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You Cannot Run Away from Your Weakness–Promises and Pie Crust are Made to be Broken!
To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know. Undeserved inequalities call for redress; and since inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved, these inequalities are to be somehow compensated for. Thus the principle holds that in order to treat all persons equally, to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into less favourable social positions. The idea is to redress the bias of contingencies in the direction of equality. In pursuit of this principle greater resources might be spent on the education of the less rather than more intelligent, at least over a certain time of life, say the earlier years of school. Now the principle of redress has not to my knowledge been proposed as the sole criterion of justice, as the single aim of the social order. It is plausible as most such principles are only as a prima facie principle, one that is to be weighed in the balance with others. For example, we are to weigh it against the principle to improve the average standard of life, or to advance the common good. However, whatever other principles we hold, the claims of redress are to be taken into account. It is thought to represent one of the elements in our conception of justice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Now the difference principle is not of course the principle of redress. It does not require society to try to even out inherent limitations as if all were expected to compete on a fair basis in the same race. However, the difference principle would allocate resources in education, say, so as to improve the long-term expectation of the least favoured. If this end is attained by giving more attention to the better endowed, it is permissible; otherwise not. And in making this decision, the value of education should not be assessed solely in terms of economic efficiency and social welfare. Equally if not more important is the role of education in enabling a person to enjoy the culture of one’s society and to take part in its affairs, and in this way to provide for each individual a secure sense of one’s own worth. Thus although the difference principle is not the same as that of redress, it does achieve some of the intent of the latter principle. It transforms the aims of the basic structure so that the total scheme of institutions no longer emphasizes social efficiency and technocratic values. We see then that the difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset and to share in the benefits of this distribution whatever it turns out to be. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Those who have been favoured by nature, whoever they are, may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in way that help the less fortunate as well. No one deserves one’s greater natural capacity nor merits a more favourable starting place in society. However, it does not follow that one should eliminate these distinctions. There is another way to deal with them. The basic structure can be arranged so that these contingencies work for the good of the least fortunate. Thus we are led to the difference principle if we wish to set up the social system so that no one gains or loses from one’s arbitrary place in the distribution of natural assets or one’s initial position in society without giving or receiving compensating advantages in return. In view of these remarks we may reject the contention that ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. However, there is no necessity for humans to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness humans agree to share one another’s fate. In designing institutions, only when doing so is for the common benefit, they undertake to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are unjust. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
A further point is that the difference principle expresses a conception or reciprocity. It is a principle of mutual benefit. We have seen that, at least when chain connection holds, each representative human can accept the basic structure as designed to advance one’s interests. The social order can be justified to everyone and in particular to those who are least favoured; and in this sense it is egalitarian. However, it seems necessary to consider in an intuitive way how the condition of mutual benefit is satisfied. Consider any two representative humans A and B, and let B be the one who is less favoured. Actually, since we are most interested in the comparison with the least favoured human, let us assume that B is this individual. Now B can accept A’s being better off since A’s advantages have been gained in ways that improve B’s prospects. If A were not allowed one’s better position, B would be even worse off than one is. The difficulty is to show that A has no grounds for complaint. Perhaps one is required to have less than one might since one’s having more would result in some loss to B. Now what can be said to the more favoured human? To being with, it is clear that the well-being of each depends on a scheme of social cooperation without which no one could have a satisfactory life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Secondly, we can ask for the willing cooperation of everyone only if the terms of the scheme are reasonable. The difference principle, then, seems to be a fair basis on which those better endowed, or more fortunate in their social circumstances, could expect others to collaborate with them when some workable arrangement is a necessary condition of the good of all. There is a natural inclination to object that those better situated deserve their greater advantages whether or not they are to the benefit of others. At this point it is necessary to be clear about the notion of desert. It is perfectly true that given a just system of cooperation as a scheme of public rules and the expectations set up by it, those who, with the prospect of improving their condition, have done what the system announces that it will reward are entitled to their advantages. In this sense the more fortunate have a claim to their better situation; their claims are legitimate expectations established by social institutions, and the community is obligated to meet them. However, this sense of desert presupposes the existence of the cooperative scheme; it is irrelevant to the question whether in the first place the scheme is to be designed in accordance with the difference principle. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Perhaps some will think that the person with greater natural endowments deserves those assets and the superior character that made their development possible. Because one is more worthy in this sense, one deserves the greater advantages that one could achieve with them. This view, however, is surely incorrect. It seems to be one of fixed point of our considered judgments that no one deserves one’s place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting place in society. The assertion that a human deserves one’s initial starting place in society. The assertion that a human deserves the superior character that enables one to make the effort to cultivate one’s abilities is equally problematic; for one’s character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which one can claim no credit. The notion of desert seems not to apply to these cases. Thus the more advantaged representative human cannot day that one deserves and therefore has a right to a scheme of cooperation in which one is permitted to acquire benefits in ways that do not contribute to the welfare of others. There is no basis for one’s making this claim. From the standpoint of common sense, then, the difference principle appears to be acceptable both to the more advantaged and to the less advantaged individual. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Of course, none of this is strictly speaking an argument for the principle, since in a contract theory argument are made from the point of view of the original position. However, these intuitive considerations help to clarify the nature of the principle and the sense in which it is egalitarian. Nonetheless, relatively marginalized groups need jobs or equal pay or civil rights or educational opportunities. Still, when we let people face these problem situations in their own way, that is how true self-initiated learning takes place. Gradually they become fully aware of their World and its problems. Then they begin to seek answers. The issues which have come from the people return to them—not as content to be deposited, but as problems to be solved. Some people regard themselves as lazy, unfit, worthless, les free than an animal. Because of this they feel attracted to the oppressors and their way of life, and their highest dream is to be like the tyrant, and oppress others. However, gradually the self-concept and the goal change. Less affluent (and sometimes the rich are victims of oppression) makes such statements as these: “I now realize I am human, an educated person.” “We were blind, now our eyes have been opened.” “Now we will no longer be a dead weight on the cooperative farm.” “I work, and working I transform the World.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
People who have been oppressed change their goals and they eventually no longer want to be like the oppressor, but they envision a new type of social system, more human. Then they begin to take considered steps to change the terrible conditions under which they live. The important thing is for people to come to feel like masters of their thinking and views of the World explicitly or implicitly manifest in their own suggestions and those of their comrades. However, sometimes their anger at professionals, at the ack of health services, at the lack of any voice in their own health care becomes so strong that some of the professionals are frightened, while others are self-righteously angry in response. Still some people get upset when communication starts because they think, “See, what you are accomplishing is better, less angry communication! You are destroying the possibility of revolutionary change! You are defusing the hatred and bitterness which alone can spark any real change for the oppressed!” Are we fiddling while Rome burns? What possible difference can a new approach to family or to psychotherapy make when our very planet is threatened with dissolution? We have to subordinate these ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The discrepancy in wealth and income between the “haves” and “have-nots” of the World is laying a basis for present as well as future hatreds. Groups roam the World, wreaking violence on totally innocent people. There seems no end to the list of undying feuds between races, cultures, and nations. Does a person-centered approach in psychotherapy have anything useful to offer in solving these immense and dangerous global issues? We must attempt to establish a sense of common cause among the vastly disparate and competing nations of the World. It requires that a nation moves beyond self-interest defined in terms of power and concentration on the common interests defined in terms of realizing a human’s fullest potentialities. There is also a desire for citizens to develop their potentialities and that goal is one of the few items on which most of the nations of the World might agree. And it is precisely at this point that experience with a person-centered approach may have something to offer. Ina time of major social change, people become acutely aware of the problem and frustrated by the superficial attempts at correction. Then, sometime suddenly, the public as a whole sees the problem clearly, looks more deeply for solutions, and discovers that the answers on a small scale, are already at hand. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
There develops a clear public will to deal with the problem, and enormous forces are set in motion. This does not mean that a miraculous solution is quickly reached, because most social problems—and technological problems too—are highly complex, and many unforeseen difficulties arise. However, once the corner has been turned, once that amorphous creature “the public” has made a decision to attack the problem, there is a great deal of forward movement. The telephone, the Internet, the radio, the automobile all went through a slow gestation period before the public realized the value of each, and demanded their rapid development. For generations different groups in American were denied the right to vote and could not hope to receive equal justice before the law. However, changes are beginning to occur, sometimes they happen with surprising speed, sometimes with tragic slowness. Yet, they are being made. Just when it seems too late, the great social collective mind grasps the seriousness of a problem and begins to move dramatically ahead. Because the collective decision is so late, the outcome is always in doubt—the World may still be drowned by overpopulation, we may still die of pollution, we may still see violent racial and gender strife—but at least we are making massive efforts to deal with those issues. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
It is this knowledge of the past that gives me courage to propose methods for dealing with intercultural, interracial, interpersonal, and international tensions. I believe that if the public becomes truly aware that present-day policies are targeted directly toward the destruction of all of us, then they may decide to look for alternatives. And the person-centered approach offers just such an alternative. Conflict within the individual is the most basic of all feuds and tensions. Some people seen outwardly like reasonably acceptable people, but they are lying to themselves. Inwardly they feel they are frauds, worthless, incompetent, full of bad impulses and evil intentions. There is an irreconcilable discrepancy between what they seem to be and what they really are. If people knew them as they are, they would reject them. Here is a power struggle within the person. In order to get by, people must keep up their façade, yet this fraudulent front is continually undermined by who they really are. No matter whichever might win out, life will be dissatisfying or frightening, or both. Individuals must realize that they can work openly for approval of others and can strive for recognition, but they can also resist control by others. Some of the conflicts that create rifts between people are marital conflict, sibling rivalry, athletic or academic cutthroat competition, and racial, gender, and educational differences. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
However, the only thing in a person’s life that makes one different is the thoughts in one’s mind that you know and no one else does. No matter how rich or poor, the person’s skin colour or gender, when someone opens up to you it is like a formula that grants access to their soul. You may learn you are closer to this person than you ever thought possible. Why? Because it is in our humanness—the shared conflicts, and feelings, learnings, perplexities, “experiences”—that we can come together, in spite of lives that in their externals probably have nothing in common, except that we were both born and have lived. One of our greatest difficulties in any dispute is to recognize or, even more difficult, to accept that the certitude we feel about our own rightness and goodness is equaled by the certitude of the opposing individual or group abut their rightness and goodness. If tension is to be reduced, it is this pattern that must somehow be dissolved. Here is where a person-centered approach is at its most powerful. When people can listen to their own feelings of hurt and distrust, the conflict over “principles” becomes completely redefined. It is now a question of the feelings, the needs, the fears of each person. New channels of communication are opened up. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The politics of a head-on confrontation over decision-making changes completely when each person is empowered to be all of oneself—feelings, fears, ideas, hopes, distrusts. A decision is then reached on a human basis, not as a result of a political clash. Listening is important. It provides a germinal took for radical self-experience, interaction, and group process. When we listen to others, coming from a rich, as yet untapped, understanding of and access to the locus of power in the individuals, we can also relearn what it means to be ourselves. Furthermore, gratitude is a handmaiden of contentment. An ever-growing attitude of gratitude will certainly make us more content since we will be focusing more on what we do have, both spiritually and materially, than on what we do not have. However, contentment is more than focusing on what we have. It is focusing on the fact that all we do have, we have by the grace of God. We do not deserve anything we have, materially or spiritually. It is all by God’s grace. Discontent usually arises when we think we are not getting what we deserve, or when we think we are not getting as much as someone else. We have already seen the corrosive effect of discontent in the attitude of those who worked all day in the vineyard. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
They were discontent and consequently unhappy, because they felt they had earned more than the workers who were hired at the eleventh hour. How different from their attitude was Paul’s who regarded himself not only as “the least of the apostles” but even as “less than the least of all God’s people” (1 Corinthians 15.9, Ephesians 3.8). Paul truly regarded himself as an “eleventh hour” worker in God’s vineyard, as one who was receiving a full say’s wages, and more, for one hour’s work. Discontent is a sign that we are living by works, that we think we deserve more than we are getting, that in some way God is not being fair to us. One of the more helpful passages of Scripture on this subject is Luke 17.7-10: “Supposed one of you had a servant plowing or looking after sheep. Would one say to the servant when one comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would one not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would one thank the servant because one did what one was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
I am sure this passage of Scripture offends many people’s sense of fairness just as much as does the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The master of the servant seems completely selfish and callous to needs of his servant. However, Jesus was not commending the master, He was simply describing conditions as they existed. The issue was, given the culture of the day, who had a right to have expectations of whom? Clearly, the servant, when he had fulfilled his duties, had no right to expect either gratitude or consideration. He had simply done what he was supposed to do. God is no selfish and callous like the master in Jesus’s story. He is the generous and gracious landowner we saw described in the parable of the workers in the vineyard. However, we are the servants of Luke 17.7-10. When we have done everything we were told to do—and who of us has come anywhere close to that standard?—we should still say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty. If we want to live by what we deserve, God could say, “All right, let us first add up your debits, and ten we will think about your credits.” Our problem is, we do not recognize our debits. We do not recognize how far, far short we come every day in doing what we are supposed to do. And because of that, we tend to live by works instead of by grace in our daily relationship with God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Paul said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” reports 1 Timothy 6.6. All the wealth and prestige in the World with discontentment results in poverty of spirit. However, contentment arising in our souls from living by grace—that is, from realizing we have not received what we actually deserved, but daily receive what we do not deserve—bring great wealth of spirit, even if we are living in poverty and obscurity. I commend to you for meditation in respect to contentment Luke 17.10, which sums up Jesus’ teaching in that story. “Behold, now it came to pass in the sixty and ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of the Nephites, that Nephi, the son of Helaman, returned to the land of Zarahemla from the land northward. For he had been forth among the people who were in the land northward, and did preach the word of God unto them, and did prophesy many things unto them. And they did reject all his words, insomuch that he could not stay among them, but returned again unto the land of his nativity. And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gadianton robbers filling the judgment-seats—having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the World, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and skill, and do according to their own wills—now this great iniquity had come upon the Nephites, in the space of not many years; and when Nephi saw it, his heart was swollen with sorrow within his breast; and he did exclaim in the agony of his soul: Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him in the promised land; then were his people easy to ne entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity; and they were quick to hearken unto the words of the Lord—yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren. However, behold, I am cosigned that these are my days, and that my soul shall be filled with sorrow because of this wickedness of my brethren. And behold, now it came to pass that it was upon a tower, which was in the garden of Nephi, which was by the highway which led to the chief market, which was in the city of Zarahemla. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“Therefore, Nephi had bowed himself upon the tower which was in his garden, which tower was also near unto the garden gate by which led the highway. And it came to pass that there were certain people passing by and saw Nephi as he was pouring out his soul unto God upon the tower; and they ran and told the people what they had seen, and the people came together in multitudes that they might know the cause of so great mourning for the wickedness of the people. And now, when Nephi arose he beheld the multitudes of people who had gathered together. And it cam to pass that he opened his mouth and said unto them: Behold, why have ye gathered yourselves together? That I may tell you of your iniquities? Yea, because I have got upon my tower that I might pour out my soul unto my God, because of the exceeding sorrow of my heart, which is because of your iniquities! And because of my mourning and lamentation ye have gathered yourselves together, and do marvel; yea, and ye have great need because ye are given away that the devil had got so great hold upon your hearts. Yea, how could you have given way to the enticing of him who is seeking to hurl away your souls down to everlasting misery and endless wo? O repent ye, repent ye! Why will ye die? Turn ye, turn ye unto the Lord your God. Why has he forsaken you? #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“It is because you have hardened your hearts; yea, ye will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd; yea, ye have provoked him to anger against you. And behold, instead of gathering you, except ye will repent, behold, he shall scatter you forth that ye shall become meat for dogs and wild beasts. O, how could you have forgotten your God in the very day that he has delivered you? However, behold, it is to get gain, to be praised of humans, yes, and that ye might get gold and silver. And ye have set your hearts upon the riches and the vain things of this World, for the which ye do murder, and plunder, and steal, and bear false witness against your neighbour, and do all manner of iniquity. And for this cause wo shall come unto you except ye shall repent. For if ye will not repent, behold, this great city, and also all those great cities which are round about, which are in the land of our possession, shall be taken away that ye shall have no place in them; for behold, the Lord will not grant unto you strength, as he has hitherto done, to withstand against your enemies. For behold, thus saith the Lord: I will not you unto the wicked of my strength, to one more then the other, save it be unto those who repent of their sins, and hearken unto my words. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“Now therefore, I would that ye should behold, my brethren, that is shall be better for the Lamanites than for you except ye shall repent. For behold, they are more righteous than you, for they have not sinned against that great knowledge which ye have received; therefore the Lord will be merciful unto them; yea, he will lengthen out their days and increase their seed, even when thou shalt be utterly destroyed except thou shalt repent. Yea, wo be unto you because of that great abomination which has come among you; and ye have united yourselves unto it, yea, to that secret band which was established by Gadianton! Yea, wo shall come unto you because of that pride which ye have suffered to enter your hearts, which has lifted you up beyond that which is good because of your exceedingly great riches! Yea, wo be unto you because of your wickedness and abominations! And except ye repent ye shall perish; yea, even your lands shall be taken from you, and ye shall be destroyed from off the face of the Earth. Behold now, I do not say that these things shall be, of myself because it is not of myself that I know these things; but behold, I know that these things are true because the Lord God has made them known unto me, therefore I testify that they shall be,” reports Helaman 7.1-29. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Awaken me, God, waler on the edge, Lord of beautiful music, God of wild longings. My shield and my protector, God, be. God, rescue me please. Great King, please guide and protect me. My guide is God as I ride through life. Life’s soft fluid, gently welling, source and gift to all who live, please be my protector. Defeat my foes with flashing flame, with thunder and lightning, Almighty God. Please empower me, Most High, I ask to write the truth on the tablet of life. God of beauty, please grant my desire. God, you give us so much. The entire World is a gift from You. You keep it running, and this should be acknowledged. O inscribe all the children of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed by Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks is due. Please grant lasting peace unto Israel Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people Israel at all times with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blesset Thy people Israel with peace. In the book of life, blessing, peace and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of Israel, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, o Lord, who establishes peace. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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I Hold it True, what’er Befall; I feel it when I Sorrow Most; ‘Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost!
Youth is not chronological age but the state of growing, learning, and changing. All people must be helped to regain the condition of youth. The two principles of justice: The first guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. The second principle provides fair equality of educational and employment opportunities enabling all to fairly compete for powers and positions of office; and it secures for all a guaranteed minimum of the all-purpose means (including income and wealth) that individuals need to pursue their interests and to maintain their self-respect as free and equal persons. In applying the two principles of justice to the basic structure of society one takes the position of certain representative individuals and considers how the social system looks to them. The difference, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged. Or as I sometime say more lightly, social and economic inequalities must by in the interests of the representative people in all relevant social positions. The perspective of those in these situations defines a suitably general point of view. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
However, certainly not all social positions are relevant. For not only are there farmers, say, but dairy farmers, wheat farmers, farmers working on large tracts of land, and so on for other occupations and groups indefinitely. If we must take such a multiplicity of positions into account, we cannot have a coherent and manageable theory. Therefore we need to identify certain positions as more basic than the others and as providing an appropriate standpoint for judging the social system. Thus the choice of these positions becomes part of the theory of justice. On what principle, though, are they to be identified? We must keep in mind the fundamental problem of justice and the manner in which the two principles cope with it. The primary subject of justice, is the basic structure of society. The reason for this is that its effects are so profound and pervasive, and present from birth. This structure favours some starting places over others in the division of the benefits of social cooperation. It is these inequalities which the two principles are to regulate. Once these principles are satisfied, other inequalities are allowed to arise from human’s voluntary actions in accordance with the principle of free association. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
Thus the relevant social positions are, so to speak, the starting places properly generalized and aggregated. By choosing these positions to specify the general point of view one follows the idea that the two principles attempt to mitigate the arbitrariness of natural contingency and social fortune. I suppose, then, that for the most part each person holds two relevant positions: that of equal citizenship and that defined by one’s place in the distribution of income and wealth. The relevant representative humans, therefore and the representative citizens and those who stand for the various levels of well-being. Since I assume that in general other positions are entered into voluntarily, we need not consider the point of view of humans in these positions in judging the basic structure. Indeed, we are to adjust the whole scheme to suit the preferences of those in the so-called starting places. In judging the social system we are to disregard our more specific interest and associations and look at our situation from the standpoint of these representative humans. Now as far as possible the basis structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship. This position is defined by the right and liberties required by principle of equal liberty and the principle of fair equality of opportunity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
When the two principles are satisfied, all are equal citizens, and so everyone holds this position. In this sense, equal citizenship defines a general point of view. The problems of adjudicating among the fundamental liberties are settled by reference to it. Many questions of social policy can also be considered from this position. For there are matters which concern the interests of everyone and in regard to which distributive effects are immaterial or irrelevant. In these cases the principle of the common interest can be applied. According to this principle institutions are ranked by how effectively they guarantee the conditions necessary for all equally to further their sims, or by how efficiently they advance shared ends that will similarly benefit everyone. Thus reasonable regulations to maintain public order ad security, or efficient measures for public health and safety, promote the common interest in this sense. So do collective efforts for national defense in a just war. It may be suggested that maintaining public health and safety, promote the common interest in this since. So do collective efforts for national defense in a just war. It may be suggested that maintaining public health and safety or achieving victory in a just war have distributive effects: the affluent benefit more than the less affluent since the have more to lose. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
However, if social and economic inequalities are just, these effects may be left aside and the principle of the common interest applied. The standpoint of equal citizenship is the appropriate one. The definition of representative humans for judging social and economic inequalities is less satisfactory. For one thing, taking these individuals as specified by the levels of income and wealth, I assumed of power and authority to avoid an index problem. That is, I suppose that those with greater political authority, say, or those higher in institutional forms, are in general better off in other respects. On the whole, this assumption seems safe enough for our purposes. There is also a question about how many such representative humans to single out, but this is not crucial because the difference principle selects one representative for a special role. The serious difficulty is how to define the least fortunate group. Here is seems impossible to avoid certain arbitrariness. One possibility is to choose particular social position, say that of the unskilled worker, and then to count as the least advantaged all those with the average income and wealth of this group, or less. The expectation of the lowest representative human is defined as the average taken over this whole class. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
Another alternative is a definition solely in terms of relative income and wealth with no reference to social position. Thus all persons with less than half of the median income and wealth may be taken as the least advantaged segment. This definition depends only upon the lower half of the distribution and has the merit of focusing attention on the social distance between those who have least and the average citizen. Surely this gap is an essential feature of the situation of the least favoured members of society. I suppose that either of these definitions or some combination of them, will serve well enough. In any case we are to aggregate to some degree over the expectations of the worst off, and the figure selected on which to base these computations is to a certain extent ad hoc. Yet we are entitled at some point to plead practical considerations in formulating the difference principle. Sooner or later the capacity of philosophical or other arguments to make finer discriminations is bound to run out. I assume therefore that the persons in the original position understand the difference principle to be defined in one of these ways. They interpret it from the first as a limited aggregative principle and assess it as such in comparison with other standards. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
It is not as if they agreed to think of the least advantaged as literally the worst off individual and then in order to make this criterion work adopted in practice some form of averaging. Rather, it is the practicable criterion itself that is to be evaluated from the perspective of the original position. It may turn out that a more exact definition of the least favoured proves unnecessary. As far as possible, then, justice as fairness appraises the social system from the position of equal citizenship and the various levels of income and wealth. Sometimes, however, other positions may need to be taken into account. If, for example, there are unequal basic rights founded on fixed natural characteristics, these inequalities will single out relevant positions. Since these characteristics cannot be changed, the position they define count as starting places in the basic structure. Distinctions based on gender are of this type, and so are those depending upon race and culture. Thus is, say, humans are favoured in the assignment of basic rights, this inequality is justified by the difference principle (in the general interpretation) only if it is to the advantage of women and acceptable from their standpoint. And the analogous condition applies to the justification of caste systems, or racial and ethic inequalities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Such inequalities multiply relevant positions and complicate the application of the two principles. On the other hand, these inequalities are seldom, if ever, to the advantage of the less favoured, and therefore in a just society the smaller number of relevant positions should be ordinarily suffice. Now it is essential that the judgments made from the perspective of the relevant positions override the claims that we are prone to make in more particular situations. If we think of ourselves in terms of our more specific positions, not everyone always benefits by what the two principle require. And unless the viewpoint of the relevant position has priority, one still has a chaos of competing claims. Thus the two principles express, in effect, an understanding to order our interests by giving certain of them a special weight. For example, persons engaged in a particular industry often find that free trade is contrary to their interests. Perhaps the industry cannot remain prosperous without tariffs or other restrictions. However, if free trade is desirable from the point of view of equal citizens or of the least advantaged, it is justified even though more specific interests suffer. For we are to agree in advance to the principles of justice and their consistent application from the standpoint of certain positions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
There is no way to guarantee the protection of everyone’s interests over each period of time once the situation of representative humans is defined more narrowly. Having acknowledged certain principles and a certain way of applying them, we are bound to accept the consequences. This does not mean, of course, that the rigors of free trade should be allowed to go unchecked. However, the arrangements for softening them are to be considered from an appropriately general perspective. The relevant social positions specify, then, the general point of view from which the two principles of justice are to be applied to the basic structure. In this way everyone’s interests are taken into account, for each person is an equal citizen and all have a place in the distribution of income and wealth or in the range of fixed natural characteristics upon which distinctions are based. Some selections of relevant positions is necessary for a coherent theory of social justice and the ones chosen should accord with its first principles. By selecting the so-called starting places one follows out the idea of mitigating the effects of natural accident and social circumstance. No one is o benefit from these contingencies except in ways that redound to the well-being of others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
The very first character trait that should flow out of experiencing God’s grace is gratitude to Him. Everything we are and everything we do that is of any value, we owe to the grace of God. This, of course begins with our salvation. The longer I live the Christian life, the more grateful I am for the salvation God gave to me when I was an eighteen-year-old college student. Years ago I memorized Mark 8.36-37: “For what shall it profit a human, if one shall gain the whole World, and lose one’s own soul? Or what shall a human give in exchange for one’s soul?” Initially, I memorized that passage to take the gospel offer seriously. However, in recent years I have begun t mediate on those verses for my own benefit to help me realize what an infinitely priceless gift I have received in God’s gracious gift of eternal life. As I think of the message of those verses, I visualize a balance scale with all the treasures of the entire World on one tray and eternal life on the other tray. The two rays are not balanced. Rather the scale is bottomed out on the side of eternal life. In the gift of eternal life, God has given us greater treasure than all the accumulated wealthy of the whole World. Are we sufficiently grateful for this priceless gift? Do we take time to actually give thanks to God for the gift that cost Him so much? #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
Are we as grateful today as we were the day we initially experienced the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God? If we are truly living by the transforming grace of God in our daily lives, gratitude for God’s gif of eternal life through Jesus Christ will be a growing experience. We should have a greater sense of gratitude, and be more desirous of expressing that attitude to God, today than the day we were brought out of the kingdom of sin into the Kingdom of grace. God has, of course, given us so much else in Christ. Have we grown in the Christian life so that we are a bit more mature today than we were a year ago? Are we perhaps more loving and gentler today than we were a year ago? If so, where did this growth come from? It did not come from ourselves, because as Paul said, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature,” reports Romans 7.18. There are only two moral forces within us: our sinful nature and the Holy Spirit empowering our new nature. If we are more Christlike today than a year ago, it is because of the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and this is by the grace of God. Certainly, we must clothe ourselves with Christlike virtues, but these same virtues are also called the fruit of the Spirit—that is, the result of His work in us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
One great paradox of the Christian life is that we are fully responsible for our Christian growth and at the same tie fully dependent upon the Holy Spirit to give us both the desire to grow and the ability to do it. God’s grace does not negate the need for responsible action on our part, but rather makes it possible. What about ministry? Have we accomplished some specific work for God? As we have already seen, we must admit to God, “All that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, we are or we have done that is worthwhile, that is not the result of God’s Spirit working in us and through us. I fear that often we Christians begin to think our spiritual growth and “success” in ministry is due, at least in large measures, to our own goodness and hard work. The irony is, the more committed and diligent we are, the more susceptible we are to that temptation. We face the same temptation in a spiritual sense that Israel faced in a material way when God warned them they would be prone to say, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me,” reports Deuteronomy 8.17. Let us go on to the temporal blessings of life. Are we comfortably situated in a nice home with plenty of food in the cupboard and the refrigerator? #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
Do we enjoy a reasonable degree of health? Do we have our own personal copy of the Bible (aside from the half dozen or so different translations some of us have)? Are we able to gather with other believers for worship and study of the Scriptures without fear of religious persecution? All of these blessings come to us by God’s grace, and all of them are occasions for gratitude and giving thanks to Him. It is interesting that some people use the expression “saying grace,” for the prayer of thanksgiving at meal time. I have no idea of that expression’s origin, but I suspect it was born out of a recognition that the food on the table was not only from God, but that it was there by His grace. We actually ought to “say grace” continually throughout the day for the temporal and spiritual blessings that come our way so abundantly. I know many of us are going through some difficult times, and it is tough to have a grateful spirit. However, if we stop and consider, we will recognize that we are still recipients every day of the amazing grace of God. If we are truly growing in grace, gratitude—and its expression in actually giving thanks to God—will be an ever-growing characteristic in our lives. Many adult learners have a deep sense of insecurity about their own mental abilities. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
Defensiveness and a false sense of pride can arise to protect one from feeling embarrassed about not knowing something. Intellectual embarrassment is one of the worst forms of humiliation—no one wants to come off as stupid or uninformed. I think our adult Sunday school classes have unintentionally contributed to this false sense of pride. I have spoken in hundreds of churches and have regularly observed Sunday school classes which divine into small groups to reflect on a passage or discuss an idea. Later, when the groups recombine to share their observations with the entire class, group feedback is almost always affirming no matter how inaccurate or poorly reasoned the point is. Over the years, this creates a feeling of safety in the class but at the price of generating both a false sense of pride and the mistaken notion that all opinions are equal, whether spontaneous and quickly conceived or the result of detailed study prior to class time. It also keeps adults from learning how to receive criticism for their ideas in the interest of truth and stifles growth in the ability to respond nondefensively. If we do not work on this in the safety of the company of our own brothers and sisters, we will come off as small, reactionary, and inarticulate in the public square. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
We need to give one another permission to express inadequately thought-out points to each other and create the expectation that we can learn to argue with one another, critique and defend ideas, or leave class with more work to do on a subject. All of this is in the interest of learning to reason carefully to get to the truth of what we study together. This may be a bit threatening at first, but over the long haul it will produce a church filled with people who are more secure about what they believe and why. The very forms that define our periods of study together often institutionalize false pride and a lack of intellectual growth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting you do not know something or that you are currently inadequately equipped to think a topic through. What is unacceptable, however, is running from this fact and thereby giving up on intellectual and spiritual growth in the interest of avoiding embarrassment or possible rejection. We all need help in this area, and we should care enough about truth and reason to give that help. Even if we agree with one another’s conclusions, we need to dedicate ourselves for Christ’s sake to refusing to allow each other to reach those conclusions with poor argumentation and sloppy treatment of data. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
Another form of inferiority comes from the simple fact that we are evangelicals. For some time now, our culture had told us that conservative Christians are intellectually inferior, that the Christian faith is irrational, and so forth. And we constantly watch our view caricatured as the news media, hostile university professors, and others regularly build straw humans out of Christians positions and proceed to destroy those straw humans. When a community is repeatedly told that it is ignorant, it will come to believe that message whether or not it is true. Asking them to leave: What should we do about this problem? I think we need to work harder at holding forth and celebrating our past and contemporary Christian thinkers. We need to know who they are. Do you know who the top Christian intellectuals are today in various fields? Are these people and their work placed before our children as examples to be emulated? We do this for Christian sports heroes, missionaries, and public speakers, so why not do it for our intellectuals? The effect of identifying and celebrating our Christian intellectuals before one another cannot be overestimated. Even though the early church was a minority movement that faced intellectual and cultural ridicule and marginalization, it maintained internal cohesion and a courageous witness thanks in no small measure to the powerful role in the broader Christian community of Christian intellectuals and apologist. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
The early church knew who her intellectuals and apologists were, and this gave them confidence and a feeling of strength. In the same way, we must identify, celebrate, utilize, and make role models out of our Christian thinkers. And we need to celebrate the absolutely unequaled history of the intellectual life in the Christian church. If an alternative community of atheists, or anything else can rival the rich culture and intellectual leadership in church history, let someone come forth and demonstrate it. The intellectual life is our heritage as Christians, and it is time to remind ourselves of this. However, if one becomes so dependent that every problem as it arises is at once put before the teacher for solution, the consequence will eventually be an utter helplessness before all problems. The capacities for independent judgment, for taking the initiative, for showing creativeness and forming decisions, will decay and even disappear. Becoming a satellite and revolving around a guru may be beneficial to a human. However, when this revolution become a permanent one, the harm beings, and one will never again be able to move into a fresh orbit and fulfill the evolutionary intention secreted within one’s own being. It is absolutely indispensable for the disciples to learn how to live their own lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
The guide must not only be competent to do what one proposes to do, but the disciple also must be qualified to take advantage of it. Rare is the true disciple. It is better to have a few earnest students who willingly work hard for their self-improvement than a mass of students who do nothing more than read books and talk amongst themselves. The kind of student one likes to see, but unfortunately rarely does see, blends a fine moral character with good intelligence and sound practicality, all topped by profound mystical intuition and a proper sense of reverence. Such a one is thoroughly dependable and reliable, one’s words are not mere froth of emotion to be quickly forgotten. When a seeker’s determination to follow the quest become tough enough not to be deviated by adversity or by luxury, one is ready for a teacher. “And it came to pass that when the sixty and second year of the reign of the judges had ended, all these things had happened and the Lamanites had become, the more part of them, a righteous people, insomuch that their righteousness did exceed that of the Nephites, because of their firmness and their steadiness in the faith. For behold, there were many of the Nephites who had become hardened and impenitent and grossly wicked, insomuch that they did reject the word of God and all the preaching and prophesying which did come among them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
“Nevertheless, the people of the church did have great joy because of the conversation of the Lamanites, yea, because of the church of God, which had been established among them. And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy. And it came to pass that many of the Lamanites did come down into the land of Zarahemla, and did declare unto the people f the Nephites the manner of their conversation, and did exhort them to faith and repentance. Yea, and many did preach with exceedingly great power and authority, unto the brining down many of them into the depths of humility, to be the humble followers of Go and the Lamb. And it came to pass that many of the Lamanites did go into the land northward; and also Nephi and Lehi went into the land northward, to preach unto the people. And thus ended the sixty and third year. And behold, there was peace in all the land, insomuch that the Nephites did go into whatsoever part of the land they would, whether among the Nephites or the Lamanites. And it came to pas that the Lamanites did also go whithersoever they would, whether it were among the Lamanites or among the Nephites; and thus they did have free intercourse one with another, to buy and sell, and to get gain according to their desire. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
“And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceedingly plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north. Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south. And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds f ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich. They did raise grain in abundance, both in the north and in the south; and they did flourish exceedingly, both in the north and in the south. And they did multiply and wax exceedingly strong in the land. And they did raise many flocks and herds, yea, many fatlings. Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace. And in the sixty and fifth year they did also have great joy and peace, yea, much preaching and many prophecies concerning that which was to come. And thus passed away the sixty and fifth year. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
“And it came to pass that in the sixty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, behold, Cezoram was murdered by an unknown hand as he sat upon the judgment-sea. And it came to pass that in the same year, that his son, who had been appointed by the people in his stead, was also murdered. And thus ended the sixty and sixth year. And in the commencement of the sixty and seventh years the people began to grow exceedingly wicked again. For behold, the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the World that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain. And now behold, those murderers and plunderers were a band who had been formed by Kishkumen and Gadianton. And now it had come to pass that there were many even among the Nephites, of Gadianton’s band. However, behold, they were more numerous among the more wicked part of the Lamanites. And they were called Gadianton’s robbers and murderers. And it was they who did murder the chief judge Cezoram, and his son, while in the judgment-seat; and behold, they were not found. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
“And now it came to pass that when the Lamanites found that there were robbers among them they were exceedingly sorrowful; and they did use every means in their power to destroy them off the face of the Earth. However, behold, Satan did stir up the hearts of the more part of the Nephites, insomuch that they did unite with those bands of robbers, and did enter into their covenants and their oaths, that they would protect and preserve one another in whatsoever difficult circumstances they should be places, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings. And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words; and this that they might distinguish a brother who had entered int the covenant, that whatsoever wickedness his brother should do he should not be injured by his brother, nor by those who did belong to his band, who had taken this covenant. And thus they might murder, and plunder, and steal, and commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness, contrary to the laws of their country and also the laws of their God. And whosoever of those who belonged to their band should reveal unto the World of their wickedness and their abominations, should be tried, not according to the laws of their country, but according to the laws of their wickedness, which had been given by Gadiation and Kishkumen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“Now behold, it is these secret oaths and covenants which Alma commanded his son should not go forth unto the World, least they should be a means of bringing down the people unto destruction. Now behold, those secret oaths and covenants did not come forth unto Gadiaton from the records which were delivered unto Helaman; but behold, they were put into the heart of Gadianton by that same being who did entice our first parents to partake of the forbidden fruit—yea, that same being who did plot with Cain, that if he would murder his brother Abel it should not be known unto the World. And he did plot with Cain and his followers from that time forth. And also it is that same being who put it into the hearts of the people to build a tower sufficiently high that they might get to Heaven. And it was that same being who led on the people who came from that tower into this land; who spread the works of darkness and abominations over all the face of the land, until he dragged the people down to an entire destruction, and to an everlasting hell. Yea, it is that same being who put it into the heart of Gadianton to still carry on the work of darkness, and of secret murder; and he has brought it forth from the beginning of humans even down to this time. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“And behold, it is he who is the author of all sin. And behold, he doth carry on his works of darkness and secret murder, and doth hand down their plots, and their oath, and their covenants, and their plans of awful wickedness, from generation to generation according as he can get hold upon the hearts of the children of humans. And now behold, he had got great hold upon the hearts of the Nephites; yea, insomuch that they had become exceedingly wicked; yea, the more part of them had turned out of the way of righteousness, and did trample under their feet the commandments of God, and did turn unto their own ways, and did build up unto themselves idols of their gold and their silver. And it came to pass that all these iniquities did come unto them in the space of not many years, insomuch that a more part of it had come unto them in the sixty and seventh year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did grow in their iniquities in the sixty and eight year also, to the great sorrow and lamentation of the righteous. And thus we see that the Nephites did begin to dwindle in unbelief, and grow in wickedness and abominations, while the Lamanites began to grow exceedingly in the knowledge of their God; yea, they did begin to keep his statutes and commandments, and to walk in truth and uprightness before him. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“And thus we see that the Spirit of the Lord began to withdraw from the Nephites, because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts. And thus we see that the Lord began to pour out his Spirit upon the Lamanites, because of their easiness and willingness to believe in his words. And it came to pass that the Lamanites did hunt the band of robbers of Gadianton; and they did preach the word of God among the more wicked part of them, insomuch that this band of robbers was utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites. And it came to pass on the other hand, that the Nephites did build them up and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils, and to join with them in their secret murders and combinations. And thus they did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet and smite and rend and turn their backs upon the poor and the meek, and the humble followers of God. And thus we see that they were in an awful state, and ripening for everlasting destruction. And it came to pass that thus ended the sixty and eighty year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Helaman 6.1-41. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
Almighty God and Jesus Christ, over the deeply sounding sea please carry me safely. Part the mists and guide me through. End the chaos, mighty Lord. Protect y people with sword upraised by at my side. All seeing God, may I be just. Lord, father, friend, please keep my feet clearly on the path of the right. King of Heaven, bless my home. Lord, endow me with wisdom. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days f the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people of Israel to compel them to forsake Thy Torah, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy Torah. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to Israel. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
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The Quality of Mercy is Not Strained, it Droppeth as the Gentle Rain from Heaven Upon the Place Beneath!
Although the World is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. Revolution does not occur when things get bad enough but when things get better—when small improvements generate rising aspirations and decrease tolerance for long-existing injustices. The “make things worse” approach is not only strategic, it is not even revolutionary—it seeks unconsciously to preserve, while at the same time discrediting, parental authority. The emotional logic behind it might be expressed as: “if things get bad enough, they will see that it is unfair.” As most people know, radical movements are always plagued with people who want to lose, want to be stopped, want in effect to be put under protective custody. The make-it-worse position is based on the same assumption as the “backlash” position, which argues that “if you go too far, they will turn against you.” Both view public opinion as a kind of judicial Good Parent, and exaggerate the importance of transient public sentiment. Both underestimate the importance, for creating change, of prolonged exposure to new ideas. There is no such thing as a situation so intolerable that human beings must necessarily rise up against it. People can bear it. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
The job of the revolutionary is to show people that things can be better and to move them directly and unceasingly word that goal. The better things get the more aware people become that they need not tolerate the injustices and miseries that remain. By the same token, the worst backlash situation is always better than the pre-change condition. Backlash implies that people once accepted and then came to reject change, but this is not the case. It is merely that the significance of the change—the reality of it—was not yet understood. Backlash is simply part of the educative process—the process of learning that change means change. It is behaviour and institutions that the true revolutionary seeks to change—the good or bad opinion of those around one is of little consequence. The backlash-avoider is saying, “if we go too far, people will think badly of me.” Thus is seems probably if the privileges and powers of legislators and judges say, improve the situation of the less favoured, they improve that of citizens generally. However, procedural justice is rare, if not impossible, in cases of much practical interest. Imperfect procedural justice is exemplified by criminal trial. The desired outcome is if and only if the defendant has committed the offense which one is charged with, one should be declared guilty. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
The trial procedure is framed to search for and to establish the truth in this regard. However, it seems impossible to design the legal rules so that they always lead to the correct result. The theory of trials examines which procedures and rules of evidence, and the like, are best calculated to advance this purpose consistent with the other ends of the law. Different arrangements for hearing cases may reasonably be expected in different circumstances to yield the right results, not always but at least most of the time. A trial, then, is an instance of imperfect procedural justice. Even though the law is carefully followed, and the proceedings fairly and properly conducted, it may reach the wrong outcome. An innocent person may be found guilty, a guilty person may be set free. In such cases we speak of a miscarriage of justice: the injustice springs from no human fault but from a fortuitous combination of circumstances which defeats the purpose of the legal rules. The characteristic mark of imperfect procedural justice is that while there is an independent criterion for the correct outcome, there is no feasible procedure which is sure to lead to it. By contrast, pure procedural justice obtains when there is no independent criterion for the right result: instead there is correct or fair procedure such that the outcome is likewise correct or fair, whatever it is, provided that the procedure has been properly followed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
The situation of pure procedural justice is illustrated by gambling. If a number of persons engage in a series of fair bets, the distribution of cash after the last bet is fair, or at least not unfair, whatever this distribution is. I assume here that fair bets are those having a zero expectation of gain, that the bets are made voluntarily, that no one cheats, and so on. The betting procedure is fair and freely entered into under conditions that are fair. Thus the background circumstances define a fair procedure. Now any distribution of cash summing to the initial stock held by all individuals could result from a series of fair bets. In this sense all of these particular distributions are equally fair. A distinctive feature of pure procedural justice is that the procedure for determining the just result must actually be carried out; for in these cases there is no independent criterion by reference to which a definite outcome can be known to be just. Clearly we cannot say that a particular state of affairs is just because it could have been reached by following a fair procedure. This would permit far too much and would lead to absurdly unjust consequences. It would allow one to say that almost any distribution of good is just, or fair, since it could have come about as a result of fair gambles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
Be not afraid of greatness: some people are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. What makes the final outcome of betting fair, or not unfair, is that the one which has arisen after a series of fair gambles. A fair procedure translates its fairness to the outcome only when it is actually carried out. In order, therefore, to apply the notion of pure procedural justice to distributive shares it is necessary to set up and to administer impartially a just system of institutions. Only against the background of a just basic structure, including a just political constitution and a just arrangement of economic and social institutions, can one say that the requisite just procedure exists. Suppose that law and government act effectively to keep markets competitive, resources fully employed, property and wealth (especially if private ownerships of the means of production is allowed) widely distributed by the appropriate forms of taxation, or whatever, and to guarantee a reasonable social minimum. Assume also that there is fair equality of opportunity underwritten by education for all; and that the others equal liberties are secured. Then it would appear that the resulting distribution of income and the pattern of expectations will tend to satisfy the difference principle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
In this complex of institutions, which we think of as establishing social justice in the modern state, the advantages of better situated improved the condition of the least favoured. Or when they do not, they can be adjusted to do so, for example, by setting the social minimum at the appropriate level. As these institutions presently exist they are riddle with grave injustices. However, there presumably are ways of running them compatible with their basic design and intention so that the difference principle is satisfied consistent the demands of liberty and fair equality of opportunity. It is this fact which underlies our assurance that these arrangements can be made just. It is evident that the role of the principle of fair opportunity is to insure that the system of cooperation is one of pure procedural justice. Unless it is satisfied, distributive justice could not be left to take care of itself, even within a restricted range. Now the great practical advantage of pure procedural justice is that it is no longer necessary in meeting the demands of justice to keep track of the endless variety of circumstances and the changing relative positions of particular persons. One avoids the problem of defining principles to cope with the enormous complexities which would arise if such details were relevant. #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
It is a mistake to focus attention on the varying relative position of individuals and to require that every change, considered as a single transaction viewed in isolation, be in itself just. It is the arrangement of the basic structure which is to be judged, and judged from a general point of view. Unless we are prepared to criticize it from the standpoint of a relevant representative person in some particular position, we have no complaint against it. Thus the accepted of the two principles constitutes an understanding to discard as irrelevant as a matter of social justice much of the information and many of the complications of everyday life. In pure procedural justice, then, distributions of advantaged are not appraised in the first instance by confronting a stock of benefits available with given desires and needs of known individuals. The allotment of the items produced takes place in accordance with the public system of rules, and this system determines what is produced, how much is produced, and by what means. It also determines legitimate claims the honouring of which yields the resulting distribution. Thus in this kind of procedural justice the correctness of the distribution is founded on the justice of the scheme of cooperation from which it arises and on answering the claims of individuals engaged in it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
A distribution cannot be judged in isolation from the system of which it is the outcome or from what individuals have done in good faith in the light of established expectations. If it is asked in the abstract whether one distribution of a given stock of things to definite individuals with known desires and preferences is better than another, then there is simply no answer to this question. The conception of the two principles does not interpret the primary problem of distributive justice as one of allocative justice. By contrast the allocative conception of justice seems naturally to apply when a given collection of goods is to be divided among definite individuals with known desires and needs. The goods to be allotted are not produced by these individuals, nor do these individuals stand in any existing cooperative relations. Since there are no prior claims on the things to be distributed, it is natural to share them out according to desires and needs, or even to maximize the balance of satisfaction. Justice becomes a kind of efficiency, unless equality is preferred. Suitably generalized, the allocative conception lead to the classical utilitarian view. For as we have seen, this doctrine assimilates justice to the benevolence of the impartial spectator and the later in turn to the most efficient design of institutions to promote the greatest balance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
On this conception society is thought of as so many separate individuals each defining a separate line along which rights and duties are to be assigned and scarce means of satisfaction allocated in accordance with rules so as to give the most complete fulfillment of desire. Utilitarianism does not interpret the basic structure as a scheme of pure procedural justice. For the utilitarian has, in principle anyway, an independent standard for judging all distributions, namely, whether they produce the greatest net balance of satisfaction. Institutions are more or less imperfect arrangements for bringing about this end. Thus given existing desires and preference, and the natural continuation into the future which they allow, the stateman’s aim is to set up those social schemes that will best approximate an already specific goals. Since these arrangements are subject to the unavoidable constraints and hindrances of everyday life, the basic structure is a case of imperfect procedural justice. The two parts of the second principle are lexically ordered. Thus we have one lexical ordering within another. However, when necessary, this ordering can be modified in the light of the general conception of justice. The advantage of the special conception is that is has a definite shape and suggests certain questions for investigation, for example, under what conditions if any would the lexical ordering be chosen? #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
Our inquiry is given a particular direction and is no longer confined to generalities. Of course, this conception of distributive shares is obviously a great simplification. It is designed to characterize in a clear way a basic structure that makes use of the idea of pure procedural justice. However, all the same we should attempt to find simple concepts that can be assembled to give a reasonable conception of justice. The notions of the basic structure, of the veil of ignorance, of a lexical order, of the least favoured position, as well as of pure procedural justice are all examples of this. By themselves none of these could be expected to work, but properly put together they may serve well enough. It is too much to suppose that there exists for all or even most moral problems a reasonable solution. Perhaps only a few can be satisfactorily answered. In any case social wisdom consist in framing institutions so that intractable difficulties do not often arise and in accepting the need for clear and simple principles. The “war on poverty” may have done very little to alleviate poverty and nothing at all to remove its causes, but it raised a lot of expectations, created many visions of the possibilities for change, altered a large number of people to existing inadequacies in the system and to the relative efficacy of various strategies for eliminating them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
Reform and change are thus complementary rather than antagonistic. Together they make it possible continually to test the limits of what can be done. Some people never know whether the door is unlocked because they are afraid to try it. Others, on the other hand, miss many opportunities for small advances because they are unwilling to settle for so little. There are often times conflicting forces in society. One seeks to remake the World to make it tolerable for us to live in, the other tries to cure us of our need to remake the World. Now the first task of a system is to maintain itself, and every system must therefore contain mechanisms to reactivate continually the motivational eccentricities that gave rise to it in the first place. Still, one cannot avoid a feeling of skepticism when it is proposed that institutional change alone will bring about motivational change. Closing down gambling casinos may reduce the volume of gambling but it does not end it. Only when institutions have been analyzed, discredited, disassembled, and the motivational forces that gave rise to them redirected into alternative spheres of gratification only then can change take place. When people can predict and influence their daily social encounters with greater ease, then they feel less manipulated and intruded upon. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
The longing for quiet, privacy, independence, initiative, and some open space says that something is preventing it from being gratified. These qualities are a foundation-stone of American society—of the suburbs. The total experience of the total humans then is of overcoming alienation, and of the subject-object split in perceiving the World; the uncovering of the unconscious means the overcoming of affective contamination and cerebration; it means the depression, the abolition of the split within myself between the universal human and the social humans; it means the arriving at the state of the immediate grasp of reality, without distortion and without interference by intellectual reflections; it means overcoming the craving to hold on to the ego, to worship it; it means giving up the illusion of an indestructible separate ego, which is to be enlarged, preserved and as the Egyptian pharaohs hoped to preserve themselves as mummies of eternity. To be conscious of the unconscious means to be open, responding, to have nothing and to be. If the new culture fails, it will be corrupted into a reactionary parody of itself. Much like we are seeing from many public and private institutions and people in society today. The problem is the we spend hundreds of billions of dollars ending lives and punishing people, but almost nothing to enhance the joys of living. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
Policies are rules are becoming an excuse for tyrannical force. It is like we no longer care about humanity or beautifying our communities. I recognize the desperate longing in America for stability, for some fixed reference point when all else is swirling about in endless flux. However, to cling to oppression and threats is the act of a hopeless addict, who, when one’s increasingly expensive habit has destroyed everything else in one’s life, embraces one’s destroyer more fervently than ever. The radical change I am suggesting here is only the reinstatement of stability itself. It may appear highly unappealing, like all cold-turkey cures, but nothing else will stop the spiraling disruption to which our old culture premises have brought us. Most old-cultural premises are built upon a self-deception: we pretend that through it we actually achieve social stability—that technological change can be confined within its own sphere. Yet obviously this is not so. Technological instability creates social stability as well, and we lose our way. California’s ban on gasoline powered cars by 2030 is an example. Imagine how many people and businesses that will harm. That is just nine years away. How long is it since anyone has said: “this is a pernicious invention, which will bring more misery than happiness to humankind?” #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
Some comments occur only in horror and science-fiction films, and even there, in the face of the most calamitous outcomes that jaded and overtaxed brains can device, the audience often feels a twinge of discomfort over the burning laboratory or the lost secret. We need to develop a human-value index—a criterion that assesses the ultimate worth of an invention or a system or a product in terms of its total impact on human life in terms of ends rather than means. We would then evaluate the achievements of medicine not in terms of human-hours or prolonged (and often comatose) life, or the volume of drugs sold, but in terms f the overall increase (or decrease) in human beings feeling healthy. We would evaluate city planning and housing programs not in terms of the number of bodies incarcerated in a given location, or the number of millions given to contractors, but in terms of the extent to which people take joy in their surroundings. We would evaluate the worth of an industrial firm not in terms of the money made of the number of widgets manufactured or sold, or how distended the organizations has become, but in terms of how much pleasure or satisfaction has been given to people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
It is not without significance that we tend to appraise a nation today in terms of its gross national product—a phrase whose connotations speaks for themselves. Americans are trained by advertising media to identify immediately with the person who actually uses the new products. When one thinks of owning a flying saucer, the American imagines oneself inside it, flying about and having fun. One does not think of oneself trying to sleep and having others Americans roaring by one’s window. Nor does one think of oneself trying to enjoy peace and quiet in the country with other Americans flying above. Nor does one even think of other Americans accompanying one in one’s flight and colliding with one as they all crowd into the city. The American never thinks of other Americans at all—it is one’s most characteristic trait that one imagines oneself to be alone on the continent. Furthermore, Americas are always hung over from some blow dealt them by their technological environment and are always looking for a fix—for some pleasurable escape from what technology has itself created. All of the people packed into downtown centers now are watched by cameras and police. Because of the influx of the population, there is always construction going on and unnecessary noise. Alarms going on in the middle of the night, a leaf blower party waking them up in the morning. No parking. #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
As the downtown community becomes less and less satisfying and pleasurable to be, people more and more look to escape from it. The saucers will simply extend this process further. People will take to their saucers to escape the hell of a saucer-filled environment, and the more they do the more unbearable that hell will become. How far can it go? What new inventions will be offered the staggering American to help one blow up one’s life? Will one finally flee to outer space, leaving the nest one has so industriously fouled behind one forever? Can one really find some means to propel oneself so fast that one will escape one’s own inventive destructiveness? The old-culture American needs to reconsider one’s commitment to technological “progress.” Cars have some many computers in them now that they are so expensive to buy. If we fail to kick the technology habit, we may retain our culture and lose our lives. Transitions are always fraught with risk and discomfort and insecurity, but we do not enjoy the luxury of postponement. It has taken us a long time to realize that seeking to surpass others might be pathological, and trying to enjoy and cooperate with others healthy, rather than the other way around. We continually turn to technology to save us from having to cooperate with each other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
I can buy shoddy goods and poisoned food, and satisfy ersatz needs. Our refusal to recognize our common economic destiny leads to the myth that if we all overcharge each other we will be better off. This self-delusion is even more extraordinary when we consider issues of health and safety. To some extend wealthy does purchase immunity from the effects of the crimes perpetrated to obtain it. Executives can live in the country, instead of cities polluted with noise and poor air quality. However, we cannot understand the irresponsibility of some corporations without recognizing that it includes and assumes a willingness on the part of corporate leaders to endanger themselves and their families for the short-run profit of the corporation. Humans have always been able to subordinate human values to the mechanisms they create. We cannot expect, after all, that everyone will arise one morning resolved simultaneously to act on different premises, and thus miraculously change the society. Competitive environments are difficult to modify, since whoever takes the first step is extremely like to go under. Americans need to be motivated by something other than greed. People engaged in helping others, in making communities viable, in making the environment more attractive, would be able to live more comfortably if they wished. #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
There is no particular reason why the United States of American could not become the center of the most beautiful, benign, and exciting culture the World has ever known. We cannot accept sayings like, “It is what it is,” or “It is a sign of the time,” we have to do better. The ability to maintain a permanent concentration of power depends upon the ability to maintain a healthy and strong population. We have to detach power from those who hate life and would rather die themselves than see others enjoying it. This involves overcoming of greed in all forms, whether it is the greed for possession, fame, or for affection; it implies overcoming narcissistic self-glorification and the illusion of omnipotence. It implies, furthermore, the overcoming of the desire to submit to an authority who solves one’s own problem of existence. Just as one has recognized that the cure of a symptom and the prevention of future symptom formations is not possible without the analysis and change of the character, one must also recognize that the change of this or that neurotic character trait is not possible without pursuing the more radical aim of a complete transformation of the person. When the achievement of idolatry, destructiveness, greed for property or fame breaks down, one’s sanity is threatened. The cure of the potential insanity lies only in the change in attitude from split and alienation to the creative, immediate grasp of and response to the World. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
Someone may be cured of a symptom, but one cannot be cured of a character neurosis. Humans are not things, humans are not a case, and the analyst does not cure anyone by treating one as an object. We must take steps to reach full enlightenment. If one candle is brought into an absolutely dark room, the darkness disappears, and there is light. However, if ten or a hundred or a thousand candles are added, the room will become brighter and brighter. Yet the decisive change was brought about by the first candle which penetrated the darkness. One person can make a difference. People usually attract like beings. Set an example. Do good and others will follow. What happens in the analytic process? A person sense for the first time that one is vain, that one is frightened, that one hates, while consciously one had believed oneself to be modest, brave and loving. The new insight may hurt one, but it opens the door; it permits one to stop projecting on others what one represses in oneself. One proceeds; one experiences the infant, the child, the adolescent, the criminal, the insane, the saint, the artist, the unity within oneself; one gets more deeply in touch with humanity, with the universal being; one represses less, is freer, has less need to project, to cerebrate. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
Then one may experience for the first time how one sees colours, how one sees a ball roll, how one’s ears are suddenly fully opened to music, when up to now one only listened to it; in sensing one’s oneness and others, one may have a first glimpse of the illusion that one’s separate individual ego is something to hold on to, to cultivate to save; one will experience the futility of seeking the answer to life by having oneself, rather than by being and becoming oneself. All these are sudden, unexpected experiences with no intellectual content; ye afterwards the person feels freer, stronger, less anxious than one ever felt before. Transformation of unconscious into consciousness is the way we approach enlightenment. By becoming less strange to ourselves, we go through this process of becoming less estranged to the World; because we have opened up communication with the Universe within ourselves, we have opened up communication with the Universe outside. False consciousness disappears, and with it the polarity consciousness. A new realism dawns in which the mountains are mountains again. We throw light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualization which are necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
Ministering to one another in time of need is an important means by which the Holy Spirit mediates His grace to us. We do need each other’s help to appropriate the grace of God. “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, one’s friend can help one up. However, pity the person who falls and has no one to help one up,” reports Ecclesiastes 4.9-10. Self-sufficient independence seems to be a hallmark of western culture. However, none of us is self-sufficient—even in our personal, private relationship with God. God leads us to specific people with whom we can develop such a mutual relationship. Do not be surprised, however, if God answers your prayer for a friend or friends in an unexpected way. He may bring into your life someone whom you have not thought as a possibility. Furthermore, do not just share your struggles with your friend, and above all, do not just commiserate with one another. Remember, we are to be ministers of grace to each other. We are to seek to be avenues of the Holy Spirit to help the other person appropriate the grace of God. Do you think no one is concerned for you, no one cares for you? If so, then you need one or more friends who will be ministers of grace to you. And very likely, you need to be a minister of grace to someone else. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
We must not, however, expect, that uniformity of human actions should be carried to such a length, as that all humans, in the same circumstances, will always act precisely in the same manner, without making any allowance for the diversity of characters, prejudices, and opinions. Such a uniformity in every particular, is found in no part of nature. On the contrary, from observing the variety of conduct in different humans, we are enabled to form a greater variety of maxims, which still suppose a degree of uniformity and regularity. “And it came to pass in the fifty and fourth year there were many dissensions in the church, and there was also contention among the people, insomuch that there was much bloodshed. And the rebellious part were slain and driven out of the land, and they did go unto the king of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they did endeavour to stir up the Lamanites to war against the Nephites; but behold, the Lamanites were exceedingly afraid, insomuch that they would not hearken to the words of those dissenters. However, it came to pass in the fifty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, there were dissenters who went up from the Nephites unto the Lamanites; and they succeeded with those others in stirring them up to anger against the Nephites; and they were all that year preparing for war. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
“And in the fifty and seventh year they did come down against the Nephites to battle, and they did commence the work of death; yea, insomuch that in the fifty and eight year of the reign of the judges they succeeded in obtaining possession of the land of Zarahemla; yea, and also all the lands, even unto the land which was near the land of Bountiful. And the Nephites and the armies of Moronihah were driven even unto the land of Bountiful; and there they did fortify against the Lamanites, from the west sea, even unto the east; it being a day’s journey for a Nephite, on the line which they had fortified and stationed their armies to defend their north country. And thus those dissenters of the Nephites, with the help of a numerous army of the Lamanites, had obtained all the possession of the Nephites which was in the land southward. And all this was done in the fifty and eight and ninth years of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass in the sixtieth year of the reign of the judges, Moronihah did succeed with his armies in obtaining many parts of the land; yea, they regained many cities which had fallen into the hands of the Lamanites. And it came to pass in the sixty and first year of the reign of the judges they succeeded in regaining even the half of all their possessions. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
“Now this great loss of the Nephites, and the great slaughter which was among them, would not have happened had it not been for their wickedness and their abomination which was among them; yea, and it was among those also who professed to belong to the church of God. And it was because of the pride of their hearts, because of the exceeding riches, yea, it was because of their oppression to the poor, withholding their food from the hungry, withholding their clothing from the naked, and smiting their humble brethren upon the cheek, making a mock of that which was sacred, denying the spirit of prophecy and of revelation, murdering, plundering, lying, stealing, committing adultery, rising up in great contentions, and deserting away into the land of Nephi, among the Lamanites—and because of this their great wickedness, and their boastings in their own strength, they were left in their own strength; therefore they did not prosper, but were afflicted and smitten, and driven before the Lamanites, until they had lost possession of almost all their lands. However, behold, Moronihah did preach many things unto the people because of their iniquity, and also Nephi and Lehi, who were the sons of Helaman, did preach many things unto the people, yea, and did prophesy many things unto the concerning their iniquities, and what should come unto them if they did not repent of their sins. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
“And it came to pass that they did repent, and inasmuch as they did repent he did venture to lead them forth from place to place, and from city to city, even until they had regained the one-half of their property and the one-half of all their lands. And thus ended the sixty and first year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass in this sixty and second year of the reign of the judges, that Moronihah could obtain no more possessions over the Lamanites. Therefore they did abandon their design to obtain the remainder of their lands, for so numerous were the Lamanites that it became impossible for the Nephites to obtain more power over them; therefore Moronihah did employ all his armies in maintaining those parts which he had taken. And it came to pass, because of the greatness of the number of the Lamanites the Nephites were in great fear, lest they should be overpowered, and trodden down, and slain, and destroyed. Yea, they began to remember the prophecies of Alma, and also the words of Mosiah; and they saw that they had been a stiffnecked people, and that they had set at naught the commandments of God; and that they had altered and trampled under their feet the laws of Mosiah, or what which the Lord commanded him to give unto the people. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
“And they saw that their laws had become corrupted, and that they had become wicked people insomuch that they were wicked even like unto the Lamanites. And because of their iniquity the church had begun to dwindle; and they began to disbelieve in the spirit of prophecy and in the spirit of revelation; and the judgments of God did stare them in the face. And they saw that they had become weak, like unto their brethren the Lamanites, and that the Spirit of the Lord did no more preserve them; yea, it had withdrawn from them because the Spirit of the Lord doth not dwell in unholy temples—therefore the Lord did cease to preserve them by his miraculous and matchless power, for they had fallen into a state of unbelief and awful wickedness; and they saw that the Lamanites were exceedingly more numerous than they, and expect they should cleave unto the Lord their God they must unavoidably perish. For behold, they saw that the strength of the Lamanites was as great as their strength, even humans for human. And thus had they fallen into this great transgression; yea, thus had become weak, because of their transgression, in the space of not many years,” reports Helaman 4.1-26. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
Run before me into battle, Jesus Christ, protect me in my fight. Shaft of reason, light within me. Please clear sight and reason, open my eyes. Christ, please ride the storm with me. The protection of our Saviour is within me. The love of our Saviour is within my heart. Dear Lord in Heaven, pleasue guide my way. Open the way, open the way, Lord, please open the way. Disputer of passings, opener of gates, Lord, please guide me through. Open the way, Saviour. Watcher of the threshold, please guide me and guard me. Be my force and fire, strength of arms. With divine might, may Christ come. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. O Lord our God, be gracious unto Thy people of Israel and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love and favour the supplication of Israel. May the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. No one can more impressively set forth the truth, that only in doing God’s work can we enjoy His peace—that gift which the World can neither give nor take away is for those who know Him as the Fountain of good counsels and just works. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
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We Have No More Right to Consume Happiness without Producing it than to Consume Wealth without Producing it!
The truth is something you stumble into when you think you are going some place else. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. The basic principle underlying initiation rituals: “if I had to suffer so much pain and humiliation to get into this club, it must be a wonderful organization. To tame the savageness of humans and make gentle the life of this World is a prayer for our country and for our people. To suggest that we say a prayer for our country and our people is to acknowledge error—the fault that lies within Americans and must not be ascribed to alien, un-American influences. Nearly 50 percent of American between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than 33 percent consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.” When they were young People used to know more, not less, about geography because classroom lessons were still fresh in their minds. And 90 percent of students have no idea of the locations of four countries intimately linked to American interest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The United States of America’s education system is not preparing young people for an increasingly global future. Cultural literacy is a desirable trait for a candidate in a presidential election. Many youths used to grow up and dream of being president, so that means we need to do a better job of preparing them. To raise questions about an individual’s intellectual qualifications carries more weight than anything else one can say about a person. One crucial qualification to determine if a person is competent is their intellectual ability to distinguish, in times of crises and on the daily basis, between worthwhile and worthless opinions. One of the major concerns about those who have proven themselves competent is the corruption of intellectuals by power than the potential corruption of government policy by intellectuals whom on one had elected. Many Americans rely on television as their only source of information for whatever they know about influences on government policy. At some point a devourer always overreaches oneself, like the witch or gain in folk tales who tries to drink up the sea and bursts, or like the vacuum monster in Yellow Submarine who ultimately devours himself and disappears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
As it stands, 66 percent of Americans cannot name three branches of government or come up with the name of a single Supreme Court justice. Americans who get their news primarily from television rather the newspaper know much less about the judicial system than newspaper readers. Furthermore, 66 percent of newspaper readers, but only 40 percent of television news watchers, know hat the primary mission of the Supreme Court is to interpret the United States Constitution. When people are ignorant of the high court’s constitutional mandate, it is much easier to convince them that justices are supposed to reflect public opinion—and that something has gone wrong when a court hands down a decision that contradicts popular wisdom. More than 50 percent of adults do not even know that there are nine Supreme Court justices. About half of adults—but just about 41 percent of teenagers—can name the three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial). Only 25 percent of adult—but 20 percent of teenagers—know that there are one hundred U.S. senators. The vast majority of both adults and teens have no idea of when or by whom the Constitution was written (James Madison in 1787). Among teenagers, nearly 98 percent cannot name the Chief Justice of the United States (John G. Roberts). #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We are still operating under the illusions that all Americans are playing by the same rules. This is our civic present and, if nothing is done to stem the rising tide of ignorance among the young, our even more disturbing civic future is doomed. So long as our society had a common point of moral reference there was a tendency for conflict to be resolved by compromise, and this comprise had a moral as well as practical basis. People no longer learn anything for the mistakes of others, instead they repeat them and expect a good outcome. However, the enemy is too dangerous to give them the benefit of the doubt; their crimes require emergency measures. Change must therefore affect the motivational roots of a society or it is not change at all. When the mind of the country is taught to aim at low objects, it eats upon itself. Despite the steady rise in the formal educational level of the population, so many Americans seems to know less and less. Technology, our servant, has also become our master, as the information highway—potentially the greatest tool for the diffusion of learning ever devised—has, for too many, become a highway to the far-flung regions of junk thought. At times like this, people must be willing to consider ideas, and even makes changes in behaviour, that they generally preferred to avoid. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
To seize the moment, Americans must recognize that we are living though an overarching crises and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think. Such a recognition has to come from ordinary citizens as well as their elected representative, from nonintellectuals and intellectuals alike. The first essential step is negative: we must give up the delusion that technology can supply the fix for a condition that, however much it is abetted by our new machines, is essentially nontechnological. That some children from affluent homes can pass undemanding standardized tests does not mean that they are learning what citizens of a functional democracy need to know. The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy. However, reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe it can do it again. Americans must consider their behaviour from a different perspective. The job of higher education is not to instruct students in popular culture but to expose them to something better. Genuine intellectuals—we need to hear more, not less, from reality-based intellectual about all of the social problems that have been exacerbated by people ignorance—that is, all social problems. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
If we persist in our efforts and finally attack the dysfunction of the system at its motivational roots, we may indeed be successful. In any case, there is n such thing as “compromise”: we are either strong enough to lever the train onto a new track or it stays on the old one or it is derailed. Everything rests on the assumption that the World does not contain the wherewithal to satisfy the needs of its human inhabitants. From this it follows that people must compete with one another for these scarce resources—lie, swindle, steal, and kill, if necessary. These basic assumptions create the danger of a “war of all against all.” I do not believe that our society can long continue on its old premises without destroying itself and everything else. Nor do I believe it can contain or rest the gathering forces of change without committing suicide in the process. The nation’s memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America’s best mind. Intellectuals must be willing to step up and bring their knowledge, instead of a lust for power, to the public square; for educators devoted to teaching and learning rather than to the latest fads in pop psychology. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
None of these suggestions address the core problem created by the media—the pacifiers of the mind that permeate our homes, schools, and politics. These is little evidence to indicate that Americans have either the desire or the will to lessen their dependency on the easy satisfaction held out by the video and digital World. The old culture turned the volume down on emotional experience in order to concentrate on its dreams of glory, but the new culture has turned it up again. Too much stimulation makes the carrot hard to see. Good taste is a taste for carrots. Happy babies must learn early that the beautiful things in life are not free. It is unrealistic o expect people simply to turn off their television sets, computers, or smart phones, because infotainment addiction resembles compulsive eating rather than alcoholism or smoking: alcohol and nicotine can be eliminated, but both food and the media supply essential nutrients as well as nonessential junk. If this is truly the new American dream for the upbringing of future generations, it is painful to think about what the cultural landscape will look like a generation from now. If there is not enough resources to go around, then those who have more will use structural inequality to find ways to prolong their advantage, and even legitimate it though various devices. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The law itself, although philosophically committed to equality, is fundamentally a social device for maintaining structured systems of inequality (defining as crimes, for example, only those of theft and violence in which lower class persons engage). However, when White collar criminals steal from people, it is glorified and they usually receive less prison time, and people are less likely to kill them in their process of breaking the law because they have more money and are deemed more valuable by society. It is still considered permissible, for example, to kill someone who is stealing your property under certain conditions. This is especially true if that person is without property oneself—a wealthy kleptomaniac (in contrast to a poor looter) would probably be worth a murder trial if killed while stealing. A more trivial example can be found in the handing of noise controls. Police are called to prevent distraction by the joyous noises of laughter and song, but not to stop the harsh and abrasive roar of power saws, leaf blowers operating at illegal hours, air hammers, power mowers, snow blowers, and other baneful machines. However, do not burn your fireplace on a bad air quality day, even if you cannot afford to run the heater and need to use your fireplace, you will be fined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The rich and the poor have always been with us to some degree. However, there is a new culture that has emerged. What is significant about the new culture is that they do not necessarily care about the causes they represent, they do not even care that whatever cause they are taking up is a new trend, they are rejecting the foundation of American culture altogether. They are much given to acing out grandiose fantasies of taking society by storm, through achievement of wealth, power, and fame. Like so many of the more successful nineteenth century utopian communities (Oneida and Amana, for example), the puritans became corrupted by involvement in successful economic enterprise and the communal aspect was eroded away—another example of system being destroyed by what it attempts to ignore. Just as a plane needs to be fixed in space by at least one more pint than the two necessary to a line, so any complementary schism needs an additional referent in order to avert mutual destruction. This has usually been popularly recognized in any situation where civil warfare threatens in either the individual or social dimension. It frequently takes an external enemy to bring the individual together with oneself, to reunite the quarreling family, to being the nation together, to restructure the idea. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
However, it is not necessary that the “third force” be negative and threatening; a common goal can unite the split group or individual. And in fact that is the essential aspect even under negative pressure. The chaos and lack of discipline is what we are most afraid of confronting and that is what we are most anxious and insecure that we have ourselves created. If society remains in a state of internecine warfare, it will bring either the group or the individual to its own destruction long before its time. In our fear of burning the candle at both ends we burn it in the middle and thus fall apart sooner. One would not have neurosis if the things fought against were not sufficiently nourished by one’s environment to enable in the first place. If we were perfect, if we had the exclusive solution, there would be no anxiety, no doubt, no disease. However, in fact, there has always been something else left to be desires and in an expanding Universe one would have to have colossal conceit, superhuman knowledge and experience, to ever not feel that something remains unexplored in this Universe. Every art, every science, every system has at one time or another found itself unnecessarily limited by its own conceit and has admitted its humility or has perished. This is as much a hard fact of experience as any “hard fact” in any field of endeavour. There is little reason to believe that this state of affairs will ever change. #Randolphharris 10 of 25
For a new culture pattern does not emerge out of nothing—the seed must already be there, like the magic tricks of wizards and witches in folklore, who can make an ocean out of a drop of water, a palace out of a stone, a forest out of a blade of grass, but nothing out of nothing. Our homes are furnished as if we intended to spend the rest of our lives in them, instead of moving every few years. This perhaps represents merely a kind of technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological failure to adapt. Should Americans ever settle down, however, they will find little to do in the ways of readjusting their household furnishing habits. Much of the new culture is implicitly and explicitly “neotenous” in a cultural sense: behaviour, values, and life-styles formerly seen as appropriate only to childhood are being retained into adulthood as a counterforce to the old culture. When the system as it stands is no longer viable, however, the mechanism must be exposed for the swindle that it is; otherwise the needed radical changes will be rendered ineffectual. They key to the mechanism is the powerful human reluctance to admit that an achieved goal was not worth the unpleasant experience required to achieve it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
You tell me it is the institution, you had better free your mind instead. However, what is all the freed minds are in jail? I am afraid there are no quick solutions to the problem of the empty self, and we cannot simplify its impact on the Christian mind. The battle here will be won or lost in the area of habits. Admit the problem. First, we must admit that this is a problem and we need to inform others about it. We do ourselves or our God no good if we hide from the fact that the empty self threatens all of us. Any movement that brings about lasting changes begins with conscious raising. Start talking to your Christian friends about the value of the Christian mind. Mention the empty self in your Saturday or Sunday school class, your home Bible study, and so on. Talk to your children about developing their intellectual abilities for the service of Christ and His people. Before a problem can be solved, it must be carefully defined and clearly acknowledged. Choose to be different. Second, at some point we need to make a fundamental decision that we will be different no matter what the cost. We Christians simply must admit that we have allowed our culture to squeeze us into its mold. We must stand against the culture (including inappropriate tendencies in the evangelical subculture), resist the empty self, and eschew the intellectual flabbiness that goes along with it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Motivation is key here. I am no expert on motivation, but I do have one piece of advice, derived from several decades of ministry: Expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree and let yourself be motivated to excel intellectually by the exposure. Listen to talk shows, read the editorial page, and walk around a local university and look at bulletin boards or read the student newspaper. Get into discussion with people at work with whom you differ. The point is to spend time around those who do not simply reinforce your own ways of looking at things. There are two advantages to this. For one thing, we can learn from our critics. For another, such exposure can move us to realize just how serious the war of ideas really is and how inadequately prepared we are to engage in that contest. Change your routine. Third, for one week, note two things on a sheet of paper. First, observe your energy rhythms. When is your energy at a low point during that day and when is it vigorous? Second, note what you tend to do when you tend to do when you get home from work or just after you have finished eating dinner. Often, when our energy is low or when we get home from work or finish dinner, we go into a passive mode and turn on the television. If a person learns to limit television watching and spends more time getting physical exercise, I believe that an intellectual life is easier to develop. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
I do not think I have to defend limiting television watching in this regard, but what about exercise? If you are in good shape, your mind becomes more alert and you have more energy to be proactive. I tell my graduate students that if they want to get the most out of the intellectual opportunities of graduate school, then they must learn to use low-energy times, or moments like after work or diner, as occasions to engage in physical exercise. Try something. After dinner go for a walk instead of turning on the TV. When you get back, sit down for thirty minutes to an hour and read an intellectually challenging book. The important thing here is to get out of passive ruts, especially those passive couch hamburger moments, and replace old habits with the new ones that create energy to read, reflect, and be more proactive. Develop patience and endurance. Fourth, learn how to duffer and develop patient endurance. A life of intellectual cultivation takes effort. And it can be painful. The mind is like a muscle: it needs to be stretched beyond itself. I often read books that are a little over my head so I can develop my intellectual strength. Also, it often takes time to work through an important topic with sufficient care and attention. One needs to take a long-term perspective toward reading and study. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
However, such a perspective will require endurance in staying put in a chair, with pen in hand, long enough to read deeply and widely. This requires a spirit of quietness and an absence of distraction. If you are fidgety and have to get up every fifteen minutes, you must get control of yourself. And gaining such control will require self-denial, suffering, and endurance. The intellectual life is both a means to and a result of a life of discipline, self-control, and endurance. The best way to develop these traits is to practice the spiritual disciplines, especially solitude and fasting. Through solitude, I am learning to be quiet, alone, and focused. Through fasting, I am learning to say no to immediate gratification and bodily distraction and control of myself. The spiritual disciplines can facilitate endurance, patience, discipline, and self-control—virtue that constitute the soil in which the cultivation of the Christian mind takes place. Develop a good vocabulary. Fifth, keep a dictionary handy and get in the habit of looking up words that you do not understand. The development of a good vocabulary is an important tool in the cultivation of the Christian mind. The ubiquitous and egregious (look them up!) avoidance of the dictionary today is no help to the person who wishes to love God with one’s mind. Set some intellectual goals. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
It is important for you to set some study goals on a yearly basis. I suggest you team up with another person in your church who has similar study interest and commit yourselves to mutually accountable reading program, like Reese’s Book Club, for example. For six years now, I have met every Friday morning for breakfast with a study partner. My friend and I read books in philosophy, psychology, contemporary culture, spiritual formation, and so on. We meet to discuss our reading. Also, we subscribe to important Christian periodicals (for example, Christian Today) and regularly browse in secular and Christian bookstores. We come together and share our discoveries each week, and our times together are rich! Find a plan that works for you and just do it! Sometimes one of our friends or loved ones have become a spiritual paralytic. The affliction or trial one has undergone has virtually immobilized the person spiritually. One is unable to help oneself. Not only that, but the spiritual “mat” one is lying on—that is, faith in God and trust in His promises—is no more than the equivalent of a thin, straw-filled mattress. If you try to encourage one through Scripture, one will look at you blankly and tell you Scripture just does not mean anything to one anymore. One has tried to claim God’s promises, but nothing “works.” God just is not there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
This person has become an awkward, heavy spiritual burden. You cannot pray with one, you can only pray for one. However, just as the paralytic’s friends persisted until they brought him to Jesus, so we too must persist in bringing this person to the throne of grace until God heals one spiritually. Of course, the spiritual paralytic is an extreme case. More often than not, the person to whom we are called to be a minister of grace can still go to the throne of grace oneself. However, we are still called to really around that person in prayer. God can, and often does, answer our individual prayers, but the general tenor of Scripture is that God desires we support each other in prayer. Beyond prayer, we must in some way receive permission to be a minister of grace to the person in need. One of the best ways we can do this is to demonstrate that we care. The first thing the person requiring grace needs from you is the assurance and demonstration that you care. We want to help that person come to the place where one can cast that hurt on God, truly believing God does care. So often, though, our perception of other people’s care. If we see care demonstrated in our friends, it is easier for us to believe God cares. If should not be this way; we should not gauge the care of God by the care of fallible, sinful human beings. However, we do. And often, God wants us to be the tangible evidence of His care. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
How can we demonstrate that we care? Obviously the first thing we must do is to make contact. If you live in the same city, invite the person to lunch or coffee, or in some way establish personal contact. Based on my own experience after the death of my first wife, and confirmed by several friends who have lost loved ones, this is where we so often fail each other. Apparently because we feel awkward and do not know what to say, we do not say anything. In fact, we may even avoid the hurting person. One friend, whose wife died some months after mine, said to me, “William, where are my friends?” Another told me of someone, who was one of his best friends, avoiding him after the death of a child. If you have failed to make contact back you did not know what to day, allow me to offer a suggestion. Just tell the person, “I know you must be hurting badly, and I do not know what to say, but I just want you to know I care.” Then, if appropriate you could add, “If it would help, I would like to have lunch [or whatever] with you, and just listen to you. I would like to know how you are really doing.” Above all, do not ask the person merely in passing at church or somewhere else “How are you doing?” Though you may not intend this, it communicates to the hurting person that you are expecting the typical cultural response, “Oh, just fine!” Speaking as one who has “been there,” this is taken as more of an indication that you do not care than that you do. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
When you have demonstrated to the other person that you do care—be sensitive to determine when the other person believes this—you can begin to ask gently probing questions, such as, “How are you and God getting alone during this time?” “Are you able to get any comfort from the Scriptures, or are they just dead to you right now?” Ask questions in a way that communicates you will not be shocked by negative answers. “And now it came to pass in the forty and third year of the reign of the judges, there was no contention among the people of Nephi save it were a little pride which was in the church, which did cause some little dissensions among the people, which affairs were settled in the ending of the forty and third year. And there was no contention among the people in the forty and fourth year; neither was there much contention in the forty and fifth year. And it came to pass in the forty and sixth, yea, there was much contention and many dissensions; in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land. And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even the did spread forth int all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. And now no part of the land wad desolate, save it were for timbers; but because of the greatness of the destruction of the people who had before inhabited the land it was called desolate. And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole Earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east. And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass as timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward, they did send forth much by the way of shipping. And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement. And it came to pass that there were many of the people of Ammon, who were Lamanites by birth, did also go forth into this land. And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them. However, behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work. However, behold, there are many books and many records of every kind, and they have kept chiefly by the Nephites. And they have been handed down from one generation to another by the Nephites, even until they have fallen into transgression and have been murdered, plundered, and hunted, and driven forth, and slain, and scattered upon the face of the Earth, and mixed with the Lamanites until they are no more called the Nephites, becoming wicked, and wild, and ferocious, yea, even becoming Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And now I return again to mine account; therefore, what I have spoken had passed after there had been great contentions, and disturbances, and wars, and dissensions, among the people of Nephi. The forty and sixth year of the reign of the judges ended; and it came to pass that there was still great contention in the land, yea, even in the forty and seventh year, and also in the forty and eighth year. Nevertheless Helaman did fill the judgment-seat with justice and equity; yea, he did observe to keep the statues, and the judgments, and the commandments of God; and he did do that which was right in the sight of God continually; and he did walk after the ways of his father, insomuch that he did prosper in the land. And it came to pass that he had two sons. He gave unto the eldest the name of Nephi, and unto the youngest, the name of Lehi. And they began to grow up unto the Lord. And it came to pass that the wars and contentions began to cease, in small degree, among the people of the Nephites, in latter end of the forty and eighth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass in the forty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, there was continual peace established in the land, all save it were the secret combinations which Gadianton the robber had established in the more settled parts of the land, which at the time were not known unto those who were at the head of government; therefore they were not destroyed out of the land. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And it came to pass that in this same yea there was exceedingly great prosperity in the church, insomuch that there were thousands who did join themselves unto the church and were baptized unto repentance. And so great was the prosperity of the church, and so many the blessings which were poured out upon the people, that even the high priests and the teachers were themselves astonished beyond measure. And it came to pass that the work of the Lord did prosper unto the baptizing and uniting to the church of God, any souls, yea, even tends of thousands. Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his hoy name. Yea, this we see that the gate of Heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the humans of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—and land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of Heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And in this year there was continual rejoicing in the and of Zarahemla, and in all the regions round about, even in the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And it came to pass that there was peace and exceedingly great joy in the remainder of the forty and ninth year; yea, and also there was continual peace and great joy in the fiftieth year of the reign of the judges. And in the fifty and first year of the reign of the judges there was peace also, save it were the pride which began t enter into the church—not into the church of God, but into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the church of God—and they were lifted up in pride, even to the persecution of many of their brethren. Now his was a great evil, which did cause the more humble part of the people to suffer great persecutions, and to wade through much affliction. Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification of their hearts unto God. And it came to pass that the fifty and second year ended in peace also, save it were the exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people; and it was because of their prosperity in the land; and it did grow upon them from day to day. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
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Had a Fairy Come and Offered to Fulfill My Desires, I Should Not Have Known what to Ask!
Did you hear about the fellow who blamed arithmetic for his divorce? His wife put two and two together. In spite of various pronouncements concerning the “death of God,” there was never any likelihood that religion would wither away in American life. Both suburbanization and higher education were secularizing forces, in that they brought together people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds on the same turf in a manner that could not help but erode certain traditional loyalties. Still many Americans choose from a cafeteria-style theological menu because they have been exposed to other religions or need to find a way to justify their actions. For example, 66 percent of Americans believe in Heaven, while less than 50 percent believe in hell. In the same sort of inconsistency, some sins that people know are wrong are acceptable, while others are not. None of us are perfect Christians, but many do try and repent from their sins. Many enslaved people in America used to look to the Bible, especially the story of Exodus, as divine source of hope for liberation for slavery. The Bible is still were most Americans turn today for hope of salvation. Some 75 percent of American believe in God. In fact, more than 60 percent who were surveyed said the Bible, not the will of the people should shape US Law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Most of these people also believe that liberal secularists have gone too far in trying to remove religion from public life. God and science have been proven methods for prolonging Earthly life. There is a deep desire for spiritual moorings—a hunger for God. People miss prayer in schools and pledging allegiance to the flag. It is believed that these two activities kept Americans in line and loyal to their country. The humbling of ourselves under God’s mighty hand always leads to exaltation. Sometimes this may consist in the removal of whatever affliction God has brought into our lives and the restoration of peaceful circumstances, perhaps even more prosperous circumstances than before. This happened in the case of Job: “The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first,” reports Job 42.12. At other times, though the circumstances are not changed, as in the case of the death of a loved one, the heaviness and painful grief or agony are removed. This happened in the case of Paul’s thorn. He was given grace to accept his thorn. When it often seems to us God has forgotten us, how are we to obtain such faith? The answer lies in 1 Peter 5.7: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” God cares for you. Even though He is disciplining you, He cares for you. As we have already seen, discipline is an indication of God’s care. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
However, God’s care goes beyond necessary discipline. Even as He disciplines you, He shares in your pain. Isaiah described God’s attitude toward Israel, “In all their distress He too was distressed,” report Isaiah 63.9. The same can be said of God’s attitude toward you. In all your distress He too is distressed. Because God cares for you, you can cast your anxiety on Him. Do not get these thoughts reversed. The text does not say, “If you cast your anxieties on Him, He will care for you.” His care is not conditioned on our faith and our ability to cast our anxiety on Him; rather, it is because He does care for us that we can cast our anxiety on Him. Even at this point, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to do this. Even with all the assurance this whole passage provides us, its truth sometimes fails to reach our hearts. Sometimes we have to pray for the grace to humble ourselves under His mighty hand and the grace to believe that He does in fact care for us. Sometimes we must pray as did the father who came to Jesus asking Him to heal his son. When Jesus said to him, “Everything is possible for one who believes,” the father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief,” reports Mark 9.32-24. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
In Modern American culture, what psychologist call the empty self has emerged in epidemic proportion. The empty self is constituted by a set of values, motives, and habits of thought, feeling, and behaviour that perverts and eliminates the life of the mind and makes maturation in the way of Christ extremely difficult. There are several traits of the empty self that undermine intellectual growth and spiritual development. The empty self is inordinately individualistic. A few years ago, I was sitting in an elementary school gym with other parents at a DARE graduation (a public-school program designed to help children say no to drugs) for my daughter’s sixth-grade class. Five sixth graders were about to read brief papers expressing their reasons for saying no to drugs. I leaned over to the coupe sitting next to me and made a prediction: each paper, I said, would be a variation of the same reason for refusing to take drugs: self-interest. Sure enough, student after student said he or she would refuse drugs because of a desire to stay healthy, become a doctor or athlete, or do well in school. Conspicuous by its absence was one single reference to virtue or duty to community. Not one student anathematized drug use because of the shame it would bring to family, community, or God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Individualist reasons were the only ones given for abstaining from drug use, a fact to be expected in a generation whose moral education is exhausted by values clarification. By contrast, when a Japanese ice skater fell during an Olympic performance a few years ago, her main concern was not the endorsement opportunities she had lost. She feared that shame had been brought onto her family and people. Community loomed large in the way she understood her own sense of self. A healthy form of individualism is a good thing. Sadly, we have all known people who fail to draw appropriate boundaries and do not separate and individuate from others in a healthy way. Such people do not think or feel for themselves, they are easy to manipulate, and their well-being is far too dependent on what others think of them. A person with a healthy individualism learns to avoid these problems in order to mutually to depend upon and relate to members of the body of Christ. This sort of individualism produces strong selves who have the power to practice self-denial to enrich the broader groups (for example, family, church) of which they are part of. However, the empty self-populating American culture is a self-contained individual who defines one’s own goals, values, and interests as though one were a human atom, isolated from other with little need or responsibility to live for the concerns of the broader community. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Self-contained individuals do their own thing and seek to create meaning by looking within their own selves. However, as psychologist Martin Seligman, “the self is a very poor site for finding meaning.” The empty self is infantile. It is widely recognized that adolescent personality traits are staying with people longer today than in earlier generations, sometimes manifesting themselves into the early thirties. Created by a culture filled with pop psychology, schools and media that usurp parental authority, and television ads that seem to treat every like a teenager, the infantile part of the empty self needs instant gratification, comfort, and soothing. The infantile person is controlled by infantile cravings and constantly seeks to be filled up with and made whole by food, entertainment, and consumer goods. Such a person is preoccupied with pleasures of the flesh, physical appearance, and body image and tends to live by feelings and experiences. For the infantile personality type, pain, endurance, hard work, and delay gratification are anathema. Pleasure is all that matters, and it had better be immediate. Boredom is the greatest evil, amusement the greatest good. The empty self is narcissistic. Narcissism is an inordinate and exclusive sense of self-infatuation in which the individual is preoccupied with one’s own self-interest and personal fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Narcissists manipulate relationships with others, including God, to validate their own self-esteem and cannot sustain deep attachments or make personal commitments to something larger than their own ego. Narcissists are superficial and aloof and prefer to “play it cool” and “keep their options open.” Self-denial is out of the question. The Christian narcissist brings a Copernican revolution to the Christian faith. Historically, the Copernican revolution dethroned the Earth from the center of the Universe and put the Sun in its place. Spiritually, the narcissist dethrones God and His purposes in history from the center of the religious life and replaces them with one’s own personal fulfillment. The narcissist evaluates the local church, the right books to read, and the other religious practices worthy of one’s time on the basis of how they will further one’s own agenda. God becomes another tool in a narcistic bag of tricks, along with the car, workouts at the fitness center, and so on—things that exist as mere instruments to facilitate a life defined largely independent of biblical Worldview. Narcissists see education solely as a means to enhance their own careers. The humanities and general education that historically were part of a university curriculum to help develop people with the intellectual and moral virtues necessary for life directed at he common good, just do not fit into the narcissist’s plans. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Narcissistic students object to the introduction of requirements in general education because the work demands too much of them and seldom leads to lucrative employment. The empty self is passive. The couch cheese burger is the role model for the empty self, and without question, modern Americans are becoming increasingly passive in their approach to life. We let other people do our living and thinking for us: the pastor studies the Bible for us, the news media does our political thinking for us, and we let our favourite sports team exercise, struggle, and win for us. From watching television to listening to sermons, our primary agenda is to be amused and entertained. Holidays have become vacations. Historically, a “holiday” was a “holy day,” an intrinsically valuable, special, active change of pace in which, through proactive play and recreation, you refresh your soul. A “vacation” is a “vacating”—even the language is passive—in order to let someone else amuse you. The passive individual is a self in search of pleasure and consumer goods provided by others. Such an individual increasingly becomes a shriveled self with less and less ability to be proactive and take control of life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Many factors have contributed to the emergence of passivity as an aspect of the empty self. However, in my view, television is the chief culprit, and its impact begins early life. Elementary school children watch an average of twenty-five hours of television per week, and high schoolers spend six times as many hours watching television as they invest doing homework. Studies indicate that such widespread television viewing induces mental passivity, inhibits motivation and the ability to stick to something, negatively affects reading skills (especially those needed for higher-level mental comprehension), weakens the ability to listen and stay focused, and encourages an overall passive withdrawal from life. The widespread passivity of the empty self explains the proliferation of magazines like People, of television shows like Entertainment Tonight, and of an overidentification with sports teams and figures. Passive people do not have lives of their own, so they must live vicariously through the lives of others, and celebrities become the codependent enablers of a passive lifestyle. They very idea of a Christian celebrity may be considered an oxymoron. However, for the passive, empty self, it is a spiritual life-support system. The empty self is sensate. Modern life is thoroughly mediated by electronic images. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Today, we may decisions and even judge what is and is not real on the basis of electronic images. If it is on TV, it is real. Advertisements sell us thing based on images, not on thoughtful content about a product. On television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to day that television gives us a conversation in images, not words. The emergence of the sensate self has produced two disastrous results. For one thing, people no longer base their decisions on a careful use of abstract reasoning in assessing the pertinent issues, nor are they as capable of doing so compared to earlier generations when thought was communicated by writing and abstract ideas, not by images. For another thing, people are coming to believe more and more that the sense-perceptible World is all there is. Cultures come in two major types: sensate and ideational. In a sensate culture people believe only in the reality of the physical Universe capable of being experienced with the five sense. A sensate culture is secular, this-Worldly, and empirical. By contrast, an ideational culture embraces the sensory World but also accept the notion that an extra-empirical, immaterial reality can be known as well—a reality consisting in God, the soul, immaterial beings, values, purposes, and various abstract objects like numbers and propositions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
A senate culture will eventually disintegrate because it lacks the intellectual resources necessary to sustain public and private life conducive of corporate and individual human flourishing. And this is precisely what we see happening to modern American culture. The widespread emergence of the sensate self has caused us to be shallow, small-souled people. The empty self has lost the art of developing an interior life. In the medieval times, the self used to be defined in terms of internal traits of virtue and morality, and the successful person, the person of honour and reputation, was the person of deep character. In such a view, the cultivation of an interior life through intellectual reflection and spiritual formation was of critical importance. In the last few decades, however, the self has come to be defined in terms of external factors—the ability to project a pleasurable, powerful personality and the possession of consumer goods—and the quest for celebrity status, image, pleasure, ad power has become the preoccupation of a self so defined. A careful development of an inner life is simply irrelevant in such a view of the good life. The empty self is hurried and busy. The empty self is a hurried, busy self gorged with activities and noise. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The empty self is consumed with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapists. The empty self experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning, a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger. Because the empty self has a deep emotional emptiness and hunger, and because it has devised inadequate strategies to fill that emptiness, a frenzied pace of life emerges to keep the pain and emptiness suppressed. One must jump from one activity to another and not be exposed to quiet for very long or the emptiness will become apparent. Such a lifestyle created a deep sense of fatigue in which passivity takes over. And fatigued people wither do not have the energy to read or, when they do, choose undemanding material. Shortly after noting that our capacity to think is on the decrease today, it is obvious that the modern individual is too rushed and distracted to look for something to improve one’s mind, demand an effort for oneself, or give rise to reflection, awareness, or sustained thought. Distraction and noise are enemies of an intellectual and spiritual life; focus and quiet are its friends. Americans are raging against the consequences of their own inclinations in these modern times, something was wrong with society and people’s actions to cause these outbursts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The old American tradition that every individual is somehow unique is something we epitomize. And the notion that education having individual potential can be more powerful than sliver and gold. A cultivated mind will not only come up with legal ways to make money, but will also find ways to retain wealth. The concept of this potential does not all fall on the parents, but because this potential is seen as innate, partially hidden, gradually unfolding, fluid, and malleable it does help to have encouragement and guidance to access these talents. However, the parent cannot simply coerce the child into a set uniform pattern of behaviour, because it is important, given our achievement ethic, that a child realize one’s maximum potential, and this means taking into account present, anticipated, or fantasied characteristics of one’s own. This potential is thus rooted in individualism and achievement ideology. It also serves, however, as a kind of compromise between biological and environmental determinism. The parent is given not clay but some more differentiated substance with which to mold an adult. We have a need to instill a social consciousness, which is why so many people want to bring up their families in the Church. Yet, keep in mind, even the deliberate push in a given direction will not always produce the expected outcome. Still, it is better to try. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Actually a good part of the difficulty starts in the confusion relating to the nature and scope of one’s own experience and particularly as it is extended to the interpretations of one’s relation to others. When one is in an authoritative relation to another as expert, leader, or parent, this is especially obvious. True, good and evil exists for us in our pain and misery, joy and exaltation. Yet the thing-in-itself is not good or bad but only in its relationship. Any one thing is sometimes good and sometimes evil and only the extremely misexperienced can ultimately fail to see this. Very recently some things like love were good, others like pleasure of the flesh were bad. Yet, if one is of the other, how can this be? We admired the highly motivated but despised the over emotional yet the intense disregard of emotion is nothing but the negative aspect of high motivation. To do any one thing intensively is far that time to neglect and obviate all other values. Too often we developed pairs of names to designate the good and bad aspects of a thing separately, yet failed to realize we were but naming the same thing twice instead of the different relationships which were the actual basis of the differentiations. The epiphanous experience in and of itself is always ambivalent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Only the context of the experience enables the discrimination of its relative values. The psychoanalyst has long been aware of this ambivalence and of course it has been long recognized as the “golden mean,” “tao,” or “way.” From birth, and possibly from even before, such choices are apparent and are usually mishandled by those in the dominant political (power) relationship to the developing individual. For the authority in attempting to choose for someone else sets up rules or lists by which to ease this take for oneself. No longer can one permit others the exercise of taste for obviously one’s tastes are one’s own and not the others’. An authority then, if one is to control the actions of others, must resort to standards and external sanctions. Only in this way can one maintain one’s special privilege. And yet if dynamic experience or taste is the basis of choice how mad one must be to think one can in any way choose for another. Because of one’s often superhuman sense of power and its complement of obligation one feels it is one’s responsibility, which, of course it would be if one were omniscient. Yet does not the parent think one knows better in relation to the child, the child to the dog, the teacher to the student, the lawyer to one’s client, the doctor to one’s patient, the governor to one’s people, the priest to one’s parish? #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
The superior, the expert, because it is what one knows is one’s own absolute experience is mislead to believe it is all that is to be known and so offers a rule, a list of sanctions and values. And because the recipient is likely to be unaware of such origins in the absolutes and relationships in the experience of the authority, one can only apply the rules to the thing and so probably is doubly mistaken and confused. The last statement is somewhat misleading for the submitter does not experience the list or rule of things entirely without relationships. In fact, the matter is far worse than one might suspect. The additional trouble lies in that there is always and very definitely a relationship but it is to the authority and not to the situation that the relationships is established. The concept of the “evil eye,” the authority by trying to establish an experience of relationships to some situation succeeds only in establishing it to oneself. However, when asked for what one has done this one will usually deny that was one’s intent and answer instead that one was trying for the development of independent and responsible experience in the existence of others. As such, all authority is truly made. At best the expert, the individual, who, because of more experience has some advantage, can only lead by example and guidance and not by command and instruction if both of these dilemmas are to circumvented. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Specific examples of this type of difficulty are extremely easy to find for they are most of our life. The mother who is anxious for the welfare of her newly born child prevents it from putting strange objects in its mouth for fear of contaminative results to the infant. She has established that habit when the time for weaning arrives and she must now cope with a child which rejects what is for it, the “bad” strange objects, its new solid food. Simultaneously this rejection of what was learned to be avoided incurs the loss of one’s mother’s affection for which the avoidance relationship has been established in the first place. One soon ceases to trust the evidence of one’s senses and in one’s turn seeks signs of eternal truth instead of reliable knowledge. Again strictures regarding pleasures of the flesh, especially for females, cause them to abhor the act for the first third of their existence but then they discover after receiving the ring that it takes the next third of existence to overcome this former set of values to what formerly was bad is now good. No wonder that so may reach the menopause thoroughly confused. The student in submitting to “basic disciplines” soon abandons thinking about the subject matter of the discipline and instead thinks primarily of how to please one’s superior, the teacher. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
And since one’s own original work is likely to be highly unbasic or individual and not in strict conformity with the “basic discipline” one to ceases to trust in one’s own experience and seeks sanctions in a white coat, collar, or particular skin colour. Yet when out of school one discovers the one must learn to choose for oneself. We can only pray one has not learned the original less too well. Of course one could continue to develop food aversions, frigidity, or slavish professionalism instead of fighting though the limitations. Such individuals are frequently comfortable in their selves even though to others they are dull and a threat to the freedom of everyone. It is possible to let the ambivalent remain bad always or good always. One can place the blame or praise elsewhere and so not have to choose now one way now another according to the relative circumstances. I just suggest that since choice is possible, and if we wish to have a democratic society with a self-choosing and responsible people, we can do much to make such choose probable. We do not have to give in to totalitarian measures. All of this has special relevance to our contemporary life and to spiritual formation under modern conditions. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
We now live within the life form called “modernity,” where revered ritual and personal relations do not smoothly govern life, because human solidarity (in family, neighbourhood, school, workplace, church) has been pulverized. There are few things of equal significance to this fact for serious Christians to understand today. In the “modern” condition, feeling will come to exercise almost total mastery over the individual. This is because people in that condition will have to constantly decide what they want to do, and feeling will be all they have to go on. Here lies the secret to understanding contemporary Western life and its peculiar proneness to gross immoralities and addictions. People are overwhelmed with decisions and can only make those decision on the basis of feelings. More than a century ago, Leo Tolstoy experiences the effects of “modernity” in the circle of wealth, upper-class Russians who made up his World. In that World, he relates, “My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires, I should not have known what to ask.” This is exactly the World of pointless activity portrayed in such staples of the contemporary American consciousness as television shows The Good Place, The Ranch, Superstore, and New Girl. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In the course of events, however, Tolstoy became involved in the life of the less affluent Russians. “I saw that the whole life of these people was passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life. And they all—endlessly different in their manners, minds, education, and position, as they were—all alike, in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, laboured quietly, endured deprivations and sufferings, and lived and died seeing therein not vanity but good.” The less affluent whom Tolstoy admired so much were not yet swallowed up in modernity. They had solid traditions of faith and community that provided a ritual form of life—and of death. The result was that they knew what was good to do without regard to their feelings. Good was not determined for them by how they “felt” or by what they thought was “the best deal.” The same was true for the “homemaker” and the “wage-earner” of our recent past. Not to say that all was well with them or with Tolstoy’s less affluent. However, individuals in their roles knew without thinking about it what to do with their minutes, hours, and days, and only rarely were faced with having to do what they “felt like doing.” The overall order in which they lived usually gave them great strength and inner freedom derived from their sense of place and direction, even in the midst of substantial suffering and frustration. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
In a situation such as today, by contrast, where people constantly have—only think they have—to decide what to do, they will almost invariably be governed by feelings. Often they cannot distinguish between their feelings and their will, and in their confusion they also quite commonly take feelings to be reasons. And they will in general lack any significant degree of self-control. This sill turn their life into a mere drift through the days and years, which addictive behaviour promises to allow them to endure. Self-control is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to d and be, even though you “do not feel like it.” Self-control means that you, with steady hand, do what you do not wan to do (or what you want not to) when that is needed and do not do what you want to do (what you “feel like” doing) when that is needed. In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it. The mongoose of a disciplined will under God and good is the only match for the cobra of feeling. “And it came to pass in the commencement of the thirty and sixth years of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Shiblon took possession of those sacred thing which had been delivered unto Helaman by Alma. And he was a just man, and he did walk uprightly before God; and he did observe to do good continually, to keep the commandments of the Lord his God; and also did his brother. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And it came to pass that Moroni died also. And thus ended the thirty and sixth year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass that in the thirty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, there was a large company of men, even to the amount of five thousand and four hundred men, with their wives and their children, departed out of the land of Zarahemla into the land which was northward. And it came to pass that Hagoth, he being an exceedingly curious man, therefore he went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship, on the borders of the land Bountiful, by the land Desolation, and by the narrow neck which led into the land northward. And behold, there were many of the Nephites who did enter therein and did sail forth with much provisions, and also many women and children; and they took their course northward. And thus ended the thirty and seventh year. And in the thirty and eighth year, this man built other ships. And the first ship did also return, and many more people did enter into it; and they also took much provisions, and set out again to the land northward. And it came to pass that they were never heard of more. And we suppose that they were drowned in the depth of the sea. And it came to pass that one other ship also did sail forth; and whither she did go we know not. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And it came to pass that in this year there were many people who went forth into the land northward. And thus ended the thirty and eight years. And it came to pass in the thirty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, Shiblon died also, and Corianton had gone forth to the land northward in a ship, to carry forth provisions unto the people who had gone forth into that land. Therefore it became expedient for Shiblon to confer those sacred things, before his death, upon the son of Helaman, who was called Helaman, being called after the name of his father. Now behold, all those engravings which were in the possession of Helaman were written and sent forth among the children of humans throughout all the land, save it were those parts which had been commanded by Alma should not go forth. Nevertheless, these things were made to be kept sacred, and handed down from one generation to another; therefore, in this year, they had been conferred upon Helaman, before the death of Shiblon. And it came to pass also in this year there were some dissenters who had gone forth unto the Lamanites; and they were stirred up again to anger against the Nephites. And also in this same year they came down with a numerous army to war against the people of Moronihah, or against the army of Moronihah, in which theu were beaten and driven back again t their own lands, suffering great loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And thus ended the thirty and ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended the account of Alma, and Helaman his son, and also Shiblon, who was his son,” reports Alma 63.1-17. Ruling the storm, He comes in the night, losing his axe again and again. The Bull of Storms comes bellowing, scattering seed over the Earth. A strong king He is, spreading fire and water as He rampages. In His wake he will leave fertile ground. Grant that we lie down in peace, secure in Thy protecting love, and shelter us beneath Thy wings to keep us safe throughout the night. On the morrow raise us up in perfect peace to life, O God, to face each task with faith in Thee, our zeal renewed and strength restored. Please save us for Thine own name’s sake, and guard us from all lurking foes. Remove all sorrow, hatred, strife, and turn Thy children’s hearts to Thee. Spread Thy tent of peace, O Lord, above Earth, we pray, and shield Thy people Israel, dispersed aboard in every land. Praised be Thou, our Lord and King, Whose sheltering love spreads over us, enfolding all who seek Thy peace, who find their hope and strength in Thee. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the Word 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 Earth, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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It is Not Unusual for the Inventive Genius to Claim the Voice of God as the Only Authority!
No one on Earth is more ingenious than an addict out to score. Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right. Even as students were attacking the authority of secular universities, fundamentalist proselytizers were brining millions of other young people into their fold. Parents do not want their families and children and homes and businesses being destroyed by the demonic decade. The scripts goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels of learning and beacons to the rest of society. Yes, a few professors were thought to be unpatriotic, but anyone who saw something wrong with American society was acting like a baby. The veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to go to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar job, and their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs would be there when they were ready to take on adult responsibilities. For the most part, students and professors pursed truth with little interference from the Worlds of gross commercialism and gross politics. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Think Periclean Athens, the University of Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. Then the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians were already inside the gates. Instead of studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators of Americans. Much of the great tradition was still ere, but then decay or collapse started to set in. In the guise of students, an alien cultural started to attack. They were on the warpath against all forms of authority, including the educational authority of the universities and the pieties of middlebrow culture. The American university that was a glorious center of higher learning, was now spewing out nonsense about how awful McMansions where, what an atrocious symbol Germans automobile were, and how middle managers were glorified baby sitters and how they rich deserve nothing. The sentimental falsehoods in public and private institutions poisoned the core curriculum and infected the minds of vulnerable youth for it told them that no matter how hard they work, they should feel guilty about success, and that they do not deserve what they earn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
All the anti-intellectuals were doing was filling Americans with shame so they could strip away the American Dream. And then the flags were removed from the class rooms, students were no longer allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The pinkos wanted to replace McMansions with high rise apartment buildings with paper thin walls so they could monitor you. They wanted to popularize Korean cars instead of Germany luxury automobiles, and instead of people reading books and studying to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers, they would watch countless hours of TV and become experts on celebrity popular culture. However, many Americans believed that university presidents and college chancellors were captains of erudition. Veterans were thankful that the GI Bill made is possible for millions of working-class people who served their country to become the first members of their families to attend college. Even women attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree to become educated, well-rounded mothers so they would be better equipped to educate their children. So, the Ivy Tower on the Hill—the place where committed scholars search for truth in a World that desperately needs help is one of the best institutions in the World, no matter what critics say. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
A college education is the best aspect of the civil rights movement in the World. It allows our youth to learn and use their minds, to obtain job so they do not have to sit around being poor and bitter. It is still possible to get a first-rate education in any number of American colleges. Some institutions have more rigorous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers of learning to learn. High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain and the mass culture surrounding them. However, because of the erosion of core studies, it is now possible at many institutions of so-called higher learning for students to receive a degree in psychology without having taken mid-level biology courses; for a cultural studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts of American history, Economic, or studying the Enlightenment; and for business majors to graduate without having studied any literature after one’s freshman year. And all of these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level of the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
During the past ten years, many institutions have moved to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education’s equivalent of the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it as everything to do with politics—both academic politic and, in the case of public universities, the politics of getting financial support from state legislatures. When university officials start talking about a return to “the basics,” it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor or President Trump has zeroed in on the academic shortcoming of State U. and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning whose importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence. The Whole World is Watching, and that is true. Parents want their kids to think of college as a safe and accepting place, where people who have been sheltered from crime and chaos can go and see the trees, drink mochas and lattes, espresso and cappuccinos with the other kids, eat cobb salads and avocado toast, filet mignon and foie gras, read Shakespeare, invest in a McMansion with roommates as a form of student housing, and once in the spring the boys can go to a dance with the girls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This image of peaceful, privileged youth is what the intellectuals who are presumably running the colleges want—and they want to run the goodly, so parents can be happy about writing tuition checks. They want to being back clubs like the Campus Crusade, which is a powerful Christian right-wing youth movement that is really popular in the Bible Belt. Evangelists are trying to save the nation by appealing to young men and women, many who are disillusioned with drugs and the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, by providing students with a way to remake their lives. These groups even enhance their appeal by their deliberate adoption and adaption of popular fashion trends and language, minus obscenities and showing too much skin, for the purpose of preaching old-time religion. They even have fashionable hairstyles and look just like other college students. Some organizations have names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company and open shelters for young people who are burnt out from Worldly ways, which may not even be their fault because they do not know better or just got caught up. Whatever the case, accepting God has been proven to help depression and can put youth in contact with important members of the community who may offer them careers or internships upon graduation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Conservatives want people to celebrate the old American Dream of love and education and Jesus Christ as our Saviour. One might even say that it is a revival and reformation of the Christian American Dream, which is embedded in everyday life society and still manages to dominate attitudes and even behavior within certain limited spheres. Christianity is a ritual of purification and cleansing, a celebration of the capacity of feeling to triumph over Worldly patterns. And it is important that human feelings should occasionally win—as important as occasional epiphanies and miracles are for religion. In our society this issue is a matter of life and death (of society, if not the individual). I also have come to a better understand of what people are saying about injustice in society. They want more funding for adequate programs like education, legal assistance, public defenders, child care, and government investigators who actually will help them because that will prevent people from being arrested. As it stands, these government agencies do not have the ability or skill, time or desire to help people. Then problems fester until it becomes a police matter and people are arrested. At that point, prosecutors will spend countless hours and millions of dollars to prosecute individuals even for minor crimes that would have been avoided if the resources were provided to help these people with ongoing problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As it stands, the media likes to play it off like there is some major mental health crisis in America, but the fact is that no one helps people when they are facing problems. Now, there may be a mental health issue with some of these people in the news media, politicians, and some people running businesses. However, when people are doing wrong to individuals, even if it is a problem that there is clear cut discrimination, harassment or some kind of other crime a person is a victim of, it is ignored and that is why people end up in police custody. The government is not willing to put ethical people in place to help them and maybe spend $10,000.00 on an investigation, but they are willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting a person. So these people are not saying defend the police, they are saying there are ways to use resources that will save money and keep these matters from becoming police problems. As it stands, society is abusing the police because all of these problems, and many of them are really petty, get kicked over to law enforcement and then law enforcement is expected to be a lawyer, psychologist doctor or guardian when that is not even their job because other government agencies are not handling their mandated responsibilities. RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The youth assume that their elders are attempting to deceive them with this talk of proper channels—that is deliberate obstruction, since the elders know that “proper channels” are designed to negate rather than to facilitate change. Their reactions are then a horror of social uproar that many people cannot comprehend because they have never experienced what these people are going through. The elders’ notion that radical leaders are “just trying to get their names in the papers” has been replaced by calling the people liars and saying they are crazy. Parents believe that is it their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, which means paying a great deal of attention to their inner states and latent characteristics. The child no longer has a private sphere, but one’s entire being is involved with parental aspirations, and it really hurts when you invest so much love, time, money, and energy into a being for society to rip that individual apart, while people sit back watching and laughing. Our children do not even take their own personalities for granted, and it really hurts them to have their dreams crushed by racism and injustice. Parents believe they are required not just to put in the time but to make their children motivated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
However, some parents are willing to throw their children to the dogs for something so trivial as etiquette and it makes a deep impression. So, yeah, some of these problems are not just with government institutions, but within the house. Some children are too young to know their parents do not wish them well and want to see them fail. Since these children cannot see anything so important as to justify this betrayal, all social situations seem to have a dishonest quality. However, parents who are good Christians, absorbed with the goal of molding their child’s total character, are much less inclined to sacrifice the child to the etiquette concerns of strangers. The artist working on one’s masterpiece does not let guests use it to wipe their feet on. As a result, their children have grown up to feel that human needs have some validity of their own, ad their careful socialization to upper-middle-class values has well prepared them to accept the responsibility of becoming a gainfully employed, good citizen. Because of the parents know that there is a deep need for economic and status security, they want their children to face reality (by which they mean social reality). “My money is not your money. I am paying all the major bills and providing you with a place to stay, nice clothes, hot meals, and even an Ultimate Driving Machine. Because of this, life seems easy, but it is not.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This unique power that parents have—to give their children attributes they do not themselves possess—is perhaps the unconscious determinant of an otherwise incomprehensible theme that appears so often in fairy tales: that of the impoverished old parent or helper who gives the hero magic gifts that could have made the giver oneself wealthy and powerful but apparently did not. However, upper-middle-class Americans parents relate to their children in a somewhat vampiresque way. They feed on the child’s accomplishments, sucking sustenance for their pale lives from vicarious enjoyment of one’s development. In a sense this sucking is appropriate since the parents give so much—lavish so much care, love, thoughtfulness, and self-sacrifice on their blook bank. However, this is little comfort for the child, who at some point must rise above one’s guilt and live one’s own life—the culture demands it of one. And after all, a vampire is a vampire. Basically, parents want their children to become mannikins which their fathers can display his influence to his friends. The crosses many youth wear around their necks are actually necessary to ward off the elders, whose vampiresque involvement who has been insufficiently exorcized. It is not that they are offended by the elders, but their hope is to magically neutralize their symbiotic relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Many youths are asked to take note of their hostile reaction towards older adults in the society, because it is bad to consider any one as being “unnecessary” and their rude reactions are in “bad taste.” One day, we will all be elders and will want our due respect. No one likes to admit that they have spent their lives in a foolish, evil, or crazy manner. That is why God tells us to humble ourselves and respect our elders. Furthermore, youth do not realize that elders are taught to lie about their feelings. They are not likely to say: “You frighten and depress us. We are afraid we have spent our lives on nurturing an ungrateful family, who brutalizes their neighbours, purses useless electronic devices and creates a joyless environment. It always seemed that right thing to do, to try to raise up a family in the way of the Lord, with Christian values, but now we are a little unsure, and if we had known how you would behave so wretchedly, we would have bought a smaller home and took more vacations instead of having children.” Instead, they suppress their doubts and fears about themselves by refusing to perceive the meaning of the stimulus. When their children cry for peace of social justice they says, “Do not talk dirty,” or “Go read the ‘Good Book.’” This is a way of saying, “There is nothing important or disturbing going on here—this is just my child who is mischievous or careless at times—it is just a family affair.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It is a desperate attempt for them to enjoy their lives and want you to enjoy the fact that you are privileged enough to not have to endure injustice and hearing about it makes them feel like failures. They view the World as unchanging—to convert the deep social unrest of the day into the blank torpor of lace curtain suburban life. This philosophy also speaks to a much larger social phenomenon. How, for example, can matters so intrinsically important, such as politics, government positions, new broadcasting be trusted to be handled by people who present themselves as not the most sane, unstable, and ineffective members of our society? The answer is two incompatible processes are taking place at once: politicians are supposed to be philanthropists, they are not supposed to be getting paid to help society, while pretending that the people do not exist. It has become a self-serving job, where many people become wealthy, while citizens and corporation feel it is taxation without representation, and not providing for the general welfare of the people. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. A strongly egalitarian conception in the sense of distribution is that unless it makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution is to be preferred. Also, nothing is lost if an accurate interpersonal comparison of benefits is impossible. It suffices that the least favoured person can be identified and one’s rational preference determined. Also, if each person gains relative to the other, further benefits to one become less valuable from a social point of view. If art helps us to define the absolute, so madness brings us to a closer understanding of the relative. For whereas we sometimes can accept the aesthetic, the immediacy of the work of art, we fight acceptance of the products of the deluded and call it madness. We say no to the possessions, the compulsions, the hallucinations. We deny their uniqueness, their absoluteness and immediacy, and place them in relation to something that can be accepted. We say these are the products of diseased minds, of sick brains and glands, of distorting heat waves, of propaganda and suggestion, or drugs and poisons, of the experience of frustration, conflict, and trauma. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
For these other categories are acceptable. The unacceptable is thus related to the sick organism, to the false culture, to the disproportionate environment: we feel safe once again. And we may be at that, sometimes. For in the relational dimension there is mobility, change, and the chance to choose. One is not captivated entirely; one can compare, discriminate, and select. It is possible to move from or toward, increase or decrease one over the other. Then there is the chance to get out of trouble or into still more. There is freedom to the n—1 absolutes available within the perspective allowed. One has gone from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality; but when no choice continuum is offered, when there are no degrees of freedom, then one is frustrated in that dimension. We may try to fight as long as there is some dimly sensed hope, but when that too disappears that dimension is dead for us and we are left just a little less alive. Of course for one who is “adjusted” to one’s madness, who accepts one’s mission, who no longer questions one’s lost, the same epiphanous structure of experience is evident as in the case of the experience called aesthetic. There is no need to distinguish between abnormality in the absolute dimension of experience. The mad person like the priest accepts one’s calling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In fact it is not unusual for the inventive genius to claim the voice of God as the only authority. For the new absolute is not derivative, has no ultimate sanction beyond its being, its epiphany. Each individual, including the reader, must refer to one’s own insight for an ostensive definition. To some extent experience in madness and aesthetic experience differ only as a matter of taste. There is no difference that cannot be questioned. Each may be accepted for itself and that is the point. It is only in so far as we see that each leads to consequences of different value to us that any distinction between the two may be noticed. Madness too frequently is self-limiting, and as such defeats its protective function by ultimately removing or devaluating that which it would protect. The question which madness does not answer or answers but poorly is: “Madness, then what?” In fact any inability to answer the questions: “Then what?” is revealing of madness; to the degree that the answer evades this question, to that degree there is madness. That is the only test of the abnormal. The normal epiphany of experience is, like most science and art, open ended. Growth may still occur, selection take place, change be accepted with grace and interest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Life can expand in depth and scope, in richness of action and experience. The completion of one leads to the opening of the next, not to boredom, self-destruction, or fear. Theoretically, if the paths chosen were completely normal, there should be no termination to life. Even at present there is usually continuity of life on into the future somewhere of some species. And that life can be called normal, the healthy life. No, it is not in the absolute dimension that the difference between normal and abnormal lies. It is only in the relative dimension that such a consideration gains significance. Then why do we continue to make the mistake of judging the absolute as good and bad, healthy and diseased, normal and abnormal? I do not know entirely the probable answer to this but the fact is that we do confuse these and I would like to point to a few crucial areas where this confusion causes no end of needless suffering to those so misinformed. This includes all of us. Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and ended the lives of his servants. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, ending the lives of all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” reports Job 1.21. And with respect to his own afflictions he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble,” reports Job 2.10. Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. We must learn to see beyond the actions of evil people and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled these events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him,” reports Job 42.11. Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord. Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God,” reports Genesis 45.8. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Joseph recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, or disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of the loving Father discipling His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Endure all hardships—all of it—as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life. Discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves,” Hebrews 12.6. This is not a word of warning, but a word of encouragement. The purpose of God’s discipline is that so we may share in His holiness, that we may be conformed in our character to His character. Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack of our character. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In either case, discipline is administered by our Heavenly Father in love, not wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because God loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son. God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory. From the Light of God that I am. From the Love of God that I am. From the Power of God that I am. From the Heart of God that I am. I decree—I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of God is my Infinite Source. The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through me with lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me. I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen With God as my Source nothing amazes me. I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come. By the power of my belief, couped with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet. From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into Life and Life gives back to me with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for me in wondrous ways for the work that I do. I AM indeed grateful. And so it is. Join me in a POWERFUL ABUNDANCE MASTERCLASS. Set your intentions for the goodness and abundance of all and you will indeed be blessed. “Behold, now it came to pass that soon after Moroni had sent his epistle unto the chief governor, he received an epistle from Pahoran the chief governor. And these are the words which he received: I, Pahoran, who am the chief governor of this land, do send these words unto Moroni, the chief captain over the army. Behold, I say unto you, Moroni, that I do not joy in your great afflictions, yea, insomuch that they have risen up in rebellion against me, and also those of my people who are free humans, yea, and those who have risen up are exceedingly numerous. And it is those who have sought to take away the judgment-seat from me that have been the cause of this great iniquity; for they have used great flattery, and they have led away the hearts of many people, which will be the cause of sore affliction among us; they have withheld our provisions, and have daunted our free people that they have not come unto you. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And behold, they have driven me out before them, and I have fled to the land of Gideon, with as many humans as it were possible that I could get. And behold, I have sent a proclamation throughout this part of the land; and behold, they are flocking to us daily, to their arms, in the defence of their country and their freedom, and to avenge our wrongs. And they have come unto us, insomuch that those who have risen up in rebellion against us are set at defiance, yea, insomuch that they do fear us and durst not come out against us to battle. They have got possession of the land, or the city, of Zarahemla; they have appointed a king over them, and he hath written unto the king of the Lamanites, in the which he hath joined them an alliance with him; in the which alliance he hath agreed to maintain the city of Zarahemla, which maintenance he supposeth will enable the Lamanites to conquer the remainder of the land, and he shall be placed king over this people when they shall be conquered under the Lamanites. And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now, behold, we will resist wickedness even unto bloodshed. If they would stay in their own land, we would not shed the blood of the Lamanites. If they would not rise up in rebellion and take the sword against us, we would not shed the blood of our brethren. If it were requisite with the justice of God, or if He should command us so to do, we would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage. However, behold he doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in Him, and He will deliver us. Therefore, my beloved brother, Moroni, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissensions, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God. Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them. Behold I have sent a few provisions unto them, that they may not perish until ye can come unto me. Gather together whatsoever force ye can upon your march hither, and we will go speedily against those dissenters, in the strength of our God according to the faith which is in us. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And we will take possession of the city of Zarahemla, that we may obtain more food to send forth unto Lehi and Teancum; yea, we will go forth against them in the strength of the Lord, and we will put an end to this great iniquity. And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. However, ye have aid, except they repent the Lord hath commanded you that ye should go against them. See that ye strengthen Lehi and Teancum in the Lord; tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free. And now I close mine epistle to my beloved brother, Moroni,” reports Alma 61.1-21. Wheat for you, Father of Grain. Barley for you, Father of Grain. Corn for you, Father of Grain. I scatter them for you, Father of Grain: a tribute to your well-famed generosity. God, you are worthy of worship: please hear me. I remember you every moment of the day. I pray to the one whose arrows bring health, to God the beautiful one. From your lyre come tunes of harmonious enchantment, and I listen entrapped, sweet-singing God. We will look to all commandments of the Lord, and do them; Lord bless us that we not follow our own heart and own eyes, but fortify us in your will. We will be holy to the Lord our God. #Randolphharris 24 of 24
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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Memory is More Incredible than Ink for it is a Wise Father who Knows His Own Child!
The generation gap is just another way of saying that the younger generation makes overt what is covert in the older generation; the child expresses openly what the parents represses. The mass media with the use of television ( “The Most Effective Devil in America,” is telling you a vision) has flooded out local boundaries and forced the total society into a dim awareness of what it is like to live in fear. It is not so much the increase in violence that upsets middle-class Americans as the democratization of violence: the less affluent and underrepresented have become less willing to serve as specialized victims of violence from a political agenda (“legally”) and each other (illegally). The same point can be made about crimes against property, given the well-known class bias in our legal system. Since the ways in which the affluent steal from the less affluent are rarely defined as crimes (when executives of a major corporation were jailed for a few days some years ago for stealing millions of dollars from the public through antitrust violations many people were shocked that respectable humans could be treated in such a rude fashion) rising property crimes rates may only reflect an increase in the democratization of larceny, a result attributable in part to the success of the mass media in convincing the less affluent that only the possession of various products can satisfy their various social, pleasures of the flesh, and moral requirements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Leaving aside these more likely to be considered violent when they have political overtones. Our nation has never known a time without serious urban riots—usually about some kind of economic or social injustice—but it was only when they began to have a political thrust and to attack business districts that the concerns about the rioting began to grow. The same relationship holds true for the college campus. It is not violence as such but its political aims that arouse concern. The same people who assail the violence of campus radicals are quite happy to regale listeners with tales of their own (apolitical) childhood pranks—pranks that would bring a jail sentence if committed today. College students on many campuses have rioted annually for generations, and the injuries and vandalism resulting from such riots have often far exceeded that produced by protests. Yet these apolitical riots have always been considered venial. The difference is that student pranks and riots in the past attacked authority but accepted it. The protests of today confront authority and question it. Thus although no violence at all may occur, those toward whom the protest is directed may feel that violence has been done to them. The disruption of ordinary daily patterns and assumptions are experienced as a kind of psychological violence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Consider what happens when a defective traffic light fails to change from red to green. The line of cars grows and restlessness increases. At some point someone decides that the symbol of order is in fact in disorder and either goes through the red light or begins to honk one’s hor. As soon as one goes through, the others all follow suit. The initiator in this situation is engaging in a kind of civil disobedience. One is challenging the specific rule about red lights in terms of a broader understanding which says that the purpose of traffic laws is to regulate traffic not to disrupt it. Yet because the situation has no real political significance the incidence carries no threat or violent connotation. We live in a society in which cruelties inflicted upon humanity can be exposed in every living room through mass media or on Facebook and Twitter. We discuss and debate constantly the appearance of any instance anywhere in the World of inhumane treatment of one person by another, but we still do not always get the full story. Nonetheless, we stress that every human life, even corporations, are beings of value. We live, in short, in modern, secure, civilized World, in which a single isolated act of violence is a calamity, an outrage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Yet, innocent people still have their characters and beings terminated by the most barbarous means possible and shows no qualms about it. These techniques are a bit reminiscent of the dunking stool used in earlier centuries to test potential witches: if the person was not a witch the individual would drown—if one did not drown thus proved one was a witch and one was burned to death. The energy required to avoid even the most obvious forms of exploitation by commercial enterprises in our society would not permit the individual to lead a normal active life. Like Looking-glass Country, it takes all the running one can do to stay in the same place. Powerlessness has always been the common lot of most of humankind. However, the more we attempt to solve problems through increased autonomy the more we find ourselves at the mercy of these mysterious, impersonal, and remote mechanisms that we have ourselves created. Their indifference is a reflection of our own. All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability since: effective adaptation to the environment requires both modification and consolidation of existing reposes; social integration depends both upon the preservation and upon the periodic dissolution of existing structural differentiation; and personal happiness rest upon both familiarity and novelty in everyday life. Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
We talk of technology as the servant of humans, but it is a servant that now dominates the households, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the major conveniences offered by social media could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say, “You cannot stop progress,” and shuffle back inside. We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler who governs our state or city whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch that individual carefully, hang on to one’s every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a Winchester Rifle, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions—because it is a means to some other means—not because it achieves an ultimate end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The much-vaunted “freedom” of American life is thus an illusion, one which underlies the sense of spuriousness so many Americans feel about their basic institutions. We are free to do only what we are told, and we are “told” not by a human master but by a mechanical construction. However, how can we be the salves of technology—is not technology merely an extension of, a creation of, ourselves? This is only metaphorically true. The forces to which we submit so abjectly were not generated by ourselves but by our ancestors—what we create will in turn rule our progeny. It takes a certain amount of time for the social effects of technological change to make their appearance, by which time a generation has usually passed. Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated with the notion of being able to create material objects just by imagining them, and have built novels, stories, and films around the idea. Actually, it is merely an exaggeration of what normally takes place. Technology is materialized fantasy. We are ruled today by the material manifestations of the fantasies of previous generations. #RanolphHarris 6 of 25
We treat technology as if it were a fierce patriarch—we are deferential, submissive, and alert to its demands. Perhaps, that is why men dominate the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California USA, and in Shenzhen, a city in south China’s Guangdong province known as the “Silicon Valley of China.” (The Silicon Valley of China has gradually become a global hardware center and hub for scientific and technological advances, where skyscrapers appear commonplace and the population has surged past 13 million.) We feel spasms of hatred toward technology, and continually make fun of it but we do little to challenge the rule. People who develop technology, like Wolfgang Egger who is a World-famous Germany car designer, reports, “to have this opportunity to create something like this [an electric car] from nothing is a big challenge that I need.” That is the main reason why he joined the Chinese car manufacturer BYD three years ago. Technology has inherited the fantasy of the authoritarian father. Furthermore, since the technological environment that rules, frustrates, and manipulates us is a materialization of the wished of our forefathers, it is quite reasonable to say that technology is the authoritarian father in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American father can be a good-natured humble man in the home precisely because he is so ruthless toward the nonhuman environment, leveling, uprooting, filling in, building up, tearing down, blowing up, tunneling under. This ruthlessness affects his children only indirectly, as the deranged environment afflicts the eyes, ears, nose, and nervous system of the next generation. However, it affects them nonetheless. Through this impersonal intermediary we inflict our will upon our children, and punish them for our generous indulgence—our child-oriented, self-sacrificing behaviour. It I small wonder that the myth of the punitive patriarch stays alive. From this viewpoint, then, delegating to technology the role of punitive patriarch is another example of the first process we described: the tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict by compartmentalization and a false illusion of autonomy—to place impersonal mechanisms between and around people and imagine that we have created a self-governing paradise. It is a kind of savage joke in its parental form. We say: “Look, I am an easy-going, good-natured, affectionate father. I behave in a democratic manner and treat you like a person, never pulling rank. As to all those roads and wires and social media and clones and machines and bombs and complex bureaucratic institutions out there, do not concern yourself about them—this is my department.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, when the child grows up one discovers the fraud. One learns that one is a slave to his father’s unconscious and unplanned whims—that the area of withheld power was crucial. The child becomes angry and rebels, saying, “You were not what you pretended, and I cannot be what you encouraged me to be.” The child attacks “the system” and authority everywhere, trying to find the source of the deception, and using techniques that reflect one’s commitment to what one’s father deceived one into thinking one was—a person. However, by this time one has also learned the system of avoiding conflict through impersonal mechanism and is ready to inflict the same deception on one’s own children. We love and indulge our children, and would never dream of hurting them. If they are poisoned, bombed, gassed, burned, or whatever, it is surely not our fault, since we do not even know how to manipulate those objects. The danger comes from outside. Perhaps long ago we did something to deliver them into these impersonal hands, but we have forgotten, and in any case it is not our responsibility. Technology, in other words, is our plains sorcerer. Because Americans have submitted so passively to the havoc wreaked by technological change, they have had to convince themselves that their obsequiousness is right and good and appropriate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Any challenge to the technological-over-social priority threatens to expose the fact that Americans has lost their adulthood and their capacity to control their environment. So long as the priority is unchallenged and unmentioned, the human surrender involved need not be confronted. However, youth is increasingly saying: “What about the people? Why have you abdicated your birthright to hardware?” It is a humiliating question, and humiliating questions tend to be answered with blows. Furthermore, the social changes wrought by technological change are so vast and shattering and we are kept so off-balance by them that the desire for independent social change (that is, change produced by human needs rather than technology) appears not as a solution and the assumption of control, but as still another disruptive force. It is like the inhabitants of an occupied country, who say to their militants, “do not fight the enemy, it will just bring more massive retaliation down upon us. Attack your own family.” The predominant feeling is that there is more change than anybody can tolerate already, so how can anyone ever consider a radical reevaluation of the whole system. I felt sure that it was just a public-relations problem that only needed a public-relations solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
I do not give a damn how it is done; do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further lies and unauthorized disclosures. I do not want excuses. I want results…whatever the cost. It became necessary for Americans to express themselves on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality. The association of highbrow culture with vaporous idealism and lowbrow culture with self-interested practicality exemplified the widespread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as noneintellectuals, of the idea that devotion to the life of the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies of everyday life. The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better oneself. Many uneducated people cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door from the 1920s well into the 1980s were often purchased through an installment plan by parents who had never owned a book but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children with information about the World that had been absent from their own upbringing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Remnants of earnest middlebrows striving today among various communities, but the larger edifice of middlebrow culture, which once encompassed Americans of many social classes as well as ethnic and racial backgrounds, has collapsed. The disintegration and denigration of the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave of anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion of highbrows and eggheads that have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part of the American psyche. What has been lost is an alterative to mass popular culture, imbibed unconsciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that surround us all. What has been lost is the culture of effort. Middlebrow culture was, above all, a reading culture. In the 1950s, to be raised in a middlebrow family meant that there were books, magazines, newspapers in the house and that everyone old enough to read had a library card. Some schools in Sacramento, California would even pause for fifteen minutes a day for reading time, where students could read whatever they wanted, as long as it was a book, it was appropriate, and educational. If much of the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample room for growth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
People had books clubs, much like Reese Witherspoon has popularized, where people select a book each month, read it and talk about. And people who live in segregated communities were taught to learn to appreciate masterpieces like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many more, and to make sure that no one could segregate one’s mind. Still, 25 percent of American high school biology teachers still believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. American ideal of self-education is a distinct era of self-help, and people placed far more emphasis on improving personality and public image and the mind like never before. However, “civilized” is still defined by the gatekeeps of greatness on the installment plan. Many people want to make it into the “Fat Man’s” class which was dubbed that for the size of their pocketbooks. We want everything to be cheap and high quality, but do not look at the value and utility it provides, and then complain about how little we get paid. Our parents, grandparents, and maybe for some of you, great grandparents had it a lot harder than we do today. We hear about how inexpensive everything used to be, but do not take inflation into account. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
In 1952, a great book cost $249.95, in 2020 dollars that is $2,470.21. Imagine what a luxury a book was back then. In fact, reading books was a status symbol because the proved to the World that one was the sort of person who did read and who could afford the price of a book. People like Reese Witherspoon is doing an excellent job trying to get Americans back into reading books. When a celebrity is seen doing anything, it becomes a trend and what could be a more productive trend than getting people to expand their minds. The possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and the ability to recalls facts before an audience of millions, could provide both fame and fortune. When being smart become a trend, imagine how much better off our society will be, how much productive our children will be. They will learn the root of what it takes to have fun and know they have to study and work hard to earn the money it takes to have fun. Because, as one gets older, fun gets more expensive. Getting a day off from school and watching TV is no longer fun, but having the ability to legally buy new cars and houses and take vacations and decorate your own private home is fun. Having privacy and dignity in your own environment is fun. Being able to relocate or explore the World when you want to is fun. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic is enthusiasm. “Whatever you do,” Paul told the Colossians, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans,” reports Colossians 3.23. To the Romans Pail admonished, “Never be lacking in seal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” reports Romans 12.11. It is natural—actually quite easy—to be enthusiastic if your work is prominent, but less natural the more hidden it is, as the conductor of a great symphony orchestra once reveled when asked which was the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered. “We can get plenty of first violinists. However, to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm—that is a problem!” And so it is. However, actually, doing one’s work with enthusiasm, even if hidden, plays for an audience far greater than that of the most famous symphony orchestras or World champion sports teams! If we could be really see this, our enthusiasm would never flag. However, it can still be hard to reason with some people. Their very mind has been taken over by one or more feelings and is made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs. It is a fearful condition from which some people never escape. We have noted how thoughts generate feelings. If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As humans, we can unknowingly become slaves to technology, or feelings and so man other things. Here, for example, is a woman (it could have just as well have been a man) who has taken in the thought that she has been treated unfairly for years in her marriage and her job. Rather than sensibly addressing the circumstances or just turning her mind away from this thought, she receives it and broods over it—for years—developing a tremendous sense of injustice and outrage, which she also welcomes and cultivates with the assistance of sympathetic friends. The “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12.15) gradually spreads over her whole personality, seeping deeply into her body and soul. It becomes something you can see in her bodily motions and actions and hear oozing through the language she uses. It affects her capacity to see what is actually going on around her, to realize what she is actually doing, and to think thoroughly and consistently. She is in the prison of resentment, though she thinks she is perhaps for the first time acting freely. Beyond the individual level, poisonous emotions and sensations often take over entire social groups, blinding them and impelling them on terrible courses of destruction. This is nearly always what has happened in cases where repression of ethnic groups or genocide occurs. Thus, to the onlooker the participants (the tyrants) seem to be deaf, blind, and insane—which, in a sense, they are. They, too, are imprisoned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Feelings can be successfully reasoned with, can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in one who has not trained oneself, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from one’s own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feeling becomes impervious to fact and reason. I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong! One’s feelings of righteousness does not mean one is right and actually should alert one to be very cautious and humble. Those who are wise will, accordingly, never allow themselves, if they can help it, to get in a position where they feel too deeply about any human matter. They will never willingly choose to allow feeling to govern them. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all. “And it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land, who was Pahoran, and these are the words which he wrote saying: Behold, I direct mine epistle to Pahoran, in the city of Zarahemla, who is the chief judge and the governor over the land, and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by the way of condemnation; for behold, ye yourselves know that we have been appointed to gather together humans, and arm them with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war of every kind, and send forth against the Lamanites, in whatsoever part they should come into out land. And now behold, I say unto you that myself, and also my men, and also Helaman and his men, have suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind. However, behold, were this all we had suffered we would not murmur nor complain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“However, behold, great has been the slaughter among our people; yea, thousands have fallen by the sword, while it might have otherwise been if ye had rendered unto our armies sufficient strength and succor for them. Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea, while they are murdering thousands of your brethren—yea, even they who have looked up to you for protection, yea, have placed you in a situation that ye might have sent armies unto them, to have strengthened them, and have saved thousands of them from falling by the sword. However, behold, this is not all—ye have withheld your provisions from them, insomuch that many have fought and bled out their lives because of their great desires which they had for the welfare of this people; yea, and this they have done when they were abut to perish with hunger, because of your exceedingly great neglect towards them. And now, my beloved brethren—for ye ought to have stirred yourselves more diligently for the welfare and the freedom of this people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, behold, ye have neglected them insomuch that the blood of thousands shall come upon your heads for vengeance; yea, for known unto God were all their cries, and all their sufferings—behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness? I say unto you, if ye have supposed in vain; for I say unto you, there are many who have fallen by the sword; and behold it is to your condemnation; for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God. And now behold, I say unto you, I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people, because of their exceeding slothfulness, yea, even the slothfulness of our government, and their exceedingly great neglect towards their brethren, yea, towards those who have been slain. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our hear, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us. Yea, had it not been for the war which broken out among ourselves; yea, were it not for these king-men, who caused so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, at the time we were contending among ourselves, if we had united our strength as we hitherto have done; yea, had it not been for the desire of power and authority which those king-men had over us; had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and untied with us, and gone forth against our enemies, instead of taking up their swords against us, which was the cause of so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies, for it would have been done, according to the fulfilling of his word. However, behold, now the Lamanites are coming upon us, taking possession of our lands, and they are murdering our people with the sword, yea, our women and our children, and also carrying them away captive, causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions, and this because of the great wickedness of those who are seeking for power and authority, yea, even those king-men. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
However, why should I say much concerning this matter? For we know not but what ye yourselves are seeking for authority. We know not but what ye are also traitors to your country. Or is it that ye have neglected us because ye are in the heart of our country and ye are surrounded by security, that ye do not cause food to be sent unto us, and also humans to strengthen our armies? Have ye forgotten in the commandments of the Lord your God? Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies? Or do ye supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make us of the means which the Lord has provided for us? Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye supposed that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And now, expect ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and humans unto us, and also unto Helaman, that he may support those parts of our country which he had regained, and that we may also recover the remainder of our possession in these parts, behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first cleansed our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government. And expect ye grant mine epistle, and come out and show unto me a true spirit of freedom, and stive to strengthen and fortify our armies, and great unto them food a part of my freemen to maintain this part of our land, and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them—and this because of their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulation—and I will come unto you, and if there be any among you that has a desire for freedom, yes, if there be even a spark of freedom remaining, behold I will stir up insurrections among you, even until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct. Yea, behold I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear; and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country, and it is because of your iniquity that we have suffered much loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Behold, I wait for assistance from your; and except ye do administer unto our relief, behold, I come unto you, even in the land of Zarahemla, and smite you with the sword, insomuch that ye can have no more power to impede the progress of this people in the cause of our freedom. For behold, the Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities to destroy his righteous people. Behold, can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites, when it is the tradition of their fathers that has caused their hatred, yea, and it has been redoubled by those who have dissented from us, while your iniquity is for the cause of your love of glory and the vain things of the World? Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet. Behold, the Lord saith unto me: If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them. And now behold, I, Moroni, am constrained, according to the covenant which I have made to keep the commandments of my God; therefore I would that ye should adhere to the word of God, and send speedily unto me of your provisions and of your men, and also to Helaman. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And behold, if ye will not do this I come unto you speedily; for behold, God will not suffer that we should perish with hunger; therefore he will give unto us of your food, even if it must be by the sword. Now see that ye fulfill the word of God. Behold, I am Moroni, your chief captain. I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honour of the World, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country. And thus I close mine epistle,” reports Alma 60.1-36. A lion protecting His young, you rage when aroused. Nothing stands before You, no troubles can resist You, no enemies defeat You. A roaring in the distance announces your arrival, scattering the dealers of cares. You shake the Earth beneath their feet, upsetting all the plans. “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontless between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.16-21. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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I would define morality as enlightened self-interest. That old Platonic ideal that there are certain pure moral forms just is not where we are. The question of political resistance is receiving more and more attention everywhere in the World. There are many causes for resistance, and there are many forms it takes. Under certain circumstances we have a right to resist, even a duty to resist. We must have the courage for peace. Our ideas about institutionalizing the aged, psychotic, those with intellectual disabilities, and infirm are based on a pattern of thought that we might call the Toilet Assumption—the notion that unwanted matter, unwanted difficulties, unwanted complexities and obstacles will disappear if they are removed from our immediate field of vision. As society’s delusions of grandeur become more inflated, the abyss between them and their actual accomplishments yawn all the wider. And from the abyss arises resentment, anger, hatred, and ever greater delusion; for the less one achieves in relation, the more one gives oneself over to fantasy. We do not connect the trash we throw from the car window with the trash in our streets, and we assume that replacing old buildings with new expensive ones will alleviate poverty in the slums. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
We throw the aged and psychotic into institutional holes where they cannot be seen. Our approach to social problems is to decrease their visibility: out of sight, out of mind. This the real foundation of racial segregation. The result of our social efforts has been to remove the underlying problems of our society farther and father from daily experience and daily consciousness, and hence to decrease, in the mass of the population, the knowledge, skill, resources, and motivation necessary to deal with them. When these discarded problems rise to the surface again—a riot, a protest, an expose in the mass media (except for when the mass media is involved in the illegal collusion)—we react as if a sewer had backed up. We are shocked, disgusted, and angered, and immediately call for the emergency plumber (the special commission, the crash program) to ensure that the problem is once again removed. Pathological cases of narcissism can be so extreme that individuals are incapable of even perceiving what is going on in the outside World because they are so busy deluding themselves. Nonetheless, there is nothing more attractive than a kind, loving person, in whom we see that one loves not just something or someone but that one loves life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
However, there are people who do not love life, who are more inclined to hate life, who are drawn to the inanimate and, ultimately, to death. The Toilet Assumption is not merely a facetious metaphor. Prior to the widespread use of the flush toilet all of humanity was daily confronted with the immediate reality of human waste and its disposal. They knew where it was and how it got there. Nothing miraculously vanished. Excrement was conspicuously present in the outhouse or chamber pot, and the slops that went out the window went visibly and noticeably into the street. The most aristocratic Victorian ladies strolling in fashionable city parks thought nothing of retiring to the bushes to relieve themselves. Similarly, garbage did not disappear down a disposal unit—it remained nearby. As with physical waste, so with social problems. The biblical adage, “the poor are always with us,” had a more literal meaning before World War I. The poor were visible and all around. Psychosis was not a strange phenomenon in a textbook but a familiar neighbour or village character. The ages were in every house. Everyone had seen animals slaughtered and knew what they were eating when they ate them; illness and death were a part of everyone’s immediate experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
In contemporary life the book of experience is filled with blank and mysterious pages. Occupational specialization and plumbing have exerted a kind of censorship over our understanding of the World we live in and how it operates. And when we come into immediate contact with anything that does not seem to fit into the ordinary pattern of our somewhat bowdlerized existence our spontaneous reaction is to try somehow to flush it away, bomb it away, throw it down the jail. These types of people are described as having a “bicyclist’s character,” because such individuals bow from the waist to those above them and kick with their feet at those below them. Those people found nothing worthy of love or interest left in their lives, so they turned their energies to acquiring power over others and even to self-destruction. Perhaps that is why, in some small degree, we all feel bored and uneasy with the orderly chrome and porcelain vacuum of our lives, from which so much of life has been removed. Evasion creates self-distaste as well as comfort, and radical confrontations are exciting as well as disruptive. The answering chord that they produce within us terrifies us, and although we cannot entirely contain our fascination, it is relatively easy to project our self-disgust onto the perpetrators of the confrontations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
As deception and delusion become apart of the seducer’s way of leading others astray or trying to hide their intentions, these types of people get others to submit to them, then they will believe whatever the individual says. An effective strategy then becomes to hold meetings in the evening when people are tired. That makes them more gullible, and they will offer less intellectual resistance to what they are told. All those factors working together allow seducers to recruit loyal followers whom one deceives because one ides one’s destructiveness from them. There will often times, depending on the size of the audience, be millions of people who do not understand what the seducer’s real goals are. And yet, they will run after individual like rats after the pied piper without realizing where the individual is leading them. This ambivalence is reflected in the mass media. The hunger for confrontation and experience attracts a lot of attention to social problems, but these are usually dealt with in such a way as to reinforce the avoidance process. The TV documentary presents a tidy package with opposing views and an implication of progress. Reports in popular magazines attempt to provide a substitute for actual experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
Important book and film reviews, for example, give just the blend of titillation and condescension to make the reader imagine that one is already “in” and need not undergo the experience itself—that one has not only participated in the novel adventure but already outgrown it. Thus the ultimate effect of the media is to reinforce the avoiding response by providing an effigy of confrontation and experience. There is always the danger with such insulating mechanisms, however, that they at times get overloaded like tonsils, and become carriers of precisely the agents against which they are directed. This is an increasingly frequent event in our society today. Many leaders need the masses behind them. They are not individuals who can develop and propagate an idea without applause to help the along. They need applause; they need others’ enthusiasm to feel confirmed in themselves. Their sense of power comes from the reactions of the people they speak to. Narcissists are so full of themselves that every word they speak seems to them to contain the greatest wisdom and truth. However, the need others who believe in them before they can believe in themselves. If no one is beside them, they find themselves on the edge of insanity, for their ideas do not derive from rationally based convictions. They are expressions of the narcissist’s emotional needs. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
The narcissist’s ideas are based on one’s sense of their greatness and power, but they need outside confirmation of that greatness and power. If we take away from these types of individuals the applause and success, then what is left is insane. It is the constant approval that proves to these types of individuals their ideas true, not the inner consistency of the ideas themselves. This type of individual is not interested in the true, but like another demagogue, they are only interested in what brings applause, for it is applause that makes things true. This produces a social confrontation, the desire for an incorruptible leader—a leader who cannot be bribed, who does not have a price. Once again this desire is a recessive trait, relegated largely to the realm of folk drama and movie script, but it exists nonetheless, as a silent rebellion against the oppressive democratic harmony of a universal monetary criterion. In the hard reality of everyday life, however, the incorruptible human is at best an inconvenience, and obstacle to the smooth functioning of a vast institutional machinery. Management leaders, for example, tend to prefer corrupt union leaders—“people you can do business with”—to those who might introduce questions and attitudes lying outside the rules of a monetary gain. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
The person who cannot be bought tends to be mistrusted as a fanatic, and the fact that incorruptible humans are so often called unpatriotic may be understood in the same light. As is the case of the mass media, however, this mechanism has become overloaded so that having been jailed and/or called an unpatriotic trader is now regarded by young adults as a medal attesting to one’s social concern. Also closely related to the latent desire for confrontation is an inarticulate wish to move in an environment consisting of something other than our own creations. Human beings evolved as organisms geared to mastery of the natural environment. Within the past few thousand years we have learned to perform this function so well that the natural environment poses very little threat to civilized peoples. Our dangers are self-made ones—subtle, insidious, and meaningless. We die from our own machines, our own poisons, our own weapons, our own despair. Furthermore, we are separated from primitive conditions by too few millennia to have evolved any comfortable adaption to a completely human-made environment. We sill long for and enjoy struggling against the elements even thought such activity can only occasionally be considered meaningful or functional. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
The cholesterol problem many Americans face provides an illustration: one theory proposes that the release of cholesterol into the bloodstream was functional for large hunting animals with primitive weapons. Since the animal was rarely killed but only wounded, one had to be followed until one dropped, and this was a matter of walking or running for several days without food or rest. A similar response would be activated today in fields such as advertising, in which a sustained extra effort over a period of time (to obtain a larger contract, for example) is periodically required. However, these peak efforts do not involve any physical release—the cholesterol is not utilized. We cross the ocean in artificially private boats, climb mountains we could fly over, kill animals we do not eat. Natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, blizzards, and so on, generate a cheerfulness which would seem inappropriate if we did not share it. It is as if some balance between human and nature had been restored, and with it human’s “true function.” Like the cat that prefers to play with a ball around the obstacle of a chair leg, so humans seem to derive some perverse joy from having a snowstorm force one to use the most primitive mode of transportation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
It is particularly amusing to observe people following the course of an approaching hurricane and following the course of an approaching hurricane and affecting a proper desire that it veer off somewhere, in the face of an ill-concealed craving that it do nothing of the kind. There is a satisfaction that comes from relating to nature on equal terms, with respect and even deference to forms of life different from ourselves—as the Native American respects the deer one kills for food and the tree that shields one from the Sun. We interact largely with extensions of our own egos. We stumble over the consequences of our past acts. We are drowning in our own excreta (another consequence of the Toilet Assumption). We rarely come into contact with a force which is clearly and cleanly Not-Us. Every struggle is a struggle with ourselves, because there is a little piece of ourselves in everything we encounter—Cresleigh Homes, clothes, Ultimate Driving Machines, cities, machines, even our foods like Foie Gras Friday at Bistro Ete. There is an uneasy, anesthetized feeling about this kind of life—like being trapped forever inside a climate controlled Ultimate Driving Machine, with X-Drive and power brake with a booster, a Live Cockpit professional, panoramic glass roof and sky lounge, and only a voice-activated BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant to talk to. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
Our World is only a mirror, and our efforts mere shadowboxing—yet shadowboxing in which we frequently manage to hour ourselves. Even that part of the World which is no human-made impinges upon us through a symbolic network we have created. We encounter primarily our own fantasies: we have a concept and image of a mountain, a lake, or a forest almost before we ever see one. Travel posters tell us what it means to be in a strange land, the events of life becomes news items before they actually happen-all experience receives preliminary structure and interpretation. Public relations, television dramas like Suits and Legend of the Seeker, and life become indistinguishable. The story of Pygmalion is thus the story of modern humans, in life with one’s own product. However, like all discreet fairy tales, that of Pygmalion stops with the consummation of one’s love. It does not tell us of one’s ineffable boredom at having nothing to love but an excrescence of oneself. However, we know that humans who live surrounded by that which and those whom they have molded to their desires—from the Caliph of Baghdad to Federico Fellini—suffer from a fearsome ennui. The minute they assume material from our fantasies cease to be interesting and become mere excreta. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
Let us take a look at this word “resistance” for a minute. To resist means to “take a stand against” something, and in order to do that we have to be somebody ourselves. Then we are not so easy to deceive or impress. On the contrary, we are capable of protest, rejection, outrage. However, if we are to be able to do that, we have to realize what we are up against. When dealing with a tyrant, we are not just dealing with certain political views of what will best promote our community’s wellbeing but with components of character and emotion, indeed, with philosophical and religious components that run through those views. We have to look beyond the rational formulations and pay not so much attention to what a political leader says as to how one says it. We have to study the individual’s face, one’s gestures, the whole being. Only then can we see that his leader is a necrophiliac, someone whom we reject from the bottom of our hearts, someone who outrages us, someone we want nothing to do with, someone we can never befriend because all our powers are committed to the preservation of life and to the dignity of humanity, to our freedom. All the necrophiliac’s powers are, by contrast, committed to destruction, to the subjugation of others, to putting them down, to dominating them. We have to stop just listening to words and start discovering who and what this being is who speaks such words. What is one’s nature, one’s character? #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
Everyone is religious in a broad sense of the word, which is to say one has goals that go beyond the mere necessities of earning a living; one has a vision and feelings that lead one to do more than be a machine for eating and reproducing. The acceptance by another person, such as the therapist, shows the individual that one no longer needs to fight one’s main battle on the front of whether anyone else, or the World, can accept one; the acceptance frees one to experience one’s own being. This point must be emphasized because of the common error in many circles of assuming that the experience of one’s own being will take place automatically if only one is accepted by somebody else. This is the basic error of some forms of “relationship therapy.” The attitude of “If-I-love-and-accept-you, this-is-all-you-need,” is in life and in therapy an attitude which many well minister to increased passivity. The crucial question is what the individual oneself, in one’s own awareness of and responsibility for one’s existence, does with the fact that one can be accepted. The ego is a part of the personality, and traditionally a relatively weak part, whereas the sense of being refers to one’s whole experience, unconscious as well as conscious, and is by no means merely the agent of awareness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
The ego is a reflection of the outside World alone, it is then precisely not one’s own sense of existence. My sense of being is no my capacity to see the outside World, to size it up, to assess reality; it is rather my capacity to see myself as a being in the World, to know myself as the being who can do these things. It is in this sense a precondition for what is called “ego development.” The ego is the subject in the subject-object relationship; the sense of being occurs on a level prior to this dichotomy. Being means not “I am the subject,” but “I am the being who can, among other things, know one’s self as the subject of what is occurring.” Humans no longer act on behalf of God, on behalf of justice, on behalf of love, but in the name of evolution. Some leaders truly believe what they are acting on behalf of, and carrying out, are the laws of evolution, the laws of biology. Some neurophysiologists think that the principles of liberty, egalite, and fraternity have their origin in the structure of the human brain. Freedom is a necessity if the human organism is to function at its full capacity. The authoritarian character has a structural predeliction to submit, to subordinate itself, but it also has a need to dominate. Those two things always go together; the one compensates for the other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
The truly democratic or revolutionary character is just the opposite and will refuse both to dominate and to be dominated. For the democratic character the equality and dignity of humans is deeply felt imperatives, and such a character will be drawn only to what promotes human dignity and equality. Our theoretical premise is that what a person thinks is relatively unimportant. It is usually a matter of sheer chance and will depend on what kind of slogans the person has heard, on which party either family tradition or social circumstances have motivated one to join, on which ideologies one has come into contact with. One thinks more or less the same things that others think, which is a sign of the human tendency to conform and to forfeit independence. What a person thinks, then, we call an opinion. Opinion can be easily changed. Opinion remains the same only as long as circumstances remain the same. And this is the great disadvantage of all polls that determine nothing but opinion. It is beyond the scope of such polls to ask: If circumstances where completely different, what would your opinion be tomorrow? However, in politics that is what counts, and the question of primary importance is not what someone happens to think at the moment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
What is important is how one lives and acts. And how one lives and acts depends on one’s character. If we put our question this way, then we find we are in need of another concept, and this concept is conviction. Conviction is an opinion that is rooted in a person’s character and not just in one’s head. Conviction is a product of what one is, opinion is based only on what one hears. In other words, people do not act solely out of economic interest but also out of inner needs, feelings, goals that are deeply rooted in the “human condition,” in the givens of human existence. I think we have to become thoroughly familiar with both these factors—with the economic motives and with the specifically human ones—if we want to understand why people act one way or another politically. Both factors are integrated in “social character.” And that means we have to unlearn something first. We have to unlearn the practice of stressing what a person says, and we have to learn to look at the whole person. When it comes to our business lives, it is interesting how skillful we are at this. If we are about to hire someone or enter into a partnership with one, we are not usually so stupid as to listen only to what the individual tells us about oneself. We want to form an impression of one’s personality. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
The more egotistic our interests are, the more cautious we are and the more ready we are to make characterological judgments. However, where our social and political interests are concerned, we do not want to take the trouble. We want to be led; we want to sit back; we want someone who tells us what we want to hear, who panders to us, and whom we then reward for doing just that. And so we do not take a close loo at one and are not interested in who one is. However, we can learn to look closely. We can learn it in the natural laboratory that all of us, whether we are children, adolescents, or adults, have available to us, the laboratory of our daily experience. We can find just about everything there. All we have to do is want to see it. And then reading can be of some help, too, thought it is regrettable that psychology, and especially academic psychology, which has booked so many great successes, have not proved very fruitful in the areas of society and politics. Characterology, the science of character, crucial as it is to politics, to marriage, to friendship, and to education, remains of relatively minor importance in the field of psychology, even though it is far more relevant to life than mist of the findings that academic psychology makes. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
You have to have faith in yourself, to be able to think critically, to be an independent human being, a human being and not follow someone around blindly like one of Mary’s sheep because when you wake up, your fleece will no longer be as white as snow. To achieve that, to learn the art of living and dying, takes a lot of effort, practice, patience. Like any other skill, it has to be learned. Anyone whose growth takes this direction will also develop the ability to know what is good—or bad—for oneself and others, good or bad for one as a human being, not good or bad for one’s success, one’s acquisition of power or of goods. The structure of our brains allows us to do something quite unique: We are able to define our optimal goals and put our emotions in the service of those goals. Anyone who takes this path will learn to resist not only the great tyrannies, but also the small tyrannies, the creeping tyrannies of bureaucratization and alienation in everyday life. This kind of resistance is more difficult than ever today, for our overall social structure spawns these small tyrannies. In this structure the human being is reduced more and more to a cipher, a cog, a bit player in a bureaucratic scenario. One has no decisions to make, no responsibilities to meet. By and large one does what the bureaucratic machinery has laid out for one. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
One does les and less thinking, feeling, shaping of one’s own life. The only thing one does think about are products of one’s own egotism, and they have to do with questions like: How can I get ahead? How can I earn money? How can I be healthier? One does not ask: What is good for me as a human being/ what is good for us as a polis? For the Greeks and in the classical tradition those where the great questions that all thought was directed at solving, thought not as an instrument for increasing control over nature but thought as an instrument for answering the question: What is the best way to live? What promotes human growth, the unfolding of our best powers? Widespread passivity, a lack of participation in the decisions affecting our own lives and our society’s life—that is the soil in which fascism or similar movements, for which we usually find names only after the fact, can grow. Indeed, it is necessary to emphasize that the very fact that the ego is conceived of as weak, passive, and derived is itself an evidence and a symptom of the loss of the sense of being in our day, a symptom of the repression of the ontological concern. This view of ego is a symbol of the pervasive tendency to see the human being primarily as a passive recipient of forces actin upon one. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
We now come to the important problem of non-being or, as phrased in existential literature, nothingness. The “and” in the phrase “To Be and Not To Be,” expresses the fact tat non-being is an inseparable part of being. To grasp what it means to exists, one needs to grasp the face that one might not exist, that one tread at every moment on the sharp edge of possible annihilation and can ever escape the fact that death will arrive at some unknown moment in the future. Existence, never automatic, not only can be sloughed off and forfeited but is indeed at every instant threatened by non-being. Without this awareness of non-being—that is, awareness of the threats to one’s being in death, anxiety, and the less dramatic but persistent threats of loss of potentialities in conformism—existence is vapid, unreal, and characterized by lack of concrete self-awareness. However, with the confronting of non-being, existences takes on vitality and immediacy, and the individual experiences a heightened consciousness of oneself, one’s World, and others around one. Death is of course the most obvious form of the threat of non-being. This truth on one level is symbolic of the death instinct. Life forces (being) are arrayed at every moment against the forces of death (non-being), and every individual life the latter will ultimately triumph. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
Human beings are the only creatures we are aware of that knows they are going to die, who anticipates one’s own death. The critical question thus is how one relates to the fact of death: whether one spends one’s existence running away from death or making a cult of repressing the recognition of death under the rationalizations of beliefs in automatic progress or providence, as is the habit in our Western society, or obscuring it by saying “one dies” and turning it into a matter of public statistics which serve to cover over the one ultimately important fact, that one oneself at some unknow future moment will die. Death is, in other words, the one fact of my life which is not relative but absolute, and my awareness of this gives my existence and what I do each hour an absolute quality. Perhaps the most ubiquitous and ever-present form of the failure to confront non-being in our day is conformism, the tendency of the individual to let oneself be absorbed in the sea of collective responses and attitudes, to become swallowed up in das Man, with the corresponding loss of one’s own awareness, potentialities, and whatever characterizes one as a unique and original being. The individual temporarily escapes the anxiety of non-being by this means, but at the price f forfeiting one’s own powers and sense of existence. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
Impotent people who evade their aggression by repressing it thereupon experience drugged tranquility and free-floating resentment. The self-affirmation of being is the stronger the more non-being it can take into itself. “And now it came to pass in the commencement of the twenty and ninth year of the judges, that Ammoron sent unto Moroni desiring that one would exchange prisoners. And it came to pass that Moroni felt to rejoice exceedingly at this request, for he desired the provisions which were imparted for the support of the Lamanite prisoners for the support of one’s own people; and he also desired one’s own people for the strengthening of his army. Now the Lamanites had taken many women and children, and there was not a woman nor a child among all the prisoners of Moroni or the prisoners whom Moroni had taken; therefore Moroni resolved upon a stratagem to obtain as many prisoners of the Nephites from the Lamanites as it were possible. Therefore he wrote an epistle, and sent it by the servant of Ammoron, the same who had brought an epistle to Moroni. Now these are the words which he wrote unto Ammoron, saying: Behold, Ammoron, I have written unto you somewhat concerning this war which ye have waged against my people, or rather which thy brother hath waged against them, and which ye are still determined to carry on after his death. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“Behold, I would tell you somewhat concerning the justice of God, and the sword of his almighty wrath, which doth hang over you except ye repent and withdraw your armies into your own lands, or the land of your possessions, which is the land of Nephi. Yea, I would tell you these things if ye were capable of hearkening unto them; yea, I would tell you concerning that awful hell that awaits to receive such murderers as thou and thy brother have been, except ye repent and withdraw your murderous purposes, and return with your armies to your own lands. However, as ye have once rejected these things, and have fought against the people of the Lord, even so I may expect you will do it again. And now behold, we are prepared to receive you; yea, and except you withdraw your purposes, behold, ye will pull down the wrath of that God whom you have rejected upon you, even to your utter destruction. However, as the Lord liveth, our armies shall come upon your except ye withdraw, and ye shall soon be visited with death, for we will retain our cities and our lands; yea, and we will maintain our religion and the cause of our God. However, behold, it supposeth me that I talk to you concerning these things in vain; or it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell; therefore I will close my epistle by telling you that I will not exchange prisoners, save it be on conditions that ye will deliver up a man and his wife and his children, for one prisoner; if this be the case that ye will do it, I will exchange. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“And behold, if ye do not this, I will come against you with my armies; yea, even I will arm my women and my children, and I will come against you, and I will follow you even into your own land, which is the land of our first inheritance; yea, and it shall be blood for blood, yea, life for life; and I will give you battle even until you are destroyed from off the face of the Earth. Behold, I am in my anger, and also my people; ye have sought to murder us, and we have only sought to defend ourselves. However, behold, if ye seek to destroy us more we will seek to destroy you; yea, and we will seek our land, the land of our first inheritance. Now I close my epistle. I am Moroni; I am a leader of the people of the Nephites. Now it came to pass that Ammoron, when he had received this epistle, was angry; and he wrote another epistle unto Moroni, and these are the words which he wrote, saying: I am Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites; I am the brother of Amalickiah whom ye have murdered. Behold, I will avenge his blood upon you, yea, and I will come upon you with my armies for I fear not your threatenings. For behold, your fathers did wrong their brethren, insomuch that they did rob them of their right to the government when it rightly belonged unto them. And now behold, if ye will lay down your arms, and subject yourselves to be governed by those to whom the government doth rightly belong, then will I cause that my people shall lay down their weapons and shall be at war no more. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“Behold, ye have breathed out many threatenings against me and my people; but behold, we fear not your threatenings. Nevertheless, I will grant to exchange prisoners according to your request, gladly, that I may preserve my food for my men of war; and we will wage a war which shall be eternal, either to the subjecting the Nephites to our authority or to their external extinction. And as concerning that God whom ye say we have rejected, behold, we know not such a being; neither do ye; but if it so be that there is such a being, we know not but he hath made us as well as you. An if it so be that there is a devil and a hell, behold will he not send you there to dwell with my brother whom ye have murdered, whom ye have hinted that he hath gone to such a place? However, behold these things matter not. I am Ammoron, and a descendant of Zoram, whom your fathers pressed and brought out of Jerusalem. And behold now, I am a bold Lamanite; behold, this war hath been wages to avenge their wrongs, and to maintain and to obtain their rights to the government; and I close my epistle to Moroni,” reports Alma 54.1-24. Here in the center of the turmoil of the city, I turn my thoughts to God. Beneath the buildings, deep beneath them, les the Earth of our Father, the very body of God. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
God cannot be hidden; whenever life if found, there He is. Great Father, please keep me mindful of you as I walk through the city. Rise, O my folk, from the dust of the Earth, grab thee in raiment beseeming thy worth; nigh draws the hour of the redeemer’s birth, freedom who bringeth, and glorious days. Wake and bestir thee, for come is thy light! Up! With thy shinning, the World shall be bright; sing! For the Lord is revealed in His might—thine is the splendor His glory displays! ‘be not ashamed,” saith the Lord, “nor distressed; fear not and doubt not. The people oppressed, Zion, My city, in thee shall find rest—thee, tat anew on thy ruins I raise.” Spoiled shall thy spoilers be; banished afar, they that devoured. However, in thee, evermore, God shall take joy; as the bridegroom, what hour, blushing, the bride lifts her veil to his gaze. Stretch out thy borders to left and to right; fear but the Lord, whom to fear is delight—the man, son of Perez, shall gladden our sight, and we shall rejoice to the fullness of days. Come in thy joyousness, Crown of thy Lord; come bring peace to the folk of the Word; come where the faithful in gladsome accord, Hail thee as Sabbath-Bride, Queen of the days. Come where the faithful are hymning thy praise; come as a bride cometh, Queen of the days. May the Lord comfort and sustain you among the other mourners for Zion and Jerusalem. Amen. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
Winchester Mystery House
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You Always Hold Your Loved One in Your Heart, but You Must Let Go of Your Grief!
We have probed the Earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it….That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-moth bases, we would have been evicted long ago, and perhaps that is what is going on with COVID-19. Perhaps the Earth is tired of being abused. After 96 percent of wildfires are caused by humans. Reentering America, one is struck first of all by the grim monotony of American facial expressions—hard, surly, and bitter—and by the aura of deprivation that informs them. One goes abroad forewarned against exploitation by grasping foreigners, but nothing is done to prepare the returning traveler for the fanatical acquisitiveness of one’s compatriots. It is difficult to become reaccustomed to seeing people already weighted down with possession acting as if every object they did not own were bread withheld from a hungry mouth. These perceptions are heightened by the contrast between the sullen faces of real people and the vision of happiness television offers: men and women ecstatically engaged in stereotyped symbols of fun—running through fields, strolling on beaches, dancing and singing. Smiling faces with chronically open mouths express their gratification with the manifold bounties offered by the culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
One begins to feel there is a sever gap between the fantasies Americans life by and the realities they live in. Americans know from an early age how they are supposed to look when happy and what they are supposed to do or buy to be happy. However, for some reason their fantasies are unrealizable and leave them disappointed and embittered. The traveler’s antennae disappear after a time. These impressions fade, and reentry process is gradually effected. American once again seem familiar, comfortable, ordinary. Yet some uneasiness lingers on, for the society seems troubled and self-preoccupied—as if suddenly large numbers of America were scrutinizing their own society with the doubtful eyes of a traveler. One of the functions of a society is to make its inhabitants feel safe, and American devote more of their collective resources to security than to any other need. They build McMansions in gated communities, have cameras inside and outside the home, every member of the family has a mobile phone and every kind of insure you can dream of. Some people even go as far as buying armored (bullet proof) Ultimate Driving Machines. Yet American still think they need more safety because of shotguns in the close, nuclear bombers patrolling overhead, and the fiction the passes as news. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
With each decade we seem to accumulate more fears, and most of these fears seem to be about each other. In the fifties we were afraid of native Communists, and although we now feel sheepish about that moment of panic, today we express the same kind of fears about the mainstream media and the political party; and in our reactions to all of these fears we have created some very real dangers. Our intense fears make many people believe their race, way of life, religion, wealth, family, home and country are in danger of total extinction. During this COVID-19 crisis, many people have seriously become fearful of a World War III. Given this lack of concern for an overwhelming threat, how can we account for the exaggerated fear of climate change? From Dr. Freud we learned long ago to suspect, when a fear seems out of proportion, that is has been bloated by a wish; and this seems particularly likely when the danger is defined as a psychological one—an evil influence. The truth about climate change is if we want to save the World, we need to stop destroying forests and rain forests. We fear storms and wild beasts, but we do not censor them. If we must guard ourselves against evil influences we there by admit to their seductive appeal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Thus the McCarthy era reached its peak after the discovery that a few Americans has responded to “brainwashing” efforts, and the fear of conversion to Communism was quite explicit in public statements and popular surveys. One survey respondent, for example, made the revealing statement that “so many people in America are eager like those soldiers of ours in Korea to fall into the traps set by Communist propaganda.” The anticommunism of that period and its institutional residues have served as a kind of political fig leaf. The same emphasis surrounds of fears of radicalism today. The political party, peace demonstrations, militance, dens, and student protests are disturbing not only because they provide a serious physical danger (say the equivalent of walking through a street gang wearing the wrong colour), but also because we fear having our secret doubts about the viability of our social system voiced aloud. It is not what happens abroad that generates hysteria, but rather what appears to be happening within ourselves. This is why force must be used against the expression of certain ideas—if the ideas pluck a responsive chord counterarguments are difficult to remember, and one must fall back on clubs and tear gas. However, what is the nature of the attraction exerted by radical ideas on unwilling conservatives? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We know something about the hopes that tige the old maid’s search for a ravisher under her bed, but we need to understand better the seductive impact that informs our enraged fascination with the revolutionary currents of American society. Since the very form of this question rests on certain assumptions about culture and personality, however, let me first makes these explicit. The emotional repertory of human beings is limited and standard. When caressed, we are built to feel warm, happy, and content, when frustrated feel angry, when attacked feel frightened, when insulted feel offended, when excluded jealous, and so on. However, every culture holds some of these human reactions to be unacceptable and attempts to warp its participants int some peculiar specialization. Since human beings are malleable within limits, the warping is for the most part successfully achieved, so that some learn not to laugh, some not to cry, some not to love, and some not to hate in situations in which these reactions might appropriately be expressed. This cultural warping of human emotionality is eased by compartmentalization: there are special times and places and situations where the disparaged responses are permitted, or classes of people who can provide vicarious satisfaction through conspicuous performance of some kind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Yet there are always a few of these responses with which every society and every individual has trouble. They must be shouted down continually, although they are usually visible to the outsider. Thus although the Germans, for example, have always placed great stress on order, precision, and obedience to authority, they periodically explode into revolutionary chaos and are driven by romantic Gotterdammerung fantasies. In the same way there is a cooperative underside to competitive America, a rich spoofing tradition in ceremonious England, an elaborate pornography in all prudish societies, and so on. Rather than saying Germans are obedient or Anglo-Saxon societies stuffy or puritanical, it is more correct to day that Germans are preoccupied with issues of authority, Anglo-Saxons with the control of emotional and pleasures of the flesh expression, and so forth. Those issues about which members of a given society seem to feel strongly all reveal a conflict one side of which is strongly emphasized, the other side as strongly (but not quite successfully) suppressed. These opposing forces are much more equally balanced than the society’s participants like to recognize—were this not true there would be no need for suppression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Life would indeed be much less frantic if we were all able to recognize the diversity of responses and feelings within ourselves, and could abandon our somewhat futile efforts to present a monolithic self-portrait to the World. Probably some exaggeration of uniformity is necessary, however, in order for us to act at all, or at least with enough consistency to permit smooth social functioning. On the individual level the delicate balance reveals itself though conversion. An individual who “converts” from one orientation to its exact opposite appears to oneself and others to have made a gross change, but actually it involves only a very small shift in the balance of a focal and persistent conflict. Just as only one percent of the voting population is needed to reserves the results of an American election, so only one percent of an individual’s internal “constituencies” need shift in order to transform one from voluptuary to ascetic, from police officer to criminal, from Communist to anticommunist, or whatever. The opposite sides are as evenly matched before, and the apparent change merely represents the desperate efforts made by the internal “majority” to consolidate its shaky position of dominance. The individual must expend just as much energy shouting down the new “minority” as one did the old; some of the most dedicated witch hunters of the 1950’s, for example, were ex-Communist. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
So the reason there is so much division in America right now is because the majority is now becoming the minority, as the demographics change. On the society levels there are more outlets from the expression of “minority” themes and sentiments, and reversals of emphasis involve more overlap between the opposing trends. The United States of America, for example, traditionally one of the most prudish societies in the World, has long displayed, in a somewhat warped and mechanical way, the greatest profusion of stimuli involving pleasures of the flesh. These considerations suggest that the fear of radical movements in America derives much of its intensity from the attraction that such movements have for their opponents—an attraction that must be stifled. However, what is it? What is so severely lacking in our society that the assertion of an alternative life style throws so many Americans into panic and rage? I would like to suggest three human desires that are deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture: The desire for community—the wish to live in trust and fraternal cooperation with one’s fellows in a total and visible collective eternity. The desire for engagement—the wish to come directly to grips with social and interpersonal problems and to confront on equal terms an environment which is not composed of ego extensions is another human desire that is deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The third is the desire for dependence—the wish to share responsibility for the control of one’s impulses and the direction of one’s life. When I say that these three desires are frustrated by American culture, this need not conjure up romantic images of individual struggling against society. In every case it is fair to say that we participate eagerly in producing the frustration we endure—it is not something merely done t us. For these desires are in each case subordinate to their opposites in that vague entity called the American Character. Americans have voluntarily created and voluntarily maintained a society which increasingly frustrates and aggravate these secondary yearnings, to the point where they threaten to become primary. Groups that in any way personify this threat are therefore feared in an exaggerated way, and will be until Americans as a group are able to recognize and accept those needs within themselves. “Thus says the Lord Who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters. Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing, even now it is springing to light. Do you not perceive it? A way will I make in the wilderness and rivers in the desert!” (Isaiah 43.16, 18-19.) #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Most of the conditions we commonly speak of as feelings are really not feelings at all; but the feeling tones or sensations that accompany those conditions are so powerful that the conditions themselves become identified with the associated sensations. This is true love and hatred or contempt, for example, but also with hurry and peace and with self-esteem and discouragement. Now, there are some extremely serious dangers here. When we confuse the condition with the accompanying feeling—peace, for example, with the feeling of peacefulness—we very likely will try to manage the feelings and disregard or deny the reality of the conditions. That way lie such things as “falling in love with love” and most of all the well-known addictions. The person who primarily wants the feeling of being loved or being “in love” will be incapable of sustaining loving relationships, whether with God or with other humans. And the person who wants the feeling of peacefulness will be unable to do the things that make for peace—especially, doing what is right and confronting evil. So, as far as our planning for spiritual formation is concerned, we must choose and act with regard to the condition, good or bad, and allow the feelings to take care of themselves, as they certainly will. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
In particular, we must never directly cherish, protect, or manipulate feelings, whether in ourselves or others. When negative feelings have themselves become so overwhelming that they threaten to take over our lives, this is the only exception to this rule. Then we must take steps to remove the negative feeling (grief or pain, for example). Prayer or even medication for such feelings is then wise. However, even so, the focus on the feeling must not be allowed to prevent our dealing, when and as we can, with the conditions from which that feelings arises. A well-known minister, after his wife passed away, said he had learned that there is a difference between turning loose your loved one and turning loose your grief. You always hold your loved one in your heart, but you must let go of your grief. So far as possible, we must always away from painful and destructive feelings. Simply that. Walk away. “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers. On the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, so that I had to reject them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
However, this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people for I will forgive their guilt and I will remember their sins no more,” reports Jeremiah 31.31-34. Charles Darwin. Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) has offered a model of emotion for various other theorists and researchers. Darwin focuses on emotive expressions—that is, on visible gestures—and not on the subjective meanings associated with them. These gestures, he posits, were acquired during a prehistoric period and have survived as “serviceable associated habits.” Originally linked to actions these emotive gestures become actions manque. The emotion of love, for example, is the vestige of what was once a direct act of copulation. The baring of teeth in rage is a vestige of the once immediate act of biting. The expression of disgust is the vestige of what was once the immediate act of regurgitating a noxious thing. For Darwin, there is no emotion without gesture although there may be gesture without action. (The says the Lord God: ) “I will give them a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within them. I will remove their heart of stone and will give them a heart of flesh,” reports Ezekiel 11.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Darwin’s theory of emotion, then, is a theory of gesture. The question for later students thus became: are emotive gestures universal or are they culturally specific? Darwin’s own general conclusion was that they were universal. Darwin distinguished between facial expressions of emotion that are innate and universal and facial gestures (not necessarily of emotion) that are learned and thus culturally variable. He devised a sixteen-item questionnaire and sent it to thirty-six missionaries and others who had lived in non-Western societies. One question was: “Can a dogged or obstinate expression be recognized, which is chiefly shown by the mouth being firmly closed, a lowering brow, and a slight frown?” Based on his returned questionnaires, Darwin concluded that “the chief expressive actions” of human beings were innate and therefore universal. Despite his generally universalist interpretations, however, Darwin concluded that some nonverbal behaviours (such as weeping, kissing, nodding, and shaking the head in affirmation and negation) were not universal but culture-specific and “learned like the words of a language.” However, the debate has been carried forward by those who argue that emotional expressions are probably innate, and those who argue that they are modeled on language and therefore culturally variable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
What is missing from both sides of this debate is what was missing in Darwin’s theory from the beginning: a conception of emotion as subjective experience and a more subtle and complex notion of how social factor impinge. Humans compete with each other for control of the ritual apparatus, which is a powerful tool for commanding people by controlling their emotions. The ego is a mediator between the id (drive) and conscious expression. Affects are seen as signals of impending danger (from inside or outside) and as an impetus to action. The ego is assigned the capacity to postpone id drives, to neutralize or bind them. One emotion—anxiety—is the model for all others because it is more important due to the unpleasantness of anxiety which leads to the development of various ego defenses against unpleasantness. As analysts we recognize that anxiety occupies a special position in mental life. It is the motive for defense. Defenses serve the purpose of minimizing, or, if possible, preventing the development of anxiety. Anxiety was initially defined in a way that bypasses the ego: anxiety is the reaction to an influx of stimuli which is too great for the mental apparatus to master or discharge. (Thus says the Lord God: ) “I ignore the troubles of the past. I shut mine eyes to them. For, behold, I create new Heavens and a new Earth. The past shall be forgotten and never come to mind. Humans shall rejoice forever in what I now create,” reports Isaiah 65.16, 17. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
So we see that God is a worker and that humans, created in God’s image, is a worker and that work is good. However, then come the Fall and the Curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” Genesis 3.17-19. The Curse made nature uncooperative, so that work became painful toil and humans had to sweat for a living. Today our working conditions vary. Some sweat more than others. We may be in a better position than some. However, the norm for the World is “painful toil.” Even more, the normal experience of humankind is one’s labour is a malaise of futility. The writer of Ecclesiastes gave this universal expression as he bemoaned his plight from the perspective of one who leaves God out of his life. In 2.4-10 he describes his professional success in acquiring vineyards and gardens and parks and enslaved humans and flocks and treasures. He was greater than all his contemporaries. He was denied nothing his eyes desired. However, he concluded in verse 11, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing gained under the Sun.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
And he reiterates in verse 17, “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the Sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the win.” Humans and others, this is as far as work will take you apart from God. You will engaged in it because, though fallen, you are in the image of God and because work is part of the natural order, and it will produce its benefits and satisfactions—but it will also be toil, and its joys will be ephemeral. Studs Terkel has revealed what has always been true under the Sun when God is left out. “And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of Earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And upon the top of these ridges of Earth he caused that there should be timers, yea, works of timbers built up to the height of a human, round about the cities. And he caused that upon those works of timbers there should be a frame of pickets built upon the timbers round about; and they were strong and high. And he caused towers to be erected that overlooked those works of pickets, and he caused places of security to be built upon those towers, that the stones and the arrows of the Lamanites could not hurt them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
“And they were prepared that they could cast stones from the top thereof, according to their pleasure and their strength, and slay one who should attempt to approach near he walls of the city. Thus Moroni did prepare strongholds against the coming of their enemies, round about every city in all the land. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his armies should go forth into the east wilderness; yea, and they went forth and drove all he Lamanites who were in the east wilderness into their own lands, which were south of the land of Zarahemla. And the land of Nephi did run in a straight course from the east sea to the west. And it came to pass that when Moroni had driven all the Lamanites out of the east wilderness which was north of the lands of their own possessions, he caused that the inhabitants who were in the land of Zarahemla and in the land round about should go forth into the east wilderness, even to the borders by the seashore, and possess the land. And he also placed armies on the south, in the borders of their possessions, and caused them to erect fortifications that they might secure their armies and their people from the hands of their enemies. And thus he cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites in the East wilderness, yea, and also on the west, fortifying the line between the land of Zarahemla and the land of Nephi, from the west sea, running by the head of the river of Sidon—the Nephites possessing all the land northward, yea, even all the land which was northward of the land Bountiful according to their pleasure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“Thus Moroni, with his armies, which did increase daily because of the assurance of protection which his works did bring forth unto them, did seek to cut off the strength and the power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possession, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession. And it came to pass that the Nephites began the foundation of a city, and they called the nae of the city Moroni; and it was by the east sea; and it was on the south by the line of the possessions of the Lamanites. And they also began a foundation for a city between the city of Moroni and the city of Aaron, joining he borders of Aaron and Moroni; and they called the name of the city, or the land, Nephihah. And they also began in that same year to build many cities on the north, one in a particular manner which they called Lehi, which was in the north by the borders of the seashore. And thus ended the twentieth year. And in these prosperous circumstances were the people of Nephi in the commencement of the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did prosper exceedingly, and they became exceedingly rich; yea, and they did multiply and wax strong in the land. And thus we see how merciful and jus are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of humans; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And we see that these promises have been verified to the people of Nephi; for it has been their quarrelings and their contentions, yea, their murderings, and their plunderings, their idolatry, their whoredoms, and their abominations, which were among themselves, which brought them their wars and their destructions. And those who were faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord were delivered at all times, whilst thousands of their wicked brethren have been consigned to bondage, or to perish by the sword, or to dwindle in unbelief, and mingle with the Lamanites. However, behold, there was never a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nephi, than in the days of Moroni, yea, even at this time, in the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass that the twenty and second year of the reign of the judges also ended in peace; yea, and also the twenty and third year. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And it came to pass that in the commencement of the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges, there would also have been peace among the people of Nephi had it not been for a contention which took place among them concerning the land of Lehi, and the land of Morianton, which joined upon the borders of Lehi; both of which were on the borders by the seashore. For behold, the people who possessed the land of Morianton did claim a part of the land of Lehi; therefore there began to be a warm contention between them, insomuch that the people of Morianton took up arms against their brethren, and they were determined by the sword to slay them. However, behold, the people who possessed the land of Lehi fled to the camp of Moroni, and appealed unto him for assistance; for behold they were not in the wrong. And it came to pass that when the people of Morianton, who were led by a man whose name was Morianton, found that the people of Lehi had fled to the camp of Moroni they were exceedingly fearful lest the army of Moroni should come upon them and destroy them. Therefore, Morianton put it into their hearts that they should flee to the land which was northward, which was covered with large bodies of water, and take possession of the land which was northward. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And behold, they would have carried this plan into effect, (which would have been a cause to have been lamented) but behold, Morianton being a man of much passion, therefore he was angry with one of his maid servants, and he fell upon her and beat her much. And it came to pass that she fled, and came over to the camp of Moroni, and told Moroni all things concerning the matter, and also concerning their intentions to flee into the land northward. Now behold, the people who were in the land Bountiful, or rather Moroni, feared that they would hearken to the words of Morianton and unite with his people, and thus he would obtain possession of those parts of the land, which would lay a foundation for serious consequences among the people of Nephi, yea, which consequences would lead to the overthrow of their liberty. Therefore Moroni sent an army, with their camp, to head the people of Morianton, to stop their flight into the land northward. And it came to pass that they did not head them until they had come to the borders of the land Desolation; and there they did head them, by the narrow pass which led by the sea into the land northward, yea, by the sea, on the west and on the east. And it came to pass that the army which was sent by Moroni, which was led by a man whose name was Teancum did meet the people of Morianton. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
And when Teancu met the people of Morianton, so stubborn were the people of Morianton, (being inspired by wickedness and his flattering words) that a battle commenced between them, in which Teancum did slay Morianton and defeat his army, and took them prisoners, and returned to the camp of Moroni. And thus ended the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus were the people of Morianton brought back. And upon their covenanting to keep the peace they were restored to the land of Morianton, and a union took place between them and the people of Lehi; and they were also restored to their lands. And it came to pass that in the same year that the people of Nephi had peace restored unto them, that Nephihah, the second chief judge, died, having filled the judgment seat with perfect uprightness before God. Nevertheless, he had refused Alma to take possession of those records and those things which were esteemed by Alma and his fathers to be most sacred; therefore Alma had conferred them upon his son, Helaman. Behold, it came to pass that the son of Nephihah, Pahoran, was appointed to fill the judgment-seat, in the stead of his father; yea, he was appointed chief judge and governor over the people, with an oath and sacred ordinance to judge righteously, and to keep the peace and the freedom of the people. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Pahoran also had the power to grant unto them their sacred privileges to worship the Lord their God, yea, to support and maintain the cause of God all his days, and to bring the wicked to justice according to their crime. And Pahoran did fill the seat of his father, and did commence his reign in the end of the twenty and fourth year, over the people of Nephi,” Alma 50.1-40. Wonder and awe, as I sit in your presence, you who sit in the gateway, in this World and in the other, mediating the power that shines through, letting pass what I need, and what I can use, holding back in mercy what I cannot. Seen against the brightness, your dark silhouette is still and sharp and clear. Sitting fiercely, with perfect intent, pure in your purpose, source of terror and comfort. A roaring fire, you sit in my heart’s center. A rampaging bull, you tear through my soul. A searing bolt, you cut through my life. A skirring arrow, you slice me in two. A standing stone, you are my anchor. The Lord reigneth while the people stand in awe; He is enthroned upon His judgment seat, while the Earth trembles. The Lord is mighty in Zion; He is exalted over all peoples. They praise His name: “God is great and revered, is holy.” Mighty King who loveth justice, Thou hast established equity; Justice and righteousness hast Thou wrought in Jacob. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
A tall-standing cypress tree is our God, supporting the Worlds on his limbs, each World ordered according to the spreading of His branches. Into each World, His twigs extend, bearing the leaves and birds that are our lives. From what source is the tree nourished? Where do its roots extend? Deep within the void they reach and are fed there from the substance of the Goddess. He makes known her will, giving it form, from which we might know it and live according to its pattern. Shaper and essence, open my eyes, open my ears, open my heart, that I might perceive the sacred pattern and conform my life to it. The goddess is the one who is Lady of all, and she is the one of whom I would speak, the one who gives birth and the one who brings death, beginning and end of the course of our lives. God is the Lord Almighty. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool, declaring: “Holy is He!” Moses and Aaron were among His priests; Samuel was among those that called upon His name, calling upon the Lord and being answered. He would speak unto them out of a pillar of cloud; they kept His testimonies and the laws He gave them. Thou, O Lord, didst answer them; Thou wast a forgiving God unto them, through punishing them for their evil. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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As Pure in thought as Angels are, to Know Her was to Love Her!
Life experiences become acting experiences, which in turn become life experiences. Today I saw her for the first time at Mrs. Jansen’s. I was introduced to her. Oh! She was good as she was fair. None—none on Earth above her! As pure in thought as angels are, to know her was to love her. She did not seem to make anything of it or pay any attention to me. I kept myself as unobtrusive as possible in order to observe her all the better. She stayed only a moment; she had come only to fetch the daughters, who were to go to the royal kitchen. While the two Jansen girls were putting on their coats, we two were alone in a room, and I, with a cold, almost supercilious apathy, said a few casual words to her, to which she replied with undeserved politeness. Then they went. I could have offered to accompany them, but that already would have sufficed to indicate the gallant suitor, and I have convinced myself that she is not to be won that way. –On the contrary, I chose to leave right after they had gone and to walk faster than they, but along other streets, yet likewise heading toward the royal kitchen so that when they turned onto Store Kongensgade I passed them in the greatest haste without greeting them or anything. It is necessary for me to gain entrance to the house, and for that, as they say in military language, I am prepared. It looks, however, as if that will be a fairly protracted and difficult matter. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
I have never known any family that lived so much apart. It is only she and her aunt—no brothers, no cousins, not a thread to grab onto, no far-removed connection to contact. I walk around continually with one arm available. Not for anything in the World would I walk with someone on each arm at this time. My arm is a grappling hook that must always be kept in readiness; my arm is intended for the potential yield—if far off in the distance a very distant relative or friend should appear whom I from afar could catch hold of, then I make a grab. Moreover, it is not right for a family to live so isolated; the poor young lady is being deprived of the opportunity to learn to know the World, to say nothing of the other possible dangerous consequences it may have. That always has its revenge. It is the same with proposing. To be sure, such isolation does protect one from petty thievery. In a very sociable house, opportunity makes the thief. However, that does not matter greatly, for there is not much to steal from such young women; when they are twenty-eight years old, their hearts are already a filled autograph album, and I never care to write my name where many have already written. It never occurs to me to scratch my name on a window pane or in a tavern, or on a tree or a bench in Frederiksberg gardens. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Beliefs are the rails upon which our lives run. We almost always act according to what we really believe. It does not matter much what we say we believe or what we want others to think we believe. When the rubber meets the road, we act out our actual beliefs most of the time. That is why behaviour is such a good indicator of a person’s beliefs. Let us look, then, at five aspects of belief that are critical to the shape of our minds. The content of a belief. A belief’s impact on behaviour I a function of three of the belief’s traits: its content, strength, and centrality. The content of a belief helps determine how important the belief is for our character behaviour. What we believe matters—the actual content of what we believe about God, morality, politics, life after death, and so on will shape the contours of our lives and actions. In fact, the contents of one’s beliefs are so important that, according to Scripture, our eternal destiny is determined by what we believe about Jesus Christ. Today, people are inclined to think that the sincerity and fervency of one’s beliefs are more important than the content. As long as we believe something honestly and strongly, we are told, then that is all that matters. Nothing can be further from the truth. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
I can believe with all my might that my Ultimate Driving Machine will fly me to Japan or love is caused solely by the brain, but that fervency does not change a thing. As far as reality is concerned, what matters is not whether I like a belief or how sincere I am in believing it but whether or not the belief is true. I am responsible for what I believe and, I might add, for what I refuse to believe because the content of what I do or do not believe makes a tremendous difference to what I become and how I act. The strength of a belief. There is, however, more to a belief than its content. There is also strength and centrality for the person who believes it. We are all familiar with the idea of a belief having strength. If you believe something, that does not mean you are certain that it is true. Rather, it means that you are at least more than 50 percent convinced the belief is true. If it were fifty-fifty for you, you would not really have the belief in question. Instead, you would still be in a process of deciding whether or not you should adopt the belief. A belief’s strength is the degree to which you are convinced the belief is true. As you gain evidence and support for a belief, its strength grows for you. It may start off as plausible and later become fairly likely, quite likely, beyond reasonable doubt, or complete certain. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The more certain you are of a belief, the more it becomes a part of your very soul, and the more you rely on it as a basis for action. The centrality of a belief. You may be less familiar with this concept than with the previous two, but with a little reflection the idea of centrality is easy to grasp. The centrality of a belief is the degree of importance the belief plays in your entire set of beliefs, that is, in your Worldview. The more central a belief is, the greater the impact on one’s Worldview were the belief given up. My belief that prunes are good for me is fairly strong (even thought I do not care for that belief!), but it is not very central for me. I could give it up and not have to abandon or adjust very many other beliefs I hold. However, my beliefs in absolute morality, life after death, or the Christian faith are very central for me—more central now, in fact, than just after my conversion in 2020. If I were to lose these beliefs, my entire set of beliefs would undergo a radical reshuffling—more so now than in 2021. As I grow, some of my beliefs come to play a more central role in the entire way I see life. How do we change beliefs? The content, strength, and centrality of a person’s beliefs plays a powerful role in determining the person’s character and behaviour. However, there is an apparent paradox about one’s beliefs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
On the one hand, Scripture holds us responsible for our beliefs since it commands us to embrace certain beliefs and warns us of the consequences of accepting other beliefs. On the other hand, experience teaches us that we cannot choose or change our beliefs by direct effort. For example, if someone offered you $100,000 to believe right now that a pink elephant was sitting next to you, you could not really choose to believe this in spite of having a good motive to do so! Happily, there is a way out of this paradox: we can change our beliefs indirectly. If I want to change my beliefs about something, I can embark on a course of study in which I choose to think regularly about certain things, read certain pieces of evidence and argument, and try to find problems with evidence raised against the belief in question. More generally, by choosing to undertake a course of study, meditation, and reflection, I can put myself in a position to undergo a change in the content, strength, and centrality of my beliefs. (We will look more at these truths later.) And if these kinds of changes in belief are what caused a change in my character and behaviour, then I will be transformed by these belief changes. That is exactly why Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, because it is precisely activities of the mind that change these three aspects of belief, which, in turn, transform our character and behaviour. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
How beliefs form the plausibility structure of a culture. There is a critical corollary of this insight. If I cannot even entertain the belief needed to bring about that change, I will never be able to change my life. By “entertain a belief” I mean to consider the possibility that the belief might be true. If you are hateful and mean to someone at work, you will have to change what you believe about the person before you will treat one differently. However, if you cannot even entertain the thought that one is a god person worthy of kindness, you will not change. There is a straightforward application here for evangelism. A person’s plausibility structure is set of ideas the person either is or is not willing to entertain as possibly true. For example, no one would come to a lecture defending a flat Earth because this idea is just not part of our plausibility structure. We cannot even entertain the idea. Moreover, a person’s plausibility structure is a function of the beliefs one already has. God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favourable conditions for the receptions of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
We may preach with all the fervour of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the World to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. If a culture reaches the point where Christian claims are not even part of its plausibility structure, fewer and fewer people will be able to entertain the possibility that they might be true. Whatever stragglers do come to faith in such a context would do so on the basis of felt needs alone, and the genuineness of such conversions would be questionable to say the least. This is why apologetics is so crucial to evangelism. It seeks to create a plausibility structure in a person’s mind, favourable conditions, so the gospel can be entertained by a person. To plant a seed in someone’s mind in pre-evangelism is to present a person with an idea that will work on one’s plausibility structure to create a space in which Christianity can be entertained seriously. If this is important to evangelism, it is strategically crucial that local churches think about how hey can address those aspects of the modern Worldview that place Christianity outside the plausibility structure of so many. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Our modern post-Christian society is perilously close to regarding Christian claims as mere figments in the minds of the faithful. Speaking of fundamentalists after the Scopes trial in 1925, historian George Marsden observes that they could not “raise the level of discourse to a plane where any of their arguments would be taken seriously. Whatever they said would be overshadowed by the pejorative associations attached to the movement by the seemingly victorious secular establishment.” Tragically, as we approach the twenty-first century, our current context for proclaiming Christian truth is even worse than it was in the decades following 1925. During those decades, at least argumentation was considered relevant to making or accepting religious claims. However, now religious assertions are regarded as mere expressions of private belief or emotion, far below the level needed for argument itself to be considered at all relevant. The plausibility, content, strength, and centrality of our beliefs play a key role in determining our character and behaviour. And various activities of thought and study affect our beliefs and thereby impact our character and behaviour. Because thoughts and beliefs are contained in the mind, intellectually development and the renewal of the mind transform our lives. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
James’ words are consistently surgical. However, none are so penetrating as these: “If anyone considers oneself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on one’s tongue, one deceives oneself and one’s religion is worthless,” reports James 1.26. An exercise in futility! This is a spiritually terrifying statement, to say the least, for it cuts like a hot knife through warm butter, dissecting the cant and piety of the self-satisfied religious. An out-of-control tongue suggests bogus religion, no matter how well one’s devotion is carried out. The true test of a human’s spirituality is not one’s ability to speak, as we are apt to think, but rather one’s ability to bridle one’s tongue. The Lord Jesus Himself explained this in no uncertain terms in a heated exchange with the Pharisees: “Make a tree god and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” reports Matthew 12.33, 34). The tongue will inevitably reveal what is on the inside. This is especially true under stress, when the tongue is compulsively revealing. A preacher with a hammer in hand, doing some work on a church workday, noticed that one of the men seemed to be following him around. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Finally the preacher asked this man why he was following him around. The man answered, “I just want to hear what you say when you hit your thumb.” The curious parishioner understood that would be of the home, where the mouth unfailingly trumpets one’s essence. James does not mean that those who sometimes fall into this sin have a worthless religion, for all are guilty at times. Rather, he is saying that if anyone’s tongue is habitually unbridled, though one’s church attendance be impeccable, one’s Bible knowledge envied, one’s prayers many, one’s tithes exemplary, and though one considers oneself religious…one deceives oneself and one’s religion is worthless. The ever practical James has cut through all the religious decorum, but it is not butter that glistens under one’s knife, but the marrow of our souls. True religion controls the tongue. Humans, how is your religion? How is mine? Do you talk too much? Do you pass along choice morsels for others to gleefully take in? Do you pass along choice morsels for others to gleefully take in? Do you say to people’s faces what you would never say behind their backs? Do you have a “gift” of a sharp tongue? Are people elevated or diminished through your words? #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
From the time when one begins to take instruction from one’s teacher, the disciple also begins a period of probation in one’s inner career and of separation from one’s inner weaknesses. The probation will enable one gradually to show forth all the different aspects of one’s personality and will indicate how receptive one really is to the teacher’s influence. During this process, qualities which are lying latent beneath the surface will arise above it; situations will arrange themselves in such a way as to force one to express them. In short, what is hidden will become open. Thus one will be given the chance to look to one’s moral foundations before one advances to the intensive mystical training which places hidden power and hidden knowledge in one’s hands. Without first getting such a foundation, one who gets possession of these powers may soon fall into overpowering temptations, with disastrous results to oneself and others. The inner conflict which results from the probation will force one to face oneself, to look at the weaknesses which are present within one and to try to conquer them. If there is no other way to get one to do so, then one will have to take the way of suffering their consequences so as to have them brought home to one. Such a phase of the disciple’s career will naturally be filled with strains for oneself and with misunderstandings about oneself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The term of probation is a period of severe trials and strong temptations. However, the principle of probation is a sound one. Out of the vortex of its tests and stresses and upheavals, one has the chance to emerge a stronger and wiser being. One’s probationary period is concerned with the general purification of character from egoism and animality as well as with its sensitization to intuition and instruction. Without such a basis to work upon, it would be dangerous for one to venture into mystical work or public service. Nor would the teacher permit one to do so, as there are inexorable laws, not of one’s making, which govern the matter. One must be on guard and not mistake psychism for spirituality, pseudo-intuition for the real thing, mix personal motives with altruistic service, nor lose oneself in dreams and fantasies instead of finding oneself in inspired action. These faults are common to most mystical aspirants. The Quest for God is deadly serious and demands so much. It is far easier to go astray from it than to keep on it. A householder is responsible for all who dwell in the house, but especially for guest. Treat anyone who has safely passed the borders of your land with respect, unless they perform some act to offend the spirit of God. Even then, treat them with kindness until you have escorted them off your property. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
It is your responsibility to restore the harmony to your house. This obligation holds for the uninvited as well as the invited guest—the neighbourhood children, the sales person, the evangelist at your door. Greet them pleasantly. Offer them hospitality. If you invite them in, offer them something to ear or drink. Your Cresleigh Home will develop a reputation for hospitality, which will please God no end. Lord who sits at the edge of my land, sits at the edge of all I own. Watchful Jesus Christ guards my space. About my Cresleigh Home, establish your place of warding. Stand watchfully at the corners. Be a shield between our house and all that would work evil. Guard our land and all who claim its protection. Here on the border, you stand your watch. I have come out here to assure you that your attention to duty is appreciated, bringing not only words, but gifts to place before your maker. Watcher on the Borders, the steward of this land offers to you. This grain is for you, and the atmosphere is for you. “O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the Earth, and cry repentance unto every people! Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the Earth. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
“However, behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me. I ought not to harrow up in my desires the firm decree of a just God, for I know that he granteth unto humans according to their desires, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto humans, yea, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction. Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all humans; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but one that knoweth good and evil, to one it is given according to one’s desires, whether one desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience. Now, seeing that I know these things, why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called? Why should I desire that I were an angel, that I could speak unto all the ends of the Earth? For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true. I know that which the Lord hath commanded me, and I glory in it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
“I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea, and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance; and this is my joy. And behold, when I see many of my brethren truly penitent, and coming to the Lord their God, then is my soul filled with joy; then do I remember what the Lord has done for me, yea, even that he hath heard my prayer; yea, then do I remember his merciful arm which he extended towards me. Yea, and I also remember the captivity of my fathers; for I surely do know that the Lord did deliver them out of bondage, and by this did establish his church; yes, the Lord God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, did deliver them out of bondage. Yea, I have always remembered the captivity of my fathers; and that same God who delivered them out of the hands of the Egyptians did deliver them out of bondage. Yea, and that same God did establish his church among them; yea, and that same God hath called me by a holy calling, to preach the word unto this people, and hath given me much success, in the which my joy is full. However, I do not joy in m own success alone, but my joy is more full because of the success of my brethren, who have been up to the land of Nephi. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
“Behold, they have laboured exceedingly, and have brought forth much fruit; and how great shall be their reward! Now, when I think of the success of these my brethren my soul is carried away, even to the separation of it from the body, as it were, so great is my joy. And now may God grant unto these, my brethren, that they may sit down in the kingdom of God; yea, and also all those who are the fruit of their labours that they may go no more out, but that they may praise him forever. And may God grant that it maybe done according to my words, even as I have spoken. Amen,” reports Alma 29.1-17. When we understand what humans are, we do not forthwith understand other things which belong to them, but we understand them one by one, according to a certain succession. On this account the things we understand as separated, we must reduce to one by way of composition or division, by forming an enunciation. Now the species of the divine intellect, which is essences of all things, and also whatever can accidental to them. Enunciatory composition signifies some existence of a thing; and thus God by His existence, which His essence, is the similitude of all those things which are signified by enunciation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Seeing that I have no confidence in anything but Thy mercy, do Thou endue my mouth with power to proclaim Thy truth, and sanctify my work with more abundant richness of grace, that Thou mayest both save my unworthy self, and justify in Thy loving-kindness the flock entrusted to me. Whatever Thou seest corrupt in them, do Thou make sound; and whatever Thou discernest vicious in me, do Thou cure; whatever guilt they have contracted or do contract, through my sinful lukewarmness or carelessness, do Thou put away. If in anything they have fallen into sin, whether with or without my knowledge, or have fallen by the stumbling block of my example, pardon them, and render not to my unhappy self the punishment which such a fault deserves. However, let the rebukes which I have administered in censure of others conduce to their salvation; and let the pleading of this prayer recall them from the error they have committed, that they may not endure the torments of hell:–so that Thou mayest vouchsafe pardon to their iniquities, and wash away the offence of which I have become guilty by my own unfitness to bear rule. Incline Thine ear, O God, to our sacrifices, and write me, and those who are committed to me, in Thy books; whereby, together with the flock entrusted to me, I may both be cleansed from all sin, and be enabled to attain to Thee in peace. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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Look down from Heaven, O Christ, on Thy flock and lambs, and bless their bodies and souls. Grant those who have received Thy sign, O Christ, on their foreheads, to be Thine own in the day of judgment.
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 