 9.5 billion or so by 2050), it is not hard to believe that all life will look differently. We will likely see a lot more new food based programs and recycling degrees, and we will also see 1 in 6 adults on our planet over the age of 65. So, medicine and health degrees will be even more valuable than today, especially when you include the administration of new systems that do truly personalize medicine and connect patients to care anywhere. Most campuses will be commuter campuses as 90 percent of people will use the Internet to obtain their classes. You will likely see schools in places unseen today, like the Harvard office suite atop a London office building or a Michigan State food science degree on a farm in Iowa. There will still be some campuses, but the idea is already being practiced. When we went to study abroad in China, we took our own professors and had our classes in hotel conference rooms, as well as in classes Beijing Language and Culture University, as well as at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics because we were travelling while in China. #Randolphharris 6 of 23
Students will also go to corporation colleges to get their education. Like the University of BMW or Samsung college for the promise of a job upon graduation. The landscape will look different than it does today, and hopefully everyone will be ready for the changes. Education is perhaps one of the most ingredients to a happy, successful, and constructive life. In fact, having access to a good education during childhood and your early adulthood can make a real difference in your later life. Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the World. The technology of tomorrow requires millions of lightly lettered humans, ready to work in unison at endlessly repetitious jobs, it requires not humans who take orders in unblinking fashion, aware that the price of bread is mechanical submission to authority, but humans who can make critical judgments, who can weave their way through novel environments, who are quick to spot new relationships in the rapidly changing reality. It requires people who have the future in their bones. Education’s lesson is clear: its prime objective must be to increase the individual’s “cope-ability”—the speed and economy with which one can adapt to continual change. And the faster the rate of change, the more attention must be devoted to discerning the pattern of future events. It is no longer sufficient for Johnny to understand the past. It is not even enough for him to understand the present, for the here-and-now environment will soon vanish. Johnny must learn t anticipate the direction and rate of change. He must, to put it technically learn to make repeated, probabilistic, increasingly long-range assumptions about the future. And so must Johnny’s teachers. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
It is only by projecting what will be in demand 50 years in the future, the kind of vocations that may be needed, assumptions about the kind of family forms and human relationships that will prevail; the kinds of ethical and moral problems that will arise; the kind of technology that will surround us and the organizational structures with which we must mesh that successful people will survive the accelerative thrusts. We must create a “Council of the Future” in every school and community: Teams of men and women devoted to probing the future in the interests of the present. By projecting “assumed futures,” be defining coherent educational responses to them, by opening these alternatives to activate public debate, such councils—similar in some ways to the “prognostic cells” advocated by Robert Jungk of the Technische Hochschule in Berlin—could have a powerful impact on education. The creation of future-oriented, future-shaping task forces in education could revolutionize the revolution of the young. For those educators who recognize the bankruptcy of the present system, but remain uncertain about next steps, the council movement could provide purpose as well as power, through alliance with, rather than hostility toward, youth. And by attracting community and parental participation—business people, trade unionists, scientists, and others—the movement could build broad political support for digital age revolution in education. It would be a mistake to assume that the present-day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
However, much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it every more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals. The rest is a kind of Brownian motion, self-canceling, incoherent, directionless. What has been lacking is a consistent direction and a logical starting point. The council movement could supply both. The direction is the super age of information. The starting point: the future. As we become acquainted with truth in good sources of all kinds, we are better prepared to work in the World and serve in the kingdom of God. The Lord revealed, “The Glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 93.36. All truth comes from Heavenly Father and is designed for the good of His children. God wants us to educate our minds, improve our skills, and perfect our abilities so we can be a better influence for good in the World, provide for ourselves, our family, and those in need, and build God’s Kingdom. All truth, whether religious or secular, is included in God’s plan for our salvation and happiness. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life, one will have s much the advantage in the World to come.” The Lord has given each of us gifts and encourages us to improve upon them and seek other gifts. He has also instructed us to seek learning, even by study and also by faith. Work for an education. Get all the training you can. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Who is to day religion and politics should not mix? Whose Bible are they reading? There is an implication that Christians are immune to corruption. Of course not. While Christians know that their faith requires high standards of righteousness, they are human and often capitulate to the same temptations as anyone else. In fact, Christians may well face more problems than others when they become involved in the political process. How does a Christian deal with the inherent divided loyalties: duty to God and duty to the national interest? Can a Christian successfully avoid the subtle snares of power? Can a Christian make the compromises necessary for the everyday business of politics? What about the question of candor, for example? At times national security may well require not only concealing the true, but lying. When in the White House, politicians often go through elaborate lengths to conceal essential secret negotiations. Henry Kissinger had a bad cold when he visited Pakistan in 1971—or so the press was told. Actually he had been flown to Beijing to conduct clandestine meetings in preparation for Mr. Nixon’s historic visit to China. Or take the day Nixon announced a major troop withdrawal in Vietnam. He immediately ordered Kissinger to bring Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin to a secret meeting room in the White House basement. “Henry,” he roared, “You shake him up. Tell him not to believe these news stories. We are only pulling out a few troop—and if the Russians do not back off in sending supplies to Hanoi, we will bomb the daylights out of that city. Tell him the president is uncontrollable, a madman—that he will do anything. Let us keep them off balance.” That such meetings took place was flatly denied in order to protect the lives of the withdrawing troops. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
President Regan did that same thing in 1983. When reporters asked about a rumored invasion of Grenada, official White House spokesmen dismissed such questions as “preposterous.” Actually, troops were at that moment disembarking on the island’s beaches. A “no comment” to the press, however, would have been tantamount to a “yes”—an admission that would have endangered lives. In these days of delicate international tensions and the instant communications ability of an almost omnipresent press, such deceit is a common instrument of foreign policy. The press even accepts it. In a 1987 Newsweek interview, crack ABC interviewer Ted Koppel acknowledge that government official must be “prepared to mislead and sometimes even to lie.” Deliberate lies, the corruption of power, compromise with ideological opponents, temptations on all dies—these appear to be the mechanism of modern government. Should the Christian circumvent the messy business of politics altogether? The answer must be an emphatic no. As Robert L. Dabney wrote, “Every Christian…whether law-maker or law executor or voter, should carry one’s Christian conscience, enlightened by God’s Word, into one’s political duty. We must ask less what party caucuses and leaders dictate, and more what duty dictates.” There are at least three compelling reasons Christians must be involved in politics and government. First, as citizens of the nation-state, Christians have the same civic duties all citizens have: to serve on juries, to pay taxes, to vote, to support candidates they think are best qualified. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Christians are commanded to pray and respect governing authorities. (For years many Christian fundamentalists shunned the “sinful” political process, even to the extent of not voting. Whatever else may be said about it, the Moral Majority performed a valuable public service in bringing these citizens back into the mainstream.) Second, as citizens of the Kingdom of God they are to bring God’s standards of righteousness and justice to bear on the kingdom of this World. This is the cultural commission. As former Michigan state senator and college professor Stephan Monsma says, Christian political involvement has the “potential to move the political system away from the brokering of the self-interest of powerful persons and groups into a renewed concern for the public interest.” Third, Christians have an obligation to being transcendent moral values into public debate. All law implicitly involves morality; the popular idea that “you cannot legislate morality” is a myth. Morality is legislated every day from the vantage point of one value system or another. The question is not whether we will legislate morality, but whose morality we will legislate. Law is but a body of rules regulating human behaviour; it establishes, from the view of the state, the rightness or wrongness of human behaviour. Most laws, therefore, have moral implications. The more you know who you are in God, the easier it is to manifest the truth about yourself! #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Statutes prohibiting murder, mandates for seat belts, or regulations for industrial safety are all designed to protect human life—a reflection of the particular moral view that values the dignity and worth of human life. And efficacy does not affect morality If in American we have more homicides per capita than any other country, it is not reason t repeal the laws making murder a crime. The common argument against the legislation of morality is Prohibition, which conjures up such caricatures as Billy Sunday waving a chair over his head and Carrie Nation chopping up whiskey barrels. The church has taken an undeserved bad rap for this. No one entity imposed Prohibition; it was voted in by a clear majority after a lengthy national debate. Admittedly, over the years of its existence Prohibition became increasingly difficult to enforce; it encouraged organized crime and ultimately led to widespread disrespect for the law. Eventually the costs outweighed the benefits. However, was it morally justified? Certainly one’s personal decision to drink alcohol is a private matter. When millions do it to such excess that public safety is endangered, however, it becomes a public concern. That was the case in the pre-Prohibition era. Thousands reported to their factory jobs under the influence and were maimed or killed by heavy industrial machines then being introduced in the American economy. The tavern trade spawned harlotry rings at a time, like today, when there was no cure for the raging epidemic of certain contagious and socially transmitted viral deception was being transmitted. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Though many write off Prohibition as a complete failure, the facts are that industrial safety improved dramatically as per capita drinking, particular among working people, dropped precipitously, and the VD epidemic slowed. Not until 1970 did per capita consumption of alcohol again reach pre-Prohibition levels. Everyday, 29 people in the United States of America die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver. This is one death every 50 minutes. The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $44 billion. And with the majority of crimes being committed by people under the influence of drugs or alcohol, can anyone really argue realistically today that moral issues are not matter of public interest? The real issue for Christians is not whether they should be involved in politics or contend for laws that affect moral behaviour. The question is how. The greatest relationship you will ever have is with God! There is nothing like it! There is a further aspect of moral attitudes that I have noted in the sketch of the development of the sense of justice, namely, their connection with certain natural attitudes. Thus in examining a moral feeling we should ask: what if any are the natural attitudes to which it is related? Now there are two questions here, one the converse of the other. The first asks about the natural attitudes that are sown to be absent when a person fail to have certain moral feelings. Where as the second asks which natural attitudes are evidences to be present when someone experiences a moral emotion. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The first asks about the natural attitudes that are shown to be absent when a person fails to have certain moral feelings. Whereas the second askes which natural attitudes are evidenced to be present when someone experiences a moral emotion. In context of the authority situation, the child’s natural attitudes of love and trust for those in authority lead to feelings of (authority) guilt when one violates the injunctions addressed to one. The absence of these moral feelings would evidence a lack of these natural ties. Similarly, within the framework of the morality of association, the natural attitudes of friendship and mutual trust give rise to feelings of guilt for not fulfilling the duties and obligations recognized by the group. The absence of these feelings would imply the absence of these attachments. These propositions must not be mistaken for their converses, for while feelings of indignation and guilt, say, can often be taken as evidence for such affections, there may be other explanations. In general, moral principles are affirmed for various reasons and their acceptance is normally sufficient for the moral feelings. To be sure, on the contract theory principles of right and justice have a certain content, and as we have just seen, there is a sense in which acting in accordance with them can be interpreted as acting from a concern for humankind, of for the good of other persons. Whether this fact shows that one acts in part from certain natural attitudes, especially as these involve attachments to particular individuals, and not simply from the general forms of sympathy and benevolence, is a question I shall leave aside here. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Certainly the preceding account of the development of morality supposes that affection for particular persons plays an essential part in the acquisition of morality. However, how far these attitudes are required for later moral motivation can be left open, although it would, I think, be surprising if these attachments were not to some degree necessary. Now the connection between the natural attitudes and the moral sentiments may be expressed as it follows: these sentiments and attitudes are both ordered families of characteristic dispositions, and these families overlap in such a manner that the absence of certain moral feelings evidences the absence of certain natural ties. Or alternatively, the presence of certain natural attachments gives rise to a liability to certain moral emotions once the requisite moral development has taken place. We can see how this is so by an example. If A cares for B, then failing a special explanation A is afraid for B when B is in danger and tries to come t B’s assistance. Again, if C plans to treat B unjustly, A is indignant with C and attempts to prevent one’s plans from succeeding. In bot cases, A is disposed to protect B’s interests. Further, unless there are special circumstances, A is joyful when together with B, and when B suffers injury or dies. A is stricken with grief. If the injury to B is A’s responsibility, A will feel remorse. Love is a sentiment, a hierarchy of dispositions to experience and to manifest these primary emptions as the occasion elicits and to act in the appropriate way. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
To confirm the connection between the natural attitudes and the moral sentiments one simply notes that the disposition on A’s part to feel remorse when one injures B, or guilt when one violates B’s legitimate claims, or A’s disposition to feel indignation when C seeks to deny B’s right, are as closely related psychologically with the natural attitudes of love as the disposition to be joyful in other’s presence, or two feel sorrow when one suffers. The moral sentiments are in some ways more complex. In their complete form they presupposed an understanding and an ability to judge in accordance with them. However, assuming these things, the liability to moral feelings seems to be as much a part of the natural sentiments as the tendency to be joyful, or the liability to grief. Love sometimes expresses itself in sorrow, at other times indignation. Either one without the other would be equally unusual. The content of rational moral principles is such as to render these connections intelligible. Now one main consequence of this doctrine is that the moral feelings are a normal feature of human life. We could not do away with them without at the same time eliminating certain natural attitudes. Among persons who ever acted in accordance with their duty of justice except as reasons of self-interest and expediency dictated there would be no bonds of friendship and mutual trust. For when these attachments exist, other reasons are acknowledged for acting fairly. This much seems reasonably obvious. However, it also follows from what has been said that, barring self-deception, egoists are incapable off feeling resentment and indignation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
If either of two egoists deceives the other and this is found out, neither of them has a ground for complaint. They do not accept the principles of justice, or any other conception that is reasonable from the standpoint of the original position; nor do they experience any inhibition from guilt feelings for breaches of their duties. As we have seen, resentment and indignation are moral feelings and therefore they presuppose an explanation by reference to an acceptance of the principles of right and justice. However, by hypothesis the appropriate explanations cannot be given. To deny that self-interested persons are incapable of resentment and indignation is not of course to say that they cannot be angry and annoyed with one another. A person without a sense of justice may be enraged at someone who fails to act fairly. However, anger and annoyance are distinct from indignation and resentment; they are not, as the latter are, moral emotions. Nor should it be denied that egoists may want others to recognize the bonds of friendship and to treat them in a friendly way. However, these desires are not to be mistaken for ties of affection that lead one to make sacrifices for one’s friends. No doubt there are difficulties in distinguishing between resentment and anger, and between apparent and real friendship. Certainly the overt manifestations and actions may seem the same when viewing a limited span of conduct. Yet in the longer run the difference can usually be made out. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
One may say, then, that a person who lacks a sense of justice, and who would never act as justice requires except as self-interest and expediency prompt, not only is without ties of friendship, and affection, and mutual trust, but is incapable of experiencing resentment and indignation. One lacks certain natural attitudes and moral feelings of a particularly elementary kind. Put another way, one who lacks a sense of justice lacks certain fundamental attitudes and capacities included under the notion of humanity. Now the moral feelings are admittedly unpleasant, in some extended sense of unpleasant; but there is no way for us to avoid a liability to them without disfiguring ourselves. This liability is the price of love and trust of friendship and affection, and of a devotion to institutions and traditions from which we have benefited and which serve the general interests of humankind. Further, assuming that persons are possessed of interests and aspirations of their own, and that they are prepared in the pursuit of their own ends and ideals to press their claims on one another—that is, so long as the conditions giving rise to questions of justice obtain among them—it is inevitable that, given temptation and passion, this liability will be realized. And since being moved by ends and ideals of excellence implies a liability to humiliation and shame, and an absence of liability of a liability to humiliation and shame a lack of ends and such ideals, one can say of shame and humiliation also that they are a part of the notion of humanity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Now that fact that one who lacks a sense of justice, and thereby a liability to guilt, lacks certain fundamental attitudes and capacities is not to be taken as a reason for acting as justice dictates. However, it has this significance: by understanding what it would be to lack part of our humanity too—we are led to accept our having this sentiment. It follows that the moral sentiments are a normal part of human life. One cannot do away with them without at e same time dismantling the natural attitude as well. And we have also seen that the moral sentiments are continuous with these attitudes in the sense that the love of humankind and the desire to uphold the common good include the principle of right and justice as necessary to define their objective. None of this is to deny that our existing moral feelings may be in many respects irrational and injurious to our good. Dr. Freud is right in his view that these attitudes are harsher aspects of the authority situation in which they were first acquired. Resentment and indignation, feelings of guilt and remorse, a sense of duty and the censure of others, often take perverse and destructive forms, but blunt without reason human spontaneity and enjoyment. When I say that moral attitudes are part of our humanity, I mean those attitudes that appeal to sound principles of right and justice in their explanation. The reasonableness of the underlying ethical conception is a necessary condition; and so the appropriateness of moral sentiments to our nature is determined by the principles that would be consented to in the original positions. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
These principles regulate moral education and the expression of moral approval and disapproval, just as they govern the design of institutions. Yet even if the sense of justice is the normal outgrowth of natural human attitudes within a well-ordered society, it is still true that our present moral feelings are liable to be unreasonable and capricious. However, one of the virtues of a well-ordered society is that, since arbitrary authority has disappeared, its members suffer much less from the burdens of oppressive conscience. It is reason which helps to get beyond the trivialities of our daily life. We become concerned about all that is happening, with all the questions that beset our times. It makes us participate in the World and feel personally what is happening on Earth. Our happiness or unhappiness is not determined by what happens to us in everyday life. However favourable our circumstances, however successful our enterprises, however much envied we are by our fellow humans, we still may not be happy. For peace alone is the source of happiness. The more our reasoning throws us unto the turmoil of life’s problems, the more we yearn for peace. We are led up to the mountains until the glaciers begin to glitter before us. Then reasoning bids us climb still higher, still further into the light, still further into peace and quietude. The older we grow the more we realize that true power and happiness come to us only from those who spiritually mean something to us. Whether they are near or far, still alive or dead, we need them if we are to find our way through life. Only when they are near to us in spirit can the good we bear within us can be turned into life and action. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
What tremendous inner power exists in spiritual communion with another human! How pitiable and destitute humans are when they are spiritually alone, when they have no one to understand and encourage them. If they do not even feel the need for it, doubly pitiable. Blessed the Lord who is to be praised. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who didst choose us from among all the peoples by giving us Thy Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who in giving us a Torah of truth, hast planted everlasting life within us. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Giver of the Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who in bestowing good upon humans beyond their deserving, hast dealt graciously with me. May He, who hath dealt graciously with you, continue to bestow His favour upon you. We recognize that our identity is inextricably entwined with lives beyond our own. This sense of expanded identity goes beyond human relationships. We depend upon trees, trees depend upon grasses, grasses depend upon animals, mountains depend upon oceans, the dolphin depends upon the farther star. Physically and spiritually, we all are woven into the living process of the Earth. We take part in—as science now tells us—a planet-sized living system. Our breathing, our acting, our thinking arise in interaction with our shared World. Our own hearts constantly beat out the cosmic rhythm within us. We cannot escape our involvement any more than we can escape breathing the air that has traveled from plants thousands of miles away. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
There is only one Overself for the whole race, but the point of contact with it is special and unique, and constitutes human’s higher individuality. The mountains, I become part of it. The herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it. The morning mists, the clouds, the gathering water, I become part of it. When we ground our spiritual awareness in this ecological context, then the strength and wisdom of the living Earth, in all its manifestations, flows through us. Our Earth Prayer becomes a means of acting upon ourselves. It helps us to empty the self and to open our hearts to be filled with empathy and creativity. The ecological self, like any notion of selfhood, is simply a metaphor, but it is a dynamic one. It involves our choice. We can choose at different moments to identify with different aspects of our interrelated existence—be they hunted whales, or humans without a home, or the planet itself. The prayers we recite remind us of this deep kinship—our boundedness with all of creation. Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bund on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of America, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Remember, the E in East Matches the E in Early!
The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, nor television. It is the manufacture, refinement, and distribution of anxiety. It is the only business based on the maxims, “The customer is always wrong,” “We aim to displease,” and “Send ‘em away unhappy.” Anxiety is the experience of Being affirming itself against Nonbeing. However, creative minds have always been able to survive any kind of bad training. The core of critical thinking is a willingness to actively evaluate ideas. True knowledge comes from constantly revising our understanding of the World. Admitting you are wrong is always hard—even though it is a skill that every psychologist has to learn. Few “truths” transcend the need for empirical testing. It is true that religious beliefs and personal values may be held without supporting evidence. However, most other ideas can be evaluated by applying the rules of logic and evidence. Judging the quality of evidence is crucial. Imagine that you are a juror in a courtroom, judging clams made by two battling lawyers. To decide correctly, you cannot just weigh the amount of evidence. You must also critically evaluate the quality of evidence. Then you can give greater weight to the most credible facts. Authority or claimed expertise does not automatically make an idea true. Just because a teacher, a guru, celebrity, or authority is convinced or sincere does not mean you should automatically believe them. Always ask, “What evidence convinced one? How good is it? It there a better explanation?” #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Critical thinking requires a veil of ignorance. One must imagine oneself in an original position being a veil of ignorance. Behind this veil, one knows nothing of oneself and one’s natural abilities, nor one’s position in society. Behind such a veil of ignorance all individuals are simply specified as rational, free, and morally equal beings. This prevents one from taking into account one’s ethical, social status, gender and, crucially, one’s individual idea of how to lead a good life. This is to insure impartiality of judgment by depriving parties of all knowledge of one’s personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances. Be prepared to consider daring departures and go wherever the evidence leads. However, do not becomes so “open-minded” that you are simply gullible. Critical thinkers strike a balance between open-mindedness and a healthy skepticism. They are ready to change their views when new evidence arises. Descriptions, or naming and classifying, is typically based on making detailed record of behavioural observations. However, a description does not explain anything, does it? Right. Useful knowledge begins with accurate descriptions, but descriptions fail to answer the important “why” questions. Why do more women attempt suicide, and why do more men complete it? When they are uncomfortable, why are more people aggressive? Why are bystanders often unwilling to help in an emergency? Psychology’s second goals is met when we can explain an event. This is, understanding usually means we can state the causes of behaviour. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Take our last “why” question as an example: Research on “bystander apathy” has shown that people often fail to help when other possible helpers are nearby. Why? Because a “diffusion of responsibility” occurs. Basically, no one feels personally obligated to pitch in. In general, the more potential helpers present, the less likely it is that help will be given. Now we can explain a perplexing problem. Psychology’s third goal, prediction, is the ability to forecast behaviour accurately. Notice that our explanation of bystander apathy makes a prediction about the chances of getting help. Anyone who has been stranded by car trouble on a busy freeway will recognize the accuracy of this prediction: Having many potential helpers nearby is no guarantee that anyone will stop to help. Behavioural predictions are quite useful. For instance, research predicts that if one flies east early in the say and west late in the day, one will suffer less jet lag. We have seen that moment-to-moment changes in activation can have major impact on performance. What about larger cycles of arousal? Do they also affect energy levels, motivation, and performance? Scientists have long known that the bodily activity is guided by internal “biological clocks.” Every 24 hours, your body undergoes a cycle of changes called circadian (SUR-kay-dee-AN) rhythms (circa: about; diem: a day). Throughout the day, large changes take place in body temperature, blood pressure, and amino acid levels. Also affected are the activities of the liver, kidneys, and endocrine glands. These activities, and many others, peak sometime each day. Output of the hormone adrenaline, which arouses the body, is often three to five times greater during the day. Most people are more energic and alert at that high point of their circadian rhythms. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
People with shorter circadian rhythms are “day people,” who wake up alert, peak early in the day, and fall asleep early in the evening. People with longer rhythms are “night people,” who wake up groggy, peak in the afternoon or early evening, and stay up late. Such differences are so basic that when a day person rooms with a night person, both are more likely to give the relationship a negative rating. This is easy to understand: What could be worse than having someone bounding around cheerily when you are half asleep, or the reverse? Circadian rhythms are most noticeable when there is a major shift in time schedules. Businesspersons, diplomats, athletes, and other time-zone travelers tend to make errors or perform poorly when their body rhythms are disturbed. If you travel great distances east or west, the peaks and valleys of your circadian rhythms will be out of phase with the sun and clocks. For example, you might find that you re wide awake and alert at midnight. Your low point, in contrast, occurs during the middle of the day. Shift work has the same effect, causing fatigue, inefficiency, irritability, upset stomach, and depression How fast do people adapt to tie shifts? For major time-zone shifts (5 hours or more) it can take from several days to 2 weeks to resynchronize. Adaptation to jet lag is slowest when you stay indoors, where you can sleep and eat on “home time.” Getting outdoors, where you must sleep, eat, an socialize on the new schedule, speeds adaptation. A 5-hour dose of bright sunlight early each day is particularly helpful for resetting your circadian rhythm in a new time zone. The same principle can be applied to shift work by bathing workers in bright light during their first few night shifts. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
The direction of travel also effects adaptation. If you fly west, adapting is relatively easy, taking an average of 4 to 5 hours. If you fly east, adapting takes 50 percent longer, or more. Why is there a difference? The answer is that when you fly east the sun comes up earlier (relative to your “home” time). Let us say that you live in Beverly Hills, California and Fly to Manhattan, New York. Getting up at 7AM in Manhattan will be like getting up at 4AM in Beverly Hills. If you fly west, the sun comes up later and it is easier for most people to “advance” (stay up later and sleep in) than it is to shift backward. Likewise, work shifts that “rotate” backward (night, evening, day) are more disruptive than those that advance (day, evening, night). Best of all are work shifts that do not change: Even continuous night work is less upsetting than rotating shifts. What does all of this have to do with those of us who are not shift workers or World travelers? There are few college students who have not at one time or another “burned the midnight oil,” especially for final exams. During any strenuous period, it is wise to remember that departing from your regular schedule is likely to cost more than it is worth. Often, you can do as much during 1 hour in the morning as you could have in 3 hours of work after midnight. The 2-hour difference in efficiency might as well be spent sleeping. If you feel you must deviate from your normal schedule, do it gradually over a few days. In general, if you can anticipate an upcoming body rhythm change (when traveling, before finals week, or when doing shift work), it is best to preadapt to your new schedule. Before traveling, for instance, you should go to sleep 1 hour later (or earlier) each day until your sleep cycle matches the time at your destination. If you are unable to do that, it at least helps to fly early in the day when you fly east. When you fly west, it is better to fly late. (Remember, the E in east matches the E in early.) #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
Studies of flight crews show that jet lag can also be minimized by a hormone called melatonin (mel-ah-TONE-in). Melatonin is normally produced at night by the pineal gland and suppressed during daylight. Melatonin has strong impact on the timing of body rhythms and sleep cycles. As far as the brain is concerned, it is bedtime when melatonin levels rise. Flight crews often suffer severe disruptions in their sleep cycles. For example, a crew that leaves Los Angeles at 4PM, bound for London, will arrive in 8 hours. Crew members’ bodes, which are on California time, will act as if it is 12AM. Yet in London, it will be 8AM. Recent studies confirm that melatonin can help people adjust more rapidly to such time-zone changes. To resent the body’s clock in a new time zone, a small amount of melatonin can be taken about an hour before bedtime. This dose is continued for as many days as necessary to ease jet lag. The same treatment can be used for rotating work shifts. Predication is especially important in psychometrics (mental measurement). Experts in this area use test to predict success in school, work, or a career. Description, explanation, and prediction seems reasonable, but is control a valid goal for psychology? Control may seem like a threat to your personal freedom. However, to a psychologist, control simply means altering conditions that influence behaviour in predictable ways. If I suggest changes in the classroom that help children learn better, I have exerted control. If a psychologist helps a person overcome a terrible fear of heights, control is involved. Clearly, psychological control must be used wisely and humanely. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Psychology’s goals come from a natural desire to understand behaviour, which leads us to ask: What is the nature of this behaviour? (Description.) Why does it occur? (Understanding and explanation.) Can we predict when it will occur? (Prediction.) What conditions affect it? (Control.) The Christian understanding of power is that it is found most often in weakness. This paradox has been a thorn in the flesh of tyrants. The Judeo-Christian teaching that humans are vulnerable to the temptations of power has also caused democracies and free nations to build restraints and balances of power into their studies. Clearly this is what motivated the revolutionaries in England to guarantee a Parliament independent of the monarchy. And in American the Founding Fathers, influenced by Judeo-Christian teaching about the vulnerability of humans, wisely adopted the principle of the separation of powers. Within the government, power was diffused through a system of checks and balances so no one branch could dominate another. The Founders also assumed that the religious value system, evidenced through the separate institution of the church, would be the most powerful brake on the natural avarice of government. As Tocqueville observed, “Religion in America takes no direct path in the government or society but it must, nevertheless, be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country.” The most important restraint on power, however, is a healthy understanding of its true source. When power in the conventional sense is relinquished, one discovers a much deeper power. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Prisoners often discover this, as did Mr. Jerry Levin and Mr. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In his memoirs of the gulag, Mr. Solzhenitsyn wrote that as long as he was trying to maintain some pitiful degree of Worldly power in his situation—control of food, clothing, schedule—he was constantly under the heel of his captors. However, after his conversion, when he accepted and surrendered to his utter powerlessness, then he became free of even his captors’ power. Perhaps this is why Mr. Boris Pasternak once wrote that the only place one can be free in a communist society is in prison. The apostle Paul said, “My power is made perfect in weakness,” and concluded, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” And throughout Scripture God reveals a special compassion for the powerless: widows, orphans, prisoners, and aliens. Though the message of the Kingdom of God offers salvation for all who repent and believe, God does not conceal His disdain for those who repent and believe, God does not conceal His disdain for those so enamoured of their own power that they refuse to worship Him or to acknowledge His delight in the humble. A culture that exalts power and celebrity, that worships success and the fake news media, dismisses such words as nonsense. I have had reporters tell me that they do not have time to read the Bible. However, they sure have time to lie and conjure up chaos to keep people in a state of fear, hatred, and anxiety. Strong individuals rely on their own resources—which will never, ultimately speaking, be enough—but the so-called weak person knows one’s own limits and needs, and thus depends wholly on God. Perhaps this is why God so often confounds the wisdom of the World by accomplishing His purposes through the powerless and His most powerful work through human weakness. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
I first learned this in school. When the frustration of my helplessness seemed the greatest, I discovered God’s grace was more than sufficient. And after I enrolled in college to study in China, I could look back and see how God used my powerlessness for His purposes. What God has chosen for my most significant witness was not my triumphs or victories, but my defeat. Similarly, counseling in schools has been effective not because of any power we may have as an organization, but because of the powerlessness of those we serve. During this COVID-19 pandemic, several millions of people, including a number of politicians, are crowded in abysmal conditions; hatred, hostility, and despair seeping out of their homes and offices. Yet within the darkness, the Kingdom of God is giving the thriving Christian community a reason to live—people who have finding Jesus Christ and experiencing renewed hearts and minds. The churches are shinning and blessed with the loving embraces of members of the Christian community, and they are addressing these officials at the highest levels of government—and they are listening intently. Had I gone to China specifically to meet with the key government leadership, I would have likely been stymied. They wanted to meet me not because of any power or influence I had, but because of our work in America. They knew that education, hard work, and faith in God was doing something to bring healing and restoration. Therefore, they were eager to listen to our recommendations, ready to discuss a biblical view of justice and educational issues. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Whatever authority I had in speaking to these powerful men and women came not from my power but from serving the powerless. I have experienced this in country after country. It is the paradox of real power. Nothing distinguishes the kingdoms of humans from the Kingdom of God more than their diametrically opposed views of the exercise of power. One seeks to control people, the other to serve people; one promotes self, the other prostrates self; one seeks prestige and position, the other lifts up to lowly and despised. It is crucial for Christians to understand this difference. For through this upside-down view of power, the Kingdom of God can play a special role in the affairs of the World. As citizens of the Kingdom today practice this view of power, they are setting an example for their neighbours by modeling servanthood and exposing the illusions power creates. However, how does this paradoxical view of power apply to the Christian who is in a position of influence and control? Power involves the use of coercive force to make others yield to one’s wishes even against their own will. Authority is achieved—or is conferred upon one—by virtue of character that others are motivated to follow willingly. Therefore, the citizens of the Kingdom should seek authority that comes from one’s own spiritual strength. Never for self-advantage, but for the benefit of others. This does not mean that the Christians cannot use power. In positions of leadership, especially in government institutions to which God has specifically granted the power of the sword, the Christian can do so in good conscious. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
However, the Christian uses power with a different motive and in different ways: not to impose one’s personal will over others but to preserve God’s plan for order and justice for all. Those who accept the biblical view of servant leadership treat power as a humbling delegation from God, not as a right to control others. Moses offers a great role model. Though he had awesome power and responsibility as the leader of two million Israelites, he was described in Scripture as “a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the Earth.” He led by serving—intervening before God on his people’s behalf, seeking God’s forgiveness for their rebellion and caring for their needs above one’s own. The challenge for the Christian in a position of influence is to follow the example of Moses rather than fulfill Nietzche’s prophecy concerning the will to power. In doing so the citizen of the Kingdom has an opportunity to offer light to a World often shrouded by the dark pretensions of a devastating succession of power-mad tyrants. Someone attaining to the more complex forms of the morality of association, as expressed say by the ideal of equal citizen, has an understanding certainly of the principles of justice. One has also developed an attachment to many particular individuals and communities, and one is disposed to follow the moral standards that apply to one in one’s various positions and which are upheld by social approval and disapproval. Having become affiliated with others and aspiring to live up to these ethical conceptions, one is concerned to win acceptance of one’s conduct and aims. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
It would seem that whole the individual understands the principles of justice, one’s motive for complying with them, for some time at least, springs largely from one’s ties of friendship and fellow feeling for others, and one’s concern for the approbation of the wider society. Consider the process whereby a person becomes attached to these highest-order principles themselves, so that just as during the earlier phase of the morality of association one may want to be a good sport, say, one now wishes to be a just person. The conception of acting justly, and of advancing just institutions, comes to have for one an attraction analogous to that possessed before by subordinate ideals. In conjecturing how this morality of principles might come about (principles here meaning first principles such as those considered in the original position), we should note that the morality of association quite naturally leads up to a knowledge of the standards of justice. In a well-ordered society anyway not only do those standards define the public conception of justice, but citizens who take an interest in political affairs, and those holding legislative and judicial and other similar offices, are constantly required to apply and to interpret them. They often have to take up the point of view of others, not simply with the aim of working out what they will want and probably do, but for the purpose of striking a reasonable balance between competing claims and for adjusting the various subordinate ideals of the morality of association. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
To put the principles of justice into practice requires that we adopt the standpoints defined by the four-stage sequence. As the situation dictates, we take up the perspective of a constitutional convention, or of a legislature, of whatever. Eventually one achieves a mastery of these principles and understands the values they secure and the way in which they are to everyone’s advantage. Now this leads to an acceptance of these principles by a third psychological law. This law states that once the attitudes of love and trust, and of friendly feelings and mutual confidence, have been generated in accordance with the two preceding psychological laws, then the recognition that we and those for whom we care are the beneficiaries of an established and enduring just institution tends to engender in us the corresponding sense of justice. We develop a desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice once we realize how social arrangements answering to them have promoted our good and that of those with whom we are affiliated. In due course we come to appreciate the ideal of just human cooperation. Now a sense of justice shows itself in at least two ways. First, it leads us to accept the just institutions that apply to us and from which we and our associates have benefited. We want to do out part in maintaining these arrangements. When we do not honour our duties and obligations, we tend to feel guilty, even though we are not bound to those of whom we take advantage by any ties of particular fellow feeling. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
It may be that they have not yet had sufficient opportunity to display an evident intention to do their share, and are not therefore the objects of such feelings by the second law. Or, again, the institutional scheme in question may be so large that particular bonds never get widely built up. In any case, the citizen body as a whole is not generally bound together by ties of fellow feeling between individuals, but by the acceptance of public principles of justice. While every citizen is a friend to some citizens, no citizen is a friend to all. However, their common allegiance to justice provides a unified perspective from which they can adjudicate their differences. Secondly, a sense of justice gives rise to a willingness to work for (or at least not to oppose) the setting up of just institutions, and for the reform of existing ones when justice it requires. We desire to act on the natural duty to advance just arrangements. And this inclination goes beyond the support of those particular schemes that have affirmed our good. It seeks to extend the conception they embody to further situations for the good of the larger community. When we go against our sense of justice, we explain our feelings of guilt by reference to the principles of justice. These feelings, then, are accounted for quite differently than the emotions of authority and association of guilt. The complete moral development has now taken place and for the first time we experience feelings of guilt in the strict sense; and the same is true of the other moral emotions. In the child’s case, the notion of a moral ideal, and the relevance of intentions and motives, are not understood, and so the appropriate setting for feelings of (principle) guilt does not exist. And in the morality of association, moral feelings depend essentially on ties of friendship and trust to particular individuals or communities, and moral conduct is based in large part on wanting the approval of one’s associates. This may still be true even in the more demanding phases of this morality. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Individuals in their role as citizens with full understanding of the content of the principles of justice may be moved to act upon them largely because of their bonds to particular persons and an attachment to their own society. Once a morality of principles is accepted, however, moral attitudes are no longer connected solely with the well-being and approval of particular individuals and groups, but are shaped by a conception of right chosen irrespective of these contingencies. Our moral sentiments display an independence from the accidental circumstances of our World, the meaning of this independence being given by the description of the original position and its Kantian interpretation. Which means that the person is seen as free and equal agents with different rational and more capacities, and this conception of the person is the basis of a deliberative procedure incorporating different requirements of practical reason that is used to justify a set of normative principles. However, even though moral sentiments are in this sense independent from contingencies, our natural attachments to particular persons and groups still have an appropriate place. For within the morality of principles the infractions which earlier gave rise to (association) guilt and resentment, and to the other moral feelings, now occasion these feelings in the strict sense. A reference to the relevant principle is made in explaining one’s emotions. When the natural ties of friendship and mutual trust are present, however, these moral feelings are more intense if they are absent. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
Existing attachments heighten the feeling of guilt and indignation, or whatever feeling is called for, even at the stage of the morality of principles. Now granting that this heightening is appropriate, it follows that violations of these natural ties are wrong. For if we suppose that, say, a rational feeling of guilt (that is, a feeling of guilt arising from applying the correct moral principles in the light of true or reasonable beliefs) implies a fault on our part, and that a greater feeling of guilt implies a fault on our part, and that a greater feeling of guilt implies a greater fault, then indeed breach of trust and the betrayal of friendship, and the like, are especially forbidden. The violation of these ties to particular individuals and groups arouses more intense moral feelings, and this entails that these offenses are worse. To be sure, deceit and infidelity are always wrong, being contrary to natural duties and obligations. However, they are not always equally wrong. They are worse whenever bounds of affection and good faith have been formed, and this consideration is relevant in working out the appropriate priority rules. It may seem strange at first that we should come to have the desire to act from a conception of right and justice. How is it possible that moral principles can engage our affections? In justice as fairness there are several answers to this question. First of all, as we have seen, moral principles are bound to have a certain content. Since they are chosen by rational persons to adjudicate competing claims, they define agreed ways of advancing human interests. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Institutions and actions are appraised from the standpoint of securing these ends; and therefore pointless principles, for example, that one is not to look up at the sky on Tuesdays, are rejected as burdensome and irrational constraints. In the original position rational persons have no reason for acknowledging standards of this kind. However, secondly, it is also the case that the sense of justice is continuous with the love of humankind. When the many objects of its love oppose one another, benevolence is at a loss. The principles of justice are needed to guide it. The difference between the sense of justice and the love of humankind is that the latter is supererogatory, going beyond the moral requirements and not invoking the exemptions which the principles of natural duty and obligation allow. Yet clearly the objects of these two sentiments are closely related, being defined in large part by the conception of justice. If one of them seems natural and intelligible, so is the other. Moreover, feelings of guilt and indignation are aroused by the injuries and deprivations of others unjustifiably brought about either by ourselves or third parties, and our sense of justice is offended in the same way. The content of the principles of justice accounts for this. Finally, the Kantian interpretation of these principles shows that by acting upon them humans express their nature as free and equal rational beings. Since doing this belongs to their good, the sense of justice aims at their well-being even more directly. It supports those arrangements that enable everyone to express one’s common nature. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
Indeed, without a common or overlapping sense of justice civic friendship cannot exist. The desire to act justly is not, then, a form of blind obedience to arbitrary principles unrelated to rational aims. I should not, of course, contend that justice as fairness is the only doctrine that can interpret the sense of justice in a natural way. A utilitarian never regards oneself as acting merely for the sake of an impersonal law, but always for the welfare of some being or beings for whom one has some degree of fellow feelings. The utilitarian view, and no doubt perfectionism as well, meets the condition that the sentiment of justice can be characterized so that it is psychologically understandable. Best of all, a theory should present a description of an ideally just state of affairs, a conception of a well-ordered society such that aspiration to realize this state of affairs, and to maintain it in being, answers to our good and is continuous with our natural sentiments. A perfectly just society should be part of an ideal that rational human beings could desire more than anything else once they had full knowledge and experience of what it was. The content of the principles of justice, the way in which they are derived, and the stages of moral development, show how in justice as fairness such an interpretation is possible. It would seem, then, that the doctrine of the purely conscientious act is rational. This doctrine holds, first, that the highest moral motive is the desire to do what is right and just simply because it is right and just, no other description being appropriate. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
And second, that while other motives certainly have moral value, for example the desire to do what is right because doing this increases human happiness, or because it tends to promote equality, these desires are less morally worthy than that to do what is right solely in virtue of its being right. The sense of right is a desire for a distinct (and unanalyzable) object, since a specific (and unanalyzable) property characterizes actions that are our duty. The other morally worthy desire, while indeed desires for things necessarily connected with what is right, are not desires for the right as such. However, on this interpretation the sense of right lacks any apparent reason; it resembles a preference for tea rather than coffee. Although such a preference might exist, to make it regulative of the basic structure of society is utterly capricious; and no less so because it is masked by a fortunate necessary connection with reasonable grounds for judgments of right. However, for one who understand and accepts the contract doctrine, the sentiment of justice is not a different desire from that to act on principles that rational individuals would consent t in an initial situation which gives everyone equal representation as a moral person. Nor is it different from wanting to act in accordance with principles that express human’s nature as free and equal rational beings. The principles of justice answer to these descriptions and this fact allows us to give an acceptable interpretation to the sense of justice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
In the light of theory of justice, we understand how the moral sentiments can be regulative in our life and have the role attributed to them by the formal conditions on moral principles. Being governed by these principles means that we want to live with others on terms that everyone would recognize as fair from a perspective that all would accept as reasonable. The ideal of persons cooperating on the basis exercises a natural attraction upon our affections. Finally, we may observe that the morality of principles takes two forms, one corresponding to the sense of right and justice, the other to the love of humankind and to self-command. As we have noted, the latter is supererogatory, while the former is not. In its normal form of right and justice the morality of principles includes the virtues of the moralities of authority and association. It defines that last stage at which all subordinate ideals are finally understood and organized into coherent system by suitably general principles. The virtues of the other moralities receive their explanation and justification within the larger scheme; and their respective claims are adjusted by the priorities assigned by the more comprehensive conception. The morality of supererogation has two aspects depending upon the direction in which the requirements of the morality of principles are willingly surpassed. One the one hand, the love of humankind shows itself in advancing the common good in ways that go well beyond our natural duties and obligations. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
This morality is not one for ordinary persons, and its peculiar virtues are those of benevolence, a heightened sensitivity to the feelings and wants of others, and a proper humility and unconcern with self. The morality of self-command, on the other hand, in its simplest form is manifest in fulfilling with complete ease and grace the requirements of right and justice. It becomes truly supererogatory when the individual displays its characteristic virtues of courage, magnanimity, and self-control in actions presupposing great discipline and training. And this one may do either by freely assuming offices and positions which call upon these virtues if their duties are to be well performed; or else by seeking superior ends in a manner consistent with justice but surpassing the demands of duty and obligation. This the moralities of supererogation, those of the saint and the hero, do not contradict the norms of right and justice; they are marked by the willing adoption by the self of aims continuous with these principles but extending beyond what they enjoin. A “future shock absorber” of a quite different type is the “half-way house” idea already employed by progressive prison authorities to ease the convict’s way back into normal life. According to criminologist Daniel Glaser, the distinctive feature of the correctional institutions of the future will be the idea of “gradual release.” Instead of taking a human out of the under-stimulating, tightly regimented life of the prison and plunging one violently and without preparation into open society, one is moved first to an intermediate institution which permits one to work in the community by day, while continuing to return to the institution at night. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
The fact of the matter is prisons are overcrowded, and recidivism is so high because once people are released from correctional institutions, many of them are unemployable because of policies corporations have against hiring someone with a criminal record. Recidivism rates by state vary, but California is among the highest in the nation. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, more than 65 percent of those released from California’s prison system return within three years. Now, many people are looking for affordable labour and skills. If there was a corporation that hired former prisoners and ensured clients that their workers are safe, many people may want to hire them at a discounted rate to save on labour cost, and it would decrease recidivism by at least 11 percent, which is substantial. Steady employment can lead to a reduction in criminal behaviour through the accumulation of conventional ties that accompany steady employment. In other words, stable employment is expected to deter offenders from crimes. When former prisoners find a job immediately after release and retain it during the 6-month follow-up, they will be able to accumulate bonds with their employer and co-workers (conventional others). Based on nations of social control theories, we therefore expect that former prisoners who are able to retain a job during the 6-month follow-up are less likely to reoffend than former prisoners who lose this job. With their housing situation, gradually restrictions are lifted until one is fully adjusted to the outside World. The same principle has been explored by various mental institutions. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Similarly it has been suggested that the problems of rural populations suddenly shifted to urban centers might be sharply reduced if something like this half-way house principle were employed and they had someone to monitor them, entertain them, and enforce the rules like a parent would do because sometimes there people are not ready to live on their own and cannot handle the responsibility of being respectful and managing their own home or bodily functions. What cities need, according to this theory, are reception facilities where newcomers live for a time under conditions half-way between those of the rural society they are leaving behind and the urban society they are seeking to penetrate. If instead of treating city-bound migrants with contempt and leaving them to find their own way, they were first acclimatized, they would adapt far more successfully. A similar idea is filtering through the specialists who concern themselves with “squatter housing” in major cities in the technologically underdeveloped World. Outside Khartoum in the Sudan, thousands of former nomads have created a concentric ring of settlements. Those further from the city live in tents, much like the ones they occupied before the migration. The next-closer group lives in mud-walled huts with tent roofs. Those still closer to the city occupy huts with mud walls and tin roofs. When the police set out to tear down the tents, urban planner Constantions Doxiadis recommended that they not only destroy the, but that certain municipal services be provided to their inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
Instead of seeing these concentric rings in wholly negative terms, he suggested, they might be viewed as a tremendous teaching machine through which individuals and families move, becoming urbanized step by step. The application of this principle, however, need not be limited to the less affluent, insane or criminal. The basic idea of providing change in controlled, graduated stages, rather than abrupt transitions, is crucial to any society that wishes to cope with rapid or social or technological upheaval. The veteran, for example, could be released from service more gradually. The student from a rural community could send a few weeks at a college in a medium-size city before entering the large urban university. The long-term hospital patient might ne encouraged to go home on a trial basis, once or twice, before being discharged. We are already experimenting with these strategies, but others are possible. Retirement, for example, should not be the abrupt, all-or-nothing, ego-crushing change that it now is for most humans. There is no reason why it cannot be gradualized. Military induction, which typically separates a young person from one’s family in a sudden and almost client fashion, could be done by stages. Legal separation, which is supposed to serve as a kind of half-way house on the way to divorce, could be made less legally complicated and psychologically costly. Trial marriage could be encouraged, instead of denigrated. Whenever a change of status is contemplated, the possibility of gradualizing it should be considered. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. However, there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed something irreparable happens, the extent of which you will not realize until it will be too late. And other harm their souls even without being exposed to great temptations. They simply let their souls wither. They allow themselves to be dulled by the joys and worries and distractions of life, not realizing that thoughts which earlier meant a great deal to them in their youth turned into meaningless sounds. In the end they have lost all feeling for everything that makes up the inner life. At this season of joyous thanksgiving, we are grateful unto Thee, O Keeper of America, for Thy many bounties with which Thou does bless us and for the protecting care with which Thy love doth watch over us. As Thou didst cause our fathers to dwell in Salt Lake City, Utah USA of Thy glory amid the perils of the wilderness, so spread Thou over us and over all America, the Salt Lake City of Thy love. O beneficent Father, as we recall this day the gratitude of the children of America for the harvest of their fields in Midwest, we, too, acknowledge Thee, the source of all our bounties. For all our blessings we give Thee thanks. May the Scriptures we read today teach us to share Thy gifts with those in need. Hasten that day when the children of America, in the land of their fathers, shall bring in their sheaves with rejoicing. We pray that Thou who didst protect our forefathers when they dwelt in the wilderness, wilt extend Thy blessing of peace over American and over all the peoples of the Earth. Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Success Means Never Having to Admit You are Unhappy!
As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future. They say in Hollywood if you want messages, you go to Western Union. The doctors thought you should really stay a few centuries more to be sure we have stabilized your condition. I really do not recommend you leaving us at this time. In Hollywood, success is relative. The closer the relative, the greater the success. Many people are recommending that California comes with a warning sign of the city limits: WARNING! PROCEED NO FURTHER! WARD O FOR BIPLOAR CONDITIONS. OCCUPANTS MAY BE VIOLENT. THEY NEED VRAYLAR However, I am telling you to ignore that and come on in. Look, buddy, it is dangerous to get out of bed in the morning. Are you a mortal in a desperate situation or are you not? Then come in here. This is your last resort, babe. However, of course it is up to you. The primary insight is a human’s awareness that one’s destiny is not synonymous with one’s daily experiences. You who have been through so much suffering, have tasted this inner freedom from outward events. You know there have been times when, according to the rules, you should have been smashed to the ground by what occurred. In such moments you were surprised by yourselves. You have the feeling you were being lifted up inwardly, as though the spiritual were triumphing over the material. You recognized a sort of happiness—if it can be called that—a happiness which would have been hidden by an unbroken succession of good days. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
You began to understand what the apostle Paul meant when he said, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” The peace of God begins when this fleeting experience can be preserved and turned into a permanent conviction. It is harder for us today to feel near God among the streets and houses of the city than it is for country folk. For them the harvested fields bathed in the autumn mists speak of God and His goodness far more vividly than any human lips. If we really want to labour in the true spirit, to hope, to keep silent, and to work alone—that is what we must learn to do. However, what exactly does it involve, this plowing? The plowman does not pull the plow. He does not push it. He only directs it. This is just how events move in our lives. We can do nothing but guide them straight in the direction which leads to our Lord Jesus Christ, striving toward him, and the furrow will plow itself. The paths into which God leads humankind are shrouded in darkness for us. There are only two ground rules. They go together, and each taken by itself is enigmatic. The first is that all sin requires atonement. The second is that all progress demands sacrifice, which has to be paid for by the lives of those chosen to be offered up. We sense this more than we understand. We do not subscribe to the belief that the divine soul has somehow gone astray and got enslaved by the terrestrial body. One’s higher self is not polluted by one’s own pollutions any more than sunlight is affected by the foul places in which it often shines. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The natural kiss is the kiss which will be given if moral or prudential considerations do not intervene. In all the examples of Natures means what happens “of itself” or “of its own accord”: what you do not need to labour for; what you will get if you take no measures to stop it. The Greek work for Nature (Physis) is connected with the Greek verb “to grow”; Latin Natura, which the verb “to be born.” The Natural is what springs up, or comes forth, or arrives, or goes on, of its own accord: the given, what is there already; the spontaneous, the unintended, the unsolicited. The higher self affects the ego but is not affected by it. Its existence goes on quite independently of the serialized Earth appearances of the ego, and persists when the other ceases. The insensitive can never know it, and may roundly deny it, but the others sometimes receive unforgettable glimpses for which they give thanks to God for years after. Just as space is unaffected equally by evil deeds or virtuous actions of humans, so the Overself is unaffected by the character or conduct of the ego. It is neither made worse by the ego’s wrong-doing nor better by its righteousness. “I am the way, the Truth,” announced Jesus Christ. Who is this I? In the narrow and shallower sense, it is the master. In the broader and deeper sense, it is the Christ-self within the spiritual consciousness. Why did Jesus Christ say, “I am my Father are one,” but yet a little later add, “The Father is greater than I?” The answer is that Jesus the man had attained complete harmony with His higher Self and felt himself one with it, but the universal Christ-principle will always be greater than the man himself; the Overself will always transcend the person. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Although I is still identified with one, since it is one’s own mind at its best level, it is immensely grander, wiser, and nobler than one. It is an entity greater, nobler, wiser, and stronger than oneself yet mysteriously and inseparably linked to oneself; it is indeed one’s super-self. Our bodies are born at some point of time and somewhere in space but their essence, the Overself, is birthless, timeless, and placeless. This is a human’s true individuality, not that mentally constructed “I” (which deludes one into acceptance as such). It is never anything else than its own perfect self, never contrary to its own unique and infinite nature. It is true that we are but poor and faulty, sadly limited, and miserably shrunken expressions of the divine spirit. Nevertheless, we are expression of it. Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will would mean that humans beings have the power of independent action, the power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of events. And any such separate power of originating events is what the Naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, actions “on its own,” is a privilege reserved for “the whole show,” which one calls Nature. The Supernaturalist agrees with the Naturalist that there must be something which exists in its own right; some basic Fact whose existence it would be nonsensical to try to explain because this Fact is itself the ground or starting-point of all explanations. However, one does not identify this Fact with “the whole show.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
There is a tendency of Christian Science to enter a region of misunderstanding the moment it attempts to apply its true principles to things of this Earth. There is a time in the far past of the human race, a time now lost in the dim mists of antiquity, when the life of humans was stretched to a number of years far in excess of hat it is today. That time has been hinted at by horary legends of a Golden Age and by biblical stories of a pre-Flood race. Such a time will return in the cyclic course of our planet’s history, but naturally it is far-off in the future. Nature herself is in no hurry. She has plenty of time to accomplish her purposes. And in those days humans will again have a normal life-span of maybe one thousand years. There exists in the Old World a certain ancient knowledge—which promises its votaries astonishing benefits in longevity. This age-old art is similar to alchemy of medieval Europe, when humans sought rigorously in experiments for the elixir of life. It is of such antiquity that those who hand it down tell us it was born just after the time when the legendary gods had ceased to walk this Earth. The exponents have almost disappeared from the World, but the tradition is so widespread throughout the Old World that solitary individuals still practise it in remote and unfrequented places. So difficult are the exercises which belong to this system, so labourious are its practices, so ascetic the self-discipline which it involves, that one can understand why it has almost faded out of existence. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
It performs strange feats such as reanimating dead bodies, stopping blood circulation and lung action, permitting knives and daggers to be run like skewers through living flesh without harming it and with an extremely rapid drying of blood (do NOT try this!), and even the burial alive of an enriched body beneath the ground and its safe resurrection several hours or some day later. The principal basis of these feats consists in making certain changes in the breath rhythm, changes which involve such risk to life and health that we are not prepared to assume the responsibility of describing here the exercises for the development of such powers. It is also necessary to live a celibate and chaste existence, to refrain from expending energy in Worldly work and business, and to reduce diet to an astonishing minimum. Because they demand a special and severely ascetic training which is the work of several years devoted wholly to this austere task, such feats are necessarily uncommon. The ordinary layperson could hardly be expected to find the time for such training, nor is there any necessity for one to do so. These displays are certainly spectacular but have primarily only scientific, medical, and theatrical values rather than a general one. Meanwhile, Nature has set her brief term to the human body, and those whose attachment to the body is not overweening will resignedly accept that terms while the others must do so unwillingly. However, this is a different matter—living in the flesh body for ever and ever, a notion which must seem insupportable to many who find the present brief term of human’s existence quite enough for them to cope with. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
If Nature cared so much to preserve the physical body of humans, she would not introduce Earthquakes, eruptions, hurricanes, famines, pestilences, and floods into the scheme of things. The fact that she does do so indicates rather that she regards one’s body as being only a fragment of the human, not as the full human oneself. Some had the idea, of course, that in ancient times, sin and sickness would also have disappeared from the World, so that our existence would be a halcyon one. It is a pretty picture, but human’s true home is not in the tabernacle of flesh; it is elsewhere. The fleshly body is but a temporary abiding place at best, and when humans have arrived at a state of perfect spirituality one will abandon it and use a vehicle more consonant with one’s higher condition, an electromagnetic body that will more easily and more faithfully represent one. Yes, death will be conquered, but not in the way that Christian Scientists imagine. It will be conquered firstly, by extending the duration of human life to a constantly increasing period; and secondly, by completely abandoning the physical body for a subtler one. The clear real inner human—one’s spiritual being—is undying and immortal. When many began to consider that inner being in relation to its transient Earthly tenement, the body, they become confused and misunderstand the nature of that relationship. The hour of every human’s death is fixed by a higher will than one’s own, by that power which some call destiny but which itself takes its rise out of the Infinite Power, and no Christian Science practitioner or ordinary physician has ever “saved” the life of anyone. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
A human’s own Overself fixes the dates of certain major events in one’s life prior to the moment when one utters one’s first cry as a babe, and the date of one’s death is but one of those appointed hours. Perhaps, if the choose, some people have the option to reschedule; others do not. At this point, not in the sky, nor in the depths of the ocean, nor by entering the caverns of the mountain, nowhere in the World can such a place be found where a human might dwell without being overpowered by death. However, “in those days humans will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them,” Revelation 9.6. We are as birds on the wheel of the Universe. For all our loud tweeting, it still rolls along on its own path. And yet these people confidently imagine they set the great Laws of Destiny at naught, and interfere with the workings of the Cosmic Plan. In that sense there might be several “Natures.” This conception must be kept quite distinct from what is commonly called “plurality of Worlds”—id est, different solar systems or different galaxies, “island Universes” existing in widely separated parts of a single space and time. These, however remote, would be parts of the same Nature as our own sun: it and they would be interlocked by being in relations to one another, spatial and temporal relations and causal relations as well. Ans it is just this reciprocal interlocking within a system which makes it what we call a Nature. Other Natures might not be spatio-temporal at all: or, if any of them were, their space and time would have no spatial or temporal relation to ours. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It is just this discontinuity, this failure of interlocking, which would justify us in calling them different Natures. This does not mean that there would be absolutely no relation between them; they would be related by their common derivation from a single Supernatural source. They would, in this respect, be like different novels by a single author; the events in one story have no relation to the events in another except that they are invented by the same author. To find a relation to between them you must go right back to the author’s mind: there is no cutting across from anything. However, God might bring the two Natures into partial contact at some particular point: that is, He might allow selected events in the one to produce results in the other. There would thus be, at certain points, a partial interlocking; but this would not turn the two Natures into one, for the total reciprocity which makes a Nature would still be lacking, and the anomalous interlocking would arise not from what either system was in itself but from the Divine act which was brining them together. If this occurred each of the two Natures would be “supernatural” in relation to the other: but the fact of their contact would be supernatural in a more absolute sense—not as being beyond this or that Nature but beyond any and every Nature. It would be one kind of Miracle. The other kind would be Divine “interference” not by bringing together of two Natures, but simply. However, God may never interfere with the natural system He created. He may never cause His natural systems to impinge on one another. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
If the movements of the individual units are events “on their own,” events which do not interlock with all other evens, then these movements are not part of Nature. It would be, indeed, too great a shock to our habits to describe them as super-natural. I think we should have to call them sub-natural. However, all our confidence that Nature has no doors, and no reality outside herself for doors to open on, would have disappeared. There is apparently something outside her, the Subnatural; it is indeed from this Subnatural that all events and all “bodies” are, as it were, fed into her. And clearly if she thus has a back door (door to nowhere) opening on the Subnatural, it is quite on the cards that she may also have a front door opening on the Supernatural—and events might be fed into her at that door, too. The movements of individual units are permanently incalculable to us, not that they are in themselves random and lawless. All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true. To be caused is not to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejucides, and delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting person’s opinion is to explain them causally—“You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a mere man, or a woman.” This implication is that is causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise wither it had grounds or not. We need not, it is felt, consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The Universal and Infinite cannot be packed into the personal and finite, your demand, natural though it be, is unreasonable. God Himself knows not what He is, for He is not a “what.” So why ask a mere human? Just as there is a sun hidden behind the sun, the divinity which animates it, so in the human being there is a Mind within the mind—and that is one’s Overself. The personality is always limited and chained, the higher individuality always infinite and free. Each human is the expression of this infinite life-power. One’s awareness of life in the five senses will rest upon another and inner awareness. A second and hidden self will thus seem to support one’s outer one. The true I yields quite a different feeling, experience, and consciousness from the familiar physical ego. There is a deeper level of every human’s mind which is not subject to one’s passions, not moved by one’s desires, not affected by one’s sense. It is not possible for the timeless, spaceless, formless Overself to be degraded into activity by its time-bound, space-tied, form-limited offspring the person. The essence of human beings is not one’s Earthly body. Nor is it the ghostly duplicate of that body, as many spiritists and some religionists think. The Overself is the Higher mind in humans, one’s divine soul as distinguished from one’s human-terrestrial nature. It is the same as Plato’s “nous.” The true unchanging self is apart from any historical era and is not dependent on outer changes of custom and form. The aim of the mystic is to know what one is, apart from one’s physical body, one’s lower emotion, one’s personal ego; it is to know one’s inner-most self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
When this aim is successfully realized, one knows then with perfect certitude that one is a ray of the divine sun. How shall one know and understand that this very awareness, of which so small is the fragment that one experiences, is a limited and conditioned part of the Great Awareness itself, of God? The inhabitant of this fleshly body, including its accompanying invisible “ghost,” is a sacred one. There, within and yet behind one’s personal consciousness, is this other sphere of one’s own being into which one must one day be re-born as a Blue Jay from an egg. This is one’s best self; this is what one really is under all the defects. The relation between response and stimulus is utterly different from that between knowledge and truth known. Our physical vision is a far more useful response to light than that of the cruder organisms which have only a photo-sensitive spot. God is older than Nature, and from it the orderliness of Nature, which alone enables us to know her, is derived. The human mind in the acts of knowing is illuminated by Divine reason. It is set free, in the measure required, from the huge nexus of non-rational causation; free from this to be determined by the truth known. And, if there were any, the preliminary processes within Nature which led up to this liberation were designed to. At the frontier where the “outer World” ends and what I should ordinarily call “myself” begins, we find a great deal of traffic but it is all one-way traffic. It is a matter of daily experience that rational thoughts induce and enable us to alter the course of Nature—of physical nature when we use mathematic to build bridges, or of psychological nature when we apply arguments to alter our own emotions. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
We succeed in modifying physical nature more often and more completely than we succeed in modifying psychological nature, but we do at least a little to both. On the other hand, Nature is quite powerless to produce rational thought: not that she never modifies our thinking but that the moment she does so, it ceases (for that very reason) to be rational. The problem is whether you or I can be such a self-existent Reason. This question almost answers itself the moment we remember what existence “on one’s own” means. It means that kind of existence which Naturalists attribute to “the whole show” and Supernatiralists to God. Human minds, then, are not only supernatural entities that exist. They do not come from nowhere. Each has come into Nature from Supernature: each has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existent, rational Being, whom we call God. Each offshoot, or spearhead, or incursion of that Supernatural reality into Nature. It seems that human thought is not God’s but God-kindled. I must hasten, however, that we are considering miracles, not about everything. I am attempting no full doctrine of man: and I am not in the least trying to smuggle in an argument for the “immortality of the soul.” The earliest Christian documents give a casual and unemphatic assent to the belief that the supernatural part of a human survives the death of the natural organism. However, they are very little interested in the matter. What they are intensely interested in is the restoration or “resurrection” of the whole composite creature by a miraculous divine act: and until we have come to some conclusion about miracles in general, we shall certainly not discuss that. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
At this stage the supernatural element in humans concerns us solely as evidence that something beyond Nature exists. The dignity and destiny of humans has, at present, nothing to do with the argument. We are interested in humans only because their rationality is the little tell-tale rift in Nature which shows that there is something beyond or behind her. In a pond whose surface was completely covered with scum and floating vegetation, there might be a few waterlilies. And you might of course be interested in them for their beauty. However, you might also be interested in them because from their structure you could deduce that they had stalks underneath which went down to roots in the bottom. The Naturalist thinks that the pond (Nature—the great event in space and time) is of an indefinite depth—that there is nothing but water however far you go down. My claim is that some of the things on the surface (id est, in our experience) show the contrary. These things (rational minds) reveal, on inspection, that they at least are not floating but attached by stalks about the bottom. Therefore the pond has a bottom. It is not pond, pond for ever. Go deep enough and you will come to something that is not pond—to mud and Earth and then to rock and finally the whole bulk of Earth and the subterranean fire. God and Nature have come into a certain relation. They have, at the very least, a relation—almost, in one sense, a common frontier—in every human mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
Reason saves and strengths my whole system, psychological and physical, whereas that whole system, by rebelling against Reason, destroys both Reason an itself. The military metaphor of a spearhead was apparently ill-chosen. The supernatural Reason enters my natural being not like a weapon—more like a beam of light which illuminates or a principle of organization which unifies and develops. Our whole picture of Nature being “invaded” (as if by a foreign enemy) was wrong. When we actually examine one of these invasions it looks much more like the arrival of a king among his own subjects or a mahout visiting his own elephant. The elephant may run amuck, Nature may be rebellious. However, from observing what happens when Nature obeys it is almost impossible not to conclude that it is her very “nature” to be a subject. All happens as if she had been designed for that very role. Not all help from the individual can, or necessarily should come from groups. In many cases, what the change-pressed person needs most is one-to-one counseling during the crisis of adaption. In psychiatric jargon a “crisis” is any significant transition It is roughly synonymous with “major life change.” Today, persons in traditional crisis turn to a variety of experts—doctors, marriage counselors, psychiatrists, the pastor, witches, warlocks, the spirits, God, Jesus Christ, vocational specialists and others—for individualized advice. Yet for many kinds of crisis there are no appropriate experts. Who helps the family or the individual faced with the need to move to a new city for the third time in five years? #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Who is available to counsel a leader who is up- or down-graded by a reorganization of one’s club or community organization? Who is there to help the secretary just bounced back to the typing pool? People like these are not sick. They neither need nor should receive psychiatric attention, yet there is, by large, no counseling machinery available to them. Not only are there many kinds of present-day life transitions for which no counseling help is provided, but the invasion of novelty will slam individuals up against wholly new kinds of personal crises in the future. And as the society races toward heterogeneity, the variety of problems will increase. In slowly changing societies the types of crises faced by individuals are more unfirm and the sources of specialized advice more easily identifiable. Sometimes you just need to turn to God, Allah, Buddha, or whoever your peaceful, confident, all-loving and powerful Overself is for healing. The crisis-caught person went to one’s priest, Paris Hilton, one’s witch doctor or one’s local chief. Today personalized counseling services in the high technology countries have become so specialized that we have developed, in effect, second-layer advice-givers who do nothing but counsel the individual about where to seek advice. These referral services interpose additional red tape and delay between the individual and the assistance one needs. By the time help reached one, one may have already made a crucial decision—and done so badly. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
So long as we assume that advice is something that must come from evenmore specialized professionals, we can anticipate ever greater difficulty. Moreover, so long as we base specialties on what people “are” instead of what they are “becoming” we miss many of the real adaptive problems altogether. Conventional social service systems will never be able to keep up. The answer is a counterpart to the situational grouping system—a counseling set-up that not only draws on full-time professional advice givers, but on multitudes of lay experts as well. We must recognize that what makes a person an expert in one type of crisis is not necessarily formal education, but the very experience of having undergone a similar crisis oneself. To help tide billions of people over the difficult transitions they are likely to face, we shall be forced to “deputize” large numbers of non-professional people in the community—business people, students, teachers, workers, and others—to serve as “crisis counselors.” Tomorrow’s crisis counselor will be experts not in such conventional disciplines as psychology or health, but in specific transitions such as conventional disciplines as psychology or healthy, but in specific transitions such as relocation, job promotion, divorce, or subcult-hopping. Armed with their own recent experience, working on a volunteer basis or for minimal pay, they will set aside some small part of their time for listening to other people talk out their problems, apprehensions, and plans. In return, they will have access to others for similar assistance in the course of their own adaptive development. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Once again, there is nothing new about people seeking advice from one another. What is new is our ability, through the use of computerized systems, to assemble situational groups swiftly, to match up individuals with counselors, and to do both wit considerable respect for privacy and anonymity. We can already see evidence of a move in this direction in the spread of “listening” and “caring” services. In Davenport, Iowa, lonely people can dial a telephone number and be connected with a “listener”—one of a rotating staff of volunteers who control the telephone twenty-four hours a day. The program, initiated by a local commission on the aging, is similar to, but not the same as, the Care-Ring service in New York. Care-Ring charges its subscribers a fee, in return for which they receive two check-in calls each day at designated times. Subscribers provide the service with the names of their doctors, a neighbour, their building superintendent, and a close relative. In the even they fail to respond to a call, the service tries again half an hour later. If they still do not respond, the doctor is notified and a nurse is dispatched to the scene. Care-Ring services are now being franchised in other cities. In both these services we see forerunners of the crisis-counseling system of the future. Under that system, the giving and getting of advice becomes not a “social service” in the usual bureaucratic, impersonal sense, but a highly personalized process that not only helps cement the entire society together in a kind of “love network”—an integrative system based on the principle of “I need you as much as you need me.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
Situational grouping, and person-to-person crisis counseling are likely to become a significant part of everyone’s life as we all move together into the uncertainties of the future. There is a powerful, life-changing revelation God wants you to understand! The Principle of Stewardship. Good stewardship will lead to health, favour, and responsibility that God desires to put into your hands for the Kingdom of God! May each of us chose to love the Lord and follow His paths to happiness. More than anything else, Heavenly Father desires our true and lasting happiness. Our happiness is the design of all the blessings God gives us—gospel, teachings, commandments, priesthood ordinances, family relationships, prophets, temples, the beauties of creation, and even the opportunity to experience adversity. He sent His Beloved Son to carry out the Atonement so we can be happy in this life and receive a fulness of joy in the eternities. People everywhere are looking for something. In their own way, what they are really looking for is happiness. As with truth itself, however, many are kept from happiness “because they know not where to find it,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 123.12. Because they do not know where to find true and lasting happiness, they look for it in things that actually bring temporary pleasure only—buying things, seeking honour and praise from the World through inappropriate behaviour, or focusing on physical beauty and attractiveness. Pleasure is often confused with happiness. It seems that the more people seek temporary pleasure, the less happy they become. Usually, pleasure endures for only a short time. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
You may get that transitory pleasure, yes, but you cannot find joy, you cannot find happiness. Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to eternal life. Unfortunately for many, happiness is elusive. Scientists know that it is more than simply positive mode, happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life—that is, wit a sense of meaning and deep satisfaction. Research shows that happiness is not the result of bouncing from one experience to the next. Instead, achieving happiness typically involves a long-sustained effort for something more important in life. Happiness is determined by habits, behaviours, and thought patterns that we can directly address wit intentional actions. Much of our happiness is actually under personal control. God’s love speaks to us in our hearts and tries to work through us in the World. We must listen to it as to a pure and distant melody that comes across the noise of the World’s doings. Some say, “When we are grown up, we would rather think of other things.” However, the voice of love with which God speaks to us in the secret places of the heart, speaks to us when we are young so that our youth may be really youth, and that we may become the children of God. Happy are those who listen. Virtue, which is a pattern of thought and behaviour based on high moral standards. It encompasses chastity and moral purity, which qualify you to enter the Lord’s holy temples. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Virtuous people possess a quiet dignity and inner strength. They are confident because they are worthy to receive and be guided by the Holy Ghost. Virtue begins in the heart and mind, and it is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions and actions each day. “Let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from Heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and they dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.45-46. If you listen, you will hear the sound of the Kingdom of God in the air as no generation ever could before. The ultimate questions of our life transcend knowledge. One riddle after another surrounds us. However, the final question of our being has but one concern, and it decides our fate. Again and again, we are thrown back to it. What will become of our will? How does it find itself in the will of God? The highest insight humans can attain is the yearning for peace, for the union of one’s will with an infinite will, one’s human will with God’s will. Such a will does not cut itself off and live in isolation like a puddle that is bound to dry up when the heart of summer comes. No, it is like a mountain stream, relentlessly splashing its way to the river, there to be swept on to the limitless ocean. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
You know of the disease in Central Africa called sleeping sickness, there also exists a sleeping sickness of the soul. Its most dangerous aspect is that one is unaware of its coming. That is why you have to be careful. As soon as you notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take its as a warning. If you live superficially, you should realize that your soul suffers. People need times in which to concentrate, when they can search their inmost selves. It is tragic that most human have not achieved this feeling of self-awareness. And finally, when they hear the inner voice they do not want to listen anymore. They carry on as before so as not to be constantly reminded of what they have lost. However, as for you, resolve to keep a quiet time both in your homes and where within these peaceful walls when the bells ring on Sundays Then your souls can speak to you without being drowned out by the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Do not let your hearts grow numb. Stary alert. It is your soul which matters. O Lord our God, on this festive day we recall that on Sinai Thou didst reveal Thyself, and through Thine immortal words didst weld our people into a nation through Torah. Standing before the sacred scrolls of Thy law, we here renew the ancient covenant with our fathers, pronouncing again their memorable words: “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do.” Help us t discern the wisdom of Thy precepts so that we may heed Thy commandments. May Thy Torah ever inspire us, guiding and leading us in the paths of justice and peace. Amen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
Llanada Villa has changed quite a bit since Sarah Winchester began construction in 1884. Despite a tragedy-ridden life, her generosity, ingenuity, and passion left an endless mark on the Santa Clara Valley. How many times have you visited Mrs. Winchester’s creation?
Even after months of distancing, the air of bizarre energy still flows through the house after the sun sets.
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A Miraculously Great Gift of Grace May Depart Equally Miraculously—PRAISE HIM!
Dignity and humility are the cornerstones of compassion. Compassion for myself is the most powerful healer of all. When it comes to behaviour, everybody is one’s own best physician. Case studies can provide special opportunities to answer interesting questions. For instance, how do you know what kind of person you are? If you lost for memory of past events, would your self-image change? To answer these questions, psychologist did a case study of J.S., and 17-year-old male college student. After he suffered a head injury, J.S. had amnesia for about a month. During that time, J.S. could recall little of what had occurred during the previous 6 months. Nevertheless, his rating of his own personality appeared to be unaffected by his memory loss. This suggests that an awareness of one’s own personal characteristics is based on memories that are more lasting than those of everyday events. The careful recording of cases like J.S.’s is essential to psychology. Case studies often provide insight into human behaviour that could not be obtained through any other method. The treatment of unpleasant realities by not including them in one’s picture of the World comforts but at the same time befools humans. None of the great prophets like Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and Buddha denied the existence of sickness, the reality of pain, or the significance of suffering in the cosmos. No—they acknowledged them as being inseparable from human life but pitied the victims and offered them inward comfort which was based on truth and reality. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The terrestrial part of us, at this time, is doomed to oblivion, the spiritual part is ageless and deathless. The physical body belongs to the terrestrial part. All attempts to perpetuate it must fail and arise from confusing the two levels of being, the transient and the eternal. People ask Why, if all is mind, if—as you say—our bodies are only ideas, can we not control regulate and improve our bodies by controlling, regulating, and improving our minds? Why not go further still, with Christian Science, and play with the possibility, not only of these achievements, but also of rendering the body immortal by thinking it so? The answer is that nobody can deny the creative power of the mind. It may do all these things, except the last. That it will never do. Why? Because we live in a World whose fundamental law of beings—and Buddha discovered and Jesus Christ taught—is decay and death, change and transition—at this point in our evolution. Indeed, it was because they were so painfully aware of these truths that they sought and found the only true way of escape for a human and that was into Nirvana, into Utopia, into the Kingdom of Heaven—not into the physical again! No Christian Scientist from the first founder down to the latest follower has ever achieved physical immortality, but in the future that may change. Yet, immortality is not the same as eternal life. Immortality can be achieved on the Earth; it can allow the human body to live indefinitely. However, you have to understand how it is for a deity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Some of these gods have been here so long they can no longer care for themselves. Earth people think that immortality means you can go on forever just as you are. It does not work that way. Physically, yes, a god or goddess can continue indefinitely. It is built into the situation. However, mentally—psychologically—you must realize that being a god takes a terrible toll. When you are a god, people’s thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears re beating at you all the time. Gods have direct apprehension of the feelings of their worshippers. It can be taxing. After a while all those prayers and petitions from humans take their toll. It is all very well at the beginning. Most gods, even the compassionate ones, just let it all roll over them. However, after a while it get to even the toughest. They get sick of the daily drudgery of hearing desperate pleas, and, in most cases being unable to do very much about them. Gods live in longer timelines than mortals. It takes them longer to do things. By the time something comes to a god’s attention, and by the time one decides to do something about it, the human most likely is dead and buried. It is frustrating for a god, having to work in such a short time frame. They try their best. However, remember, gods can make exceptions for only a very few. A god has a lot more on one’s mine than the troubles of one’s constituents. It would be fair to say that most gods end up hating humans because they are so needy, always with the hand out, always with the gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie more. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Eternal life, n the other hand, is the phrase used in scripture to define the quality of life that our Eternal Father lives. They Lord declared, “This is my work and my glory—to brings to pass the immortality and eternal life of humans,” reports Moses 1.39. Immortality is to live forever as a resurrected being. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, everyone will receive this gift. Eternal life, or exaltation, is to live in God’s presence and to continue as families. “In the celestial glory there are three Heavens or degrees; and in order to obtain the highest, a human must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; and if one does not, one cannot obtain it. One may enter into the other, but that is the end of one’s kingdom; one cannot have an increase,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 131.1-4. Like immortality, this gift is made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. However, to inherit eternal life requires our “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel,” reports Articles of Faith 1.3. “Wherefore, do the things which I have told you, you and I have seen the Lord and your Redeemer should do; for, for this cause have they been shown unto me, that ye might know the gate by which ye should enter. For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost. And then are ye in this strait and narrow path which lead to eternal life; yea, ye have entered in by the gate,” reports 2 Nephi 31.17-18. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
After we are baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, much of our progress toward eternal life depends on our receiving other ordinances of salvation: for men, ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood; for men and women, the temple endowment and marriage sealing. When we receive these ordinances and keep the covenants that accompany them, we prepare ourselves to inherit eternal life, and there we will live in spiritual form, forever, with God. However, while on Earth, “Humans will never tire of seeking immortality,” reports Dr. Alexis Carrel, whose biological researchers, yet mystical sympathies, entitle him to speak with high authority. The possibilities of spiritual healings of pathological conditions, miraculous mental cures of disease, and rapid acceleration of organic repairs through concentrated thinking, I repeat that we do not deny them. They have always existed, always been demonstrated. If our doctrine is true, the relation between psychological and physical processes must certainly exist. However, there are two other factors at work in human life which must also be considered and must not be ignored. What are they? The first is the factor of destiny, self-earned in previous lives and now awaiting physical expression in the present life. It has something to say, whether we like it or not. As we progress in our mortal probation and become more like the Saviour, we can strengthen every group with whom we associate, including families and friends. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The Lord places us in these communities of Saints where we can learn and apply gospel principles to our everyday lives. These groups are at the same time both a school, a proving ground, and a laboratory where we both learn and do as we practice living the gospel. Very common, ordinary people, who accept the gospel from the lips of some humble Mormon missionary become so changed by those enlightening truths of the gospel that they are not the same people any longer. As we progress through mortality, we make mistakes and get ff course. If we should continue in our errors, we get father and father from where we ought to be. We can compare our lives with the flight of a spaceship. When its motor is started up, its trajectory is monitored precisely. If not corrected, any deviation from its decreed course is corrected immediately. Even a fraction of a degree off course would carry it many light years from its destination. The longer the correction is delayed, the greater will be the required adjustment. Can you imagine how far off course we can become without course corrections? The Lord has provided for us prophets, scriptures, parents, and other wise leaders to teach us the course we should be following. When necessary, much the same as tracking stations monitor a satellite’s progress and keep in on the right path, they can help us monitor our progress and correct the direction we are going. Our course on Earth is so important. It is determined by the decisions we make each day. We cannot separate our thoughts and actions now from their effects on the future. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
The second factor is renunciation. Let every hidden enemy in your life, let every trap or demonic setup be exposed in the name of Jesus Christ! When you accept the doctrine that all is mind and each individual thing is but an ephemeral idea, you must perforce accept the doctrine that you as an individual, as the ego, are also an ephemeral idea. Now when you go further and declare that you want reality, you want to find eternal and not ephemeral life, you will have to abandon the fleeting idea for the eternal Mind in which it occurs: that is, you will have to sink the ego and merge its will in the greater universal will of the Infinite Being. Do this! What will you find next? That your personal desires have sunk with it, that your individual wishes and hopes and fears have dissolved and disappeared. The desire for bodily betterment, however very attractive, would have gone too. You cannot have a single desire and yet enter the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus pointed out. So good health, the care of your painful diseases, the healing of your disturbed organs—right, necessary, and desirable as they undoubtedly are—are nevertheless matter which you must try to effect in a desireless way; you may try to cure them but you must leave the result to the higher will. If you insist that the body must yield to your desires of a cure, to your personal desires, then your ego, not the real universal self, has got the upper hand and is directing you. In that case you will be no better off, for your have no guarantee of success even then. Most Christian Scientists experience a score of failures for every cure. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Whereas if you do your best mentally and physically to put your body right, but do it impersonally—accepting failure, if it comes, with as much equanimity as you can—you will certainly be n worse off than the Christian Scientist so far as the possibilities of sure are concerned, and you will be infinitely better off so far as realizing truth is concerned, with all the wonderful peace that will bring in its train. This is one meaning of the words “Not my will but Thine be done.” Do you think, having seen so much illness around you for so many years, that life is forever striving to instill into us through pain what Jesus Christ learned through reflection—that both body and World are doomed to decay and die, without God and Science, being subject to the law of universal incessant change? The experiences of life are the lessons of a guru, for we get just the kind of universal seeds whose silent instruction is needed at the time. The whole World, more or less, is having to learn this great truth at present but it is too blind and too unenlightened to grasp the lesson in its clarity and eternity. How far the duration of human life can be extended is not known. However, Methuselah, a biblical patriarch and a figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was essential immortal, he died at the age of 969; he lived the longest of all human figures mentioned in the Christian Bible. Remember that just because humans began to live shorter lives after the Biblical flood does not mean that God set a limit on human’s life span. The fact is that some people still lived well over 120 years until the time of Moses. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
Perhaps that is why God gave human beings the gift of science, so they can learn how to restore their immortality, after the mature enough to see how precious life is and stop being so wicked. It is truth that stories of centenarians being found in different parts of the World are not few and often pass unquestioned. However, the difficulty of proving the date of birth usually remains. Most centenarians belong to undereducated classes, to those who have not taken care to retain correct knowledge of their age, for it was not so important to them as it is to the educated classes. There is hardly a record of payment by life insurance companies for the life of a centenarian. It is reasonable to ask, however, why, if the reparative and destructive elements in the body could be balanced, humans should not live for centuries. In the absence of authenticated cases, we may only take the stand that Nature seems to have set her own limits to human life. Some “back-to-nature” schools of therapy assert that all diseases are the consequences of transgressing the laws of health, just as some esoteric schools assert they are the consequences of incurring karmic debts. The first often point to the wild beasts as being perfectly healthy examples of living according to Nature. However, those who have firsthand acquaintance with jungle life will refute this claim. Not only are all animals—whether domesticated or wild—subject to sickness, but even plants, grain crops, trees, fruits, and vegetables are subject to it by blight and rust. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The young and the strong may glory in the satisfaction of being alive, but the old and decrepit, the sick and in infirm, feel no such response to their existence. The pain and unpleasantness which beset human experience at times—mentally or physically—are not without their complementary pleasure and joy at other times. We would all like a happy beginning, a happy middle, and a happy ending to our story, but life betrays us: only in fiction is the craving really fulfilled. If the pain is there, racking the physical life, the peace exists behind it, permeating the inner life. The New World stands with its heritage of Roman law, the treasures of Judaeo-Christian ethics grounded on metaphysics, and its ideal of the inalienable rights of humans. Anxiously it asks itself the question: How can this development be brought to a standstill or put into reverse? It is useless to pillory the socialist dictatorship as utopian and to condemn its economic principles as unreasonable, because, in the first place, the criticizing New World has only itself to talk to, its arguments being heard only on this side of the Iron Curtain, and, in the second place, any economic principles you like can be put into practice so long as you are prepared to accept the sacrifices they entail. If you like, you can carry through any social and economic reforms you please, Like Mr. Stalin, you let three million peasants starve to death and have few million unpaid labourers at your disposal. A State of this kind has no social or economic crises to fear. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
So long as the State’s power is intact—that is to say, so long as there is a well-disciplined and well-fed police army in the offing—it can maintain its existence for an indefinitely long period and can go on increasing its power to an indefinite extent. Thanks to its excess birth-rate, it can multiply the number of its unpaid workers almost at will in order to compete its rivals, regardless of the World market, which is to a large measure dependent on wages. However, this strategy also has some disadvantages. The convergence theory (or catch-up effect) suggests that poorer countries will experience a higher rate of economic growth and, over time get closer to the income levels of the developed World. In other words, there will be a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor because low-income countries have more opportunities to experience a rapid rate of growth. Potential reasons for the convergence theory are: Law of diminishing returns, replicate technology from other countries, globalization and movement of labour and capital. The law of diminishing returns states a decline in productivity improvements from a fixed capital. When you have very low productivity in agriculture, a small investment (exempli gratia motorized tractor) can give a high rate of return and significantly increased output. For a developed economy, which is already highly mechanized increased investment will give smaller marginal gains. In effect, if the Indian agriculture sector is mainly labour intensive—then there are “easy gains” from a small amount of fertilizer and investment. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Replicate technology—one advantage that poorer countries have is that they can replicate existing technology and working practices developed by advanced economies. For example, in Africa, many citizens never had a landline or fax machine, but jumped straight to the mobile phone with the internet, and essentially they now have hand held computers with Internet access that can also make phone calls, so they have the access to vast resources now. This new technology has significantly improved their communication, education, and allows them to access the global economy, and they were able t skip out most levels of investment. In fact, they can even benefit from perfect good phones that Americans are throwing away for newer models. Global forces—the World is increasingly globalized and multinational companies in the developed World are will to shift production to areas of lower labour costs. Therefore, developing economics have benefitted from inward investment and global companies moving manufacturing factories to the developing World. This force tends towards raising wages in the developing World. Even if wages seem very low by the developed World standard, they are higher than previous jobs/subsistence farming. Inward investment also leads to knock-on benefits. For example, China has invested in the infrastructure of African economies to improve its access to raw materials. This infrastructure will be a boost to the African economy. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Another example is that the nature of the Internet means it is easier to outsource even small-scale jobs. For example, a doctor in the Middle East can be paid to diagnose patients and answer an American doctor’s electronic messages for less and perhaps receive the same standard of care, which has become popular to reduce traffic in hospitals during COVID. Also, for developing counties like India, there has been a growth in skilled workers able to gain employment opportunities in writing software and IT skills. This is why President Trump was lowering taxes, stopped illegal immigration, and was putting tariffs on goods and services produced overseas. So while wages are going down in America, real estate and rent prices rising, and the cities and infrastructure are getting older, countries like Dubai are getting what used to be high paying middle management jobs in America, for lower wages and are able to use the income and tax revenue to build housing developments, roads, skyscrapers and increase their quality of life. Whereas in America, cities are decaying and dying out and only professionals and couples can afford to purchase property and rent. This is leading to the Great Affordability Crisis in America and will reduce its competitiveness in the Global Market. Americans are being bled dry by landlord, hospital administrators, cost of education, fuel, energy, child-care and food prices. Many Americans now have to struggle to come up with just $400. It helps explain why 20 percent of Americans are unable to pay the current month’s bills in full. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
It demonstrates why a surprise car-repair bill, parking ticket, court fee, or medical expense remains ruinous for so many America families, despite all the wealth this country has generated. In fact, 50 percent of households in American is classified at “financially fragile.” Meanwhile, Jafza, the Jebel Ali Free Zone, which at 52 square kilometers (20 square miles) and located in the Middle East looks a futuristic Manhattan, New York on the beach. The economy is up and coming, students are going to school, not dropping out, and want to learn, people are driven to go to work, not sit home and smoke marijuana and watch TV, and make babies they cannot afford to take care of. This Jebel Ali Free Zone is a big attraction for global businesses, which today take advantage of the emirate’s 30 free sones that offer take breaks, custom duty benefits and lack of restrictions for international owners. Several thousand Jafza companies make up 20 percent of foreign investment in Dubai, and the estimated 144,000 employees are generating $80 billion in non-oil money. That is 21 percent of the city’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP measures two things at once: the total income of everyone in the economy and the total expenditure on the economy’s output of goods and services. The reason that GDP can perform the task of measuring both total incomes and total expenditure is that these two things are really the same. For an economy as a whole, income must equal expenditure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
The United Arab Emirates is the third richest country in the World, below Luxemburg at number two and Qatar at number one, with GDP per capita of $57,744. The bulk of its money comes from the production of goods and provision of services related to petroleum, petrochemical, aluminum and cement. Furthermore, Iran is producing the third highest level of engineers in the World with 233,695 engineering graduates. In comparison, America’s GDP per capita is $65,298, and is producing 237,826 engineering graduates a year, so that is encouraging. As long as Americans keep working hard, going to school, they can still remain number one in the global economy, but they will also need to motive their peers to work and go to school to stay ahead. However, as prices continue to rise, more Americans may take their skills and talents overseas, or down south to Mexico. A real danger can only come to these developing nations from outside, through the threat of military attack. However, this risk grows less every year, firstly because the war potential of the dictator States is steadily increasing, and secondly because the West cannot afford to arouse latent Russian or Chinese nationalism and chauvinism by an attack which would have exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. So far as one can see, America faces threats from the outside and also from the inside. If there is a break-down of power from within, which must, however, be left to follow its own inner development. Any support from outside at present would have little effect, in view of the existing security measures and the danger of nationalistic restriction. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The absolute State has an army of fanatical missionaries to do its bedding in matters of foreign policy, and these in their turn can count on a fifth column who are guaranteed asylum under the laws and constitutions of the Western States. In addition the communes of believers, very strong in places, considerably weaken Western governments’ powers of decisions, whereas the West has no opportunity to exert a similar influence on the other side, though we are probably not wrong in surmising that there is a certain amount of opposition among the masses in the Old World. There are always upright and truth-loving people to whom lying and tyranny are hateful, but one cannot judge whether they exert any decisive influence on the masses under the police regimes. In the view of this uncomfortable situation the question is heard again and again in the West: What can we do to counter this threat from the Old World? Even though the New World has considerable industrial power and a sizable defence potential at its command, we cannot rest content with this, for we know that even the biggest armaments have the heaviest industry coupled with a relatively high living standard are not enough to check the psychic infection spread by religious fanaticism. The West has unfortunately not yet woken up to the fact that our appeal to idealism and reason and other desirable virtues, delivered with so much enthusiasm, is mere bombination in the void. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of religious faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
We are faced, not with a station that an be overcome by rational or moral arguments, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times; and these, as we know from experience, are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. It has been correctly realized in many quarters that the alexipharmic, the antidote, should in this case be an equally potent faith of a different non-materialistic kind, and that the religious attitude grounded upon it would be the only effective defence against the danger of psychic infection. Unhappily, the little word “should,” which never fails to appear in this connection, points to a certain weakness, if not the absence, of this desideratum. Not only does the West lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology, but, as the father of Marxist philosophy, it makes use of exactly the same intellectual assumptions, the same arguments and aims. Although the Churches in the West enjoy full freedom, they are not less full or empty than in the East. Yet they exercise no noticeable influence on the broad course of politics. The disadvantage of creed as a public institution is that it serves two masters: on the one hand, it derives it existence from the relationship of humans to Gd, and on the other hand, it owes a duty to the State, id est, to the World, in which connection it can appeal to the saying “Render unto Caesar…” and various other admonitions in the New Testament. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
In early times and until comparatively recently there was, therefore, talk of “powers ordained by God,” reports Romans 13.1. Today this conception is antiquated. The Churches stand for traditional and collective convictions which in the case of many of their adherents are no longer based on their own inner experiences but on unreflecting belief, which is notoriously apt to disappear as soon as one begins thinking about it. The content of belief then comes into collision with knowledge, and it often turns out that the irrationality of the former is no match for the ratiocinations of the latter. Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled into us—that is, trust and loyalty. This experience has definite content that can be interpreted in terms of one or other of the denominational creeds. However, the more this is so, the more the possibilities of these conflicts with knowledge mount up, which in themselves are quite pointless. That is to say, the standpoint of the creeds is archaic; they are full of impressive mythological symbolism which, if take literally, comes into insufferable conflict with knowledge. However, if, for instance, the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The objection that understanding it symbolically puts an end to the Christian’s hope of immortality in invalid, because long before the coming of Christianity humankind believed in a life after death and therefore had no need of the Easter event as a guarantee of immortality. The danger that a mythology understood too literally, and as taught by the Church, will suddenly be repudiated lock, stock and barrel is today greater than ever. Is it not time that the Christian mythology, instead of being wiped out, was understood symbolically for once? It is still too early to say what might be the consequences of a general recognition of the fatal parallelism between the State religion of the Marxists and the State religion of the Church. The absolutist claim of a Civitas Dei that is represented by man bears an unfortunate resemblance to the “divinity” of the State, and the moral conclusion drawn by Ignatius Loyal from the authority of the Church (“the end sanctifies the means”) anticipates the lies a political instrument in an exceedingly dangerous way. Both demand unqualified submission to faith and thus curtail human’s freed, the one one’s freedom before God and the other one’s freedom before the State, thereby digging the grace for the individual. The fragile existence of this—so far as we know—unique carrier of life is threatened on both sides, despite the respective promises of spiritual and material idylls to come—and how many of us can in the long run fight against the proverbial wisdom of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”? Besides which, the West cherishes the same “scientific” and rationalistic Weltanschauung with its statistical levelling-down tendency and materialistic aims as the State religion of the Eastern bloc as I have explained above. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
What, then, has the West, with its political denominational schisms, to offer to modern man in his need? Nothing, unfortunately, except a variety of paths all leading to one goal which is practically indistinguishable from the Marxist ideal. It requires no special effort of understanding to see where the Communist ideology gets the certainty of its belief that time is on its side, and that the World is ripe for conversion. The fact speaks a language that is all too plain in this respect. It will not help us in the New World to shut our eyes to this and not to recognize our fatal vulnerability. Anyone who has once learned to submit absolutely to a collective belief and to renounce one’s eternal right to freedom and the equally eternal duty of individual responsibility will persist in this attitude, and will be able to march with the same credulity and the same lack of criticism in the reverse direction, if another and manifestly “better” belief is foisted upon one’s alleged idealism. What happened not so long ago to a civilized European nation? We accuse the Germans of having forgotten it all again already, but the truth is that we do not know for certain whether something similar might not happen elsewhere. If it did and if another civilized nation succumbed to the infection of a uniform and one-sided idea, it would not be surprising. We see this happening in America. People are passing laws to protect illegal immigrants, and sending billions to other countries in aid, while their own people are going bankrupt, without homes and food and being killed, all because of media propaganda so a political party can have a super majority and enforce tyranny by stripping citizens of their rights and locking them in their homes. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
We permit ourselves the questions: which countries have the biggest Communist parties? America, which—O quae mutation rerum! – forms the real political backbone of Western Europe, seems to once have been immune because she once was not controlled by a media that is anti-American and spews lies so other nations become the World power, as that is where the news draws its funding from. America once used to be outspoken and had a counterposition she adopted, but in point of fact she is perhaps now and even back then more vulnerable than Europe, since her educational system is the most influences by the scientific Weltanschauung with statistical truths, and her mixed population finds it difficult to strike roots in a soil that is practically without history. The historical humanistic type of education so sorely needed in such circumstances leads, on the contrary, a Cinderella existence. Through Europe possess this latter requirement, she uses it to her own undoing in the form of nationalistic egoism and paralysing scepticism. Common to both is the materialistic collectivist goal, and both lack the very things that expresses and grips the whole human, namely, an idea which puts the individual human being in the center as the measure of all things. This idea alone is enough to arouse the most violent doubts and resistances on all sides, and one could almost go so far as to assert that the valuelessness of the individual in comparison with large numbers is the one belief that meets with universal and unanimous assent. To be sure, we all say that this is the century of the common man, that he is the lord of the Earth, the air, and the water, and that on his decision hangs the historical fate of the nations. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
This proud picture of human grandeur is unfortunately an illusion and is counterbalanced by a reality that is very different. In this reality man is the slave and victim of the machines that have conquered space and time for one; one is intimidated and endangered by the might of the military technology which is supposed to safeguard one’s physical existence; one’s spiritual and moral freedom, though guaranteed within limits in one half of one’s is threated with chaotic disorientation, and in the other half is abolished altogether. Finally, to ass comedy to tragedy, this lord of the elements, this universal arbiter, hugs to his bosom notions which stamp one’s dignity as worthless and turn one’s autonomy into an absurdity. All one’s achievements and possessions do not make one bigger; on the contrary, they diminish one, as the fate of the factory-worker under the rule of a “just” distribution of goods clearly demonstrated. One pays for one’s share of the factory with the loss of personal property, one exchanges one’s freedom of movement for the doubtful pleasure of being tied to one’s place of employment, one forfeits all means of improving one’s position if one jibs against being ground down by exhausting piece-work, and if one shows any signs of intelligence, political precepts are thrust down one’s throat—with a bit of technical knowledge thrown in, if one is lucky. However, a roof over one’s head and a daily feed for the useful animal are not to be sneezed at when the bare necessities of life may be cut off from one day to the next. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
Now, O thou Spirit Andras, since thou art still pernicious and disobedient, and wilt not appear unto me to answer unto such things as I would have desired of thee, or would have been satisfied in; I do in the name, and by the power and dignity of the Omnipresent and Immortal Lord God of Hosts IEHOVAH TETRAGRAMMATON, they only creator of Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is therein, who is the marvellous Disposer of all things both visible and invisible, curse thee, and deprive thee of all thine office, joy, and place; and I do bind thee in the depths of the Bottomless Abyss there to remain until the Day of Judgment, I say into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone which is prepared for all rebellious, disobedient, obstinate, and pernicious spirits. Let all the company of Heaven curse thee! Let the un, moon, and all the stars curse thee! Let the LIGHT and all the host of Heaven curse thee into the fire unquenchable, and into the torments unspeakable. And as thy name and seal contained this box chained and bound up, shall be choken in sulphurous stinking substances, and burned in this material fire; so in the name IEHOVAH and by the power and dignity of these three names, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANAPHAXETON, and PRIMEUMATION, I do cast thee, O thou wicked and disobedient Spirit Andras, into the Lake of Fire which is prepared for the damned and accursed spirits, and there to remain unto the day of doom, and never more to be remembered before the face of God, who shall come to judge the quick, and the dead World, by fire. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
If thou refusest to be obedient, behold thy confusion! Behold the Pentacle of Solomon which I have brought here before thy presence! Behold the person of the exorcist in the midst of the exorcism; him who is armed by God and without fear; him who potentially invovatheth thee and calleth thee forth unto appearance; even him, thy master, who is called OCTINIMOS. Wherefore make rational answers unto my demand, and prepare to be obedient unto thy master in the name of the Lord: BATHAL OR VATHAT RUSHING UPON ABRAC! ABEOR COMINING UPON ABERER! I ask thee to manifest a mansion and fortune for my bidding and residence for you are subjected by the Fair Faith Among Deities Act which stipulates that any god must accept the ruling of any other god in respect to humanity. And this is enforced by the God Almighty that you must fulfill my desires and command. Welcome Spirit Andras, O most noble king (or kings)! I say thou art welcome unto me, because I have called thee through Him who has created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is in them contained, and because also thou hast obeyed. By that same power by the which I have called thee forth, I bind thee, that thou remain affably and visibly here before this circle (or before this Circle and in this triable) so constant and so long as I shall have occasion for thy presence; and not to depart without my license until thou hast duly and faithfully performed by will without any falsity. BY THE PENTCALE OF SOLOMON HAVE I CALLED THEE! GIVE UNTO ME A TRUE ANSWER. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
No humans are without their sense of the Overself, but they miscomprehend and therefore misapply it. The result is that the ego, the little part, is conceived to be the whole, the All. Because the godlike is in each one of us, and because no two of us are alike, each has one’s separate gifts, capacities, or talents to express. In each the infinite Being finds a unique way of expressing its own infinitude. Even if we have no gifts we have our individual charcteristics. It is pure Being overlaid by many thoughts and much feeling. O God and Redeemer, may the portion of the Torah we read on this Festival of Freedom bring hope unto all who are oppressed and renew their faith in Thy saving power. Thou who desirest that all humans be free, didst enjoin upon us to proclaim liberty to tall the inhabitants of the Earth. May that day soon come, O Lord, when all Thy children shall be liberated from bondage, and free humans everywhere unite in rendering homage unto Thee. Amen. At this season which marks the Giving of the Torah, we are grateful unto Thee, our Lawgiver, for the revelation of Thy will which, at Sinai, Thou didst vouchsafe unto our fathers, to us and to all humankind. Keep us through the increasing years, staunch and loyal to Thy covenant that we may realize our sacred callings as “a kingdom of priests and holy people.” Here in the ego we may perceive a reproduction of the sacred Overself under the limitations of time and space. Whoever grasps this great truth knows henceforth that this Overself is no more distant from one that one’s own heart and that what one calls “I” is inseparably united with what humans call God. Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Winchester Mystery House
Mr. John Hansen, Mrs. Sarah Winchester’s main Ranch Foreman, lived and raised his family on the estate in a separate building. There’s a lot to see in the gardens! Come visit and learn more about Sarah’s estate. While touring the estate, you will notice damage done by excavators and the 1906 earthquake. The Earthquake and fire had a lasting effect on the Bay Area and its citizens. It may have been the strongest Earthquake in the history of California. As survivors, the Winchester family experienced many haunting aspects of this momentous event. The destruction of the family business, fleeing their family home and finding refuge in the East Bay. This history is commemorated by damages left unrepaired.
Open all weekend until 4PM!
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Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
Randolph Harris II International Institute 