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You Do Not Love Me, You Do Not Care What Happens to Me! Give the Heaven’s Above More than Just a Passing Glance!

June 22, 2020 1:09 am

For some people it is difficult to find peace. They can forgive from their heart of hearts, but find no rest, for then the doubt awakens; they are the one who caused the problem; they are the occasion of the calamity; it was their pride that craved the unusual. Then they repent, but one will find no rest, for then the accusing thoughts acquits one of the charges: the aggressor was the one who with their cunning instilled this plan into their souls. Then the individual hates; one’s heart finds relief in curses, but one still finds no repose. Once again one reproaches oneself—reproaches oneself because one has hated, one who oneself is a sinner, reproaches oneself because regardless of how cunning the aggressor was one’s self always remains guilty. It is oppressive for the individual that someone has decided to deceive them, but still more oppressive, one is almost tempted to say, that one is no longer listens humbly to one’s voice but is able to hear the many voices at the same time. Then recollection awakens in one’s soul, and one forgets blame and guilt; able to recollect the beautiful moments, and is dazed in an unnatural exaltation. With an indescribable but cryptic, blissful, unnamable anxiety, one is able to listen to music the one’s self evoked and yet did not evoke; always there was harmony. Yet, it is terrible that one can scarcely control the anxiety that grips one. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

One is carried along into that kingdom of mist, into that dreamland where one is frightened by one’s own shadow at every moment. Often, futilely trying to tear away from it; following along like an ominous shape, like an accuser who cannot speak. How strange! One has allowed someone else to spread the deepest secrecy over everything, and yet there is an even deeper secrecy, that one’s self is in on the secret and that one came to know I in an unlawful way. To forget the whole thing is not possible. Some Black women are comfortable with the many different ingredients of their identity, and they are women committed to freedom from oppression. They find themselves constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of themselves, and present that as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or deny the other parts of themselves. They do not want to isolate themselves from their White, Hispanic, or Asian counterparts, but would like the ability to be included in the discussion. The need for multiple consciousness in feminist movement—a social movement encompassing law, literature, and everything in between—has long been apparent. Since the beginning of the feminist movement in the United States of America, Black women have been discussing the fact that their experience calls into question the notion of a unitary “women’s experience.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

In the first wave of the feminist moment, Black women’s realization that White leaders of the suffrage may have not been aware of what women of colour have to suffer with, especially when they do not adhere to typical gender status. However, through conversations, publications of a diverse voice of authors, and television shows and movies, the second wave of Black women are again speaking loudly and persistently, and at many levels their voices have begun to be heard. Feminist have adopted the notion of multiple consciousness as appropriate to describe a World in which people are not oppressed only or primarily on the basis of gender, but also on the basis of race, class, sexual orientation, and other categories in inextricable webs. Moreover, multiple consciousness is implicit in the precepts of the feminism itself. Feminist method starts with the very radical act of taking women seriously, believing that what they say about themselves and their experience is important and valid, even when (or perhaps especially when) it had little or no relationship to what has been or is being said about them. In feminist legal theory, however, the move away from univocal toward multivocal theories of women’s experience and feminism has been slower than other areas. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

In feminist legal theory, the pull of the second voice, the voice of abstract categorization, is still powerfully strong: “We the People” seems in danger of being replaced by “We the women.” And in feminist legal theory, as in the dominant culture, it is mostly White, heterosexual, and socioeconomically privileged people who speak for all women. Not surprisingly, because of the cries of the unheard are becoming so strong, the story they tell about “women,” despite its claim to universality, seems to actually be becoming more inclusive. Some of the best examples have been in the film in TV industry. Little Fires Everywhere, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington examines the roles of women of different ethnic backgrounds, classes, and socioeconomic backgrounds. How to Get Away With Murder, starring Viola Davis was extremely powerful, especially final episode where she has to defend herself and her lifestyle. The Family That Prey’s Together, Good Deeds, Why Did I Get Married, Temptations: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, by Tyler Perry are also good film the help others to understand the plight of women of colour, as well as Losing Isaiah starring Halle Berry. So even if feminist theories are still catching up to modern times, art is imitating life. And White middle-class women, as well as the rest of the World are becoming more aware of what their sisters have to endure. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

The notion that there is a monolithic “women’s experience” that can be described independent of other facets of experience like race, class, and sexual orientation is called gender essentialism. Gender essentialism is no longer reducing the lives of people who experience multiple forms of oppression because racism, sexism, and homophobia are being discussed and are now better understood by different people all over the World. Those who produce the “story of woman” are making sure they appear in it. They are ensuring that they are storytellers and, in a position, to decide which of all the many facts about women’s lives are going into the story, and which ought to be left out. Women want to make sure that none of their voiced are at the bottom of a hierarchy of oppression. Middle-class American women, tradition suggest, feel emotion more than men do. The definitions of “emotional” and “cogitation” in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language reflect a deeply rooted cultural idea. Yet women are also thought to command “feminine wiles,” to have the capacity to premeditate a sigh, an outburst of tears, or a flight of joy. In general, they are thought to manage expression and feeling not only better but more often than men do. How much the conscious feelings of women and men differ is an issue I leave aside here. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

However, women are, in fac, more likely to have access to their emotions. Early in childhood boys but no girls must relinquish their primary identification with the mother. To achieve this difficult task, the boy (but not the girl) must repress feelings associated with the other in the difficult effort to establish himself as “not like mother,” as a boy. The consequence is a repression of feeling generally. The girl, on the other hand, because she enters a social and sexual category the same as that as her mother, does not have to relinquish identification with her or sacrifice her access to feelings through repression. If this interpretation is valid (and I find it plausible), we might expect women to be more in touch with their feelings, which are, as a consequence, more available for conscious management. Men may manage feelings more by subconscious repressing, women more by conscious suppressing. Therefore, the evidence seems clear that most women do more emotion managing than men. And because the well-managed feeling has an outside resemblance to spontaneous feeling, it is possible to confuse the condition of being more “easily affected by emotion” with the action of willfully managing emotion when the occasion calls for it. #Randolphharris 6 of 25

Especially in the American middle class, women tend to manage feeling more because in general they depend on men for a level of support, and one of the various ways of repaying their debt is to do extra emotion work—especially emotion work that affairs, enhances, and celebrates the well-being and status of others. When the emotional skills that children learn and practice at home move into the marketplace, the emotional labour of women becomes more prominent because men in general have not been trained to make their emotions a resource and are therefore less likely to develop their capacity for managing feeling. There is also a difference in the kind of emotion work that men and women tend to do. Many studies have also told us that women adapt more to the needs of others and cooperate more than men do. These studied often imply the existence of gender-specific characteristics simply exist passively in women? Or are they signs of a social work that women do—the work of affirming, enhancing, and celebrating the well-being and status of others? I believe that much of time, the adaptive, cooperative women is actively working showing difference. This deference requires her to make an outward display called the “seriously” good girl in her and to support this effort by evoking feelings that make the “nice” display seem more natural. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Girls are generally trained to be “seriously” good and to be ashamed of being bad whereas boys are asked to be good in formalistic ways but covertly invited to be ashamed of being “too” good. Oversocialization into “sugar-and-spice” demeanor produces feminine skills in delivering deference. Women who want to put their own feelings less at the service of other must still confront the idea that if they do so, they will be considered less “feminine.” What it takes to be more “adaptive” is suggested in a study of college students. Students were asked “If a boy or girl had all the other qualities you desire, would you marry this person if you were not in live with him or her?” In response, 64 percent of men, but only 24 percent of the women said No. Most of the women answered that they “did not know.” As one put it: “I do not know, if he were that good, may I could bring myself around to loving him.” Other research indicates that men have a more romantic orientation to love, women a more realistic orientation. That is, males may find cultural support for a passive construction of love, for seeing themselves as falling head over heels, or walking on air. The female is not pushed hither and yon by her romantic compulsions. On the contrary, she seems to have a greater measure of rational control over her romantic inclinations than the male. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Women are more often than men describing themselves as “trying to make myself love,” “talking myself into not caring,” or “trying to convince myself.” A content analysis of 260 protocols showed that more women than men (33 percent versus 18 percent) spontaneously used the language of emotion work to describe their emotions. The image of women as “more emotional,” more subject to uncontrolled feelings, has also been challenged by a study of 250 students at UCLA, in which only 20 percent of the men but 45 percent of the women said that they deliberately show emotion to get their way. This pattern is also socially reinforced. When women sent direct messages (persuading by logic, reason, or an onslaught of information), they were later rated as more aggressive than men who did the same thing. As one woman put it: “I pout, frown, and say something to make the other person feel bad, such as ‘You do not love me, you do not care what happens to me.’ I am not the type to come right out with what I want; I will usually hint around. It is all hope and a lot of beating around the bush.” The emotional arts that women have cultivated are analogous to the art of feigning among those whose wishes outdistance their opportunities for class advancement. As for many others who are less affluent, it has been in the woman’s interest to be the better actor. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

The use of feminine wiles (including flattery) is felt to be a psychopolitical style of the subordinate; it is therefore disapproved of by women who have gained a foothold in the man’s World and can afford to disparage what they do no need to use. As the psychologist would say, the techniques of deep acting have usually high “secondary gains.” Yet these skills have long been mislabeled “natural,” a part of woman’s “being” rather than something of her own making. The intensity of devotion rather than the value of offerings must always govern the master’s response. The self-actualized has an official position, which is accompanied by appropriate duties. They include: taking a personal interest in the disciples’ inner welfare and growth; instructing them in the truth, and in the way to its attainment; inspiring them telepathically with glimpses of the higher states; encouraging them to persevere in traveling along the way; warning them against the pitfalls and obstacles. The teacher’s duty is to give direction, provide knowledge, warn against pitfalls, correct errors. It is not one’s duty to save others necessary efforts of will and thinking. The master powerfully removes the sluggishness of the intellect of one’s disciple; clarifies one’s ideas about what is eternal and what is perishable, what is real and what is unreal, what is material and what is mental; and what open to one the realm of truth slowly but unmistakably by constant appeal to one’s reason. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

The first service of the Master is to point out the way, both inwardly and outwardly, to the disciple. This shortens one’s journey by several lifetimes, which would otherwise have to be spent in wanderings, explorings, gropings, and searchings. It is to expound truth and correct errors, to place an example before the others, and to purify them by one’s company that such a teacher appears in the outer World. Another phase of one’s work is to stimulate the yearning for higher attainment where it exists, and to inculcate it where it does not. Nature, also, mourns for a lost good. “Day unto day utter speech, and night unto night show knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the World. In them has one set a tabernacle for the Sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of one’s chamber, and rejoice as a strong human to run a race,” reports Psalm 19.2-5. It is one’s work to show others what they cannot see for themselves—their own higher possibilities. One’s function is to interpret humans—and more especially spiritual humans—to themselves. One’s task is to make known to other humans their God like possibilities within themselves. One’s mission is not to being humans pleasure, but to raise them to appreciate truth. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

The teacher assists one’s students to attain a degree of concentration beyond that which they are able to achieve by themselves. One detonates the higher potentialities of each disciple, breaks the closed circle of one’s senses, and leads one toward a moral and mystical regeneration. “For the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of one who has subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travels in pain together until now,” reports Romans 9.19-22. The duty of any spiritual teacher is to lead the seeker to God, to find one’s own source of inner light and strength and thus not to lean on outside human beings. A self-actualized individual who is quite competent does help the learner: one shows the way, illuminates problems, untangles knots, dispels confusions, explains meanings, and encourages effort. Tutelage has its place. One who directs anyone’s wakening spiritual faith that person’s teacher. If one guides us to notice hitherto unobserved truths, if one lead our thought and faith away from hitherto strongly held errors, then a teacher fulfills a useful function. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

A teacher’s services include the unveiling and exposing of psychic or mystic experiences which are merely self-suggested or mainly hallucinatory. One cannot do more than help them find and fulfill their own ways to the goal, but it is enough. A teacher has to be firm at some times, gentle at others. “And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth: for the first Heaven and the first Earth were passed away; and there was no more sea…And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations,” reports Revelations 21.1, 22.1-2. Each year when Good Friday and Easter Sunday approach us our thoughts turn toward the great drama of redemption, culminating in the pictures of the Cross and Resurrection. Who is redeemed? Some humans alone; or humankind, including all nations; or the World, everything that is created, including nature, the stars and the clouds, the winds and the oceans, the stones and the plants, the animals and our own bodies? The Bible speaks again and again of the salvation of the World, as it speaks of the creation of the World, and the subjection of the World to anti-Divine forces. And World means nature as well as humans. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

So let us ask today: what does nature mean to us? What does it mean to itself? What does it mean to the great drama of creation and salvation? A threefold answer is contained in the words of the psalmist, the apostle and the prophet: the psalmist sings of the glory of nature; the apostle shows the tragedy of nature: and the prophet pronounces the salvation of nature. The hymn of the psalmist praises the glory of God in the glory of nature; the letter of the apostle links the tragedy of nature to the tragedy of humans; and the vision of the prophet sees the salvation of nature in the salvation of the World. So let us listen once more to the words of the psalmist, about the glory of nature, in their precise meaning. “The Heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament shows the work of his hands. Day unto day pour forth the story, night unto night announces the knowledge. There is no speech, no language! Their voice cannot be heard! However, their music goes out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the World.” The 19^th Psalm points to an antique belief held by the ancient World and expressed by poets and philosophers: that the Heavenly bodies, the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, produce by their movement a harmony of tines, sounding day and night from one end of the World to the other. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

These voices of the Universe are not heard by human ears; they do not speak in human language. However, they exist, and we can perceive them through the organs of our spirit. Shakespeare says: “There is not the smallest orb which thou beholds, but in his motion like an angel sings, such harmony is in immortal souls; but whilst this muddy vesture of decay does grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.” The psalmist has heard it; he knows that the stars are sounding: the glory of creation and its Divine Ground. Are we able to perceive the hidden voice of nature? Does nature speak to us? Does it speak to you? Or has nature become silent to us, silent to the humans of our period? Some of you may say, “Never before in any period has nature been so open to humans as it is today. The mysteries of the past have become the knowledge of children. Through every scientific book, through every laboratory, through every machine, nature speaks to us. The technical use of nature is the revelation of its mystery.” The voice of nature has been heard by the scientific mind, and the answer is the conquest of nature. However, is this all that nature says to us? If one only arouses the human to recognition of the necessity of taking a new road, a spiritual guide’s duty to an erring human will not be fully carried out. It will not be enough to show one the path. One must also keep them steadfast on the path. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

I was sitting under a tree with a great biologist. Suddenly he exclaimed, “I would like to know something about this tree!” He, of course, knew everything that science had to say about it. I asked him what he meant. And he answered, “I want to know what this tree means for itself. I want to understand the life of this tree. It is so strange, so unapproachable.” He longed for a sympathetic understanding of the life of nature. However, such an understanding is possible only by communion between human and nature. Is such communion possible in our period of history? Is nature not completely subjected to the will and willfulness of humans? This technical civilization, the pride of humankind, has brought about a tremendous devastation of original nature, of the land, of animals, of plants. It has kept genuine nature in small reservations and has occupied everything for domination and ruthless exploitation. And worse: many of us have lost the ability to live with nature. We fill it with the noise of empty talk, instead of listening to its many voices, and, through them, to the voiceless music of the Universe. Separated from the soil by a machine, we speed through nature, catching glimpses of it, but never comprehending its greatness or feelings it power. Who is still able t penetrate, meditating and contemplating, the creative ground of nature? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

A Chinese emperor asked a famous painter to paint a picture of a rooster for him. The painter assented, but said that it would take a long time. After a year the emperor reminded him of his promise. The painter replied that after a year of studying the rooster he had just begun to perceive the surface of its nature. After another year the artist asserted that he had just begun to penetrate the essence of this kind of life. And so on, year after year. Finally, after ten years of concentration on the nature of the rooster, he painted the picture—a work described as an inexhaustible revelation of the divine group of the Universe in one small part of it, a rooster. Compare the emperor’s wise patience and the painter’s saintly contemplation of an infinitely small expression of the divine life, with the exuberances of our contemporaries, who rush in their cars to some famous view and exclaim, “How lovely!”—referring, no doubt, not to the view, but to their own appreciation of beauty. What blasphemy of the glory of nature! and consequently of the divine ground, the glory of which sounds through the glory of nature. Praising the glory of nature does not mean speaking of the beauty of nature alone and forgetting its overwhelming greatness and terrible power. Nature never manifest shallow beauty or merely obvious harmony. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

We must try to conform to the humanity, intuition, sensitivity, and the intelligence needed to understand the message from the Universe. One who teachers well, learns oneself. Many of the historical statues in American are representations for hopes of a greater time. The welcoming of the second coming of Christ. Some of these monuments are universally admired and accepted by all people of all nations as the symbol of FREEDOM, and many of these relics evokes a profound veneration and strike a responsive chord from all liberty-loving people everywhere. To make these statues of these great characters and to erect in them that part of the country which gave them their early development and growth into public life is an honour. Human spirit finds its expression through a particular individual, likewise a spirit in finding its self-expression in permanent materials of bronze or stone and deserves to be focalized and located so that they may have a place and standing in our World. When life sinks to a low, these monuments constantly fed the human spirit with hope and promise. The closer the arts bring us to our souls’ ideal the more worthy are they to their exalted mission. These statues bring us in contact with the harmonies of nature, awakening responsive echoes in our innermost souls. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

This art, these wizard-like creations, revives he ashes of the past, makes us appreciate how far we have some, so we never forget our roots. If we destroy our history, we will forget our past and are doomed to recreate the same mistakes. We have a new wave of immigrants who know nothing about our culture, and these monuments serve as reminders that we must never repeat slavery, genocide, nor economic oppression. They stand for the freedom of this nation and are part of its founding. Without these markers, Americans will lose their way. For instance, no one can find reference to the Prison’s of the River in Sacramento. The only place I found it recorded was on a fading, plastic plague in Sacramento. It was a reference to the Witch Trials that took place in this city in the mid-1800s. The LaGrange served as Sacramento’s jail until November 1859 when it sank in a week-long storm, killing 449 people. There were more than 950 suspected witches and Jewish refugees on board. In February of 1986, archaeologist located what is believed to be wreckage of LaGrange, which was imprisoned by the rip-rap and must, just south of the “I” Street Bridge. Now, it would be nice to have a monument to remember these people and their sacrifice. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

Certain teachers develop an unhealthy lust for power, imposing their personal will on hapless disciples. The teacher whose motives get mixed up, whose desire to help and serve others twins around one’s desire to gain money, prestige, influence, or power is one who begins to teach before one is ready to do so. Both one and one’s disciples will have to pay the price for one’s premature activities. It is better to have no teacher at all than to have one who has psychologized oneself into the delusion that one has reached the God-realized state, who mistakes self-deception for self-realization. The Saints become the sons and daughters of Christ through faith—they are then called by the name of Christ—King Benjamin exhorts them to be steadfast and immovable in good works. About 124 Before Christ. “And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin has thus spoken to this people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken unto them. And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou has spoken unto us; and also, we know their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And we, ourselves, also, though the infinite goodness of God, and the manifestations of his Spirit, have great views of that which is to come; and were it expedient, we could prophesy of all things. And it is the faith which we have had on things which our kind has spoken unto us that has brought us to this great knowledge, whereby we do rejoice with such exceedingly great joy. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the Angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God. And now, these are the words which king Benjamin desired of them; and therefore he said unto them: Ye have spoken the words that I desired; and the covenant which ye have made is a righteous covenant. And now, because of the covenant which ye shave made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he has spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and daughters. And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives. And it shall come to pass that whosoever does this shall be found at the right hand of God, for one shall know he name by which one is called; for one shall be called by the name of Christ. And now it shall come to past, that whosoever shall not take upon one the name of Christ must be called by some other name; therefore, one finds oneself on the left hand of God. And I would that ye should remember also, that this is the name that I said I should give unto you that never should be blotted out, except it be through transgression; therefore, take heed that ye do not transgress, that the name be not be blotted out of your hearts. I say unto you, I would that ye should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts, that ye are not found on the left hand of God, but that ye hear and know the voice by which ye shall be called, and also, the name by which God shall call you. For how knows a human the master who one has not served, and who is a stranger unto one, and is far from the thoughts and intents of one’s heart? And again, does a human take a mule which belongs to one’s neighbour, and keep him or her? #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“I say unto you, Nay; one will not even suffer that one shall feed among one’s flocks, but will drive one away, and cast one out. I say unto you, that even so shall it be among you if ye know not the name by which ye are called. Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, hat you may be brought to Heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of one who created all things, in Heaven and in Earth, who is God above all. Amen,” reports Mosiah 5.1-15. Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the World who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behaviour. And the important thing was that you never let down doing the best that you were able to do—it might be poor because you might not have very much within you to give, or to help people with, or to live your life with. However, as long as you did the very best that you were able to do, then that was what you were put here to do and that was what you were accomplishing by being here. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

O my Lord, please forgive me for serving Thee in sinful ways—by glorying in my own strength, by forcing myself to minister through necessity, by accepting the applause of others, by trusting in assumed grace and spiritual affection, by a faith that rests upon my hold on Christ, not on Him along, by having another foundation to stand upon besides Thee; for thus I make flesh my arm. Please help me to see that it is faith stirred by grace that does the deed, that faith brings a human nearer to Thee, raising Him above mere human, that Thou does act upon the soul when thus elevated and lifted out of itself, that faith centres in Thee as God all-sufficient, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, as Go efficient, mediately, as in Thy commands and promises, immediately, in all the hidden power that faith sees and knows to be in Thee, abundantly, with omnipotent effect, in the revelation of Thy will If I have not such faith I am nothing. It is m duty to set Thee above all others in the mind and eye; but it is my sin that I place myself above Thee. Lord, it is the special evil of sin that every breach of Thy laws arises from contempt of Thy Person, from despising Thee and Thy glory, from preferring things before Thee. Please help me to abhor myself in comparison of Thee, and please keep me in a faith that words by love, and serves by grace. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

I give Thee thanks, O Lord, holy Father, Almighty, everlasting God, Who hast refreshed me with the most holy Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and I pray that this Sacrament of our salvation, which I, unworthy sinner have received, may not turn to my judgment nor condemnation, according to my deserts, but to the profit of my body and soul, unto life eternal. Lord Jesus Christ, Almighty and everlasting God, please be merciful to my sins through my reception of Thy Body and Blood. For Thou has said, “He that Eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood dwells in Me, and I in One.” Therefore I humbly beseech Thee to create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me, and strength me with Thy free Spirit, and cleanse me from all vices and the crafts of the devil, that I may attain to the partaking of Heavenly joys; Who lives and reigns in God. The person who constantly tries to make other persons over into a copy of oneself, who tries to change their living habits or thinking-ways into the same as one’s own, who seeks zealously to proselytize their religious beliefs, is too often merely asserting one’s own ego and practising a subtler, more self-deceptive form of egotism. If one really felt love for them, as one often professes, one would leave their freedom to choose what suit them, not thrust oneself and one’s own beliefs aggressively upon them. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Rancho Cordova, CA |

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Up to a Certain Point it is Good for Us to Know that there are People in the World Who Will Give Us Love!

June 20, 2020 1:20 am

No matter how urgent our social needs are, all of us have needs for solitude, for times alone with ourselves. Again, the optimum selfhood experience includes a balance of solitariness, sociality, and peripheral interactions (“spectatorship”). There is in each of us a need for privacy and time alone. It is not so much a need to reject or repudiate others as it is a need to go within, to get acquainted or re-acquainted with our selfhood. We like to roam about our own house with no one to disturb us. Modern psychology had very modest beginnings. It set out to study memory, acoustic and visual phenomena, the association of ideas, and the psychology of animals. Wilhelm Wundt was perhaps the most important and influential figure in those early days of modern psychology. Psychologists then did not write for the general public, and they were not particularly well known. They wrote for their colleagues, and only a few novices showed any interest in their work and publications. When it shifted its focus to the motives behind human behaviour, that situation changed radically, however, and psychology started gaining in popularity. That field of inquiry has dominated psychology for the last hundred years. It concerns us all, of course, for we all want to know what it is that motivates us and why we act on the motives we do rather than on quite different ones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

If psychology can promise us some clarity on those questions, then it can obviously be of great value to us. And so it was that motivational psychology became perhaps the most popular of all sciences, and in recent decades it has, if anything, gained popularity rather than lost. Every human action has a motive behind it, and in every case that motive is an independent and innate instinct. We are born with instincts in us just as animals are. If we are aggressive, the reason is our aggressive instinct. If we are servile, blame our servile instinct; if we are avaricious, our avaricious instinct; if we are jealous, chalk that up to our jealous instinct; if we enjoy cooperation, then that is our cooperative instinct at work. If we are quick to flee danger, that is our flight instinct, and so on and so forth. Indeed, if we tally up all the instincts the instinct theoreticians have come up with, the final count comes to about two hundred different instincts, each one of which will motivate a certain kind of human behaviour, just as a key on a piano will, when pressed, produce a certain note. However, the problem with this extremely interesting edifice is that it is not properly constructed. It is actually not a building at all but only a mental construction that has no basis in reality at all. Human aggression can be traced back to a more or less innate aggressive instinct. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

One weakness of instinct theory is its tendency to oversimplify. It is just too simple an answer to postulate an instinct for every single bit of human behaviour, and such postulation does not really explain anything. All it says is that actions have motives, that different actions have their own distinct motives, and that those motives are innate. However, none of that could be proved for most of the so-called instincts. There are a few—such as defensive aggression, flight, and also, to certain degree, behaviour involving pleasures of the flesh, though here we are even less sure of our ground—in which quasi-instinctive elements are present. However, here we must not overlook the fact that learning, the influence of culture and society, can significantly modify even those innate drives, so much so that in both humans and animals subjected to such modification the drives may almost disappear or, on the other hand, become greatly accentuated. The other weakness of the theory was that some instincts were strongly developed in some individuals and cultures yet almost nonexistent in others. There are, for example, primitive tribes that are extremely aggressive while others display practically no aggressiveness at all. The same has held true for individuals. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

If someone comes to a psychiatrist today and says, “Doctor, I am so furious I would like to do something I cannot return from,” the psychiatrist does not say, “Aha, the aggressive instinct is very strong in this man.” Instead, he makes a diagnosis more along these lines: “This man must be ill. This aggressiveness he is expressing, this hatred that has built up inside him, is a sign of illness.” If the man’s aggressiveness were motivated by instinct, it would be normal, natural behaviour and not a symptom of illness. We find, too—and this is very important—that the most primitive of peoples, the hunter-gathers, the people at the very earliest beginnings of civilization, were the least aggressive of all human beings. If aggressiveness were innate, then it should have been most evident in the hunter-gatherers. In fact, just the opposite is true. It was the growth of civilization, starting about 4000 Before Christ; it was the creation of large cities, kingdoms, hierarchies, armies; it was the invention of war, the invention of slavery—and I use the word “invention” deliberately here, because neither of those things occur in nature—it was all these things that provided breeding grounds for sadism, aggression, and the desire to subjugate and destroy, ills that never existed to anywhere near that same degree among primitive, prehistoric peoples. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

It was the weakness in the instinct theory that prompted the behaviourists to propose a totally contrary view. They maintain that absolutely nothing is innate in us and that everything people do is the result of social conditions and of very clever manipulation on the part of society or of the family. Concepts like freedom and dignity are thought by B.F. Skinner to be “pure fictions. They do not exist at all but are simply products of influencing human beings in such a way that they will think they want to be free. Neither a desire for freedom nor a sense of human dignity is inherent in human nature.” Let me give you a simple example of the theory at work. Little Leo will not eat his spinach. If his mother punishes him, she will not—as many parents know—get very far. And Skinner agrees that punishment is not the correct method. There should be no great lectures about spinach. It should simply be served. And if little Leo nibbles at it, then his mother should give him a friendly smile and promise him an extra piece of cake. The next time the spinach appears on the table, little Leo will be more inclined to eat it. Once again he wins his mother’s smile, and this time she gives him a piece of chocolate. And so things continue until little Leo is conditioned, that is, until he had learned that he will get a reward if he eats his spinach. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Who does not like rewards? And after that a while Leo will eat his spinach with pleasure, preferring it to any other vegetable. Now it is true that things can work out just that way. Skinner has invested a great deal of effort in finding the cleverest ways to do this sort of thing. The reward is not automatically repeated every time, for instance. It is omitted once, then reintroduced. Many ingenious studies and experiments have been made to see how people can best be seduced, how rewards can be used to make them do what the person giving out the rewards wants them to do. Skinner is not interested in why the manipulator wants people to do what one asks them to do, for Skinner does not think that values can have any objective meaning. If we reflect on the situation of a psychologist in one’s laboratory, then it is easy enough to understand Skinner’s position. Whether the animals eat or do not eat is not of much interests. The only think of interest is whether one can induce them, with one method or another, to eat or not to eat. And since behavioursts regard human beings too, themselves included, as guinea pigs, they are not interested in the question of why and to what end they condition others. They are interested in only two things: whether they can condition someone and how they can do it best. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

The behaviourist separates human behaviour from human beings. One does not study people in the process of behaving; one studies only the product, and the product is behaviour. The human being who generates that behaviour is expressly put to one side. Human beings as such are unimportant; they are the subject of philosophy, of speculation. What interest the behaviourist is what people do. One chooses to ignore the question of why such astonishingly large numbers of people do not react the way they should react if the theory were correct. One is not disturbed by the fact that many people rebel, refuse o conform, do not fall for the subtle bribes that are ultimately the essence of this whole theory. The theory assumes that most people prefer to be bribed rather than to be themselves and to realize the potential of their own natures and talents. Instinct theory and behaviourism have one thing in common despite the great differences between them. Neither allows human beings the slightest control over their own lives. Instinct theory sees humans driven by impulses that lie far back in one’s human and animal pas. Behaviourism sees humans driven by whatever social constructs and conditions happen to be in effect. One is as dominated by the opportunistic and seductive tricks of one’s society as the human of instinct is by the history of one’s species. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

However, neither of the two, neither human model as proposed by the two theories, is based on what humans actually want, what one is, what is in accordance with one’s nature. The two major schools account for the greater part of what does by the name of “modern psychology” today. And I should ass that behavioristic psychology professors at American universities are behavioursts, and Soviet psychology follows very similar paths for obvious political reasons. Christianity claims the Essential Godmanhood has, in a concrete event and a concrete human, appeared within the conditions of existence, inside the weft of history, without falling from essence and without being distorted by the ebb and flow of existence. In Christ “Eternal Goodmanhood” had been seen. When it was seen Jesus was known as the Christ, the expectation of humankind finally fulfilled, the One who brings in the new eon, the New Being. Jesus is the Christ for us. And because the Christ means Essential Godmanhood, the Christ is God-for-us. Jesus would not have been the Christ, and, as the Christ, he would not have been the manifestation of Eternal Godmanhood, if humanity had not acknowledged him. For there is no revelatory situation without the ecstasy of recognition in which one discovers a manifestation of being-itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

The symbol of the Christ, therefore, which is borrowed from the Jewish conception of the Messiah, or King, or Anointed, can easily be distorted. Jesus as the Christ must not be seen as a God walking on Earth, as a divine-human automaton without serious temptation, real struggle, or tragic involvement in the ambiguities of life. This would be a misunderstood myth. It could not be the manifestation of a reality in which one partakes. It would not be the revelation of the ground of being. Caught in existential estrangement, humans could not grasp the meaning of a divine-human avatar. A human being names Jesus who would not be subject to the involvements of existence could not be revelatory since humans could not step into the non-existential theological circle where one would make sense. On the contrary, the Christ has been known, touched with our hands, seen with our eyes. And he has been known, not only as a man named Jesus, but as Jesus who is called the Christ. This means that in Jesus we have the picture of a personal life which is subjected to all the consequences of existential estrangement but wherein existential estrangement is conquered in oneself and a permanent unity is kept with God. The ground of being, which we only perceive in hope, to which we are unconditionally committed without the evidence that we are in contact with it, dominated the ambiguities of existence in Christ. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

Under its power, the power, the Christ did not undergo original sin; his existence did not imply a fall: it maintained in its integrality the dominion of Essential Goodmanhood over the tragedies of life. The universal quest of humankind has been for this return to unity, for this recovery of the ground of being which supports us and from which we are estranged. To perceive it in the Christ is to hear the good news that the Christ is the one who brings in the new eon, to expect the coming of a new state of things through him, the state of things in which we ourselves have recovered Essential Godmanhood and have risen from the state of estrangement to that of reunion with being-itself. The symbol of New Being is human’s quest to conquer the dichotomy between subject and object. New Being is essential being under the conditions of existence, conquering the gap between essence as existence. This symbol itself can misread. The Bing which is manifested in Christ is new indeed, but not in the sense that is has done away with the circumstances of estrangement that mark existential being. Tragedy is still here, but henceforth it has been conquered. It is there, but no longer as victorious. The New Being is new insofar as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being insofar as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being within and under the conditions of existence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

It is new in two respects: it is new in contrast to the merely potential character of essential being; and it is new over against the estranged character of existential being. In the Christ alone, human’s relation to the ground of being is fully actual and fully undistorted. In ourselves, subject as we are to existential estrangement, Godmanhood is only potential; it is a state of dreaming innocence in which we never were and from which, speaking symbolically, we feel when we came into being. Our actual being is divorced from it, and the constant dream of human has been for a return to the beginning, a restoration of that which has been lost because never had it, innocence, essence, Godmanhood. This is the New Being we long for. In Christ it has been manifested. Essential being has come o existence without distortion. Innocence has become experience without losing its pristine virginity. Estrangement has been conquered. The New Being has appeared in a personal life. We want to communicate to you an experience we have had that here and there in the World and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Out of their participation in the revelatory situation in which Jesus is perceived to be the Christ, Christians witness to the vision they have had of the New Reality, which is reconciliation, reunion, resurrection. The New Creation, the New Being, the New state of things. As we pray in faith, we become a vital part in the Lord’s work as He prepares the World for His Second Coming. The transcendent events we honour were the beginning of the prophesied last dispensation, in which the Lord is preparing His Church and His people, those who bear His name, to receive Him. As part of our preparation for Hid coming, He will lift each of us so we may rise to spiritual challenges and opportunities. The work of the Lord in these last days, is one of vast magnitude and almost beyond the comprehension of mortals. Its glories are past description, and its grandeur unsurpassable. It is the theme which has animated the bosom of prophets and righteous humans from the creation of the World down through every succeeding generation to the present time; and it is truly the dispensation of the fullness of times, when all things which are in Christ Jesus, whether in Heaven or on Earth, shall be gathered together in Him, and when all things shall be restored, as spoken of by all the holy prophets since the World began; for in it will take place the glorious fulfilment of the promises made to he fathers, while the manifestations of the power of the most High will be great, glorious, and sublime. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

We feel disposed to go forward and unite our energies for the upbuilding of the Kingdom, and establishing the Priesthood in their fullness and glory. The work which has to be accomplished in the last days is one of vast importance, and will call into action the energy, skill, talent, and ability of the Saints, so that it may roll forth with glory and majesty. “Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the Summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smoke the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole Earth. And in the days of these kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure,” reports Daniel 2.34-35, 44-45. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

The effect of standing before God by welcoming him before us will, by contrast, be the transformation of our entire life. All else that enters our mind, and especially the thoughts that first come to mind as we encounter various kinds of event that make up our lives, will be healthy, Godly, and good. The conclusions we “jump” to prompted by events around us will be those in harmony with the realities of a good-God-governed Universe, not the illusions of a Godless or a me-governed Universe, or one where humans are supreme—or no one is. My patterns of thinking will conform to the truth of scriptural revelation, and I will extend and apply those truths, under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, to all of the details of my daily life. Am I undertaking some task? Then I in faith do it with God, assuming and finding his power to be involved with me. That is the nature of His kingdom. Is there an emergency? I will mee it with the knowledge that God is in the midst of it with me and will be calm in a center of intense prayer. Am I praised? My thoughts (and feelings) will move immediately to the goodness of God in my life. Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is supporting and helping me because He loves me and has a future for me. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Am I condemned or reproached? I know that God is over all and that He is working things out—that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called into the fulfillment of his purposes. And so forth. I constantly and thoughtfully engage myself with the ideas, images, and information that are provided by God through the Scriptures, His Son Jesus, and the lives and experiences of His people through the ages. In doing that, I am constantly nourished by the Holy Spirit in ways far beyond my own efforts of understanding. What I receive in response to my efforts is therefore also a gift, a grace. Spiritual (trans)formation of my thought life is achieved by the ministry of the Spirit in the midst of my necessary and well-directed efforts. This has special importance when I am faced with the presence of evil and suffering in human life, my own or at large. I realize that I will either allow my view of evil to determine my view of God and will cut Him down accordingly, or I will allow my view of God to determine my view of the evil and will elevate Him accordingly, accepting that nothing is beyond His power for God. King Benjamin continues his address—salvation comes because of the Atonement—Believe in God to be saved—retain a remission of your sins through faithfulness—impart of your substance to the poor—do all things in wisdom and order. About 124 Before Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

“And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the Angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the Earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them. And hey had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the Earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying: O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created Heaven and Earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of humans. And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them. And king Benjamin again opened his mouth and began to speak unto them, saying: My friends and my brethren, my kindred and my people, I would again call your attention, that ye may hear and understand the remainder of my words which I shall speak unto you. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

“For behold, if the knowledge of the goodness of God at this time has awakened you to a sense of your nothingness, and your worthless and fallen state—I say unto you, if ye have come to a knowledge of the goodness of God, and His matchless power, and His wisdom, and His patience, and His long-suffering towards the children of humans; and also, the atonement which has been prepared from the foundation of the World, that thereby salvation might come to one that should put one’s trust in the Lord, and should be diligent in keeping his commandments, and continue in the faith even unto the end f his life, I mean the life of the mortal body—I say, that this is the human wo receives salvation, through the atonement which was prepared from the foundation of the World for all humankind, which ever were since the fall of Adam, or who are, or whoever shall be, even unto the end of the World. And this is the means whereby salvation comes. And there is none other salvation save this which hath been spoken of; neither are there any conditions whereby humans can be saved expect the conditions which I have told you. Believe in God; believe that he is, an that he created all things, both in Heaven and in Earth; believe that He has all wisdom, and all power, both in Heaven and in earth; believe that humans do not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

“And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them. And again I say unto you as I have said before, that as ye have come to knowledge of the glory of God, or if ye have known of His goodness and have tasted of his love, and have received a remission of your sins, which causes such exceedingly great joy in your souls, even so I would that ye should remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and His goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depth of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the Angel. And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true. And ye will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably, and to render to every human according to that which is one’s due. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness. However, ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another. And also, ye yourselves will succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that stands in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar puts up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The human has brought oneself one’s misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto one of my substance that one may not suffer, for one’s punishment are just—however, I say unto you, O human, whosoever does this the same has great cause o repent; and except one repents of that which one has done one perishes forever, and has no interests in the kingdom of God. For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on His name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another. And if ye judge the human who puts up one’s petition to you for your substance that one perish not, and condemn one, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which does not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongs and yet ye put up no petition, not repent of the thing which thou hast done. I say unto you, wo be unto that human, for one’s substance shall perish with one; and now, I say these things unto those who are rich as pertaining to the things of this World. And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“And now, if you say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received. And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you—that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before God—I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every human according to that which one has, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants. And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a human should run faster than one has strength. And again, it is expedient that one should be diligent, that thereby one might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order. And I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among your borrow of one’s neighbour should return the thing that one borrowed, according as one does agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and perhaps thou shalt cause they neighbour to commit sin also. And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“However, this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe them commandments of God, and continue in faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O human, remember, and perish not,” reports Mosiah 4.1-30. O Lord, I bless Thee that the issue of the battle between Thyself and Satan has never been uncertain, and will end in victory. Calvary broke the dragon’s head, and I contend with a vanquished foe, who with all one’s subtlety and strength has already been overcome. When I feel the serpent at my heel may I remember one whose heel was bruised, but who, when bruised, broke the devil’s head. My soul with inward joy extols the mighty conqueror. Heal me of any wounds received in the great conflict; if I have gathered defilement, if my faith has suffered damage, if my hope is less than bright, if my love is not fervent, if some creature-comfort occupies my heart, if my soul sinks under pressure of the fight. O Thou whose every promise is balm, every touch life, draw near to Thy weary warrior, refresh me, that I may rise again to wage the strife, and never tire until my enemy is trodden down. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Please give me such fellowship with Thee that I may defy Satan, unbelief, the flesh, the World, with delight that comes not from a creature, and which a creature cannot mar. Give me a draught of the eternal fountain that lies in Thy immutable, everlasting love and decree. Then shall my hand never weaken, my feet never stumble, my sword never rest, my shield never rust, my helmet never shatter, my breastplate never fall, as my strength rests in the power of Thy might. Tasting, O Lord, the fullness of Thy perfect sweetness, we beseech Thee that it may be to us for remission of sins and health of soul, through Thy mercy and grace. Receiving the Cup of the Lord’s Pasion, and tasting the sweetness of His most holy Body, let us give thanks and praise to Him, walking in His house with joy and gladness. We have received the Body of Christ, and drunk His Blood. We will fear no evil, for the Lord is with us. May Thy Blood be always life to us, and salvation of our souls, O our God. LORD our God, mercifully grant that we who have received the Body and Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son, may be far removed from the blindness of the unfaithful disciple, seeing that we confess and worship Christ our Lord, Very God and Humans. Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

Learn smart ways to tackle that frustrating kitchen clutter in today’s Cresleigh Blog! 🧹 Link in bio. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBoRl1Xp7dZ/

Preserve in us, O Lord, the gift of Thy grace; that by the power and virtue of the Eucharist which we have received, we may be fortified against all evils of this life and of the life to come. #CresleighHomes

So We Have Asked the Wrong Question: Satan Said to Eve, “You Will be Like God, Knowing Good and Evil!”

June 19, 2020 1:35 am

A warmer climate, immigrations, and agricultural improvements have led to explosive population growth. We so many new mouths to feed the new growth in populations spelled disaster. Fertility rates combined with reduced harvest means the land can no longer support its population. While the abundance of labour has kept wages low, most Americans in the twenty first century have experienced a steady decline in living standards, marked by famine, poverty and poor health, leaving them vulnerable to infection. Medical examinations of many Americans find them overweight and suffering from prior illness from eating unhealthy foods because they are affordable. The destruction caused by COVID-19 will change humanity in two important ways. On an economic level, the rapid loss of population will lead to some important changes in America’s economic conditions. There will be more food to go around as well as more land and better pay for the surviving farmers and workers. People will begin to eat better and live longer. Living standards will also bring an increase in social mobility. Weakening the tyrannical oppression of the government, which will bring about political reforms. However, COVID-19 will also have an important biological impact. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Because COVID-19 will wipe out some of the most frail and vulnerable people, it will leave behind a population with significantly different gene pool. Including genes that may help survivors resist the virus. Genetic mutations often confer immunity to different pathogens that work in similar ways. Riches are not from an abundance of Worldly goods, but from a contented mind. Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others’ were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves. In the same sense as it could be said that one’s journey through life was undetectable, in the same sense no victim fell before one. One lived much too intellectually to be a seducer in the ordinary sense. For some people, individuals are merely for stimulation; they discard them as trees shake off their leaves—one is rejuvenated, the foliage withers. I can think of nothing more tormenting than a scheming mind that loses the thread and then directs all its keenness against itself as the conscience awakens and it becomes a matter of rescuing oneself from this perplexity. The many exists from one’s foxhole are futile; the instant one has troubled soul already thinks it sees daylight filtering in, it turns out to be a new entrance, and thus, like panic-stricken wild game, pursued by despair, one is continually seeking an exit and continually finding an entrance through which one goes back into oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

Such a person is not always what could be called a criminal; one very often is oneself frustrated by one’s own schemes, and yet one is stricken with a more terrible punishment than is the criminal, for what is even the pain of repentance compared with this conscious madness? One’s punishment has a purely esthetic character, for even the expression “the conscience awakens” is too ethical to use about one; consciousness that manifests itself as a restlessness that does not indict one even in the profounder sense but keeps one awake, allow one no rest in one’s sterile restlessness. Nor is one insane, for one’s multitude of finite thoughts are not fossilized in the eternity of insanity. Who is and who is not a psychologist? And what is psychology? The answer to the first question would appear to be quite simple. Anyone who has not studied psychology and has not earn an academic degree in the field is not a psychologist. That would mean practically everyone is a nonpsychologist. However that is not really the case, and I would go so far as to claim that there is no such thing as a nonpsychologist, because we all practice and have to practice our own brands of psychology as we live our lives. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

We have to know what is going on inside other people. We have to try to understand them. We even have to try to predict how others will behave. To do so we do not have to go to a university laboratory. The laboratory of everyday life (to which it is not even necessary to go) gives us ample opportunity to think through and ponder any number of experiments and cases. So we have asked the wrong question. We should ask not whether we are psychologist. Whatever the answer to that question may be, I feel that the study of psychology can help us become better psychologist. That brings us to our second question: What is psychology? This question is much harder to answer than the first one. We will have to take a little time with it. The literal meaning of psychology is “science of the soul.” However, knowing that does not make any clearer to us precisely what this science of the soul is. What does it study? What are its methods? What are its goals? Most people think psychology is a relatively modern science. They have that impression because it is essentially only in the last 100 to 150 years that the word “psychology” ha come into use. However, they forget that there was a premodern psychology that began—let us say—about 500 years Before Christ and continued into the seventeenth century. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

Premodern psychology did not call itself “psychology,” however. It was known as “ethics” or often as “philosophy,” but that does not make it any the less psychology. What was the purpose of that premodern psychology? Our answer can be quite brief: Premodern psychology sought to understand the human soul in the interest of making people better. The motivation behind psychology was therefore moral. Indeed, we could even say religious. Aristotle wrote a psychological textbook, but he titled it Ethics. The Stoics produced a very interesting psychology, and some of you may be familiar with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In Thomas Aquinas you will find a system of psychology from which you can probably learn more than you can from most modern textbooks. His discussion of such concepts as narcissism, pride, humility, modesty, inferiority complex, and many more are as interesting and profound as you will find anywhere. Spinoza, too, wrote a psychology and, like Aristotle, entitled it Ethics. Spinoza was probably the first great psychologist to recognize clearly the power of the unconscious when he said that we are all aware of our desires but we are not aware of the motives behind those desires. The modern period has seen the rise of a totally different psychology, which is no the whole not much more than a hundred years old. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

This modern psychology has a different purpose. Its goals is not to understand the soul so that we can become better human beings; its goal is—to state the case crudely—to understand the soul so that we can become more successful human beings. We want to understand ourselves and others so that we can take the upper hand in life, so that we can manipulate others, so that we can shape ourselves in ways that will favour our own advancement. One if we understand how much culture and the goals of society have changed, can we fully grasp the difference between the tasks of premodern and modern psychology. Now, I am sure that by and large people in classical Greece or in the Middle Ages were not all that much better than we are today. Their everyday behaviour was probably even worse than ours. However, despite that their lives were governed by an idea, and that idea was just the business of earning one’s daily pay check (bread) was not enough to make life worth living. Life had to have a meaning, and much of that meaning lay in human growth, in the development of our human powers. And therein lay the relevance of psychology. Modern humans see things differently. They are not as interested in being and becoming more as they are in having more. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

Modern humans want better careers, more money, more power, more respect. However, we know that more and more people are beginning to doubt whether goals like those will really make them happy. Word is getting around, and such doubt is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the United States of America, the richest and most economically advanced country in the World. God never removed Paul’s thorn, despite is anguished pleas. When Paul wrote these words, it had been fourteen years since he had received the surpassingly great revelations. During that time he had suffered many varied adversities. How could he have still needed the thorn to curb any temptation to become conceited? God had an even greater purpose for the thorn. He wanted Paul to experience the sufficiency of His grace. God wanted Paul to learn that the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit was all he needed. God wanted Paul to lean continually on the Spirit for strength. All things are naked to God’s eyes. God necessarily knows things other than Himself. For it is manifest that He perfectly understands Himself; otherwise His existence would not be perfect, since His existence is His act of understanding. Now if anything is perfectly known, it follows of necessity that its power is perfectly known. However, the power of anything can be perfectly known only by knowing to what is power extends. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

Since therefore the divine power extends to other things by the very fact that it is the first effective cause of all things, as is clear. God must necessarily know things other than Himself. And if we add that the very existence of the first effective cause is God, this appears still more plainly, God is His own act of understanding. Hence whatever effects pre-exist in God, as in the first cause, must be in His act of understanding, and all things must be in Him according to an intelligible mode: for everything which is in another, is in accord to the mode of that in which it is. God’s grace assumes our sinfulness, guilt, and ill-deservedness. Here we see it also assumes our weakness and inability. Just as grace is opposed to the pride of self-righteousness, so it is also opposed to the pride of self-sufficiency. The sin of self-sufficiency goes all the way back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s temptation of Eve was undoubtedly complex and many faceted. That is, it included what we would now consider a number of different temptations. However, one of those facets was the temptation of self-sufficiency. Satan said to Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil,” reports Genesis 3.5. Humankind was created to be dependent upon God: physically, “in him we live and move and have our being,” reports Acts 17.28. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

Some people, their religious services are a holy thing to them, unpriced and unpriceable. For it is done at the dictate of one’s higher self. We must recognize a sharp, clear-cut distinction between spiritual teaching as a duty and spiritual teaching as a business. The one expresses one’s true relationship to the disciple, the other seeks financial return from one. Spirituality is no commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. It must be worked for step by step and won by personal effort. This still remains true even though in the end it is conferred by Grace, for without such preparation the conferment is unlikely, nay almost impossible. This is not less true if the efforts may mostly be buried in the history of past lives. If any religious organization or cult-leader even mentions a price, a fee, or even a contribution as a prerequisite to Grace, initiation, or higher consciousness, then the devotee is being deceived by imposture. It is an ancient tradition that such instruction should be given free and that a teacher is degraded by receiving payment. God is costless. It is, as Jesus pointed out, as free as the wind which comes and goes. Whoever has realized it will gladly teach the way to anyone who is ripe and ready for one’s teachings. If any human puts a price on it and offers to sell it to you, be sure one is offering a false or shoddy imitation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

Note how Moses recalled the Israelites’ utter extremity and total dependence on God: God humbled them, caused them to hunger, fed them with food they had never seen before, taught them that humans live by the word that comes from God. Maybe this is due to Eve, but although many feminists’ legal theories are powerful and brilliant in many ways, they sometimes rely on gender essentialism—the notion that a unitary, “essential” women’s experience can be isolated and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of experience. The result of this tendency toward gender essentialism, is not only that some voices are silenced in order to privilege others (for this is an inevitable result of categorization, which is necessary both for human communication and political movement), but that the voices that are silenced turn out to be the same voices silenced by the mainstream legal voice of “We the People”—among them, the voices of Black women. This result troubles me for two reasons. First, the obvious one: As a humanitarian, the experience of Black women is too often ignored both in feminist theory and in legal theory, and gender essentialism in feminist legal theory does nothing to address the problem. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

A second and less obvious reason for my criticism of gender essential is that contemporary legal theory needs less abstraction and not simply a different sort of abstraction. To be fully subversive, the methodology of feminist legal theory should challenge not only law’s content but its tendency to privilege the abstract and unitary voice, and this gender essentialism also fails to do. In accordance with my belief that legal theory, including feminist legal theory, is in need of less abstraction, and should introduce the voices of more Black women. However, just because people do not represent everyone equally does not mean that they are racist. Some of the people who are not diverse are antiracist. Yet, just as law itself, in trying to speak for all persons, ends up silencing those without power, feminist legal theory is in danger of silencing those who have traditionally been kept from speaking, or who have been ignored when they spoke, including Black women, poor White women, and sometimes even rich young White men. The first step toward avoiding this danger is to give up the dream of gender essentialism. Second, in using a racial critique to attack gender essentialism in feminist legal theory, my aim is not to establish a new essentialism in its place based on the essential experience of Black women. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

Nor should my focus on Black women be take to mean that other women and even men are not silenced either by the mainstream culture or by feminist legal theory. Third, every experience is unique and no categories or generalizations exists at all. Even a jurisprudence based on multiple consciousness must categorize; without categorization each individual is as isolated as most alienated people believe themselves to be, and there can be no moral responsibility of social change. We need to make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable, and to do so is all the more important in a discipline like law, where abstraction and “frozen” categories are the norm. Avoiding gender essentialism need not mean that the Holocaust and a corncob are the same. Although the tactful acceptance of clumsy efforts by others to help may be a burden to the stigmatized individual, more is asked of one. It is said that if one is really at ease with one’s differentness, this acceptance will have an immediate effect upon normals, making it easier for them to be at ease with one in social situations. The stigmatized individual is advised to accept oneself as a normal person because of what others can gain in this way, and hence likely one oneself, during face-to-face interaction. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

The line inspired by normals, then, obliges the stigmatized individual to protect normals in various ways. An important aspect of this protection has only been suggested; it will be reconsidered here. Given the fact that normals in many situations extend a stigmatized person the courtesy of treating one’s defect as if it were of no concern, and that the stigmatized is likely to feel that underneath it all one is a normal human being like anyone else, the stigmatized can be expected to allow oneself sometimes to be taken in and to believe that one is more accepted then one is. One will then attempt to participate socially in areas of contact which others feel are not one’s proper place. Thus Black writer describes the consternation she causes in a hotel beauty shop: “The shop was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was hushed and solemn as I was ushered in and I was virtually lifted by the uniformed attendant into the chair. I tried a joke, the usual thing about getting a haircut once every three months even if I did not need it. It was a mistake. The silence told me that I was not a woman who should make jokes, not even good ones.” People do not only expect you to play your part; they also expect you to know your place. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

“Once at an open air restaurant, a waiter rushed to meet me, on the terrace where the tables were, no to help me, but to tell me that they could not serve a woman like me at that restaurant, as people visited to enjoy themselves and have a good time, not to be depressed by the sight minorities.” That the stigmatized individual can be caught taking the tactful acceptance of oneself too seriously indicates that this acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance is conditional. It depends upon normals not being pressed past the point at which they can easily extend acceptance—or, at worst, uneasily extended it. The stigmatized are tactfully expected to be polite and not to press their luck (or they will be arrested); they should not test the limits of the acceptance shown them (because the police are not on their side and looking for a reason to incarcerate them), nor make it the basis for still further demands. Tolerance, of course, is usually part of the bargain. The nature of a “good adjustment” is not apparent. It requires that the stigmatized individual cheerfully and unselfconsciously accept oneself as essentially the same as normals, while at the same time one voluntarily withholds oneself from those situations in which normals would find it difficult to give lip service to their similar acceptance one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

More emotion management goes on in the families and jobs of the upper classes than in those of the lower classes, generally speaking. That is, in the class system, social conditions conspire to make it more prevalent at the top. In the gender system, on the other hand, the reverse is true: social conditions make it more prevalent, and prevalent in different ways, for those at the bottom—women. In what sense is this so? And why? Both men and women do emotion work, in private life and at work. In all kinds of ways, men as well as women get into the spirit of the party, try to escape the grip of hopeless love, try to pull themselves out of depression, try to allow grief. However in the realm emotional experience, is emotion work as important for men as it is for women? And is it important in the same ways? I believer that the answers to both questions is No. The reason, at the bottom, is the fact that women in general have far less independent access to money, power, authority, or status in society. They are a subordinate social stratum, and this has four consequences. First, lacking other resources, women make a resource out of feeling and offer it to men as a gift in return for the more material resources they lack. (For example, in 2017, overall, 57 percent of men earn $50,000.00 or more annually, while only 42 percent of women earn the same a year.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

The pay gap is still 20 percent for woman and Black women with graduate degrees earn 2 percent less than their White female counterparts. Thus, a woman’s capacity to manage feeling and to do “relational” work is for them a more important resource. Second, emotion work is important indifferent ways for men and women. This is because each gender tends to be called on to do different kinds of this work. On the whole, women tend to specialize in the polite and accommodating side of emotional labour and men tend to be more stern and less emotional. This specialization of emotional labour in the marketplace rests on the different childhood training of the heart that is given to girls and to boys. (“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little body made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.”) Moreover, each specialization presents men and women with different emotional tasks of mastering anger and aggression in the service of “being nice.” To men, the socially assigned task of aggressing against those that break rules of various sorts creates the private task of mastering fear and vulnerability. Third, and less noticed, the general subordination of women leaves every individual women with a weaker “status shield” against the displaced feelings of others. For example, female real estate agents found themselves easier targets for verbal abuse from buyers so that male sales representatives often found themselves called upon to handle unwarranted aggression against them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

The fourth consequence of the power difference between the genders is that for each gender a different portion of the managed heart is enlisted for commercial use. Women more often react to subordination by making defensive use of physical beauty, charm, and relational skills. For them, it is these capacities that become most vulnerable to commercial exploitation, and so it is these capacities that they are most likely to become estranged from. For male workers in “male” jobs, it is more often the capacity to wield anger and make threats that is delivered over to the company, and so it is this sort of capacity that they are more likely to feel estranged from. After the great transmutation, then, men and women come to experience emotion work in different ways. Yet, wise teachers try to harmonize the contradictions. They use practical scientific ways along with mystical interior ones. The person who is fluent and articulate makes a better teacher so far as communication is concerned; but the person who has had divine experience, who knows what one is talking about, is still the best teacher of all. If one knows in experience as in theory, and if one possesses the ability to communicate this theory, then the impressions left will not be vague but quite distinct. A teacher who gives a well-argued discourse about Truth helps us, but so does the teacher who announces the Truth in non-discursive terms both are needful in their place. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

The self-actualized is one who not only knows the truth but can teach well what one knows—and not necessarily in words, for silence can also be used as an effective medium. King Benjamin continues his address—the Lord Omnipotent will minister among humans in a tabernacle of clay—blood will come from every pore as He atones for the sins of the World—His is the only name whereby salvation comes—humans can putt off the natural humans and become Saints through the Atonement—the torment of the wicked will be as a lake of fire and brimstone. About 124 Before Christ. “And again my brethren, I would call your attention, for I have somewhat more o speak unto you; for behold, I have things to tell you concerning that which is to come. And he things which I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judges of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice; and that thou mayest declare unto thy people, that hey may also be filled with joy. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

“For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst humans, working mighty miracles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of diseases. And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of humans. And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than humans can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people. And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary. And lo, he cometh unto his own, that salvation might come unto the children of humans even through faith one one’s name; and even after all this they shall consider him a man, and say that he hath a devil, and hall scourge hi and shall crucify him. And he shall rise the third day from the dead; and behold, he standeth to judge the World; and behold, all these things are done that a righteous judgment might come upon the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

“For behold, and also his blood atoneth for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned. However, wo, wo unto one who knoweth that one rebelleth against God! For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord God hath sent his holy prophets among all the children of humans, o declare these things to every kindred, nation, and tongue, that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though one had already come among them. Yet the Lord God saw that his people were a stiffnecked people, and he appointed unto them a law even the law of Moses. And many signs, and wonders, and types, and shadows showed he unto them, concerning his coming; and also holy prophets spake unto them concerning his coming; and yet they hardened their hearts, and understood not that the law of Moses availeth nothing except it were through the atonement of his blood. And even if it were possible that little children could sin they could not be saved; but I say unto you they are blessed; for behold, as in Adam, or by nature, they shall, even so the blood of Christ atoneth for their sins. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of humans, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For behold he judgeth, and his judgment is just; and the infant perisheth not that dieth in his infancy; but humans drink damnation to their own souls except they humble themselves and become as little children, and believe that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent. For the natural human is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless one yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural human and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon one, even as a child doth submit to one’s father. And moreover, I say unto you, that the time shall come when the knowledge of a Saviour shall spread throughout every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. And behold, when that time cometh, none shall be found blameless before God, except it be little children, only through repentance and faith on the name of the Lord God Omnipotent. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

“And even at this time, when thou shalt have taught thy people the things which the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, even then are they found no more blameless in the sight of God, only according to the words which I have spoken unto thee. And now I have spoken he words which the Lord God hath commanded me. And thus saith the Lord: They shall stand as a bright testimony against this people, at the judgment day; whereof they shall be judged, every human according to one’s work, whether they be good, or whether they be evil. And if they be evil they are consigned to an awful view of their own guilt and abominations, which doth cause them to shrink from the presence of the Lord into a state of misery and endless torment, from whence they can no more return; therefore they have drunk damnation to their own souls. Therefore, they have drunk out of the cup of the wrath of God, which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall because of one’s partaking of the forbidden fruit; therefore, mercy could have claim on them no more forever. And their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flames are unquenchable, and whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever. Thus hath the Lord commanded me. Amen,” reports Mosiah 3.1-27. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

Mighty God, I humble myself for faculties misused, opportunities neglected, words ill-advised, I repent of my folly and inconsiderate ways, my broken resolutions, untrue service, my backsliding steps, my vain thoughts. O bury my sins in the ocean of Jesus’ blood and please let no evil result from my fretful temper, unseemly behaviour, provoking pettiness. If by unkindness I have wounded or hurt another, do thou pour in the balm of Heavenly consolation; if I have turned coldly from need, misery, grief, please do not in just anger forsake me: If I have withheld relief from penury and pain, do not withhold They gracious bounty from me. If I have shunned those who have offended me, please keep open the door of Thy heart to my need. Please fill me with an over-flowing ocean of compassion, the reign of love my motive, the law of love my rule. O Thou God of all grace, please make me more thankful, more humble; please inspire me with a deep sense of my unworthiness arising from the depravity of my nature, my omitted duties, my unimproved advantages, Thy commands violated by me. With all my calls to gratitude and joy may I remember that I have reason for sorrow and humiliation; O give me repentance unto life; cement my oneness with my blessed Lord, that faith may adhere to one more immovably, that love may entwine itself round one more tightly, that one’s Spirit may pervade every fibre of my being. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

Then please send me out to make one know to my fellow-humans. The spiritual guide must be someone to be trusted more than any human to be looked to for guidance, knowledge, hope, inspiration, and warning. One respects every confidence that is reposed in one and keeps all confession in the hidden archives of memory. Whatever confidence one receives during the interview, the other person may feel sure that it will not be betrayed. The person who professes to guide others spiritually and to inspire them with high ideals cannot escape being watched. If one resents the ordeal, one’s service o them will be impaired; but if one accept it, one shows thereby that one is not looking for self-glory. Contempt and slander will be the unequal reward some will pay one; miscomprehension and minification will be received from others. One will accept them unconcernedly. No true master will take money for one’s services. O God, the Bread of our life, look upon us; be Thou the Guardian of our bodies; be Thou the Saviour of our souls. Believing that we have received from the holy Alter the Body and Blood of Christ our Lord and God, let us pray to the Unity of the Blessed Trinity, that it may be granted to us evermore, in fullness of faith, to hunger and thirst after righteousness; and that we, being strengthened with the grace of the saving Food, may so do His work, that we may possess the Sacrament which we have received, not for judgment, but for healing, through our Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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I Will be as Harsh as Truth and as Uncompromising as Justice!

June 18, 2020 1:23 am

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of humans. There are jobs at every socioeconomic level that place emotional burdens on the worker, but these burdens may have little to do with the performance of emotional labour. Among the less affluent, where work is often deskilled and boring and the work process beyond the worker’s control, the emotional task is often to suppress feelings of frustration, anger, or fear—and often to suppress feelings of any sort. This can be a terrible burden, but it is not in itself emotion labour. Factory workers, truck drivers, farmers and fisher-people, forklift operators, plumbers and bricklayers, chambermaids in transient hotels, and backroom laundry workers do no on the whole have their emotion work as closely subjected to occupational strictures as those who are in positions of catering to business people, or managing a corporations economic obligations. There are, however, many workers who, in promoting a product or a company, transform their show of personality into a symbol of the company, a clue to the nature of its product. These workers are seldom making the major decisions, but in one way or another they represent the decision-makers—not simply in how they look or what they say but in how, emotionally speaking they seem. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

The advertising maxim “Never sell what you do not believe in” calls for an act of faith. However, since many workers do not earn as much as their bosses do, they are less likely to be, in a sense, really sold. They are more likely to see emotional labour as no more than work to be better at counting costs. Still higher up are the big corporate decision-makers. For them, political, religious, and philosophic beliefs become more “job relevant,” and the bones between self and work are many and diffuse. Here years of training and experience, mixed with a daily carrot-and-stick discipline, conspire to push corporate feeling rules further and further away from self-awareness. Eventually, these rules about how to see things and how to feel about them come to seem “natural,” a part of one’s personality. The longer the employment and the more rewarding the work in terms of interest, power, and pay, the truer this becomes. At the very top of the upper class are the tycoons, the imperial decision-makers. They assume the privilege of personally setting the informal rules to which underlings eagerly attune themselves, rules designed to suit their own personal dispositions. Their notions of what is funny, what to beware of, how grateful to feel, and how hostile one should be to outsiders will become an official culture for their top employees. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

This position of having so much power is more than the license to indulge emotional idiosyncrasy, for the idiosyncrasies of the powerless can be happily ignored. It is a subtle and pervasive way of dominating through the enforcement of latent feeling rules for subordinates. Interestingly enough, at the other extreme of the class ladder employees may enjoy almost complete freedom from feeling rules, although they have no right to set them for others. They enjoy the license of the dispossessed. To sum up, jobs that place a burden on feelings are common in all classes, which is one reason why work is defined as work and not play. However, emotional labour occurs only in jobs that require personal contact with the public, the production of a state of mind in others, and (except in the true profession) the monitoring of emotional labour by supervisors. It is mainly in these jobs, where deep and surface acting form an important part of the work, that hating the job can prevent one from doing the job well. What a person does at work may bear an uncanny resemblance to the “job description” of being the child of such a worker at home. Big emotion workers tend to raise little ones. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

Mothers and fathers teach children letters and numbers and manners and a World view, but they also teach them which zone of the self will later be addressed by rules of work. As research on this topic of the family training ground for the transmutation suggest, working-class parents prepare the child to be controlled more by rules that apply to overt behaviour whereas middle-class parent typically prepare them to be governed more by rules that apply to feelings. There is a distinction between two types of “family control system,” the positional and the personal. In the positional control system, clear and formal rules determine who gets to decide what and who gets to do what. The right to make rules is based on formal attributes, such as age, gender, and parenthood. A “positional family” is not necessarily authoritarian or emotionally cold; it simply bases authority on impersonally assigned status and not on personal feelings. Positional appeals, therefore, are appears to impersonally assigned status. For example, to her son who keeps saying he want to play Twirly Curls Barbie Doll by Mattel, a mother might appeal to gender status: “Little boys do not play with dolls, dolls are for your sister; here, take a He-Man, Masters of the Universe, instead.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

In the personal control system, what matter far more than formal status is the feelings of parent and child. Parents back up their appeals by such statements as “because it would mean a lot to me,” or “because I am very tired.” Appeals are also aimed at the child’s feelings. A mother using personal control in the situation above might say: “Why do you want to play with Twirly Curls Barbie Doll? She is so boring. Why not play with He-man?” In positional families, control works against the child’s will. In personal families, control works through that will. Thus a child who says “I do not want to kiss grandpa—why must I kiss him always?” will be answered in different ways. Positional: “Children kiss their grandpa,” and “He is not well—I do not want any of your nonsense.” Personal: “I know you do not like kissing Grandpa, but he is unwell and he is very fond of you.” In the personal family, the child appears to have a choice. If the child questions a rule invoked by the parent, the situation is further explained and the alternatives more clearly elaborated. Given the situation and the positional family, the child is told to act according to a rule, and any questioning of it is answered by an appeal to immutable status: “Why? Because I am your mother, and I say so.” The positional child is told what to do and asked to accept the legitimacy of the order. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Working-class families are generally more positional, and middle-class families more personal. Middle-class parents are more likely to sanction what they later infer to be a child’s feeling and intent whereas working-class parents are more likely to sanction behaviour itself. A child asked to “love Aunt Tori” might revel by refusing to love Aunt Tori. The child asked to feel ambitious and “love school” might rebel by hating and disdaining success. If authority in the middle class is more expressed though feeling rules and emotion management—if it is more through these than through riles of outer behaviour that we are governed—hen we would do well to examine rebellion as rebellion against dictates in the realm. A middle-class mother is far more likely to punish her son for losing his temper than for engaging in wild and disruptive physical play. His loss of temper, not his wild play, is what is intolerable. The middle-class child seems to be especially subject to three messages. The first is that the feelings of superiors are important. Feeling is linked to power and authority because it is the reason adults often give for the decision they make. The child grows sensitive to feeling and learns to read well. The second is that a child’s own feelings are important. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Feelings are worth paying attention to and can be honoured as reasons for doing or not doing something. The middle-class child’s own sense of power is bonded more closely to feeling than to external display. One latent message in the free-school education of the 1960, designed almost exclusively for middle-class students, was that personal feelings are near sacred objects of attention and deserve frequent and detailed discussion. The third is that feelings are meant to be managed—monitored, sanctioned, and controlled. Thus when Tennessee spills milk on his mother’s rare 17^th century antique Persian rug (a sickle-leaf, vine scroll and palmette vase-technique carpet, produced in the city of Kerman in the 1600s, part of the Clark Collection), he will be punished less for damaging the rug than for doing it in anger. His transgression is not possessed in not managing his anger. It seems, then, that middle-class children are more likely to be asked to shape their feelings according to the rules they are made aware of. At the very least, they learn hat it is important to know how to manage feeling. In a sense, the true middle-class lesson may be set forth in learning it is through the art of deep acting that we make feelings into instruments we can use. In reviewing this research on the family, I have frequently used the terms “middle-class child” and “working-class child,” but I do not mean to suggest that one is trained to do emotional labour and the other is not. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Middle-class parents whose jobs do not involve public contact may train their children to accept positional authority, and less affluent parents whose jobs do involve public contact may train their children to accept personal authority. More precisely, the class messages that parents pass on to their children may roughly as follows. Middle class: “Your feelings count because you are (or will be) considered important by others.” Less affluent: “Your feelings do not count because you are not (or will not be) considered important by others.” However, some times class level does not matter. It may also depend on if the parents resent their children or love them. Cutting across the class messages may be other messages about emotional labour. The two main ones would be as follows. “Learn to manage your feelings, and learn to attune yourself to feeling rules because doing this well will get you places” (emotional-labour occupations). And “Learn to manage your behaviour because that is all the company will ask of you” (nonemotional-labour occupations). Upper-class parents doing emotional labour may combine these messages “Your feelings are important” and “Learn to manage them well” whereas lower-class emotion labourers may stress only the “Manage them well.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Conversely, upper-class parent who do not specialize in emotional labour may emphasize “Your feelings matter” without stressing “Manage them well.” And lower-class parents doing physical or technical work may see no relevance in either message. How feelings are dealt with in families may be determined not so much by social class as by the overall design of emotional labour, which is itself only loosely related to social class. Further, in our society the personal control system extends far beyond the family; it operates, for example, in schools that stress the development of autonomy and emotional control and in jobs that call for a capacity to forge useful relationships. Similarly, the social guardians of the positional control system are found not only in working-class families but in the traditional churches to which they go, and to some extent in the schools, where they learn to manage their behaviour in ways that will be useful on the job. If jobs that call for emotional labour grow and expand with the spread of automation and the decline of unskilled labour—as some analysts believe they will—this general social track may spread much further across other social classes. If this happens, the emotional system itself—emotion work, feeling rules, and social exchange, as hey come into play in a “personal control system”—will grow in importance as a way through which people are persuaded and controlled on and off the job. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

If, on the other hand, automation and the decline of unskilled labour leads to a decline in emotional labour, as machines replace the personal delivery of services, then this general social track may come to be replaced by another that trains people to be controlled in more impersonal ways. The transmutation of emotional life—the move from the private realm to the public realm, the trend toward standardization and commercialization of emotive offerings—already fans out across the whole class system. Commercial conventions of feeling are being recycled back into individual private lives; emotional life now appears under new management. Talking at dinner about encounters with an irate customer or watching the moves of host and participant on television giveaway programs opens the family home to a larger World of feeling rules. We learn what to expect outside, and we prepare. In the United States of America, this public culture is not simply public; it is commercial. Thus the relation between private emotion work and public emotional labour is a link between a commercial and commercial spheres. The home is no longer a sanctuary from abuses of the profit motive. Yet the marketplace is not without images of the home. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

The atmosphere of the private living room, which many employees are ask to recall as they are at work in the office, has already borrowed some of the elements of that office. The principles of commerce that govern exchanges in the office are supposed to be softened by the analogy to a private home, a home remote from commerce. However, for a quarter of a century now, private relations between friends and kin have been the basis for living room “parties” at which kitchenware, cosmetics, or (more recently) wedding packages are sold. Similarly, to build a market for air travel, the airlines use the idea of a private family and the feelings one would have there. Airline training strategists borrow from the home the idea of a place where that sort of borrowing does not go on. Yet in a culture like ours, it does. Thus it is in the family that we assess our bonds to the public culture and search out ways in which we may be monitored there. It is in the family—that private refuge, that haven in a heartless World—that some children first see commercial purposes at close hand and prepare for the call from central casting that will let them display their skills on a larger stage. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

In an essay, Cynthia Ozick describes a comment she once overheard at a party: “For me, the Holocaust and a corncob are the same.” Ozick understands his comment to mean that for a writer, all experience is equal. Literature has no moral content, for it exists purely in the domain of the imagination, a place where only aesthetics matter. Thus, a poet may freely replace the Holocaust with a corncob. Poetic language is only a game of words; the poet need not and in fact should not worry about social responsibility. Literary language is purely self-referential. Law, however, has not been much tempted by the sound of the first voice. Lawyers are all too aware that legal language is not a purely self-referential games, for legal interpretive acts signal and occasion the imposition of violence upon others. In their concern to avoid the social and moral irresponsibility of the first voice, legal thinkers have veered in the opposite direction, toward the safety of the second voice, which speaks from the position of “objectivity” rather than “subjectivity,” “neutrality” rather than “bias.” This voice, like the voice of “We the People,” is ultimately authoritarian and coercive in its attempt to speak for everyone. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

In both law and literature there are theorists who struggle against their discipline’s grain. Literary theorists such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Gayati Spivak, and abdul JanMohamed are attempting to read specific verbal and visual texts against complex cultural codes of power, assertion, and domination which these texts both reflect and, indeed, reinforce. Legal theorists such as Mari Matsuda, Pat Williams, and Derrick Bell juxtapose the voice that allows theorists to discuss liberty, property, and rights in the aspirational mode of liberalism with no connection to what those concepts mean in real people’s lives with the voices of people whose voices are rarely heard in law. In neither law nor literature, however, is the goal merely to replace one voice with its opposite. Rather, the aim is to understand both legal and literary discourse as the complex struggle and unending dialogue between these voices. The metaphor of “voice” implies a speaker. I want to suggest, however, that both voices I have described come from the same source, a source I term “multiple consciousness.” It is a premise of this article that we are no born with a “self,” but rather are composed of a welter of partial, sometimes contradictory, or even antithetical “selves.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

A unified identity, if such can ever exist, is a product of will, not a common destiny or natural birthright. Thus, consciousness is never fixed, never attained once and for all; it is not a final outcome or a biological given, but a process, a constant contradictory state of becoming, in which both social institutions and individual wills are deeply implicated. A multiple consciousness is home both to the first and second voices, and all the voices in between. As I use the phrase, “multiple consciousness” as reflected in legal or literary discourse is not a golden mean or static equilibrium between two extremes, but rather a process in which propositions are constantly put forth, challenged, and subverted. Cynthia Ozick argues that “a redemptive literature, a literature that interprets and decodes the World, beaten out for the sake of humanity, must wrestle with its own body, with its own flesh and blood, with its own life.” Similarly, Mari Matsuda, while arguing that in the legal realm “holding on to a multiple consciousness will allow us to operate both within the abstractions of standard jurisprudential discourse, and within the details of our own special knowledge,” acknowledges that “this constant shifting of consciousness produces sometimes madness, sometime genius, sometimes both. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

The mask, id est, the ad hoc adopted attitude, I have called the persona, which was the name for the masks worn by actors in antiquity. The human who identifies with this make I would call “personal” as opposed to “individual.” The two above-mentioned attitudes represent two collective personalities, which may be summed up quite simply under the name “personae.” I have already suggested that the real individuality is different from both. The persona is thus a functional complex that comes into existence for reasons of adaptation or personal convenience, but is by no means identical with the individuality. The persona is exclusively concerned with the relation to objects. The relation of the individual to the object must be sharply distinguished from the relation to the subject. By the “subject” I mean first of all those vague, dim stirrings, feelings, thoughts, and sensation which follow in on us not from any demonstrable continuity of conscious experience of the object, but well up like a disturbing, inhibiting, or at times helpful, influence from the dark inner depths, from the background and underground vaults of consciousness, and constitute, in their totality, our perception of the life of the unconscious. Just as there is a relation to the outer object, an outer attitude, there is a relation to the inner object, and inner attitude. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

It is readily understandable that this inner attitude, by reason of its extremely intimate and inaccessible nature, is far more difficult to discern than the outer attitude, which is immediately perceived by everyone. Nevertheless, it does not seem to me impossible to formulae it as a concept. All those allegedly accidental inhibitions, fancies, moods, vague feelings, and scraps of fantasy that hinder concentration and disturb the peace of mine even of the most normal human, and that are rationalized away as being due to bodily causes and suchlike, usually have their origin, not in the reasons consciously ascribed to them, but in perceptions of unconscious processes. Dreams naturally belong to this class of phenomena, and, as we all know, are often traces back to such external and superficial causes as indigestion, sleeping on one’s back, and so forth, in spite of the fact that these explanations can never stand up to searching criticism. The attitude of the individual in these matters is extremely varied. One human will not allow oneself to be disturbed in the slightest by one’s inner processes—one can ignore them completely; another human is just as completely at their mercy—as soon as one wakes up some fantasy or other, or a disagreeable feeling, spoils one’s mood for the whole day. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Likewise, a vaguely unpleasant sensation puts the idea into one’s head that one is suffering from a secret disease, a dream fills one with gloomy forebodings, although ordinary one is not superstitious. Others, again, have only periodic access to these unconscious stirrings, or only to a certain category of them. For one human they may never have reached consciousness at all as anything worth thinking about, for another they are worrying problem one broods on daily. One human takes them as physiological, another attributes them to the behaviour of one’s neighours, another finds in them a religious revelation. These entirely different ways of dealing with the stirrings of he unconscious are just as habitual as the attitudes to the outer object. The inner attitude, therefore, is correlated with just as definite a functional complex as the outer attitude. People who, it would seem, entirely overlook their inner psychic process no more lack a typical inner attitude than the people who constantly overlook the outer object and the reality of facts lack a typical outer one. In all the latter cases, which are by no means uncommon, the persona is characterized by a lack of relatedness, at times even a blind inconsiderateness, that yield only to the harshest blows of fate. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Not infrequently, it is just these people with a rigid persona who possess an attitude to the unconscious process which is extremely susceptible and open to influence. Inwardly they are as weak, malleable, and “soft-centered” as they are inflexible and unapproachable outwardly. Their inner attitude, therefore, corresponds to a personality that is diametrically opposed to the outer personality. I know a man, for instance, who blindly and pitilessly destroyed the happiness of those nearest him, and yet would interrupt important business journeys just to enjoy the beauty of a forest scene glimpsed from the carriage window of his Ultimate Driving Machine. Cases of this kind are doubtless familiar to everyone, so I need not give further examples. “And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the Earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the Earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you. And I, even I, whom ye call your king, am no better than ye yourselves are; for I am also of the dust. And ye behold that I am old, and am about to yield up this mortal frame to its mother Earth. Therefore, as I said unto you that I had served you, walking with a clear conscious before God, even so I at this time have caused that ye should assemble yourselves together, that I might be found blameless, and that you blood should not come upon me, when I shall stand to be judged of God of the things whereof he hath commanded me concerning you. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

“I say unto you that I have caused that ye should assemble yourselves together that I might rid my garments of your blood, at this period of time when I am about to go down to my grave, that I might go down in peace, and my immortal spirit may join the choirs above in singing the praises of a just God. And moreover, I say unto you that I have caused that ye should assemble yourselves together, that I might declare unto you that I can no longer be your teacher, nor your king; for even at this time, my whole frame doth tremble exceedingly while attempting to speak unto you; but the Lord God doth support me, and hath suffered me that I should speak unto you, and hath commanded me that I should declare unto you this day, that my son Mosiah is a king and a ruler over you. And now, my brethren, I would that ye should so as ye have hitherto done. As ye have kept my commandments of my father, and have prospered, and have been kept from falling into the hands of your enemies, even so if ye shall keep the commandments of my son, or the commandments of God which shall be delivered unto you by him, ye shall prosper in the land, and your enemies shall have no power over you. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“However, O my people, beware lest there shall arise contentions among you, and ye list to obey the evil spirit, which was spoke of by my father Mosiah. For behold, there is a wo pronounced upon one who listeth to obey that spirit; for if one listeth to obey him and remaineth and dieth in one’s sins, the same drinketh damnation to one’s own soul; for one receiveth for one’s wages an everlasting punishment, having transgressed the law of God contrary to one’s own knowledge. I say unto you, that there are not any among you, expect it be your little children that have not been taught concerning these things, but what knoweth that ye are eternally indebted to your Heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are; and also have been taught concerning the records which contain the prophecies which have been spoken by the holy prophets, even down to the time of our father, Lehi, left Jerusalem; and also, all that has been spoken by our fathers until now. And behold, also, they spake that which was commanded them of the Lord; therefore, they are just and true. And now, I say unto you, my brethren, that after ye have known and have been taught all these things, if ye should transgress and go contrary to that which has been spoken, that ye do withdraw yourselves from the Spirit of the Lord, that it may have no place in you to guide you in wisdom’s paths that ye may be blessed, prospered, and preserved. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“I say unto you, that the human that doeth this, the same cometh out in open rebellion against God; therefore ne listeth to obey the evil spirit, and becometh an enemy to all righteousness; therefore, the Lord has no place for one, for one dwelleth not in unholy temples. Therefore if that human repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken one’s immortal soul to a lively sense of one’s own guilt, which doth cause one to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill one’s breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever. And now I say unto you, that mercy hath no claim on that human; therefore one’s final doom is to endure a never-ending torment. O, all ye old human, and also ye young humans, and you little children who can understand my words, for I have spoken plainly unto you that ye might understand, I pray that ye should aware to a remembrance of the awful situation of those that have fallen into transgression. And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into Heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it,” reports Mosiah 2.25-40. Thou Eternal Source, Author of all created being and happiness, I adore Thee for making humans capable of religion, that one may be taught to say: “Where is God, my Maker, who giveth song in the night?” However, degeneracy has spread over our human race, turning glory into shame, rendering us forgetful of Thee. We know it is Thy power alone that can recall wandering children, can impress on them a sense of divine things, and can render that sense of divine things, and can render that sense lasting and effectual; from Thee proceed all good purposes and desires, and the diffusing of piety and happiness. Thou hast knowledge of my soul’s secret principles, and art aware of my desire to spread the gospel. Make me an almoner to give Thy bounties to the indigent, comfort to the mentally ill, restoration to the sin-diseased, hope to the despairing, joy to the sorrowing, love to the prodigals. Blow away the ashes of unbelief by Thy Spirit’ breath and give me light, fire, and warmth of love. I need spiritual comforts that are gentle, peaceful, mild, refreshing, that will melt me into conscious lowliness before Thee, that will make me feel and rest in Thee as my All. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Please fill the garden of my soul with the wind of love, that the scents of the Christian life may be wafted to others; then come and gather fruits to Thy glory. So shall I fulfill the great end of my being—to glorify Thee and be a blessing to humans. May the Communion of Thy Sacrament, O Lord, both purify use and makes us one, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please deliver us from evil, Lord Jesus Christ! We eat Thy Body, which was crucified for us, and we drink Thy blood, which was shed for us: may Thy holy Body prove our salvation, and Thy holy Blood the forgiveness of our sins, both now and forever. Being fed with Heavenly Food, and refreshed with the eternal Cup, let us give unceasing thanks and praise to the Lord our God, entreating that we, who have spiritually received the most holy Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, may be freed from carnal vices and be made spiritual. O God, Who are eternal salvation, and inestimable blessedness, grant, we beseech Thee, to all Thy servants, that we who have received things holy and blessed, may be enabled to be holy and blessed evermore. God of righteousness, God of mercy, God of immortality and life, God of brightness and glory, we pray and beseech Thee, that being refreshed by Divine gifts, we may be preserved by Thee for Thyself unto the bliss which is to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

Cresleigh Homes

Experience summertime the way it’s meant to be at @HUBApts: poolside with a great book in hand. 🌞

They have a move-in special happening right now! Head to their website to learn more. Link in bio. https://sites.google.com/fpimgt.com/hubvirtualtours/homeLook upon us, O Lord, Who willest us both to feed on Thy Body and to become Thy Body; grant that what we have received may avail for remission of our sins: and may the Divine sustenance, constituted by Thy benediction, so unite itself to our souls, that the flesh being subdued to the spirit, may obey, and not rebel.
#HUBApts
#CresleighHomes

One Might Call Me a Stepchild of Our Culture—I Might Have Been a Gold-Fish in a Glass Bowl!

June 17, 2020 1:33 am

The value of life is possessed, not in the length of the days, but in the use we make of them; a human may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of years, but on your will. The greatest thing in the World is to know how to be self-sufficient. There are certain typical difficulties inherent in our culture, which mirror themselves as conflicts in every individual’s life and which, accumulated, may lead to the formation of the neuroses. Since I am not a sociologist, I shall merely point out briefly the main trends which has a bearing on the problem of neurosis and culture. Modern culture is economically based on the principle of individual competition. The isolated individual has to fight with other individuals of the same group, has to surpass them and, frequently, thrust them aside. The advantage of the one is frequently the disadvantaged of the other. The psychic result of this situation is a diffuse hostile tension between individuals. Everyone is the real or potential competitor of everyone else. This situation is clearly apparent among members of the same occupational group, regardless of strivings to be fair or of attempts to camouflage by polite considerations. It must be emphasized, however, that competitiveness, and the potential hostility that accompanies it, pervades all human relationships. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Competitiveness is one of the predominant factors in social relationships. It pervades the relationships between men and men, between women and women, and whether the point of competition be popularity, competence, attractiveness or any other social value it greatly impairs the possibilities of reliable friendship. It also, as already indicated, disturbs the relations between men and women, not only in the choice of the partner but in the entire struggle with one for superiority. It pervades school life. And perhaps most important of all, it pervades the family situation, so that as a rule the child is inoculated with this germ from the very beginning. The rivalry between father and son, mother and daughter, one child and another, is not a general human phenomenon but is the response to culturally conditioned stimuli. It remains one of Dr. Freud’s great achievements to have seen the role of rivalry in the family, as expressed in his concept of the Oedipus complex and in other hypotheses. It must be added, however, that this rivalry itself is not biologically conditioned but is a result of given cultural condition and, furthermore, that the family situation is not the only one to stir up rivalry, but that the competitive stimuli are active from the cradle to the grave. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

The potential hostile tension between individuals results in a constant generation of fear—fear of the potential hostility of others, reinforced by a fear of retaliation for hostilities of one’s own. Another important source of fear in the normal individual is the prospect of failure. The fear of failure is a realistic one because, in general, the chances of failing are much greater than those of succeeding, and because failures in a competitive society entail a realistic frustration of needs. They mean not only economic insecurity, but also loss of prestige and all kinds of emotional frustrations. Another reason why success is such a fascinating phantom is its effect on out self-esteem. It is not only by others that we are valued accord to the degree of our success; willy-nilly our own self-evaluation follows the same pattern. According to existing ideologies success is due to our own intrinsic merits, or in religious terms, is a visible sign of the grace of God; in reality it is dependent on a number of factors independent of our control—fortuitous circumstances, unscrupulousness, and the like. Nevertheless, under the pressure of the existing ideology, even the most normal person is constrained to feel that one amounts to something when successful, and is worthless if one is defeated. Needless to say, this presents a shaky basis for self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

All these factors together—competitiveness and its potential hostilities between fellow-beings, fears, diminished self-esteem—result psychologically in the individual feeling that one is isolated. Even when one has many contacts with others, even when one is happily married, one is emotionally isolated. Emotional isolation is hard for anyone to endure; it becomes a calamity, however, if it coincides with apprehensions and uncertainties about one’s self. It is this situation which provokes, in the normal individual of our time, an intensified need for affection as a remedy. Obtaining affection makes one feel less isolated, less threatened by hostility and less uncertain of oneself. Because it corresponds to a vital need, love is overvalued in our culture. It becomes a phantom—like success—carrying with it the illusion that it is a solution for all problems. Love itself is not an illusion—although in our culture it is most often a screen for satisfying wishes that have nothing to do with it—but it is made an illusion by our expecting much more of it than it can possibly fulfill. And the ideological emphasis that we place on love serves to cover up the factors which create our exaggerated need for it. Hence the individual—and I still mean the normal individual—is in the dilemma of needing a great deal of affection but finding difficulty in obtaining it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

The situation thus far represents a fertile ground for the development of neuroses. The same cultural factors that affect the normal person—leading one toward a shaky self-esteem, potential hostile tension, apprehensiveness, competitiveness entailing fear and hostility, enhanced need for satisfactory personal relations—affect the neurotic to a higher degree and in one the same results are merely intensified—a crushed self-esteem, destructiveness, anxiety, enhanced competitiveness entailing anxiety and destructive impulses, and excessive need for affection. When we remember that in every neurosis there are contradictory tendencies which the neurotic is unable to reconcile, the question arises as to whether there are not likewise certain definite contradictions in our culture, which underlie the typical neurotic conflicts. It would be the task of the sociologist to study and describe these cultural contradictions. It must suffice for me to indicate briefly and schematically some of the main contradictory tendencies. The first contradiction to be mentioned is that between competition and success on the one hand, and humanly love and humility on the other. On the one hand everything is done to spur us toward success, which means that we must be not only assertive but aggressive, able to push others out of the way. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

On the other hand we are deeply imbued with Christian ideals which declare that it is selfish to want anything for ourselves, that we should be humble, turn the other cheek, by yielding. For this contradiction there are only two solutions within the normal range: to take one of these strivings seriously and discard the other; or to take both seriously with the result that the individual is seriously inhibited in both directions. The second contradiction is that between the stimulation of our needs and our factual frustrations in satisfying them. For economic reasons needs are constantly being stimulated in our cultural by such means as advertisements, “conspicuous consumption,” the ideal of “keeping up with Hiltons.” For the great majority, however, the actual fulfillment of these needs is closely restricted. They psychic consequences for the individual is a constant discrepancy between one’s desires and their fulfillment. Another contradiction exists between the alleged freedom of the individual and all one’s factual limitations. The individual is told by society that one is free, independent, can decide one’s life according to one’s own free will; “the great game of life” is open to one, and one can get what one wants if one is efficient and energetic. In actual fact, for the majority of people all these possibilities are limited. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

What has been said facetiously of the impossibility of choosing one’s parents can well be extended to life in general—choosing and succeeding in an occupation, choosing ways of recreation, choosing a mate. The result for the individual is a wavering between a feeling of boundless power in determining one’s own fate and a feeling of entire helplessness. These contradictions embedded in our culture are precisely the conflict which the neurotic struggles to reconcile: one’s tendencies toward aggressiveness and one’s tendencies toward yielding; one’s excessive demands and one’s fear of never getting anything; one’s striving toward self-aggrandizement and one’s feeling of personal helplessness. The difference from the normal is merely quantitative. While the normal person is able to cope with the difficulties without damage to one’s personality, in the neurotic all the conflicts are intensified to a degree that makes any satisfactory solution impossible. It seems that the person who is likely to become neurotic is one who has experienced the culturally determined difficulties in an accentuated form, mostly through the medium of childhood experiences, and who has consequently been unable to solve them, or has solved them only at great cost to one’s personality. We might call one a stepchild of our culture. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The individual’s “own” group, then, may inform the code of conduct professionals advocate for one. The stigmatized individual is also asked to see oneself from the point of view of a second grouping: the normals and the wider society that they constitute. I want to consider at some length the shadow cast by this second standpoint. The language of this stance inspired by normals is not so much political, as in the previous case, as it is psychiatric—the imagery of mental hygiene being employed as a source of rhetoric. One who adheres to the advocated line is said to be mature and to have achieved a good personal adjustment; one who does not follow the line is said to be an impaired person, rigid, defensive, with inadequate inner resources. What does this advocacy involved? The individual is advised to see oneself as fully human being like anyone else, one who at worst happens to be excluded from what is, in the last analysis, merely one area of social life. One is not a type or a category, but a human being: Who said that the physically disabled are unfortunate? Do they, or do you? Just because they cannot dance? All music has to stop sometime anyway. Just because they cannot play tennis? Lots of times the Sun is too hot! Just because you have to help them down the stairs? Is there something else you would rather do? #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Polio is not sad—it is just darned inconvenient—it means you cannot have those fits of temper and run into your room and kick the door shut any more. Disabled is an awful word. It specifies! It sets apart! It is too intimate! It is condescending! It makes me want to vomit like a wiggling creature coming out of the cocoon. Since one’s affliction is nothing in itself, one should not be ashamed of it or of others who have it; nor should one compromise oneself by trying to conceal it. On the other hand, by hard work and persistent self-training one should fulfill ordinary standards as fully as one can, stopping short only when the issue of normifcation arises; that is, where one’s efforts might give the impression that one is trying to deny one’s differentness. (This very fine line is drawn differently, of course, by different professionals, but because of this ambiguity it needs professional presentation all the more.) And because normals have their troubles, too, the stigmatized individual should not feel bitter, resentful, or self-pitying. A cheerful, outgoing manner should be cultivated. A formula for handling normals follows logically. The skills that the stigmatized individual acquires in dealing with a mixed social situation should be used to help the others in it. Normals really mean no harm; when they do, it is because they do not know better. They should therefore be tactfully helped to act nicely. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Slights, snubs, and untactful remarks should not be answered in kind. Either no notice should be taken or the stigmatized individual should make an effort at sympathetic re-education of the normal, showing one, point for point, quietly, and with delicacy, that in spite of appearances the stigmatized individual is, underneath it all, a fully-human being. (So complete is the individual’s derivation from society, that society can rely on those who are the least accepted as normal members, the least rewarded by the pleasures of easy social intercourse with others, to provide a statement, clarification, and tribute to the inward being of every human. The more the stigmatized individual deviates from the norm, the more wonderfully one may have to express possession of the standard subjective self if one is to convince others that on possesses, it and the more they may demand that one provide them with a model of what an ordinary person is supposed to feel about oneself.) When the stigmatizes person finds that normals have difficulty in ignoring one’s failings, one should try to help them and the social situation by conscious efforts to reduce tension. In these circumstances the stigmatized individual may, for example, attempt to “break the ice,” explicitly referring to one’s failing in a way that shows one is detached, able to take one’s condition in stride. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

In addition to matter-of-factness, levity is also recommended: “Then there was the cigarette gag. That was invariably god for a laugh. Whenever I would walk into a restaurant, bar, or party, I would whip out a pack of butts, open it ostentatiously, take one, light it, and sit back puffing on it contentedly. That almost always attracted attention. People would stare and I could almost hear them saying, My! Is it not wonderful what he can do with a pair of hooks? Whenever anyone commented on this accomplishment I would smile and say ‘There is one thing I never have to worry about. That is burning my fingers.’ Corny, I know, but a sure icebreaker.” It should be noted that one who attempts to break the ice may, of course, be seen as exploiting the situation for what can be wrung from it, as novelists have pointed out. However, being able to break the ice, one may be demonstrating to oneself that one has superior control in the situation. A somewhat sophisticated female patient whose face had been scarred by a beauty treatment felt it effective upon entering a room of people to say facetiously, “Please excuse the case of leprosy.” It is also suggested that the stigmatized individual in mixed company may find it useful to refer to one’s disability and one’s group in the language one employs when with one’s own, and the language employed about one when normals are among their own—thus proffering the normals present a temporary status as wise one. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

At other times one may find it appropriate to conform to “disclosure etiquette” and introduce one’s failing as a topic of serious conversation, in this way hoping to reduce its significance as a topic of suppressed concern: The injured man’s feeling that, as a person, one is not understood, combined with the non-injured person’s embarrassment in one’s presence, produced a strained, uncomfortable relationship which further serves to separate them. To relieve this social strain and gain greater acceptance, the injured person may not only be willing to satisfy the expressed curiosity of non-injured persons…but may also oneself initiate discussions of the injury. Other means of helping the others to be tactful toward one are also recommended, such as, in the case of facial disfigurements, pausing on the threshold of an encounter so the participants-to-be will have a chance to compose their response. A 37-year-old male whose face is grossly disfigured but who carries on a real estate business, “When I have an appointment with a new contact, I try to manage to be standing at a distance and facing the door, so the person entering will have more time to see me and get adjusted to my appearance before we start talking.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

The stigmatized individual is also advised to act as if the efforts of normals to ease matters for one were effective and appreciated. Unsolicited offers of interest, sympathy, and help, although often perceived by the stigmatized as an encroachment on privacy and a presumption, are to be tactfully accepted: “Yet, help is not only a problem to those who render it. If the disabled individual wants the ice to be broken, one must admit the value of help and allow people to give it to one. Innumerable times I have seen the fear and bewilderment in people’s eyes vanish as I have stretched out my hand for help, and I have felt life and warmth stream from the helping hands I have taken. We are not always aware of the help we may give b accepting assistance, that in this way we may establish a foothold for contact.” A polio patient author states a similar theme: “When my neighbours ring my bell on a snowy day to inquire if I need something from the store, even though I am prepared for bad weather I try to think up some item rather than reject a generous offer. It is kinder to accept help than refuse it in an effort to prove independence.” And similarly, an amputee: “A lot of amputees sort of humour the others to make them feel good because they are doing something for you. It does not make other people uncomfortable like it could if you were still standing up.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The call, properly done, is a call from God who is inviting us corporately into His presence. We listen to God’s works with reverent, prayerful anticipation. As the call ends, we are led in an invocation which invites God to meet us and calls us to submit ourselves in worship, for His glory. When God stands before us, we stand before Him. Refusing to worship Him is a way of trying to avoid his face and his eyes. Even the One-and-a half-year-old Annie was enjoying water in the back yard with her brother Leo, and grandmother “Boomba.” Boomba gently counseled her to water the peonies, but she had just discovered mud by pouring water on a small patch of dirt. Boomba told her not to put water on the dirt because it makes mud and mud will “get everything dirty.” Well, mud it was anyway, and little Annie even put the mud into a small tub of water nearby, calling it then “warm chocolate,” and she ate some. Boomba, who had been reading facing away from the action, soon discovered and cleaned up what to her was a mess, and then returned to her reading, but now seated so as to be facing Annie. However, the little girl soon resumed her “warm chocolate” routine, saying sweetly, “Do not look at me, Boomba. Okay?” Boomba of course agreed, and looked down at her reading. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

Then Annie would make black mud and put some of it in the tub. And then some more. Three times she said, as she continued with her work, “Do not look at me, Boomba. Okay?” The tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we unobserved in our wrong. The adult soul carries the same burden—but now so great as to be crushed by it. And when the face of God will no longer be avoidable, that soul will cry out in agony “to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face Him who sits on the throne,’” reports Revelation 6.15-16. The so-called “right to privacy” of which so much is made in contemporary life is in very large measure merely a way of avoiding scrutiny in our wrongdoing. King Benjamin addresses his people—he recounts the equity, fairness, and spirituality of his reign—he counsels them to serve their Heavenly King—those who rebel against God will suffer anguish like unquenchable fire. About 124 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that after Mosiah had done as his father had commanded him, and had made a proclamation throughout all the and, that the people gathered themselves together throughout all the land, that they might go up to the temple to hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them. And there were a great number, even so many that they did not number them; for they had multiplied exceedingly and waxed great in the land. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

“And they also took the firstlings of their flocks, that they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings according to the law of Moses; and also that they might give thanks to the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Jerusalem, and who had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies, and had appointed just humans to be their teachers, and also a just man to be their kind, who had established peace in the land of Zarahemla, and who had taught them to keep the commandments of God, that they might rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all humans. And it came to pass that when they came up to the temple, they pitched their tents round about, every human according to one’s family, consisting of one’s wife, and one’s sons, and one’s daughters, and their sons, and their daughters, from the eldest down to the youngest, every family being separate one from another. And they pitched their tents round about the temple, every human having one’s tent with the door there of towards the temple, that thereby they might remain in their tents and hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them; for the multitude being so great that king Benjamin could not teach them all within the walls of the temple, therefore he caused a tower to be erected, that thereby his people might hear the words which he should speak unto them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

“And it came to pass that he began to speak to his people from the tower; and they could not all hear his words because of the greatness of the multitude; therefore he caused that the words which he spake should be written and sent forth among those that were not under the sound of his voice, that they might also receive his words. And these are the words which he spake and caused to be written, saying: My brethren, all ye that have assembled yourselves together, you that can hear my words which I shall speak unto you this day; for I have not commanded you to come up hither to trifle with the words which I shall speak, but that you should hearken unto me, and open your ears that ye may hear, and your hears that ye may understand, and your minds that the mysteries of God maybe unfolded to your view. I have not commanded you to come up hither that ye should fear me, or that ye should think that I of myself am more than a mortal man. However, I am like as yourselves, subject to all manner of infirmities in body and mind; yet I have been chosen by this people, and consecrated by my father, and was suffered by the hand of the Lord that I should be a ruler and a king over this people; and have been kept and preserved by his matchless power to serve you with all the might, mind and strength which the Lord hath grated unto me. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“I say unto you that as I have been suffered to spend my days in your service, even up to this time, and have not sought gold nor sliver nor any manner of riches of you; neither have I suffered that ye should be confined in dungeons, nor that ye should make slaves of one another, nor that ye should murder, or plunder, or steal, or commit adultery; nor even have I suffered that ye should commit any manner of wickedness, and have taught you that ye should keep the commandments of the Lord, in all things which he hath commanded you—and even I, myself, have labored with mine own hands that I might serve you, and that ye should not be laden with taxes, and that there should nothing come upon you which was grievous to be borne—and of all these things which I have spoken, ye yourselves are witnesses this day. Yet, my brethren, I have not done these things that I might boast, neither do I tell these things that thereby I might accuse you; but I tell you these things that ye may know that I can answer a clear conscience before God this day. Behold, I say unto you that because I said unto you that I had spent my days in your service, I do not desire to boast, for I have only been in the service of God. And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“Behold, ye have called me your king; and if I, whom ye call your king, do labor to serve you, then ought not ye to labor to serve one another? And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your Heavenly King! I say unto you, my brethren, that is you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting your from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

“And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him. And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he had paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast? Thou God of my end, Thou hast given me a fixed disposition to go forth and spend my life for Thee; if it by Thy will let me proceed in it; if not, then revoke my intentions. All I want in life is such circumstances as may best enable me to serve Thee in the World; to this end I leave all my concerns in Thy hand, but let me not be discouraged, for this hinders my spiritual fervency; enable me to undertake some task for Thee, for this refreshes and animates my soul, so that I could endure all hardships and labours, and willingly suffer for Thy name. However, O what a death it is to strive and labour, to be always in a hurry and yet do nothing! Alas, time flies and I am of little use. O that I could be a flame of fire in Thy service, always burning out in one continual blaze. Please fit me for singular usefulness in the World. Please fit me to exult in distresses of every kind if they but promote the advancement of Thy kingdom. Fit me to quit all hopes of the World’s friendship, and give me a deeper sense of my sinfulness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Please fit me to accept as just desert from Thee any trial that may befall me. Please fit me to be totally resigned to the denial of pleasures I desire, and to be content to spend m time with Thee. Please fit me to pray with a sense of the joy of divine communion, to find all times happy seasons to my soul, to see my own nothingness, and wonder that I am allowed to serve Thee. Please fit me to enter the blessed World where no unclean thing is, and to know Thee with me always. May the holy Food and Drink be salutary to us, O Lord; may it fortify our temporal life, and give us life eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who touchest us in the participation of Thy Sacrament, work out in our hearts the effects of its power, that through Thy Gift itself we may be fitted for the reception of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the Heavenly Mystery, O Lord, be to us a renewal of soul and body; and as we have gone through the performance of it, may we feel its effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank Thee, O Lord, Who refreshest us both with the partaking of the Heavenly Sacrament and with the solemn remembrance of Thy righteous servants, through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the vices of our hearts be overcome by this Medicine, which came to heal the diseases of our mortal nature. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

Cresleigh Homes

This #PlumasRanch laundry room makes our heads spin with all that storage! 😍

Check out the interactive floor plans and virtual tours for this community on our website. Link in bio! https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/

Almighty and everlasting God, preserve the works of Thy mercy, and pour into our hearts the sweetness of the Body and Blood of Thine Only-begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord. #CresleighHomes

If Someone Breaks a Law and Harms Someone Else, What Should Happen?

June 15, 2020 11:59 pm

No one is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. Through a small part of evolution which is devoted to free will, we learn and grow. One who allows oneself to learn and grown in this way never frowns at the mistake of others, but, instead, forgives them. Laws permeates American society. Laws have been defined as a system of rules. Another way to think about this is to think in terms of Law and laws. While laws (little “l”) are the specific rules that we have to restrict, regulate, and/or promote behaviour, Law (big “L”) is a larger concept: an ideal that is based in the values, structure, process, procedures, and purpose of a legal system. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was put on the books as a “law” that outlawed forms of discrimination, while the value of equality is promoted in the United States of America’s “Law.” There are different notions of Law. For some, such as human rights advocates, the purpose of Law is to promote and uplift human personality, while for others, such as libertarians, its purpose is to protect individual property rights. In evaluating the little “l” (law) in relation to justice, we ultimately are discussing the big “L” (Law). One can evaluate their agreement with a particular law based upon the larger perspective of Law they uphold. In the United States of American, Law is frequently associated with the norm “equal justice under law,” which emphasizes the value of equality in the legal process, procedures, and structure. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Others critique what they see are the current norms and values promoted by the structures of the Untied States’ legal system. The equality norm can be viewed and implemented in different ways. For example, you can treat likes alike, and unlikes unlike, or you can endorse equality of status in which unlikes are valued equally. The current United States’ legal system promotes the former, an understanding of equality that does not adequately address gender inequality. Law, as a concept, can also be understood by juxtaposing it with the other subject material in this essay. In relation to the economy, some argue that the economy and issues such as workers’ right and workplace discrimination. Additionally, although laws can attempt to regulate social relations, they have frequently failed to do so justly. Legal theory must hear and respond the intersecting identities of everyone. Law are an institutional response to certain human behaviour that can be destructive. Some would argue that laws are a reaction to human nature, and that the legal system and its laws must be consistent with the morality of human nature in order to be considered legal. Additionally, laws are used in the governance of many societies and human behaviours. This brings us to the issue of politics. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Politics is the process through which societies create laws. However, in the application of law, politics is supposed to be absent. This is why lady justice has a blindfold—she cannot see the disputant and therefore cannot show favoritism. Legal systems require a connection with morality in order to it to be considered truly legal. However, some disagree. They argue that laws are commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from a sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience. There, it may seem that laws are not necessarily based in morality, and they can be defined as an expression of the sovereign will, backed by sanctions. Yet, this can make the legal system look like nothing more than a gun person writ large. So, it is debated that the legal system should be viewed as a facilitator, a problem solver. Many see the legal system as one of rules that impose obligations. Some obligations are direct injunctions and requirements (primary rules): drive on the right-hand side of the road; no smoking in classrooms; income taxes due on April 15. Other rules, secondary rules, are about the creation and application of these primary rules: the Treasury Department will collect taxes; the Board of Regents has jurisdiction over classroom safety and health. These rules determine who have the power to make (primary) rules. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Jurisprudence is the theory behind law, the philosophy of law. Scholars discuss what law is in analytic jurisprudence, and what it ought to be in normative jurisprudence. There are different schools of thoughts on jurisprudence, such as natural law, legal positivism, legal realism, and critical legal studies: Natural law theories connect morality and law. Natural law, in this school of thought, is different than human-made law. Existing outside any state structure or society, natural law is seen as natural to human beings and thus consistent with human nature. Any law that is not consistent with human nature is not a true law; an unjust law is no law at all. Human nature can be a test of a valid law. However, legal positivists believe that there is not necessarily a connection between morality and law. Law is a practical endeavor that varies over time and space. Legal positivist believe that law is a human construction. Legal realists, on the other hand believe law is a prediction of what the courts will decide. Under this system of thought, law is not a system of rules that the judge mechanically applies; instead the judge makes the law. The rules allow free play and, consequently, other factors (such as class, temperament, excreta) help determine judicial decisions. Legal realists believe that it is the real World practice of law that determines what law is. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Critical legal studies, the newest of these schools, began to develop in the 1970s. An early formative statement adopted by the Critical Legal Conference states: “The central focus of the critical legal approach is to explore the manner in which legal doctrine and legal education and the practices of legal institutions work to buttress and support pervasive system of oppressive, inegalitarian relations. Critical theory works to develop radical alternatives, and to explore and debate the role of law in the creation of social, economic and political relations that will advance human emancipation.” This multifaceted field is critical of traditional understandings of law. Scholars in this field argue that legal doctrines are hegemonic. They propose that legal doctrines reflect the ideas of the dominant, most powerful social groups, and so they renationalize and support existing inequality. There are many other ideas about law but the preceding four paradigms are major contributions on which others have built. Let us apply the typology of jurisprudence that we developed above with Plato’s “Crito,” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and the work of John Rawls. A reading within this section, Plato’s “Crito” (360 BCE) is a dialogue between Socrates and Socrates’ friend Crito. Socrates awaits his execution after his trial and conviction for impiety and corrupting the youth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Socrates awaits his execution after his trial and conviction for impiety and corrupting the youth. Crito has come to Socrates having prepared to smuggle him out of prison and into exile. Although both agree that the trial and degree of execution were unjust, the two men enter into a dialogue about whether or not Socrates should escape and, therefore, disobey Athenian law. Ultimately, Socrates decides not to attempt escape because of his commitment to Athenian laws, rooted ultimately in his belief that all laws must be obeyed because to do otherwise risks chaos and unhappiness. Socrates believes that human nature, as unwieldy as it is, needs to be controlled bylaws, and thus he supports, and therefore must abide by, the laws in place, whether or not it currently results in just outcomes. Of all the pieces you will read, this argument exemplifies the traditional legal positivism. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963), on the other hand, argues that sometimes a just person must openly disobey an unjust law. He believes in higher law principles that guarantee, among other things, equality for all humankind in law. For King, an unjust law is one that conflicts with God’s laws; it degrades human personality. A just law can be recognized by its tendency to uplift humans, treating them with respect. King supports civil disobedience to resist unjust laws, but this requires a willingness to accept suffering. King’s position typifies the natural-law approach. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Rawls does not accept King’s natural-law criterion for the adequacy of law. Instead, he proposes that we test justice in law via a thought experiment. This thought experiment begins with the “original position,” a room in which individuals enter and communicate. These individuals are cloaked in a “veil of ignorance,” which does not allow them to see their own personal characteristics (such as their race, gender, class, nationality, age, or other distinctions). They are aware, however, of the societal conditions outside the room (such as the existence of poverty and its deleterious impact). Rawls suggests that their ignorance about where they fit in the scheme of things will enable them to come up with just and fair principles about how to treat one another outside this room. Each individual must be aware that, when they leave the room, they may discover that they are in the worst position in society. This will encourage them to agree on a reasonable social safety net that improves the position of the people worst-off in society. In the end, Rawls argues, these individuals will decide upon the following principles: (1) everyone should have equal opportunities and (2) there can be inequality but only when it benefits all individuals. Law, if consistent with these principles, would be considered just. For Rawls, a legal positivist, the only thing one can say about human nature is that it is rational and self-interested. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

If someone breaks a law and harms someone else, what should happen? Your perspective on humans, jurisprudence, and law will help determine your responses. The utilitarian perspective argues that justice is promoted by pursuing “utility.” Utility is measured by examining the potential “happiness” (+) and unhappiness (id est, “mischief”) (-) created by an act. According to this theory, good laws should increase the total happiness of the community and exclude what subtracts from it. Punishments are mischief; thus, punishment should only if it promises to exclude a greater evil. It is interesting to contrast Bentham’s “greatest good for the greatest number” approach with that of Immanuel Kant (1797/2000). Kant argues for retribution where a wrong occurs. Against utilitarianism, and for a priori principles and not a set of feelings, Kant argues for the principle of equality between the crime and the penalty (like for like, murder for murder). In fact, he argues the famous premise that, even if a society is dissolving, it should still kill the last murderer because, if it did not, the bloodguiltiness would remain with the people. Punishment is more than an abstraction. It occurs every day in the United States, where it is a highly institutionalized, bureaucratic process. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

We can consider the reality of punishment as in the contemporary United States of America, where it is highly institutionalized, bureaucratic process. We can consider the reality of punishment as it is practiced in the contemporary United States of America, asking under what conditions (if any) it can be considered just or unjust. The development of the prison in Western society were brought into fortition because the acts were once considered punishable when committed against the sovereign (such as a king). Punishment occurred to the body and was a public spectacle (such as hangings, quarterings, and beheadings). Enlightenment thinkers critiqued these methods of punishment and argued for reform. Society changed, as did punishment. Although not promoted by reformers, imprisonment because the preferred method of punishment. The development of prisons occurred alongside other social developments designed to condition individuals to societal norms. Punishable acts became considered as those committed against the public/community and punishment would occur largely behind closed doors, in prisons that focused on correcting the individual and their souls. As opposed to grotesque scenes in public, punishment now functions to condition people to societal norms, not only within the prison, but also within a society. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

By promoting societal norms amongst each other, we being the punitive procedure to the entire society. Those not adhering to societal norms become delinquents. Consequently, a central theme we have to consider is power. To be able to define the good and the bad is power. Therefore, as punishment occurs to condition individuals to societal norms, punishment is connected with power and prisons are mechanisms of power. We have traced the development of prisons and the relationship with power, now we have to move this discussion to present day. Many people are currently calling on prison reforms and abolition. Prison is an industrial complex that supports ever expanding prison system. The prison industrial complex recognizes the societal, economic, and political conditions that exist and support the use of prisons as punishment. Many are calling for a re-imagining of our system as a whole because people belonging to a lower economic class or are a marginalized group are often hindered in the criminal justice system. For example, they do not usually have the resources that other groups have to afford private legal defense and the acts they are more likely to be charged with (as compared to other acts such as white-collar crime) are punished more harshly. White-collar crime is now synonymous with a full range of fraud committed by businesses and government professionals. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

White-collar crimes are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trusts and are not dependent on the application of threat of physical force or violence, but can lead to a loss of live(s). The motivation behind these crimes is financial—to obtain or avoid losing money, property, or services or to secure a personal or business advantage. These are not victimless crimes. A single scam can destroy a company, devastate families by wiping out their life savings, or cost investors billions of dollars (or even all three). Today’s fraud schemes are more sophisticated than ever, and the FBI is dedicated to using its skills to track down the culprits and stop scams before they start. Still, many people are critical of the current criminal justice system and punishments. Other critics have suggested alternatives to our system of punishment, such as restorative justice. This alternative to imprisonment concerns itself first with the restoration of the community, the victim, and the perpetrator. Some are advocating for a restorative justice that takes into account indigenous models of justice. For example, this model would support a system focused on identifying and addressing underlying societal issues and social problems, rather than a system which only responds to criminal activity after it has taken place. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Each individual analysis offers new problems even to the most experienced analyst. In each individual one finds oneself confronted with difficulties one has never encountered before, with attitudes which are hard to recognize and still harder to explain, with reactions which are far from transparent at first sight. Looking back at the intricacy of the neurotic character structure, and at the many factors involved, this variety is not surprising. Differences in inheritance and in the experiences a person has gone through during one’s life, particularly in one’s childhood, produce a seemingly boundless variation in the construction of the factors involved. However, in spite of all these individual variations the crucial conflicts around which a neurosis grows are practically always the same. In general they are the same conflicts to which the healthy person in our culture is also subject. It is something of a truism to say that it is impossible to distinguish clearly between neurotic and normal, but it may be useful to repeat it once more. Many people, confronted by conflicts and attitudes that they recognize in their own experience, may ask themselves: Am I neurotic or not? The most valid criterion is whether or not the individual feels disabled by one’s conflicts, whether one can face them and deal with them directly. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

When we have recognized that neurotic persons in our culture are impelled by the same underlying conflicts, and that in a diminished degree the normal person is also subject to them, we are confronted again with the question that was raised at the beginning: what are the conditions in our culture which are responsible for the fact that neuroses center around these particular conflicts I have described, and not others? Dr. Freud has given this problem but limited consideration; the reverse side of this biological orientation is a lack of sociological orientation, and thus he tends to attribute social phenomena primarily to psychic factors and these primarily to biological factors (libido theory). This tendency has led psychoanalytical writers to believe, for example, that wars are caused by the working of the death instinct, that our present economic system is rooted in anal-erotic drives, that the reason the machine age did not start two thousand years ago is to be found in the narcissism of that period. Dr. Freud sees a culture not as the result of a complex social process but primarily as the product of biological drives which are repressed or sublimated, with the result that reaction formations are built up against them. The more complete the suppression of these drives, the higher the cultural development. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Since the capacity for sublimation is limited and since the intensive suppression of primitive drives without sublimation may lead to neurosis, the growth of civilization must inevitably imply a growth of neurosis. Neuroses are the price humanity has to pay for cultural development. The implicit theoretical presupposition underlying this train of thought is a belief in the existence of biologically determined human nature, or more precisely, a belief that oral, anal, genial, and aggressive drives exits in all human beings in approximately equal quantities. Variations in character formation from individual to individual, as from culture to culture, are due, then, to the varying intensity of the suppression required, with the additional qualification that this suppression affects the different kinds of drives in varying degrees. Historical and anthropological findings do not confirm such a direct relationship between height of culture and the suppression of pleasures of the flesh or aggressive drives. The error consists primarily in assuming a quantitative instead of a qualitative relation. The relation is not between quantity of culture but between quality of individual conflicts and quality of cultural difficulties. The quantitative factor cannot be disregarded, but it can be evaluated only in the context of the entire structure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

In Heaven myriads of myriads of Angels continuously say in loud unison: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power of riches and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing.” And every created thing which is in Heaven and on the Earth and under the Earth and on the sea, and all thing sin them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honour and glory and dominion forever and ever,” reports Revelation 5.12-13. Now, this angelic vision is precisely the vision that possesses the thought life of the renovated heart; and you can see how it would grip the whole person and one’s Earthly environment. This is what it is to “hallow” God’s name. It is what we pray for in The Lord’s Prayer. However, sad to say, even our Christian meetings and environments are for the most part far from it. It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these early years of the twenty-first century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity. However, why a moral calamity? Because absolutely nothing can inform, guide, and sustain radical and radiant goodness in the human being other than this true vision of God and the worship based thereon. Only this vision can jerk the twisted condition of humanity right. Nothing straight can be constructed from such warped wood as that which humans are made. And humanly speaking this is true. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

However, what is impossible with humans is possible with God. “And now there was no more contention in all the land of Zarahemla, among all the people who belonged to king Benjamin, so that King Benjamin has continual peace all the remainder of his days. And it came to pass that he had three sons; and he called their names Mosiah, and Helorum, and Helaman. And he caused that they should be taught in all the language of his fathers, that thereby they might become humans of understanding; and that they might know concerning the prophecies which had been spoken by the mouths of their fathers, which were delivered them by the hand of the Lord. And he also taught hem concerning the records which were engraven on the plates of brass, saying: My sons, I would that ye should remember that were it not for these plates, which contain these records and these commandments, we must have suffered in ignorance, even at this present time, not knowing the mysteries of God. For it were not possible that our father, Lehi, could have remembered all these things, to have taught them to his children, except it were for the help of these plates; for he having been taught in the language of the Egyptians therefore he could read these engravings, and teach them to his children, and so fulfilling the commandments of God, even down to this present time. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

“I say unto you, my sons, were it not for these things, which have been kept and preserved by the hand of God, that we might read and understand of his mysteries, and have his commandments always before our eyes, that even our father would have dwindled in unbelief, and we should have been like unto our brethren, the Lamanites, who know nothing concerning these things, or even do not believe them when they are taught them, because of the traditions of their fathers, which are not correct. O my sons, I would that ye should remember that these sayings are true, and also that these records are true. And behold, also the plates of Nephi, which contain the records and the sayings of our fathers from the time they left Jerusalem until now, and they are true; and we can know of their surety because we have them before our eyes. And now, my sons, I would that ye should remember to search them diligently, that ye may profit thereby; and I would that ye should keep the commandments of God, that ye may prosper in the land according to the promises which the Lord made unto our fathers. And many more things did king Benjamin had made an end of teaching his sons, that he waxed old, and he saw that he must very soon go the way of all the Earth; therefore, he thought I expedient that he should confer the kingdom upon one of his sons. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“Therefore, he had Mosiah brought before him; and these are the words which he spake unto him, saying: My son, I would that ye should make a proclamation throughout all this land among all this people, or the people of Zarahemla, and the people of Mosiah who dwell in the land, that thereby they may be gathered together; for on the morrow I shall proclaim unto this y people out of mine own mouth that thou art a king and a ruler over this people, whom the Lord our God hath given us. And moreover, I shall give this people a name, that thereby they may be distinguished above all the people which the Lord God hath brought out of the land of Jerusalem; and this I do because they have been a diligent people in keeping the commandments of the Lord. And I give unto them a name that never shall be blotted out, except it be though transgression. Yes, and moreover I say unto you, that if this highly favoured people of the Lord should fall into transgression, and become a wicked and an adulterous people, that the Lord will deliver them up, that thereby they become weak like unto their brethren; and he will no more preserve them by his matchless and marvelous power, as he has hitherto preserved our fathers. For I say unto you, that if he had not extended his arm in the preservation of our fathers they must have fallen into the hands of the Lamanites, and become victims of their hatred. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

“And it came to pass that after king Benjamin had made an end of these sayings to his son, that he gave him charge concerning all the affairs of the kingdom. And moreover, he also gave him charge concerning the records which were engraven on the plates of brass; and also the plates of Nephi; and also, the sword of Laban, and the ball or director, which le our fathers through the wilderness which was prepared by the hand of the Lord that thereby they might be led, everyone according to the heed and diligence which they gave unto him. Therefore, as they were unfaithful they did not prosper nor progress in their journey, but were driven back, and incurred the displeasure of God upon them in remembrance of their duty. And now, it came to pass that Mosiah went and did as his father had commanded him, and proclaimed unto all the people who were in the land of Zarahemla that thereby they might gather themselves together, to go up to the temple to hear the words which his father should speak unto them,” Mosiah 1.1-17. Please Hear, O Lord, our prayers, that they Holy Communion of our redemption ma both bestow on us assistance for this life, and procure for us everlastings joys; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Sovereign God, Thy cause, not my own, engages my heart, and I appeal to Thee with greatest freedom to set up Thy kingdom in every place where Satan reigns; please glorify Thyself and I shall rejoice, for to bring honour to Thy name is my sole desire. I adore Thee that Thou art God, and long that others should know it, feel it, and rejoice in it. O that all humans might love and praise Thee, that Thou mightiest have all glory from the intelligent World! Let sinners be brought to Thee for Thy dear name! To the eye of reason everything respecting the conversation of others is as dark as midnight, but Thou canst accomplish great things; the cause is thine, and it is to Thy glory that humans should be saved. Lord, please use me as Thou wilt, do with me what Thou wilt; but, O, promote Thy cause, let Thy kingdom come, let Thy blessed interest be advanced in this World! O do Thou bring in great numbers to Jesus! Let me see that glorious day, and give me to grasp for multitudes of souls; let me be willing to die to that end; and while I live let me labour for Thee to the utmost of my strength, spending time profitably in this work, both in health and in weakness. It is Thy cause and kingdom I long for, not my own. O, answer Thou my request! #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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In Our World of Divide and Conquer, the Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master House!

June 15, 2020 2:40 am

Miracles are not believed, even by those to whom they happen. A guru who thinks of oneself as having disciples has attachments. The ego is present in one. They are mentally held as possessions. An individual who is privileged to carry a message from the mountaintop down to one’s fellows should feel no envy of other messengers, no emotional disturbance at their success or one’s own failure. If one does, it means that the ego has inserted itself into one’s work and poisoned it. On the contrary, one which they could not hear for themselves. One ought to rejoice at their blessing, otherwise one is still worshipping oneself and not God. A true messenger will not look for followers but for those whom one can help. Exposed to flattery and obsequiousness though one will be, one will nevertheless keep quite free from pomposity and vanity. The teacher has to bear patiently with the defects and weakness of one’s students. If one’s insight were too limited, one’s compassion too small, and one’s calmness too superficial, one could not do this. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creative can spark like a dialectic. Only then different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power seek new ways of being in the World generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominated) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal being is forged. Many people have been taught either to ignore their differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and one’s oppression. However, community must no mean a shedding of our difference, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable people; those of us who have been forged in the crucible of difference—those of us who are less affluent, who are atypical, who are mature—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified at outside the structures in order to define and seek a World in which we can al flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

We must learn to allow our unique qualities to make us strong for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow for us to temporarily beat one at one’s own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those whom still define the master’s house as their only source of support. I believe most educators would agree that a high priority in education is to help individuals to acquire the learning, the information, and the personal growth that will enable them to deal more constructively with the “real World.” This is often the theme of commencement addresses, in which one expresses hopes or fears concerning how the new graduates will face and cope with the “real World.” It is often a topic in the final hours of intensive encounter groups, when individuals who have learned a great deal about themselves and about their interpersonal relationships are concerned about how they will behave when they return to their “real” lives outside. What is this “real World?” It is this question that I want to explore, and I believe that the direction in which my thinking has inexorably led me will be best portrayed by giving a number of personal commonplace examples. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

A few weeks ago, I was sitting alone, late at night, on the deck of a beach cottage in norther California. As I sat there for several hours, a bright star on the horizon moved upward into clear view. A brilliant planet moved with the same slow, majestic speed from directly above me to a point well on my right. The star and the planet were accompanied in their movement by the Milk Way and all the other constellations. Obviously, I was the center of the Universe, and the Heavens were slowly revolving about me. It was a humbling experience (How small I am!) and an uplifting one (How marvelous to be such a focal point!). I was looking at the real World. Yet, in another corner of my mind, I knew that I, and the Earth beneath me, and the atmosphere surrounding me were moving at a breathless speed—faster than modern jet plane—in the direction I called east, and the stars and planets were, relative to the Earth, comparatively motionless. Although I could not see what I have just described, I knew that this—not the more obvious perception—was really the real World. On some level, we are aware that we are an infinitesimal speck on an insignificant planet in one of the minor galaxies (of which there are millions) in the Universe. We know that each of these galaxies are moving at an incredible speed, often exploding away from the others. Is this reality, too? #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

I am confused. However, at least there is one reality of which I can be sure: the hard wooden chair on which I sit, the solid Earth on which the deck rests, the stainless steel pen I hold in my hand. This is a reality that can not only be seen, but also felt and touched. These objects can sustain weight and pressure. They are solid. However, no, I know enough of science to challenge all this. The chair is made up of formerly living cells, intricate in their composition, composed more of space than of matter. The Earth is a slowly moving fluid mess, which shudders very frequently as it shrinks and cracks and crinkles. The road over which I drove yesterday had been a part of those shudders. One day in 1906, the Earth shrugged a little and the road cracked, and the western side of the crack was carried twenty feet north of its continuation on the other side. Solid Earth! And what about the reassuring hardness of my metal pen? They tell me it is composed of invisible atoms, moving at great speed. Each atom has a nucleus, and recent years have brought discoveries of more and more particles in those nuclei. Each particle is endowed with fantastically unbelievable characteristics; it moves in possibly random, possibly orderly trajectories in the great inner space of each atom. My pen is hardly the firm solid object that I so clearly feel and hold. The “real World” seems to be dissolving. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

I am reassured, but also perplexed, by the statement of the great physical scientist, Sir James Jeans. He says: “The steam of human knowledge is impartially heading toward a nonmechanical reality: The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” Try that on your practical friend, or your plumber, or your stockbroker. Tell them, “The real World is just a great thought.” At any rate, the conception of a real World, obvious to anyone, is rapidly slipping completely out of my grasp. However, at least in the interpersonal World, I know my family and my friends; this knowledge is surely a solid basis on which I can act. However, then my memories trip me up. One needs only the simple occasion of a softly facilitated encounter group, where permission is given to express oneself, to discover how shaky our interpersonal knowledge is. Individuals have discovered in their closet friends and family members great realms of hidden feelings. There are previously unknown fears, feelings of inadequacy, suppressed rages and resentments, bizarre desires for pleasures of the flesh and fantasies, hidden pools of hopes and dreams, of joys and dread, of creative urges and unbidden loves. This reality, too, seems as unsure, as full unknowns, as any yet considered yet in this paper. So that individual is drive back to self: “At least I know who I am. I decide what I want t do, and I do it. That is for real.” However, is it? #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

If I talk to the behaviourist, one tells me, “You are nothing but the sum of your stimulus inputs and the conditioned responses you emit. All of the rest is illusion.” Well, finally we have reality. I am nothing but a mechanical robot. Or is that all? Where do my dreams come from? Perhaps that can be explained too. The I think of Jean, the woman who told me that her identical twin sister was driving back to her own home at night by a familiar route when Jean awoke in a panic of certainty. She phoned the highway police and told them, “There have been an accident on such-and-such a highway. It is a white car with his license and a lone woman driver.” There was a pause, and then the officer said, in a puzzled and slightly suspicious voice, “But how did you know about that lady? We only got the report of the accident two minutes ago.” What do we make of that kind of reality? That little episode opens up a whole train of thought about the inner Worlds and “separate realities.” In a World of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic feminists to recognize differences as crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our World, divide and conquer must become define and empower. We need to foster interracial cooperation between races, cultures, occupations, lifestyles, and genders who do not love each other. Unity is powerful and important. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

Feminists and other egalitarian movements have the same agenda, and that is to achieve equality for all of the group that they recognize. Many people are still caught up by discriminatory visions of the past, and those are being relived today. However, majority of society has educated themselves about humanity and the difference between people, and know that they key to survival is acceptance and understanding. To follow the Golden Rule, do on to others as you would have then do on to you. We all want to go to Heaven because Earth is not our final home. However, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” reports Romans 6.23. Humans of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of society’s ignorance and to educate humanity as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of the young and mature to educate society—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of discriminatory thought. It is the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Helping others to understand the art of proper living is itself an art. A person may be good and yet not a good teacher. Racism, sexism, Zeusophobia, homophobia, perennial disregard for law and order are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside oneself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices. The people have so much power and are coming out in masses and demanding changes, but violence is not the answer. Your mayors and governors are the ones who have control over how your state and local resources are distributed and they also have a strong influence in law enforcement, business and the media. You have the power to use all of people who are upset and want change to recall these people and put officials in office who will listen to you and build more affordable housing before expanding a theatre or erecting a sports colosseum, add more public transportation and supermarkets in communities that need them, and allocate more resources to educate, and make sure they make it to the classroom and are not eaten up on administrative costs and fees. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

There is scarcely any neurosis in which the tendency to get rid of the self does not appear in a direct form. It may appear in fantasies of leaving home and becoming a derelict or of losing one’s identity; in an identification with a person one is reading about; in a feeling, as one individual put it, of being forlorn amid the darkness and the waves, of being at one with the darkness and the waves. The tendency is present in wishes to be hypnotized, in an inclination toward mysticism, in feelings of unreality, in an inordinate need for sleep, in the lure of sickness, insanity, death. And as I have mentioned before, in masochistic fantasies the common denominator is a feeling of being putty in the master’s hand, of being devoid of all will, of all power, of being absolutely subjected to another’s domination. Each different manifestation is of course determined in its special way and has its own implications. A feeling of being enslaved, for example, may be par of a general tendency to feel victimized, and as such be a defense against impulses to enslave others and also an accusation against others for not letting themselves be dominated. However, while it has also the secret positive value of self-surrender. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

Whether the neurotic subjects oneself to a person or to fate, and whatever the kind of suffering which one allows to overpower one, the satisfaction one seeks seems to be the weakening or extinction of one’s individual self. One ceases then to be the active carrier of actions and becomes an object, without a will of one’s own. When masochistic strivings are thus integrated into the general phenomenon of a striving to relinquish the individual self, the satisfaction that is sought or attained by weakness and suffering loses its strangeness; it is put in a frame of reference that is familiar. The tenaciousness of masochistic strivings in neurotics is then accounted for by the fact that at the same time they serve as a protection against anxiety and provide a potential or real satisfaction. As we have seen, this satisfaction is seldom real except in fantasies about pleasures of the flesh or perversions, even though the striving for it is an important element in the general tendencies toward weakness and passivity. Thus a final question arises as to why the neurotic so rarely attains the oblivion and abandon, and thus the satisfaction, which one seeks. An important circumstance which prevents a definite satisfaction is that the masochistic drives are counteracted by the neurotic’s extreme emphasis on the uniqueness of one’s individuality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

Most masochistic phenomena share with neurotic symptoms the character of being a compromise solution of incompatible strivings. The neurotic tends to feel a prey to everyone’s will, but at the same time insists that the World should adapt itself to one. One tends to feel enslaved, but at the same time insists that one’s power over others should be unquestioned. One wants to be helpless and taken care of, but at the same time insists on being not only entirely self-sufficient but, in effect, omnipotent. One tends to feel that one is nothing, but is irritated when one is not taken for a genius. There is absolutely no satisfactory solution which could reconcile such extremes, particularly since both strivings are so strong. The drive toward oblivion is much more imperative in the neurotic than in the normal person because the former wants to get rid not only of the fears, limitations and isolations that are universal in human existence, but also of a feeling that one is trapped in insoluble conflicts and their resultant sufferings. And one’s contradictory drive toward power and self-aggrandizement is equally imperative and more than normally intense. Of course one does attempt to achieve the impossible, to be at once everything and nothing; one may, for example, live in a helpless dependence and at the same time exert a tyranny over others by means of one’s weakness. Such compromises one oneself mistake as a capacity for surrender. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

In fact, sometimes even psychologist seem inclined to confound the two, and to assume that surrender is in itself a masochistic attitude. In reality the masochistic persons is, on the contrary, entirely incapable of giving oneself to anything or anyone; one is incapable, for example, of putting all one’s energies into the service of a cause, or of wholly giving oneself in love to another person. One can surrender oneself to suffering but in this surrender one is wholly passive, and the feeling or the interest or the person which is the cause of one’s suffering one uses only as a means to lose oneself for the sake of losing oneself. There is no active interplay between oneself and the other, but only one’s self-centered absorption in one’s own ends. Genuine surrender to a person or a cause is a manifestation of inner strength to a person or a cause is a manifestation of inner strength; masochistic surrender is ultimately a manifestation of weakness. Another reason why the satisfaction that is sought is seldom attained lines in the destructive elements inherent in the neurotic structure I have described. These are missing in the cultural “Dionysian” drives. In the latter there is nothing comparable to the neurotic destructiveness of all that constitutes the personality, of all its potentialities for achievement and happiness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Let us compare the Greek Dionysian cult, for example, the neurotic fantasies of becoming insane. In the former the desire was for a transitory ecstatic experience serving to enhance the joy of life; in the latter the same drive toward oblivion and abandon serves neither as a temporary submergence leading to reemergence, nor as a means of making life richer and fuller. Its goal is to get rid of the whole tormenting self, regardless of its values, and therefore the intact part of the personality reacts to it with fear. In fact, fear of disastrous possibilities toward which part of the personality impels the whole is usually the only factor in the process that impinges upon awareness. All the neurotic knows about it is that one has a fear of becoming insane. Only when the process is separated into its component parts—a drive toward self-relinquishment and a reactive fear—can it be understood that one is striving for a definite satisfaction but is prevented by one’s fears from attaining it. One factor peculiar to our culture serves to reinforce the anxiety connected with the drives toward oblivion. In Western civilization there are but few, if any, cultural patterns in which these drives, even regardless of their neurotic character, can be satisfied. Religion, which offered such a possibility, has lost its power and appeal for the majority. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Not only are there no effective cultural means for such satisfaction, but their development is actively discouraged, for in an individualistic culture the individual is expected to stand on one’s own feet, assert oneself, and if necessary fight one’s way. In our culture to yield realistically to tendencies toward self-relinquishment involves the danger of ostracism. In view of the fears that usually debar the neurotic from the specific satisfactions for which one is striving, it is possible to understand the value for one of masochistic fantasies and perversions. If one drives for self-relinquishment are lived out in fantasies or in pleasures of the flesh practices one can perhaps escape one’s danger of complete self-obliteration. Like the Dionysian cults, these masochistic practices provide a temporary oblivion and abandon, with comparatively little risk of harm to the self. Usually they pervade the whole structure of the personality; sometimes they are concentrated on pleasures of the flesh activities, aggressive and successful in their own work, but are impelled from time to time to indulge in masochistic perversions such as dressing like the opposite gender or playing the naughty boy or girl and having themselves beaten. On the other hand, the fears that prevent the neurotic from finding a satisfactory solution of one’s difficulties may also pervade one’s masochistic drives. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

If these drives are of a pleasure of the flesh nature one will then, in spite of intense masochistic fantasies concerning relations of pleasures of the flesh, keep away from pleasures of the flesh altogether, showing a repugnance toward the other gender, or at least grave inhibitions with pleasures of the flesh. Dr. Freud regards masochistic drives as an essentially phenomenon involving pleasures of the flesh. Originally he regarded masochism as an aspect of a definite, biologically determined stage of sexual development, the so-called anal-sadistic stage. Later he added the hypothesis that masochistic drives have an inherent kinship with feminine nature and imply something like living out a wish to be the opposite gender. His last assumption, as mentioned before, is that masochistic drives are a combination of self-destructive and drives dealing with pleasures of the flesh, and that their function is to render the self-destructive drives harmless to the individual. My point of view, on the other hand, may be summed up as follows. Masochistic drives are neither an essential phenomenon dealing with pleasures of the flesh nor the result of biologically determined processes, but originate in personality conflicts. Their aim is not suffering; the neurotic wishes to suffer as little as anyone else wishes it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Neurotic suffering, inasmuch as it serves certain functions, is not what the person wants but what one pays, and the satisfaction one aims at is not suffering itself but a relinquishment of the self. Most of us are familiar with the often used but very true expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Perhaps we have even uttered it on occasion. However, do we sincerely believe it? I think not. If we truly believed it, we would be far less judgmental, much more compassionate toward, and quick to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ. God has been a beneficial purpose in giving the thorn, whatever it was, to Paul. And it was God who gave it, even though it was given through the instrumentality of Satan. Satan certainly had no interest in curbing Paul’s temptation to pride; he would have wanted just the opposite. As in the case of Job, Satan undoubtedly wanted to drive a wedge between Paul and the Lord; he wanted Paul to turn against God. However, just as God and Satan had different purposes for Paul’s thorn in the flesh. God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers,” reports Romans 8.28-29. God’s purpose for Paul’s thorn is clearly stated in the text: “to keep me from becoming conceited,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.7. Sometimes God’s purpose for allowing pain in our lives is clear; more often, it seems, it is not. In fact, frequently a great part of the pain is the sheer irrationality of it. God never explained to Job the Purpose of his unbelievable pain. He left Job to suffer in the dark, so to speak. That is usually our experienced. Paul said the thorn was given to torment him. Other various translate the verb as “harass,” “buffet,” or “afflict.” The same verb is used in 1 Corinthians 4.11 where it is translated as “brutally treated.” Paul was brutally treated by Satan. The apostle Peter said, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour,” reports 1 Peter 5.8. The devil is cruel and vicious. He would devour us, if he could. He torments us to the full extent God allows. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

However, as was the case when Joseph’s brother sold him into slavery, through the devil intends to harm us, God intends it for good. “You intended to harm me, but God intended if for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives,” reports Genesis 50.20. Paul’s reaction to this thorn was one of deep anguish. He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.8. Although the turn was always present, there were probably times when its pain, whether physical or emotional or both, was unusually severe. It is likely that on three of those occasions Paul was driven to cry out to God for its removal. Mormon abridges the large plates of Nephi—he puts the small plates with the other plates—King Benjamin established peace in the land. About After Death 385. “And now I, Mormon, being about to deliver up the record which I have been making into the hands of my son Moroni, behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people, the Nephites. And it is many hundreds of years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son; and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people. However, many God grant that he may survive them, that he may write somewhat concerning them, and somewhat concerning Christ, that perhaps someday it may profit them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king of Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which has been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this kind Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi. And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of he prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have been fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely comes to pass—wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people. However, behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren. And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, one worketh in me to do according to his will. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

And my prayer to God is concerning my brethren, that they may once again come to knowledge of God, yea, the redemption of Christ; that they may once again be a delightsome people. And now I, Mormon, proceed to finish out my record, which I take from the plates of Nephi; and I make it according to the knowledge and the understanding which God has given me. Wherefore, it came to pass that after Amaleki had delivered up these plates into the hands of king Benjamin, he took them out and put them with the other plates, which contained records which had been handed down by the kings, from generation to generation until the days of king Benjamin. And they were handed down from king Benjamin, from generation to generation until they have fallen into my hands. And I, Mormon, pray to God that they may be preserved from this time henceforth. And I know that they will be preserved; for there are great things written upon them, out of which my people and their brethren shall be judged at the great and last day, according to the word of God which is written. And now, concerning this king Benjamin—he had somewhat of contentions among his own people. And it came to pass also that the armies of the Lamanites came down out of the land of Nephi, to battle against his people. However, behold, king Benjamin gathered together his armies, and he did stand against them; and he did fight with the strength of his own arm, with the sword of Laban. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“And in the strength of the Lord they did contend against their enemies, until they had slain many thousands of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they did contend against the Lamanites until they had driven them out of all the lands of their inheritance. And it came to pass that after there had been false Christs, and their mouths had been shut, and they punished according to their crimes; and after there had been false prophets, and false preachers and teachers among the people, and all these having been much contention and many dissension away unto the Lamanites, behold, it came to pass that king Benjamin, with the assistance of the holy prophets who were among his people—for behold, king Benjamin was a holy man, and he did reign over his people in righteousness; and there were many holy people in the land, and they did speak the word of God with power and with authority; and they did use much sharpness because of the stiffneckedness of the people—wherefore, with the help of these, king Benjamin, by labouring with all the might of his body and the faculty of his whole soul, and also the prophet, did once more establish peace in the land. Being filled with the very essence of restoration and life, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that by the Heavenly Gifts which Thou art pleased to bestow on us, Thou wouldest grant us to cleave to things Heavenly; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Elector of Saints, blessed is the person whom Thou choosest and callest to Thyself. With Thee is mercy, redemption, assurance, forgiveness; Thou hast lifted me, a prisoner, out of the pit of sin and pronounced my discharge, not only in the courts of Heaven, but in the dock of conscience; hast justified me by faith, given me peace with Thee, made me to enjoy glorious liberty as Thy child. Save me from the false hope of the hypocrite: May I never suppose I am in Christ unless I am a new creature, never think I am born of the Spirit unless I mind the things of the Spirit, never rest satisfied with professions of belief and outward forms and services, while my heart is not right with Thee. May I judge my sincerity in religion by my fear to offend Thee, my concern to know Thy will, my willingness to deny myself. May nothing render me forgetful of Thy glory, or turn me aside from Thy commands, or shake my confidence in Thy promises, or offend Thy children. Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful. May I not be inattentive to the design of Thy dealings with me, or insensible under Thy rebukes, or immobile at Thy calls. May I learn the holy art of abiding in Thee, of being in the World and not of it, making everything not only consistent with but conducive to my religion. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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Refreshed with the participation of the sacred Gift, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that we may feel the effectual working of the rite which we celebrate; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Hitch Your Wagon to a Star and Never Leave that Till Tomorrow which You Can do Today!

June 13, 2020 12:57 am

The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing you will make one. While liberals criticize the model of deliberative democracy for possibly overextending itself and corroding the sphere of individual privacy, feminist theorists criticize this model for not extending itself broadly enough to be truly inclusive. The distinction between public and private as it appears in modern political theory expresses a will for homogeneity that necessitates the exclusion of many persons and groups, particularly women and radicalized groups culturally identified with the body, wildness and rationality. In conformity with the modern idea of normative reason, the idea of the public in modern political theory and practice designates a sphere of human existence in which citizens express their rationality and universality, abstracted from their particular situations and need, and opposed to feeling. Examination of the exclusionary and homogeneous ideal in modern political theory, however, shows that we cannot envision such renewal of public life as a recovery of Enlightenment ideals. Instead, we need to transform the distinction between public and private that does not correlate with an opposition between reason and affectively desire, or universal and particular. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

In this cogent and penetrating feminist critique of the ideal of the impartial public applies to the model of deliberative democracy suggested in the preceding only in certain respects. Certainly, the model of a general deliberative assembly that governed our conceptions of the public sphere well into the twenty-first century was historically, socially, and culturally a space for male bodies. I mean this not only in a sense that only men were active citizens entitled to hold office and appear in public, but also in the sense that the institutional iconography of early democratic theory privileged the male mode of self-representation. Yet here we must distinguish between the institutional and the conceptual critique. There is a certain ambivalence in the feminist critique of such models of the public sphere and deliberative democracy. On the one hand, the critique appears to take democratic institutions at their principled best and to criticize their biased and restrictive implementations in practice; on the other hand, the feminist critique appears to aim at a rejection of the ideals of free public reason and impartiality altogether. The democratic public sphere appears to be essentially and not just accidentally masculinist. A normative theory of deliberative democracy requires a strong concept of the public sphere as its institutional correlate. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

The public sphere replaces the model of the general deliberative assembly found in early democratic theory. In this context, it is important for feminist theorists to specify the level of their conceptual objection, and to differentiate among institutional and normative presuppositions. We do not reject the ideal of a public sphere, only its Enlightenment variety. Perhaps we should replace the ideal of the “civil public” with that of a heterogeneous public. There are a number of institutional measures that would guarantee and solidify group representation in such a public sphere. Yet wanting to retain the public sphere and according it a place in democratic theory is not compatible with the more radical critique of the ideal of impartial reason. We can distinguish between “deliberative” and “communicative” democracy on the grounds that most theories of deliberative democracy offer too narrow a conception of the democratic process because they continue to privilege an ideal of a common good in which the discussions participants are all supposed to leave behind their particular experience and interests. By contrast, we advocate a theory of communicative democracy according to which individuals would attend to one another’s differences in class, gender, race, religion, and so one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

Each social position has a partial perspective on the public that is does not abandon; but through the communicative process participants transcend and transform their initial situated knowledges. Instead of critical argumentation, such processes of communicative confrontation privilege modalities of communication like greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling. I think this distinction between deliberative and communicative democracy is more apparent than real. To sustain critique of the ideals of impartiality and objectivity, which we associate with the deliberative model, we must also be able to distinguish the kind of transformation and transcendence of partial perspectives that occurs in communicative democracy from the mutual agreement to be reached in process of deliberative democracy. Yet how can we distinguish between the emergence of common opinion among members of one group, if we do not apply to such processes of communications or deliberation some standards of fairness and impartiality in order to judge the manner in which opinions were allowed to be brought forth, groups were given chances to express their points of view, and the like? The model of communicative democracy, far from dispensing with the need for standards of impartiality and fairness, requires them to make sense of its own formulations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

Without some such standards, we could not differentiate the genuine transformation partial and situated perspectives from mere agreements of convenience or apparent unanimity reached under conditions of duress. With respects to modes of communication like greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling, I would say that each of these modes may have their place within the informally structed process of everyday communication among individuals who share a cultural and historical life World. However, it is neither necessary for the democratic theorist to try to formulize and institutionalize these aspects of communicative everyday competence, nor is it plausible—and this is the more important objection—to build an opposition between them and critical argumentation. Greeting, storytelling, and rhetoric, although they may be aspects of informal communication in our everyday life, cannot become the public language of institutions and legislatures in a democracy for the following reasons: to attain legitimacy, democratic institutions require the articulation of the bases of their actions and policies in discursive language that appeals to commonly shared and accepted public reasons. In constitutional democracies such public reasons take the form of general statements consonant with the rule of law. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

The rule of law has a certain rhetoric structure of its own: it is general, applies to all members of a specified reference group on the basis of legitimate reasons. In our attempt to transform the language of the rule of law into a more partial, affective, and situated mode of communication would have the consequences of inducting arbitrariness, for all who can tell how far the power of a greeting can reach? It would further create capriciousness—what about those who simply cannot understand by story? It would limit rather than enhance social justice because rhetoric moves people and achieves results without having to render an account of the bases upon which it induces people to engage in certain courses of action rather than others. In short, some moral ideal of impartiality is a regulative principle that should govern not only our deliberations in public but also the articulation of reasons by public institutions. What is considered impartial has to be in the best interests of all equally. Without such a normative principle, neither the ideal of the rule of law can be sustained nor deliberative reasoning toward a common good occur. Some Enlightenment ideals are part of any conception of democratic legitimacy and the public sphere. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

The point therefore is not rejection of the Enlightenment in toto but a critical renegotiation of its legacy. Expanding on the model of a heterogeneous, dispersed network of many publics, it is suggested how, in fact, once the unitary model of the public sphere is abandoned, women’s concerns, as well as those of other excluded groups, can be accommodated. Such a nonunitary and dispersed network of public can accommodate women’s desires for their own spaces, in their own terms. In such subaltern counter publics, the lines between the public and the private, for example, can be renegotiated, rethought, challenged, and reformulated. It is nonetheless a long step from the cultural and social rethinking and reformulation of such distinctions as between the public and the private to their implementation in legislation and governmental regulation. While sharing the concern of liberal theorists that the precipitous reformulation of such a divide may corrode individual liberties, we rightly point out that there is a distinction between opinion-making and policy-making public bodies, and that the same kinds of contrasts may not apply to each alike. Opinion-making publics, as found in social movements, for example, can lead us to recognizer and rethink very controversial issues about privacy, pleasures of the flesh, and intimacy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

However, this does not imply that the only or even most desirable consequence of such processes of public deliberation should be general legislation. Thus when conceived as an anonymous, plural, and multiple medium of communication and deliberation, the public sphere need not homogenize and repress difference. Heterogeneity, otherness, and difference can find expression in the multiple associations, networks, and citizens’ forums, all of which constitute public life under late capitalism. My goal in this essay has been to outline a deliberative model of democracy that incorporates features of practical rationality. Central to practical rationality is the possibility of free public deliberation about matters of mutual concern to all. The discourse model of ethics and politics suggest a procedure for such free public deliberation among all concerned. Such processes of public deliberation have a claim to rationality because they increase and make available necessary information, because they allow the expression of arguments in the light of which opinions and beliefs need to be revised, and because they lead to the formation of conclusions that can be challenged publicly for good reasons. Furthermore, such procedures allow self-referential critique of their own uses and abuses. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

One who takes up the vocation of spiritual service should do so only if one be sufficiently prepared for it morally—only if one be destitute of ambitions and greeds, detached from people and the thought of people, isolated from personal motivations, liberated from the lower emotions. A master of issues no command and requires no obedience. Others may do so but not one. One will bear no grudge if one’s advice is rejected. The self-actualized who performs the enlightened potentate to one’s court disciples may be unconsciously playing up to their desires or expectations but also playing down to one’s own desire for power. It may help to keep them in juvenile dependence on one but also keep one within the ego and thus reduce one’s capacity to serve them. Even if one were not ethically more sensitive and hence more scrupulous than most people, one’s own spiritual dignity and personal self-respect would alone forbid one’s taking advantage of the credulous, the inexperienced, or the unbalanced. The spiritual guide who is not oneself free from passion is a dangerous guide for those who are still struggling in the grip of passion. The teacher who has not utterly subdued personal egoism is unfit to assist those who seek liberation from it. One should learn to solve the problems of other people. The true teacher identifies oneself with one’s student and does not sit on a Himalayan height of self-esteem. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

The chief institutional correlate of such a model of deliberative democracy is a multiple, anonymous, heterogenous network of many public and public conversations. In other domains of social life as well, the model of deliberative democracy based on the centrality of public deliberation can inspire the proliferation of many institutional designs. Usually the sufferings entailed in these tendencies toward weakness yield no conscious satisfaction but, on the contrary, regardless of the purpose they serve, are definitely part of the neurotic’s general awareness of misery. Nevertheless these tendencies aim at a satisfaction, even when they do not, or at least apparently do not, reach it. Occasionally this aim can be observed and sometimes it even becomes apparent that the goal of satisfaction has been achieved. An individual who went to visit some friends living in the country felt disappointed that no one met her at the station and that some of her friends were not at home when she arrived. Thus far, she said, the experience was wholly painful. However, then she felt herself sliding into a feeling of being utterly desolate and forlorn, a feeling which, son afterwards, she recognized as entirely disproportionate to the provocation. This submergence in misery not only lulled the pain but was felt as positively pleasurable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

The achievement of satisfaction is much more frequent and more obvious in fantasies involving pleasures of the flesh and perversions of a masochistic character, such as fantasies of being assaulted, beaten, humiliated, enslaved, or their actual enactment. In fact they are only another manifestation of this same general inclination toward weakness. The obtaining of satisfaction by submersion in misery is an expression of the general principle of finding satisfaction by losing the self in something greater, by dissolving the individuality, by getting rid of the self with its doubts, conflicts, pains, limitations and isolation. This is called liberation from the principium individuationis. It is what is meant by the Dionysian tendency and is considered one of the basic strivings in human beings, as opposed to what is called the Apollonian tendency, which works toward an active molding and mastering of life. Dionysian trends have attempts to induce ecstatic experience, and these tendencies are widespread among the various cultures, and they manifold their expressions. The term “Dionysian” is taken from the Dionysus cults in Greece. These, as well as the earlier cults of Thracians, had as their aim the extreme stimulations of all feelings up to visionary states. This means of producing ecstatic states were music, uniform rhythm of flutes, raving dances at night, intoxicating drinks and pleasures of the flesh abandon, all working up to a seething excitement and ecstasy. (The term ecstasy means literally being outside or beside oneself.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

All over the World there are customs and cults following the same principle: in groups abandonment in festivals and religious ecstasy, and individuals, oblivion in drugs. Pain also plays a role in producing the Dionysian condition. In some Plains India tribes visions are induced by fasting, cutting off a piece of flesh, being tied in a painful position. In the Sun Dances, one of the most important ceremonies of the Plains Indians, physical torture was a very common means of stimulating ecstatic experiences. The Flagellantes in the Middle Ages used beatings to produce ecstasy. The Penitentes in New Mexico used thorns, beatings, the carrying of heavy loads. Though these cultural expressions of Dionysian tendencies are far from being patterned experience in our culture, they are not entirely alien to us. To some degree all of us know the satisfaction derived from losing ourselves. We feel it in the process of falling asleep after a physical or mental strain or of going into narcosis. The same effect can be induced by alcohol. In the use of alcohol certainly losing inhibitions is one of the factors involved, and lulling grief and anxiety is another, but here too the ultimate satisfaction aimed at is the satisfaction of oblivion and abandon. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

And there are few persons who do not know the satisfaction of losing themselves in some great feeling, whether it be love, nature, music, enthusiasm for a cause or pleasures of the flesh abandon. How can we account for the apparent universality of these strivings? In spite of all the happiness life can afford, it is at the same time full of inescapable tragedy. Even if there is no particular sufferings, there still remain the facts of old age, sickness, and death; in still more general terms, the fact remains inherent in human life that the individual is limited and isolated—limited in what one can understand, achieve, or enjoy, isolated because one is a unique entity, separate from one’s fellow beings and from surrounding nature. In fact, it is this individual limitation and isolation which mist of the cultural trends toward oblivion and abandon tend to overcome. The most poignant and beautiful expression of this striving is found in the Upanishad, in the picture of rivers which flow and, disappearing into the ocean, lose name and shape. By dissolving the self in something greater, by becoming part of a greater entity, the individual overcomes to a certain extent one’s limitations; as it is expressed in the Upanishad, “By vanishing to nothing, we become part of the creative principle of the Universe.” This seems to be the great consolation and gratification which religion has to offer human beings; by losing themselves they can become at one with God or nature. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

The same satisfaction can be achieved by devotion to a great cause; by surrendering to the self to a cause we feel at one with a greater whole. In our culture we are more aware of the opposite attitude toward the self, the attitude that emphasizes and highly values the particularities and uniqueness of individuality. Humans in our culture feels strongly that one’s own self is a separate unity, distinguished from or opposite to the World outside. Not only does one insist on this individuality but one derives a great deal of satisfaction from it; one finds happiness in developing one’s special potentialities, mastering oneself and the World in active conquest, being constructive and doing creative work. Of this ideal of personal development Goethe has said, “Hoechstes Glueck der Menschenkinder ist doch die Persoenlichkeit.” However, the opposite tendency that we have discussed—the tendency to break through the shell individuality and be rid of its limitations and isolation—is an equally deep-rooted human attitude, and is also pregnant with potential satisfaction. Neither of these tendencies is itself pathological; both the preservation and development of individuality and the sacrifice of individuality are legitimate goals in the solution of human problems. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

Although these proposed philosophies of life, these recipes of being, are presented as though from a stigmatized individual’s personal point of view, on analysis it is apparent that something else informs them. This something else is groups, in the broad sense of like-situated individuals, and this is only to be expected, since what an individual is, or could be, derives from the place of this kind in the social structure. One of these groups is the aggregate formed by the individual’s fellow-sufferers. The spokesperson of this group claim that the individual’s real group, the one to which one naturally belongs, is this group. All the other categories and groups to which the individual necessarily also belongs are implicitly considered to be not one’s real ones; one is no really one of them. The individual’s real group, then, is the aggregate of persons who are likely to have to suffer the same deprivation as one suffers because of having the same stigma; one’s real “group,” in fact, is the category which can serve as one’s discrediting. The character these spokespersons allow the individual is generated by the relation one has to those of one’s own kind. If one turns to one’s group, one is loyal and authentic; if one turns away, one is craven and a fool. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

The admonition that the stigmatized individual should be loyal to one’s group is voiced by professional scientists, too. For example, Riesman, in “Marginality, Conformity, and Insight,” Phylon, Third Quarter, 1935, 251-252, in describing how a sociologist, or an American, or a professor may each be seduced into accepting compliments regarding one’s self that are an insult to one’s group, adds this story: “I myself recall that I once told a woman lawyer that she was not as strident and aggressive as other Portias I had known, and I regret that she took this as a compliment and consented to the betrayal of her female colleagues of the bar. Here, surely, is a clear illustration of a basic sociological them: the nature of an individual, as one oneself as we impute it to one, if generated by the nature of one’s group affiliations. Sociologically, it should be clear that in finding oneself in different social situations, the individual will find oneself facing different claims as to which of one’s many groups is one’s real one. Other matter are less clear. Why, for example, should individuals who have already paid a considerable price for their stigma be told not to pass; perhaps according to the rule that the less you have had the less you should try to obtains? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

And if derogation of those with a particular stigma is bad in the present and bad for the future, why should those who have the stigma, more so than those who do not, be given the responsibility of presenting and enforcing a fair-minded stand and improving the lot of the category as a whole? One answer, of course is that those with the stigma should “know better,” thus assuming an interesting relation between knowledge and morality. A better answer, perhaps, is that those with a particular stigma are often considered by themselves and by normals to be linked together through space and time into a single community that should be supported by its members. As might be expected, professionals who take an in-group standpoint may advocate a militant and chauvinistic line—even to the extent of favouring a secessionist ideology. Taking this tack, the stigmatized individual in mixed contacts will give praise to the assumed special values and contributions of one’s kind. One may also flaunt some stereotypical attributes which one could easily cover; thus, one finds second generations Jews who aggressively interlard their speech with Jewish aggressively interlard their speech with Jewish idiom and accent, and the militant homosexual who are patriotically swish in public places. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

The stigmatized individual may also openly question the half-concealed disapproval with which normals treat one, and wait to “fault” the self-appointed wise, that is, continue to examine the other’s actions and words until some fugitive sign is obtained that their show of accepting one is only a show. The problems associated with militancy are well known. When the ultimate political objective is to remove stigma from the differentness, the individual may find that one’s very efforts can politicize one’s own life, rendering it even more different from the normal life initially denied one—even though the next generation of one’s fellow may greatly profit from one’s efforts by being more accepted. Further, in drawing attention to the situation of one’s own kind one is in some respects consolidating a public image of one’s differentness as a real thing and of one’s fellow-stigmatized as constituting a real group. On the other hand, if one seeks some kind of separateness, not assimilation, one may find that one is necessarily presenting one’s militant efforts in the language and style of one’s enemies. Moreover, the pleas one presents, the plight one reviews, the strategies one advocates, are all part of an idiom of expression and feeling that belongs to the whole society. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

One’s disdain for a society that rejects one can be understood only in terms of that society’s conception of pride, dignity, and independence. In short, unless there is some alien culture on which to fall back, the more one separates oneself structurally from the normals, the more likely one may become culturally. “Behold, it came to pass that I, Omni, being commanded by my father, Jarom, that I should write somewhat upon these plates, to preserve our genealogy—wherefore, in my days, I would that ye should know that I fought much with the sword to preserve my people, the Nephites, from falling into the hands of their enemies, the Lamanites. However, behold, I of myself am a wicked man, and I have not kept the statues and the commandments of the Lord as I ought to have done. And it came to pass that two hundred and seventy and six years had passed away, and we had many seasons of peace; and we had many seasons of serious war and bloodshed. Yea, and in fine, two hundred and eighty and two years had passes away, and I had kept these plates according to the commandments of my fathers; and I conferred them upon my son Amaron. And I make an end. And now I, Amaron, write the things whatsoever I write, which are few, in the book of my father. Behold, it came to pass that three hundred and twenty years had passed away, and the more wicked part of the Nephites were destroyed. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“For the Lord would not suffer, after he had led them out of the land of Jerusalem and kept and preserved the from falling into the hands of their enemies, yea, he would not suffer that the words should not be verified, which he spake unto our fathers, saying that: Inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall not prosper in the land. Wherefore, the Lord did visit them in great judgment; nevertheless, he did spare the righteous that they should not perish, butt did deliver them out of the hands of their enemies. And it came to pass that I did deliver the plates unto my brother Chemish. Now, I Chemish, write what few things I write, in the same book with my brother; for behold, I saw the last which he wrote, that he wrote it with his own hand; and he wrote it in the day that he delivered them unto me. And after this manner we keep the records, for it is according to the commandments of our fathers. And I make an end. Behold, I, Abinadom, am the son of Chemish. Behold, it came to pass that I saw much war and contention between my people, the Nephites, and the Lamanites; and I, with my own sword, have taken the lives of many of the Lamanites in defense of my brethren. And behold, the record of this people is engraven upon plates which is had by the kinds, according to the generations; and I know of no revelation save that which has been written, neither prophecy; wherefore, that which is sufficient is written. And I make an end. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“Behold, I am Amaleki, the son of Abinadom. Behold, I will speak unto you somewhat concerning Mosiah, who was made king over the land of Zarahemla; for behold, he being warned of the Lord that he should fled out of the land of Nephi, and as many would hearken unto the voice of the Lord should also depart out of the land with him, into the wilderness—and it came to pass that he did according as the Lord had commanded him. And they departed out of the land into the wilderness, as many as would hearken unto the voice of the Lord; and they were led by many preachings and prophesyings. And they were admonished continually by the word of God; and they were led by the power of his arm, through the wilderness until they came down into the land which is called the and of Zarahemla. And they discovered a people, who were called the people of Zarahemla. Now, there was great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla; and also Zarahemla did rejoice exceedingly, because the Lord had sent the people of Mosiah with the plates of brass which contained the record of the Jews. Behold, it came to pass that Mosiah discovered them; and they had dwelt there from that time forth. And at the time that Mosiah discovered them, they had become exceedingly numerous. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“Nevertheless, they had had many wars and serious contentions, and had fallen by the sword from time to time; and their language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them. However, it came to pass that Mosiah caused that they should be taught in his language. And it came to pass that after they were taught in the language of Mosiah, Zarahemla gave a genealogy of his fathers, according to his memory; and they are written, but not in these plates. And it came to pass that the people of Zarahemla, and of Mosiah, did unite together; and Mosiah was appointed to be their king. And it came to pass in the days of Mosiah, there was a large stone brought unto him with engravings on it; and he did interpret the engravings by the gift and power of God. And they gave an account of one Coriantumr, and the slain of his people. And Coriantumr was discovered by the people of Zarahemla; and he dwelt with them for the space of nine moons. It also spake a few words concerning his fathers. And his first parent came out from the tower, at the time of the Lord confounded the language of the people; and the severity of the Lord fell upon them according to his judgments, which are just; and their bones lay scattered in the land northward. Before, I, Amaleki, was born inn the days of Mosiah; and I have lived to see his death; and Benjamin, his son, reigneth in his stead. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And behold, I have seen, in the days of king Benjamin, a serious war and much bloodshed between the Nephites and the Lamanites. However, behold, the Nephites did obtain much advantage over them; yea, insomuch that king Benjamin did drive them out of the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that I began to be old; and, having no seed, and knowing king Benjamin to be a just man before the Lord, wherefore, I shall deliver up these plates unto him, exhorting all humans to come unto God, the Holy One of Israel, and believe in prophesying, and in revelations, and in the ministering of Angels, and in the gift of speaking with tongues, and in the gift of interpreting languages, and in all things which is good save it comes from the Lord: and that which is evil cometh from the devil. And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved. And now I would speak somewhat concerning a certain number who were desirous to possess the land of their inheritance. Wherefore, they went up into the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“And their leader being a strong and mighty man, and a stiffnecked man, wherefore he caused a contention among them; and they were all slain, save fifty, in the wilderness, and they returned again to the land of Zarahemla. And it came to pass that they also took others to a considerable number, and took their journey again into the wilderness. And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them. And I am about to lie down in my grace; and these plates are full. And I make an end of my speaking,” reports Omni 1.1-30. Heavenly Father, Thou hast led me singing to the cross where I fling down all my burdens and see them vanish, where my mountains of guilt are levelled to a plain, where my sins disappear, though they are the greatest that exist, and are more in number than the grains of fine sand; for there is power in the blood of Calvary to destroy sins more than can be counted even by one from the choir of Heaven. Thou hast given me a hill-side spring that washes clear and white, and I go as a sinner to its waters, bathing without hinderance in its crystal streams. At the cross there is free forgiveness for poor and meek ones, and ample blessings that last forever; the blood of the Lamb is like a great river of infinite grace with never any diminishing of its fullness as thirsty ones without number drink of it. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

O Lord, forever will Thy free forgiveness live that was gained on the mount of blood; in the midst of a World of pain it is a subject for praise in every place a song on Earth, an anthem in Heaven, its love and virtue knowing no end. I have a longing for the World above where multitudes sing the great song, for my soul was never created to love the dust of Earth. Though here my spiritual state is frail and poor, I shall go on singing Calvary’s anthem. May I always know that a clean heart full of goodness is more beautiful than the lily, that only a clean heart can sing by night and by day, that such a heart is mine when I abide at Calvary. Please Visit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy family, and guard with watchful tenderness the hearts which have been hallowed by scared Mysteries; that as by Thy mercy they receive the healings Gifts of eternal salvation, they may retain them by Thy protecting power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please defend, O Lord, with Thy protection those whom Thou satisfies with Heavenly Gifts; that being set free from all things hurtful, we may press onwards with our whole heart to the salvation which cometh from Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We have received, O Lord, the glorious Mysteries, and pray Thee by means of them to make us partakers of things Heavenly, while we are dwelling on the Earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

Cresleigh Homes

This week’s Cresleigh Blog welcomes you to #MillsStation at #CresleighRanch! Located in the heart of Rancho Cordova, this community features modern homes built for making memories. 😍 Check it out at the link in bio! https://www.instagram.com/p/CBWN3lLgHaX/

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We beseech Thee, O Lord, that the solemn reception of Thy Sacrament may cleanse us from all our old sins, and change us into new creatures; though Jesus Christ our Lord. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/

Is Tragedy Stronger than Hope? Does the Past Conquer the Future? Is Wrath More Powerful than Mercy?

June 12, 2020 12:30 am

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. We have seen that in struggling with one’s conflicts the neurotic person undergoes a great deal of suffering, that moreover one often uses suffering as a means of attaining certain goals which, because of existing dilemmas, are difficult to attain otherwise. Though we are able to recognize in every individual situation the reasons why suffering is used and the ends that are to be achieved by it, there remains some bewilderment why people should be willing to pay such an enormous price. It looks as if the generous use made of suffering, and the readiness to recoil from an active mastering of life, grow out of an underlying drive which can be roughly described as a tendency to make the self weaker instead of stronger, miserable instead of happy. Since this tendency is contradictory to general conceptions of human’s nature it has been a great puzzle, in fact a stumbling block to psychology and psychiatry. It is indeed the basic problem of masochism. The term masochism originally referred to perversions dealing with pleasures of the flesh, and fantasies in which pleasures of the flesh is obtained through suffering, though being beaten, tortured, assaulted, enslaved, humiliated. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

Dr. Freud has recognized these perversions and fantasies associated with pleasures of the flesh are akin to the general tendencies toward suffering, that is, those which have no apparent foundations in pleasures of the flesh; these latter tendencies have been classified as “moral masochism.” Since in perversions and fantasies associated with pleasures of the flesh suffering aims at a positive satisfaction, the conclusion has been drawn that all neurotic suffering is determined by a wish for satisfaction, or to put in into simple language, that the neurotic wants to suffer. The difference better perversions associated with pleasures of the flesh and so-called moral masochism is assumed to be a difference of awareness. In the former both the striving for satisfaction and the satisfaction are conscious; in the latter both are unconscious. The obtaining of satisfaction through suffering is a big problem even in perversions, but it becomes still more puzzling in the general tendencies toward suffering. Many attempts have been made to account for masochistic phenomena. The most brilliant of them is Dr. Freud’s hypothesis of death instinct. This contends, briefly, that there are two main biological forces operating within humans: the life instinct and the death instinct. The latter force, which aims at self-destruction, when combined with libidinal drives results in the phenomenon of masochism. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

A question of great interest which I want to raise here is whether the tendency to suffer can be understood psychologically, without taking recourse to a biological hypothesis. To begin with we have to tackle a misunderstanding, which consist in confounding actual suffering with the tendency to suffer. There is no warrant for jumping to the conclusion that since suffering exists there is therefore a tendency to incur it or even to enjoy it. For example we cannot, with H. Deutsch, interpret that fact that in our culture women secretly enjoy these pains masochistically, even though this may certainly be true in exceptional cases. A great deal of the suffering that occurs in neuroses has nothing at all to do with a wish to suffer, but is only the unavoidable consequences of existing conflicts. It occurs just as pains occurs after one has broken a leg. In both cases the pains appear regardless of whether the person wants them or not, and one does not gain anything by the suffering they incur. Manifest anxiety engendered by existing conflicts is the outstanding but not the only example for suffering of this type in neuroses. Other kinds of neurotic suffering are also to be understood in this way—such as the suffering which accompanies the realization of a growing discrepancy between potentialities and factual achievements, the feeling of being hopelessly caught in certain dilemmas, hypersensitivity to the slightest offenses, self-contempt for having a neurosis. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

This part of neurotic suffering, since it is quite unobtrusive, is often altogether neglected when the problem is tackled with the hypothesis that the neurotic wishes to suffer. And when this is done one wonders sometimes to what extent laypeople and even some psychiatrists unconsciously share the contemptuous attitude which the neurotic oneself has toward one’s neurosis. Having eliminated the neurotic sufferings which are not caused by tendencies to suffer we turn now to those which are so caused and hence fall under the category of masochistic drives. In these the surface impression is that the neurotic suffers more than is warranted by reality. In more detail, one gives the impression that something within on avidly seizes upon every opportunity to suffer, that one can manage to turn even fortuitous circumstances into something painful, that one is quite unwilling to relinquish suffering. However, here he behaviour which produces this impression to a large extent accounted for by the functions which neurotic suffering has for the person concerned. As to these functions of neurotic suffering I may summarize what we have seen thus far. Suffering may have a direct defense value for the neurotic, and may often, in fact, be the only way one can protect oneself against imminent dangers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

By self-recrimination one avoids being accused and accusing others, by appearing ill or ignorant one avoids reproaches, by belittling oneself one avoids the danger of competition—but the suffering one thereby brings on oneself is at the same time a defense. Suffering is also a means of getting what one wants, of carrying out one’s demands effectively and of putting one’s demands on a justified basis. Concerning one’s wishes toward life the neurotic is in a dilemma. One’s wishes are, or have become, imperative and unconditional, partly because they are prompted by anxiety, partly because they are not checked by any real consideration of others. However, on the other hand one’s own capacity to assert one’s demands is greatly impaired, because of one’s lack of spontaneous self-assertion, in more general terms because of one’s basic feeling of helplessness. The result of one’s dilemma is that one expects others to take care of one’s wishes. One gives the impression that underlying one’s actions is a conviction that others are responsible for one’s life and that hey are to be blamed if things go wrong. This collides with one’s conviction that no one grants one anything, and the result is that one feels one has to coerce others to fulfill one’s wishes. It is here that suffering comes to one’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

Suffering and helplessness become one’s outstanding means of obtaining affection, help, control, and at the same time allow one to evade all demands that others might make of one. Suffering has finally the function of expressing accusations against others in a disguised but effective way. When the function of neurotic suffering are recognized the problem is divested of some of its mysterious character, but is still not completely solved. In spite of the strategical value of suffering there is one factor which lends support to the notion that the neurotic wants to suffer: often one suffers more than is warranted by the strategical goal, tends to exaggerate one’s misery, to submerge oneself in feelings of helplessness, unhappiness and unworthiness. Even though we know that one’s emotions are likely to be exaggerated and that they cannot be take at face value, we are struck by the fact that the disappointments which result from one’s conflicting tendencies throw one into an abyss of misery which is disproportionate to the significance that the situation had for one. When one has been but moderately successful one dramatically exaggerates one’s defeat as an irrevocable disgrace. When one has merely failed to assert oneself one’s self-esteem drops like a deflated balloon. Wen during analysis one has to face the unpleasant prospect of working through a new problem one drop into absolute hopelessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

We still have to examine why one thus seemingly voluntarily increases one’s sufferings beyond the strategical necessities. In such suffering there are no apparent advantages to be gained, no audiences that might be impressed, no sympathy to be won, no secret triumph in asserting one’s will over others. Nevertheless, there is a gain for the neurotic, but of a different kind. Incurring a failure in love, a defeat in competition, having to realize a definite weakness or shortcoming of one’s own is unbearable for one who has such high-flown notions of one’s uniqueness. Thus when one dwindles to nothing in one’s own estimation, the categories of success and failure, superiority and inferiority cease to exist; by exaggerating one’s pain, by losing oneself in a general feeling of misery or unworthiness, the aggravating experience loses some of its reality, the sting of the special pain is lulled, narcotized. The principle operating in this process is a dialectic one, containing the philosophical truth that at a certain point quantity is converted into quality. Concretely, it means that though suffering is painful, abandoning one’s self to excessive suffering may serve as an opiate against pain. A masterly description of this process is given in a Danish novel Aage von Kohl. The story concerns a writer whose beloved wife had been lust-murdered to years before. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

The husband had been warding off the unbearable pain by only dimly experiencing what had happened. To escape the realization of his grief he had plunged into work and had written a book, working day and night. The narrative begins the day the book is finished, that is, at the psychological moment when one would have to face one’s pain. We meet him first at the cemetery, whither his steps have inadvertently led him. We see him indulging in the most gruesome and fantastic speculations of such thoughts as worms eating the dead, people buried alive. He is exhausted and returns home, where his torture continues. He is impelled to recall minutely what had happened. If her had gone with his wife that evening when she visited friends, if she had reached him by telephone to ask him to call for her, if she had stayed with the friends, if he had taken a walk and happened to meet her at the station, perhaps the murder would not have occurred. Impelled to imagine in detail how the murder took place he becomes submerged in an ecstasy of pain, until finally he loses consciousness. Thus far the story is of particular interests for the problem we have been discussing. What happens further is that after having recovered from his orgy of torment he still has to work through the problem of taking revenge, and ultimately he becomes capable of facing his pain realistically. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

The process that is presented in this story is the same that can be seen in certain mourning customers that serve to alleviate the pain of loss by acutely intensifying it and inducing complete abandonment to it. When this narcotic effect of exaggerated pain is recognized we have a further help in finding understandable motivations in masochistic drives. However, there still remains the question of why such suffering can yield satisfaction, as it obviously does in masochistic perversions and fantasies and as we suspect it does in the general neurotic tendencies toward suffering. In order to be able to answer this question it is necessary to recognize first elements which all masochistic tendencies have in common, or more accurately, the basic attitude toward life that underlies such tendencies. When they are examined from his point of view the common denominator is definitely found to be a feeling of intrinsic weakness. This feeling appears in the attitude toward the self, toward others, toward fate in general. Briefly it can be described as a deep feeling of insignificance or rather of nothingness, nonbeing; a feeling of being like a reed that can easily be swayed by any wind; a feeling of being in the power of others, or being a their beck and call, appearing in a tendency toward over-compliance and in a defensive over-emphasis on control and not giving in; dependence on affection and the judgement of others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

This feeling of deep insignificance can also manifest by showing an inordinate need for affection, and also later on as an inordinate fear of disapproval; a feeling of not having a say in one’s own life but of having to let others bear the responsibility for it and make the decisions; a feeling that good and evil come from outside, that one is entirely helpless toward fate, appearing negatively in a sense of impending doom, positively in an expectation of some miracle happening without one’s moving a finger; a feeling toward life in general that one cannot breathe, work, enjoy anything without others supplying the incentive, the means and the aims; a feeling of being putty in the master’s hands. How are we to understand this feeling of intrinsic weakness? Is it in the last analysis the expression of a lack of vital strength? It may be this in some cases, but on the whole differences in vitality among neurotics are in no way greater than in other people. Is it a simple consequence of the basic anxiety? Certainly anxiety has something to do with it, but anxiety alone may have the opposite effect of impelling one to strive for and attain more and more strength and power in order to be safe. The answer is that primarily this feeling of intrinsic weakness is not a fact at all; what is felt as weakness and appears as weakness is only the result of an inclination toward weakness. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

This fact can be recognized from characteristics we have already discussed: in one’s own feelings the neurotic unconsciously exaggerated one’s weakness and one tenaciously insists on being weak. It is, however, not only by logical deduction that this inclination toward weakness can be discovered; very often it can be seen at work. Individuals may imaginatively seize upon every possibility of believing that they have an organic illness. One individual, whenever any difficulty arose, quite consciously wished to have tuberculosis, lie in a sanitarium and be completely taken care of. If any demand is made such a person’s first impulse may be to yield, and one will then go to the other extreme and refuse to give in at any price. In analysis an individual’s self-recriminations are often the result of one’s adopting as one’s own opinion an anticipated criticism, thus showings one’s readiness to surrender in advance to any judgment. The tendency blindly to accept authoritative statements, to lean on someone, always to recoil from a difficulty with a helpless “I cannot” instead of accepting it as a challenge, is a further evidence of the inclination toward weakness. Death is the work of the Divine wrath: “For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath, we bring our years to an end as a sigh”—as short a sigh, and as full of sorrow as a sigh. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

The idea of the Divine wrath has become strange to our time. We have rejected a religion which seemed to make God a furious tyrant, and individual with passions and desires who committed arbitrary acts. This is not what the wrath of God means. It means the inescapable and unavoidable reaction against human pride and arrogance. That reaction, through which humans are thrown back into one’s limits, is not a passionate act of punishment or vengeance on the part of God. It is the reestablishment of the balance between God and humans, which is disturbed by human’s elevation against God. We understand the profound relationship between God and humans because God sets our innermost secrets in the light of His face. God’s anger is not directed against our moral shortcomings, against special acts of disobedience to the Divine order. It is directed against the secret of our personality, against what happens in us and to us, unseen by humans, unseen even by ourselves. This, our secret, determines our fate, more than anything visible. In the realm of our visible deeds we may not feel that we deserve the wrath of God—misery and tragedy. However, God looks through the veils which hide our secrets. They are manifest to Him. Therefore, we feel every day the burden of being under a power which negates us, which disintegrates us and makes us unhappy. This is the wrath under which we pass all our days, not only those in which we endure special failures and special sufferings. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

This is the situation of all humans. However, not all humans know it. “Yet who knoweth the power of thine anger, and who of us dreads Thy wrath? So teach us to count our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom!” The 90h Psalm tries to teach us the truth about our human situation, our transitoriness and our guilt. It does what the great ancient tragedies did. They revealed to all the people of the city, gathered in the theatre, what humans are; they showed the people that the greatest, the best, the most beautiful, the most powerful—all-stand under the tragic law and the curse of the immortals. They wanted to reveal he tragic situation of humans, that is, one’s situation before the Divine. One becomes great and proud and tries to touch the Divine sphere, and one is cast into destruction and despair. This is what the psalmist wanted to reveal to the righteous and unrighteous people of one’s nation—what they were; what humans are. However, the psalmist knew that humans, even if shaken for a moment, forgot their fate. One knew that humans live as if they are to live forever, and as if the wrath of God did not exist. Therefore, he askes us to count our days, to consider how soon they shall come to an end. He prays God that He Himself may each us that we must die. The psalmist does not think that realization of the truth of what one has been saying will cast humans into despair. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

On the contrary, one believes that just this insight can give us heart of wisdom—a heart which accepts the infinite distance between God and humans, and does not claim a greatness and beatitude which belongs to God alone. The wise heart is the heart which does not try to hide this from itself, which does not try to escape into a false security or a false cynicism. The wise heart is the heart which can stand this knowledge courageously, with dignity, humility, and fortitude. This wisdom is implicit in every word of the psalm. It is the greatest wisdom that humans, having felt the tragedy of life, achieved in the ancient World. After the prayer for the wise heart (and not for intellectual wisdom!) a new section of the psalm begins, perhaps added in a later period of the Jewish religion. This new section is concerned with the nation and its historical situation. “Relent, O Thou Eternal, and delay not, be sorry for Thy servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Thy loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Grant joy as long as Thou has been afflicting us, for all the years we have had suffering. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants and Thy glory upon Thy children! And let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us and prosper the work of our hands!” Something new appears in these words: the significance of past and future, the prayer for a better future, for a future of happiness and joy, of the presence of God and the success of our work. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

God is not only the God of eternity. He is also the God of the future. The cycle from dust to dust, from sin to wrath, is broken. There appears the vision of an age of fulfillment, after the ages of misery. However, this vision is only for His servants—for the selected nation, and within her, only for those who are really His servants. The individual no longer stands lone before God. One is included among the other servants of God, in the midst of the people of God who look not toward their return to dust, but toward a life in a new age in which God is present. Hope supersedes tragedy. This is the highest point that religion reaches in the Old Testament. However, the spirit of religion drives beyond even this. It is not the end. What does the historical hope mean for the individual? Does it free us from the law of transitoriness and guilt? History, running toward the unknown future, throws every human back into the past, and we do not reach the age of fulfillment for which the poet longs. The cruel step of history goes over graves, and history itself does no seem to approach its fulfillment. Whenever history seems to come near to its fulfillment, it is thrown back and is further away from its fulfillment than ever before. That is what we experience so inescapably in our time. And so we ask, as all generation of humans have asked: is tragedy stronger than hope? Does the past conquer the future? Is wrath more powerful than mercy? #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

We are driven hither and tither between melancholy and expectations—from tragedy to hope, from hope to tragedy. In this situation we may be ready to receive the message of a new being, a new kind of existence which is not only hope, but also a reality, in which Divine wrath and human guilt ultimately are conquered. Christianity is based on this message: God subjecting Himself to transioriness and wrath, in order to be with us. And thus is fulfilled the hope of which he psalmist sings: “Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants and Thy glory upon Thy children.” Whether or not we accept that message, it is the answer to the questions the psalmist leaves unanswered. We may prefer to cling to the mere hope in spite of all disillusionments. We may prefer to return to the pious resignation of the older part of the psalm. We may even prefer to go back to the melancholic identification of human’s life with that of the grass field. We may choose any of these ways of interpreting our life. However, if we do choose any of them, we must realize that we cannot find in them the answer to the question of our life. And we must be resigned. However, if we accept the message of the new reality in Christ, we must understand that this message does not contain an easy answer, and that it does not guarantee any spiritual security. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

We must know that it is real answer only if we understand it permanently in the light of our human situation, in which tragedy and hope fight each other without victory. The victory is above them. When the prayer of the psalmist was answered, the victory came. “Relent, O thou Eternal!”—this prayer is the prayer of humankind through all eons, and the hidden prayer in the dept of every human soul. It is the Lord’s Day. You have come to church to worship God in spirit and in truth. You are in church to give God worth—worth-ship, as the English work properly means. What now? Here again the word which is the theme of this essay comes to center stage—discipline. It is of great significance that one of the two most prominent words denoting worship in the New Testament is the word latreuo, which means to work or serve. This tells us implicitly that worship involves work—disciplined work. It is from this word that liturgy is derived, for liturgy is one’s work in worship. All churches have liturgies, even those which would call themselves “non-liturgical.” In fact, having no liturgy is a liturgy! Relaxed charismatic services may be as liturgical in their format as a High-Church service—and in some cases more rigid. My purpose is not to recommend one liturgy over another, though, of course I have my opinion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Whatever your liturgy may be, you must work at it with all you have, for worship is work. If you are to please and glorify God, there must be some holy sweat. Please use this time to continue to live a temple-worthy life or to become temple worthy. As the Restoration continues, I know that God will continue to reveal many great and important things pertaining to His kingdom here on Earth. The Saviour is the perfect engineer, builder, and interior designer. His project is the perfection and eternal joy of our souls. Daily repentance is a transformative tool that enables us to grow a little kinder, more loving, and more understanding. Studying the scriptures brings us closer to the Saviour, whose generous love and grace assist us with our growth. Again and again the scriptures show us how families succeed through righteous living and how they fail by pursuing other paths. Fine homes follow the blueprint created by the Lord for His finest home, the temple. The Lord’s steady framework allows His Spirit to change our hearts. Experiencing a mighty change of the heart is like adding because features to the interior of the temple. As we continue in faith, the Lord gradually changes us. We receive His image in our countenance and begin to reflect the love and beauty of His character. As we become more like Him, we feel more at home in His hose, and He will feel at home in ours. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

The finest homes are refuges from the storms of life. The Lord has promised that those who keep the commandments of God prosper in the land. God’s prosperity is the power to press forward despite the problems of life. Because some live in the finest home, which is the heart of God, their faithful living provides them the strength, vision, and Heavenly help they need in the current turmoil. Mortality always brings challenges, but time after time I have seen those who strive to obey the commandments are blessed to find their ways forward with peace and hope. Those blessings are available to everyone, it does not require privilege. With God’s loving help, your soul can be all He wants it to be and you can be the finest various of yourself, prepared to establish and live in a finest home. “Now behold, I, Jarom, write a few words according to the commandment of my father, Enos, that our genealogy may be kept. And as these plates are small, and as these things are written for the intent of the benefit of our brethren the Lamanites, wherefore, it must needs be that I write a little; but I shall not write the things of my prophesying, nor of my revelations. For what could I write more than my fathers have written? For have not they revealed the plan of salvation? I say unto you, Yea; and this sufficeth me. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

“Behold, it is expedient that much should be done among this people, because of the hardness of their hearts, and the deafness of their ears, and the blindness of their minds, and the stiffness of their necks; nevertheless, God is exceedingly merciful unto them, and has not as yet swept them off from the face of the land. And there are many among us who have many revelations, for they are not all stiffnecked and have faith, have communion with the Holy Spirit, which maketh manifest unto the children of humans, according to their faith. And now, behold, two hundred years had passed away, and the people of Nephi had waxed strong in the land. They observed to keep the law of Moses and the sabbath day holy unto the Lord. And they profaned not; neither did they blaspheme. And the laws of the land were exceedingly strict. And they were scattered upon much of the face of the and, and the Lamanites also. And they were exceedingly more numerous than were they of the Nephites; and they loved murder and would drink the blood of beasts. And it came to pass that they came many times against us, the Nephites, to battle. However, our kings and our kings and our leaders were mighty humans in the faith of the Lord; and they taught the people the ways of the Lord; wherefore, we withstood the Lamanites and swept them away out of our lands, and began to fortify our cities, or whatsoever pace of our inheritance. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

“And we multiplied exceedingly, and spread upon the face of the land, and became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine crafts of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel, making all manners of tools of every kind to till the ground, and weapons of war—yea, the sharp pointed arrow, and the quiver, and the dart, and the javelin, and all preparations for war. And thus being prepared to meet Lamanites, they did not prosper against us. However, the word of the Lord was verified, which he spake unto our fathers, saying that: Inasmuch as ye will keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land. And it came to pass that the prophets of the Lord did threaten the people of Nephi, according to the word of God, that if they did not keep the commandments, but should fall into transgression, they should be destroyed from off the face of the land. Wherefore, the prophets, and the priests, and the teachers, did labour diligently, exhorting with all long-suffering the people to diligence; teaching the law of Moses, and the intent for which it was given; persuading them to look forward unto the Messiah, and believe in one to come as though one already was. And after this manner did they teach them. And it came to pass that by so doing they kept them from being destroyed upon the face of the land; for they did prick their hearts with the word, continually stirring them unto repentance. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

“And it came to pass that two hundred and thirty and eight years had passes away—after the practices of wars, and contentions, and dissensions, for the space of much of the time. And I, Jarom, do not write more, for the plates are small. However, behold, my brethren, ye can go to the other plates of Nephi; for behold, upon them the records of our wars are engraven, according to the writings of the kinds, or those which they caused to be written. And I deliver these plates into the hands of my son Omni, that they may be kept according to the commandments of my fathers,” Jarom 1.1-16. Having received life by the refreshment of the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we humbly beseech Thee, O God, that by this transcendent remedy Thou wouldest both cleanse us from the contagion of all sins, and fortify us against the incursion of all dangers; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. O my Saviour, I thank Thee from the depth of my being for Thy wondrous grace and love in bearing my sin in thine own body on the tree. May Thy cross be to me as the tree that sweetness my bitter Marahs, as the rod that blossoms with life and beauty, as the brazen serpent that calls forth the look of faith. By Thy cross crucify my every sin; use it to increase my intimacy with Thyself. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

“Please it make my intimacy with Thyself the ground of all my comfort, the liveliness of all my duties, the sum of all Thy gospel promises, the comfort of all my afflictions, the vigour of my love, thankfulness, graces, the very essence of my religion; and by it give me that rest without rest, the rest of ceaseless praise. O my Lord and Saviour, Thou hast also appointed a cross for me to take up and carry, a cross before Thou givest me a crown. Thou hast appointed it to be my portion, but self-love hates it, carnal reason is unreconciled to it; without the grace of patience I cannot bear it, walk with it, profit by it. O blessed cross, what mercies dost Thou bring with Thee! Thou art only esteemed hateful by my rebel will, heavy because I shirk Thy load. Please teach me, gracious Lord and Saviour, that with my cross Thou sendest promised grace so that I may bear it patiently, that my cross is Thy yoke which is easy, and Thy burden which is light. We render thanks and praise to Thee, O Lord, Who hast strengthened us with the Communion of the Body and Blood of Thy most dearly beloved Son; humbly beseeching Thy mercy that this Thy Sacrament, O Lord, may not increase our guilt and punishment, but may plead for our pardon and salvation. May it be the abolition of our sins, the strength of our weakness, our bulwark against the perils of the World. May this Communion cleanse us from guilt, and makes us partakers of the joy of Heaven: through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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There are Two things to Aim at in Life: First to Get What You Want; and, After that, To Enjoy it!

June 9, 2020 11:54 pm

Conflict is probably as old as life itself and some would say that it is just as right. Our understanding of human behaviour should enable us to make some distinctions between those kinds of natural phenomena that are necessary and those that we have outgrown as human beings. Conflict, in the sense of fighting and warfare within the species of humans, is an outmoded and certainly dysfunctional social process. Dysfunctional means not serving the survival needs of the organism or the structure. If you are like me, you have tried to see inside yourself, to find in you what you see in others. If you are like me, you have only ever seen darkness where others have light. You believe you have no soul. You believe you have no goodness in you. However, you are made of God like everyone else. So we have three basic social processes: cooperation, competition, and conflict. Of the three, cooperation and some forms of competition seem to be functional, while vicious competition and conflict can be shown to be devastatingly dysfunctional. The proponents of instinctive aggression claim that competitiveness and conflict have just as much natural origin, are just as functional, and have just as much survival value as cooperation. However, many others feel that a full evaluation of the biosocial nature of humans will point up to the dysfunctionality of continued hostility in a World growing daily more crowded. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

I have attempted to cover neither all the aggravating factors that operate during the process nor the curative ones. I have not discussed, for instance, any of the difficulties or benefits that arise in connection with the individual’s brining all one’s defensive and offensive peculiarities into the relationship with the analyst—though this is an element of great significance. The steps I have described constitute merely the essential processes that must be gone though each time a new trend or conflict becomes visible. It is often impossible to proceed in the other named, since a problem may be inaccessible to the individual even when it has come into sharp focus. As we saw in the example concerning the arrogation of rights, one problem may merely disclose another which must be analyzed first. As long as every step is eventually covered, the order is of secondary importance. The specific symptomatic changes that result from analytical work naturally vary with subject tackled. When an individual recognizes one’s unconscious impotent rage and its background, a state of panic may subside. When one sees the dilemma in which one was caught, a depression may life. However, each piece of analysis well done also brings about certain general changes in the individual’s attitude toward others and toward oneself, changes that occur regardless of the particular problem that has been worked through. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

If we were to take such dissimilar problems as an overemphasis on pleasures of the flesh, a belief that reality will accord with one’s wishful thinking, and a hypersensitivity to coercion, we would find that their analysis affects the personality in much the same way. No matter which of these difficulties is analyzed, hostility, helplessness, fear, and alienation from the self and others will be diminished. Let us consider, for example, how alienation from the self is lessened in each of these instances. A person who overemphasizes pleasures of the flesh feels alive only in experiences and fantasies involving pleasures of the flesh; one’s triumphs and defeats are confined with the sphere of pleasure of the flesh; the only asset one values in oneself is how attractive one is visually. It is only when one understands this condition that one can start to become interested in other aspects of living, and so retrieve oneself. A person for whom reality is bounded by the projects and plans of one’s imagination has lost sight of oneself as a functioning human being. One sees neither one’s limitations nor one’s actual assets. Through analytical work one ceases to mistake one’s potentialities for accomplishments; one is able not only to face but to feel oneself as one really is. The person who is hypersensitive to coercion has become oblivious to one’s own desires and beliefs, and feels that it is others who dominate and impose upon one. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

When this condition is analyzed, one begins to know what one really wants, and hence is able to strive toward one’s own goals. In every analysis repressed hostility, regardless of its kind and source, will come to the fore and make the individual temporarily more irritable. However, each time a neurotic attitude is abandoned, irrational hostility will be diminished. The individual will become less hostile when one sees one’s own share in the difficulty instead of externalizing, and when one becomes less vulnerable, less fearful, less dependent, less demanding, and so on. Hostility is primarily allayed by a decrease in the helplessness. The stronger a person becomes, the less one feels threatened by others. The accrual of strength stems from various sources. One’s center of gravity, which had been shifted to others, comes to rest within oneself; one feels more active and starts to establish one’s own set of values. One will gradually have more energy available: the energy that had done into repressing part of oneself is released; one becomes less inhibited, less paralyzed by fears, self-contempt, and hopelessness. Instead of either blindly complying or fighting or venting sadistic impulses, one can give in on a rational basis and so becomes firmer. Finally, although anxiety is temporarily stirred up by the undermining of established defenses, each step that is profitably taken is bound to diminish it, because the individual becomes less afraid of others and oneself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

The general result of these changes is an improvement in the individual’s relations with others and with oneself. One becomes less isolated; to the extent that one becomes stronger and less hostile, others gradually cease to be a menace to be fought, manipulated, or avoided. One can afford to have friendly feelings for them. One’s relations with oneself improve as externalization is relinquished and self-contempt disappears. If we examine the changes that take place during analysis we see that they apply to the very conditions that brought about the original conflicts. While in the course of a neurotic development all the stresses become more acute, therapy takes the opposite road. The attitudes that arose from the necessity of coping with the World in the face of helplessness, fear, hostility, and isolation become more and more meaningless and hence can be gradually dispensed with. Why, indeed, if one feel secure within oneself and can live and strive with others without the constant fear of being submerged, should anyone want to efface or sacrifice oneself for persons one hates and who step on one? If one is able to love and is not afraid to fight, why should anyone anxiously avoid involvement with others? #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

To do this work takes time; the more entangled and the more barricaded a person is, the more time is required. That there should be a desire for brief analytical therapy is quite understandable. We should like to see more persons benefit from all that analysis has to offer, and we realize that some help is better than no help at all. Neuroses, it is true, vary greatly in severity, and mild neuroses can be helped in a comparatively short period. While some of the experiments in brief psychotherapy are promising, many, unfortunately, are based upon wishful thinking and are carried on with an ignorance of the powerful forces that operate in neurosis. In the case of sever neuroses I believe that the analytical procedure can be shortened only by so bettering our understanding of the neurotic character structure that less time will be wasted in groping for interpretations. Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist. Experience of any one of a number of kinds may be sufficiently telling to bring about personality changes. It may be the inspiring example of a truly great person; it may be a common tragedy which by brining the neurotic in close touch with others takes one out of one’s egocentric isolation; it may be association with persons so congenial that manipulating or avoiding them appears less necessary. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

In other instances the consequences of neurotic behaviour may be so drastic or of such frequent occurrence that they impress themselves on the neurotic’s mind and make one less fearful and less rigid. The therapy effected by life itself is not, however, within one’s control. Neither hardships nor friendships nor religious experience can be arranged to meet the needs of the particular individual. Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may entirely crush another. And, as we have seen, the capacity of the neurotic behaviour and to learn from them is highly limited. We could rather say that an analysis can be safely terminated if the individual has acquired this very capacity to learn from one’s experience—that is, if one can examine one’s share in the difficulties that arise, understand it, and apply the insight to one’s life. Knowledge of the role that conflicts play in neurosis and the realization that they can be resolved make it necessary to redefine the goals of analytical therapy. Although many neurotic disturbances belong in the medical sphere, it is not feasible to define the goals in medical terms. Since even psychosomatic illness are essentially an ultimate expression of conflicts within the personality, the goals of therapy must be defined in terms of personality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Thus seen they encompass a number of aims. The individual must acquire the capacity to assume responsibility for oneself, in the sense of feeling oneself the active, responsible force in one’s life, capable of making decisions and of taking the consequences. With this goes an acceptance of responsibility toward others, a readiness to recognize obligations in whose value one believes, whether they relate to one’s children, parents, friends, employees, colleagues, community, or country. Closely allied is the aim of achieving an inner independence—one as far removed from a mere defiance of the opinions and beliefs of others as from a mere adoption for them. This would mean primarily enabling the individual to establish one’s own hierarchy of values and to apply it to one’s actual living. In reference to others it would entail respect for their individuality and their rights, and would thus be the basis for a real mutuality. It would coincide with truly democratic ideals. We could define the goals in terms of spontaneity of feeling, an awareness and aliveness of feeling, whether in respect to love or hate, happiness or sadness, fear or desire. This would include a capacity for expression as well as for voluntary control. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Because it is so vital, the capacity for love and friendship should be especially mentioned in this context; love that is neither parasitic dependence nor sadistic domination but, a relationship which has no purpose beyond itself; in which we associate because it is natural for human beings to share their experience; to understand one another, to find joy and satisfaction in living together; in expressing and revealing themselves to one another. The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that conflicts are resolved. These goals are not arbitrary, nor are they valid goals of therapy simply because they coincide with the ideals that wise persons of all times have followed. However, the coincidence is not accidental, for these are the elements upon which psychic health rests. We are justified in postulating these goals because they follow logically from a knowledge of the pathogenic factors in neurosis. Our daring to name such high goals rests upon the belief that human personality can change. It is not only the young child who is pliable. All of us retain the capacity to change, even to change in fundamental ways, as long as we live. This is belief supported by experience. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Analysis is one of the most potent means of bringing about radical changes, and the better we understand the forces operating in neurosis the greater our chance of effecting desired change. Neither the analyst nor the individual is likely wholly to attain these goals. They are ideals to strive for; their practical value lies in their giving us direction in our therapy and in our lives. If we are not clear about the meaning of ideals, we run the danger of replacing an old idealized image with a new one. We must be aware, too, that it does not lie within the power of the analyst to turn the individual into a flawless human being. One can only help one to become free to strive toward an approximation of these ideals. And this means giving one as well an opportunity to mature and develop. “Think about the hundreds of years, if not thousands of years of lost women’s stories. How the hell can I not feel that there is a sense of urgency? Every woman I know that is working to tell stories of women or marginalized groups feels the same way. You do not know how long a window will last. You hope it lasts a long, long, time, but you never know,” reports Reese Witherspoon. During this time of tension and uncertainty, and as the Restoration continues, I know that God will continue to reveal many great and important things pertaining to His kingdom here on Earth. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

To bring the mind to dwell intelligently upon God as He is presented in His Word will have the effect of causing us to love God passionately, and this love will in turn bring us to think God steadily. Thus he will always be before our minds. The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. One who is in love, one’s thoughts are ever upon the object. One who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. “When I awake, I am still with thee,” reports Psalms 139.18. The thoughts are as travelers in the mind. David’s thoughts kept Heaven-road, “I am still with Thee.” God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God, who scarcely ever think of God! “God is not in all his thoughts,” reports Psalms 10.4. A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. One never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge. In this way we enter a life of worship. To think of God as he is, one cannot but lapse into worship; and worship is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration in the whole person. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

Worship puts into abeyance every evil tendency in every dimension of the self. It naturally arises from thinking rightly of God on the basis of revealed truth confirmed in experience. We say flatly, Worship is at once the overall character of the renovated thought of life and the only safe place for a human being to stand. An old hymn contains these lines: “In our astonished reverence we confess Thine uncreated loveliness.” “Astonished reverence” is a good paraphrase for worship, as is “admiration to the point of delight.” That is the true outcome of renovation of the thought life. The first request in The Lord’s Prayer is, “Hallowed be Thy name.” It is first because it is the most important one. To the extent that God is exalted in the minds of people, and his very name is cherished with utmost respect, everything else goes right. You can verify this experimentally in yourself. Your God is too small is a message we hear often these days, and it is a message that is usually misunderstood. The point is not your God is too small to meet your needs, but your God is so small that you fail to relentlessly worship and adore him. In the renovated mind, God constantly stands as uniquely and supremely worthy. Hallowed be Thy name! This is a serious matter, for how can a symbol disintegrate if it truly partakes of the power of being-itself which it expresses? How can it fail to be revelatory, unless the reality of which it partakes also disintegrates? #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

When we speak of artistic symbols, we naturally do not encounter this problem. However, when we speak of the Unconditional as perceived in religion and faith, one does not seem to posit it with enough earnestness. One duly recognizes the difference between artistic and religious symbols. The latter has special character in that it points to the ultimate level of being, to ultimate reality, to being itself, to meaning itself. If this is admitted, how then can we declare that when a religious symbol disintegrates, it means that the encounter with Ultimate reality out of which it grew has itself disintegrated? They are the expression of an encounter with ultimate reality, and they disappear if this kind of encounter disappears. It is not theoretical criticism that kills the religious symbols. Theoretical refutation is powerless before the existential pregnancy of the symbol. However, when one adds that symbols are killed by a change in the actual encounter, one may ask how ultimate was the Ultimate that was perceived in that situation, if it can disappear? If the Unconditional is unconditional, it should be beyond the reach of the situation in which it was perceived. The situation was a necessary, symbolic mediation for it to be perceived; but a person that has intuited the Unconditional knows it once and for all, even after the various elements of the revelatory correlation have separated and lost their power. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

This leads to a basic criticism. If we are right connecting religious symbols and the Ultimate, one cannot be right in thinking that religious symbols can die. For the Ultimate does not die. A symbol which is no longer made powerful by the existential context in which it became symbolic of Ultimate reality, remains symbolic of it by the very power of Ultimate reality already perceived. A symbol which has been truly symbolic of God is always symbolic of God. When it no longer leads to God, God comes to humans through it. This would seem to be the conclusion logically to be drawn: A symbol has truth: it is adequate to the revelation it expresses. A symbol is true: it is the expression of a true revelation. A symbol remains true as long as what it reveals is the truth. Since ultimate truth does not disintegrate, neither do its symbols. However, religious symbols are double-edged. They are directed toward the infinite which they symbolize and toward the finite through which they symbolize. One can easily understand that the symbol and, along with it, the reality from which it was take may disintegrate in mutual interdependence. Yet one cannot see why the Infinite lacks the power to maintain the symbolic relation even when the situation is no longer revelatory. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

A constellation of religious symbols form what is calls a religious myth. Myths are symbols of faith combined in stories about divine-human encounters. One finds such myths in pagan religions, and they are present in the Old Testament and even in the New. The usage of the word “myth” is not derogatory. Myths are as necessary as symbols. The correlation of several symbols even manifests an element of human’s perception of the Unconditional which a symbol, by itself, would not convey, namely the historical and the cosmic relevance of the Unconditional. It puts the stories of the gods into the framework of time and space. If this expresses the transcendence of God above space and time, it is very legitimate. However, it is radically ambiguous. Myths can contribute to unseat the Unconditional and to make humans conceive of it as subject to time and space. This is why so many myths imply polytheism: myth divides the divine into several figures, removing ultimacy from each of them without removing their claim to ultimacy. Like symbols, therefore, myths must be criticized, and all great religious have done so. In modern times, and in the Christian context of the New Testament, this criticism has been given the name of de-mythologization, a matter which will claim our attention later. At this point it is enough to note that myth and de-mythologization belong together, just like symbol and symbol-criticism. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

A myth which is not understood as symbolic but as literally true is a “pure myth.” Its religious value is distorted by literalism. It is taken as transcendent history of the life of God and of God’s intervention in the life of humans. Such myths must be broken. Only a broken myth has undoubted religious value, precisely because its value has resisted the radical criticism of de-mythologization. However, the criticism of myth should bear on the real, not on the imagined shortcomings of the mythical story. Pagan mythology has often been criticized for its supposed immortality, yet, these attacks are only partially justified. The relations of the mythological gods are trans-moral; they are ontological; they refer to structures of being and to conflicts of values. The only ultimately valid criticism of a myth must take account of the religious dimensions of the myth. It must be seen as an attempt to perceive and express the concept that God is living and the experience of humans faced with the fascinating mystery of the holiness of God’s life. Because it is made of symbols that are themselves the products of a series of revelatory situations, a myth may be successfully criticized only from within its own revelatory context. This is called the theological circle. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

Only the Unconditional which the myth wants to express can judge myth. Only in its light can the myth be considered inadequate, misleading, or, perhaps, fallacious. In the light of the Ultimate, however, all myths are ambiguous. For if they combine symbols, that is, revelatory situations, the system into which these are united is not itself a revelatory situation. It is, precisely, a myth, arising out of religious imagination. Because of the bipolarity—combining genuine revelatory situations into imaginative patterns—myths must be neither destroyed, negated, nor accepted in their literalism. They must be broken, understood on the level of the ultimate dimension of existence, which they depict in ambiguous traits and colours. Christianity was born, not with the birth of the man who is called Jesus, but in the moments in which one of His followers was driven to say to Him, “Thou art the Christ.” The cornerstone of Christology is that the revelation carried by Jesus must have been known in a revelatory situation. This implies the convergence of a “miraculous,” power-revealing situation, and of someone grasping the meaning of this situation in an ecstasy of faith. The most striking such moment, as recorded in the New Testament, is the confession of Peter professing his faith that “Thou art the Christ.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

“Thou art the Christ” is confession with which we need to concentrate on the meaning. For the term “Christ” is evidently the central symbol of Christology. It is in the light of it that every other symbol is meaningful and that every Christian assertion about Jesus must be criticized. In the light of it, too, Christians will judge the attempts of other religions to identify the Christ differently from what Christianity asserts. With the symbol of the Christ we are at the cosmic crossroads of all religions. For, as the analysis of faith has shown, all religions try to identify the depths of humans; they endeavour to find the name of the ground of being. The concrete content of a religious faith is an equation of being-itself with the meaning of a religious symbol or myth. The essential content of every religious faith, whatever the concrete content involved, is that the depths of human is experienced the ultimate ground of all being, the Unconditional. The term Christ, in Christianity, gives a name to the Unconditional, the eternal ground of all that is. However, it is not more than a name; it is an identification with an event of history. There has been a man in whom Essential Godmandhood has appeared within existence and subjected itself to the conditions of existence without being conquered by them. By Essential Godmanhood, we mean the eternal ground of humans. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

The analysis of human’s existential estrangement, which classical theology calls original sin, shows that by the very fact of their existence, humans have fallen from their essential being to an existential situation. The essential being of humans corresponds exactly to one’s point of contact with the Absolute. It is not only humanhood as experienced in existence, but it is also humanhood as created in God, ontologically before the fall into existence. This is called Godmanhood. Essential Godmanhood is thus being of humans prior to existence. It is humans in God. To essential humans belongs the unity of their finiteness with their infinity, and it is precisely this unity which I called Godmanhood, because it is an expression of the dialectical interdependence of finiteness and infinity. Sherem denies Christ, contends with Jacob, demands a sign, and is smitten of God—all the prophets have spoken of Christ and His Atonement—the Nephites lived out their days as wanderers, born in tribulation, and hated by the Lamanites. About 544-421 Before Christ. “And now it came to pass after some years had passed away, there came a man among the people of Nephi, whose name was Sherem. And it came to pass that he began to preach among the people, and to declare unto them that there should be no Christ. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And he preached many things which were flattering unto the people; and this he did that he might overthrow the doctrine of Christ. And he labored diligently that he might lead away the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did lead away many hearts; and he knowing that I Jacob, had faith in Christ who should come, he sought much opportunity that he might come to me. And he was learned, that he had a perfect knowledge of the language of the people; wherefore, he could use much flattery, and much power of speech, according to the power of the devil. And he had hope to shake me from the faith, notwithstanding the many revelations and the many things which I had seen concerning these things; for I truly had seen Angels, and they had ministered unto me. And also, I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word, from time to time; wherefore, I could not be shaken. And it came to pass that he came unto me, and on this wise did he speak unto me, saying: Brother Jacob, I have sought much opportunity that I might speak unto you; for I have heard and also know that thou goest about much, preaching that which ye call the gospel, or the doctrine of Christ. And ye have lead away much of this people that they pervert the right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way; and convert the laws of Moses into the worship of a being which ye shall say come many hundred years hence. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And now behold, I, Sherem, declare unto you that this is blasphemy; for no human knowth of such things to come. And after this manner did Sherem contend against me. However, behold, the Lord God poured in His Spirit into my soul, insomuch that I did confound him in all his words. And I said unto him: Deniest thou the Christ who shall come? And he said: If there should be a Christ, I would not deny him; but I know that there is no Christ, neither has been, nor ever will be. And I said unto him: Believest thou the scriptures? And he said, Yea. And I said unto him: Then ye do not understand them; for they truly testify of Christ. Behold, I say unto you that none of the prophets have written, not prophesized, save they have spoken concerning this Christ. And this is not all—it has been made manifest unto me, for I have heard and seen; and it also has been made manifest unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, I know if there should be no atonement made all humankind must be lost. And it came to pass that he said unto me: Show me a sign by this power of the Holy Ghost, in the which ye know so much. And I said unto him: What am I that I should tempt God to show unto thee a sign in the thing which thou knowest to be true? Yet thou wilt deny it, because thou art of the devil. Nevertheless, not my will be done; but if God shall smite thee, let that be a sign unto thee that he has power, both in Heaven and in Earth; and also that Christ shall come. And thy will, O Lord, be done, and not mine. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“And it came to pass that when I, Jacob, had spoken these words, the power of the Lord came upon him, insomuch that he fell to the Earth. And it came to pass that he was nourished for the space of many days. And it came to pass that he said unto the people: Gather together on the morrow, for I shall die; wherefore, I desire to speak unto the people before I shall die. And it came to pass that on the morrow the multitude were gathered together; and he spake plainly unto them and denied the things which he had taught them, and confessed the Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, and the ministering of Angels. And he spake plainly unto them, that he had been deceived by the power of the devil. And he spake of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment. And he said: I fear least I have committed the unpardonable sin, for I have lied unto God; for I denied the Christ, and said that I believed the scriptures; and they truly testify of him. And because I have thus lied unto God I greatly fear lest my case shall awful; but I confess unto God. And it came to pass that when he had said these words he could say no more, and he gave up the ghost. And when the multitude had witnessed that he spake these things as he was about to give up the ghost, they were astonished exceedingly; insomuch that the power of God came down upon them, and they were overcome that they fell to the Earth. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“Now, this thing was pleasing unto me, Jacob, for I had requested it of my Father who was in Heaven; for he had heard my cry and answered by prayer. And it came to pass that peace and the love of God was restored again among the people; and they searched the scriptures, and hearkened no more to the words of this wicked man. And it came to pass that many means were devised to reclaim and restore the Lamanites to the knowledge of the truth; but it all was vain, for they delighted in wars and bloodshed, and they had an eternal hatred against us, their brethren. And they sought by the power of their arms to destroy us continually. Wherefore, the people of Nephi did fortify against them with their arms, and with all their might, trusting in the God and rock of their salvation; wherefore, they became as yet, conquerors of their enemies. And it came to pass that I, Jacob, began to be old; and the record of this people being kept on the other plates of Nephi, wherefore, I conclude this record, declaring that I have written according to the best of my knowledge, by saying that the time passes away with us, and also out lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream, we being a lonesome and a solemn people, wanderers, cast out from Jerusalem, born in tribulation, in a wilderness, and hatred of our brethren, which caused wars and contentions; wherefore, we did mourn out our days. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“And I, Jacob, saw that I must soon go down to my grave; wherefore, I said unto my son Enos: Take these plates. And I told him the things which my brother Nephi has commanded me, and he promised obedience unto the commands. And I make an end of my writing upon these plates, which writing has been small; and to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that many of my brethren may read my words. Brethren, adieu,” reports Jacob 7.1-27. Lord Jesus Christ, Who hast given unto us such Food of Thy goodness unto salvation and life eternal, preserve us by means of this Food in purity and without defilement, dwelling within us by Thy divine protection. Please guide us by Thy divine grace into the path of Thy holy will, which desires our good, and by it may we be fortified against all the assaults of our enemies, that we may be accounted worthy to hear Thy voice, and to follow Thee, the only mighty and true Shepherd, and to obtain the place prepared in Thy Heavenly kingdom, O our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Life-giving God, please quicken me to call upon Thy name, for my mind is ignorant, my thoughts vagrant, my affections Earthly, my heart unbelieving, and only Thy Spirit can help my infirmities. I approach Thee as Father and friend, my portion forever, my exceeding joy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

I believe in Thee as the God of nature, the ordainer of providence, the sender of Jesus my Saviour. My guilty fears discourage an approach to Thee, but I praise Thee for the blessed news that Jesus reconciles Thee to me. May the truth that is in him illuminate in me all that is dark, establish in me all that is wavering, comfort in me all that is wretched, accomplish in my all that is of Thy goodness, and glorify in me the name of Jesus. I pass through a vale of tears but bless Thee for the opening gate of glory at its end. Please enable me to realize as mine the better, Heavenly country. Prepare me for every part of my pilgrimage. Uphold my steps by Thy word. Please let no iniquity dominate me. Please teach me that Christ cannot be the way if I am the end, that He cannot be redeemer if I am my own saviour, that there can be no true union with Him while the creature has my heart, that faith accepts Him as redeemer and Lord or not at all. Constant association with Him can only benefit the sensitive after all. It exalts and tutors them. However, it leaves the insensitive exactly as they were before. Long ago Jesus pointed out the futility of casting a good seed on a stony ground. Not that this lack of sensitivity is to be deprecated. Nature has set us all on different rungs of ger evolutionary ladder. No one is to blame for being what he or she is. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Light of Light, and God of God, Who didst bow Thy holy Heavens, and descend to Earth for the salvation of the World, out of Thy love of humans; extend Thine Almighty right hand, and send out Thy blessings on all us. Hallow our bodies and souls by this Sacrifice which we have received, and guide our steps into the paths of righteousness, that we may behave ourselves according to Thy will, and observe Thy commandments and do them all the days of our life, and come to a blessed end, and sing a ceaseless hymn with Thy Saints to Thee, and Thy Father, and Thy Holy Spirit.
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