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Reflection on the Mysteries of the Soul—To Know Just How He Suffered Would be Dear
Open the celestial doors, guardians of the galaxy, so that we may see the treasure of beauty that she brings. Let there be Heaven on Earth, a harmonic galaxy. I was bitterly full of desire. It was unspeakable to need someone in this way. I closed my eyes and listened to the night. Ravenous, repulsive creatures singing magnificently. And working the soft fertile Earth, creatures of such loathsomeness I could not dwell on it. And the clatter of the riverfront train unendingly. And then the absurd song of the calliope on the riverboat that took the tourists up and down the waterway as they feasted and laughed and dance and sang. I believe I caused the infirmary myself. In my attempt to penetrate the other World I met its natural guardians, the embodiment of my own weakness and faults. In my case the personal self had grown porous because of my dimmed consciousness. I wanted to enter death without going mad and I stood before the Sphinx: either thou into the abyss or I! If you say they are fair game, then they are fair game, and that is good enough for me, Beloved Boss. I cannot tell my own heart and soul what I am feeling now, how much I crave this little battle. I cannot find the words, it is so raw, so rooted inside me! It goes way back into the human part of me that is not going to die, does it not? Then came illumination. A larger and more comprehensive self emerged and I could abandon the previous personality with its entire entourage. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
I saw this earlier personality could never enter transcendental realms. A new life began for me and from now on I felt different from other people. A self that consisted of conventional lies, shams, self-deceptions, memory images, a self like that of other people, grew in me again but behind and above it stood a greater and more comprehensive self which impressed me with something of what is eternal, unchanging, immortal and inviolable and which ever since that time has been my protector and refuge. I lay amongst the flowers, and there were no thorns on the roses. Time had stopped. And the distant commotions of the house did not matter. She was fulfilled. She was the vampire in my dream. She was the Perfect Pearl, caught speechless in the miracle and staring down at me, wondering only what had become of me, as another fledgling of mine had done long ago—but understand dangers are only temporary. When the internal battles are waged, they struggle often takes its toll, as in all battles, on the battlefield itself. The battlefield is the person. Christians will recall St. Paul complaining that he was often at odds with himself. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
The conflicts that go on inside each of us are the mixed motives we have, the competing needs, the differing ideas and attitudes. They are not competing or differing selves struggling it out. We are whole persons, but there are many conflicting elements in each of us. Sometimes the rational part of us is in fierce competition with the emotional or the physiological parts. The result often seems to be a disintegration of the self, or behavior that seems to point to disintegration. To settle the conflicts, we often compromise parts of our selfhood. At times we play as if there were no conflict. “I am alright, Jack!” and “Stiff upper lip” are some of the terms our British cousins employ to portray a stolid, unperturbed façade, while inside the battle goes on. The romantic movement has produced a concept of individuality which is equally to be distinguished from the medieval concept and from that of the Enlightenment and contains elements of both. The individual is emphasized in one’s uniqueness, as an incomparable and infinitely significant expression of the substance of being. Not conformity but differentiation is the end of the ways of God. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
Self-affirmation of one’s uniqueness and acceptance of the demands of one’s individual nature are the right courage to be. This does not necessarily mean willfulness and irrationality, because the uniqueness of one’s individual nature are the right courage to be. This does not necessarily mean willfulness and irrationality, because the uniqueness of one’s individuality is possessed by its creative possibilities. However, the danger is obvious. The romantic irony elevated the individual beyond all content and made one empty: one was no longer obliged to participate in anything seriously. In a person like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Friedrich von Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part. Such a turn was prepared by the other side of romantic thought, the emphasis on the collectives and semicollectives of the past, the ideal of the organic society. Organism, as has so often happened in the past, became the symbol of a balance between individualization and participation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
However, its historical function in the early 19th century was to express not the need for a balance, but the longing for the collectivist pole. It was used by all reactionary groups of this period who, be it for political or for spiritual reasons or both, tried to re-establish a new Middle Ages. In this way the romantic movement produced both a radical form of the courage to be as oneself and the (unfulfilled) desire for a radical form of the courage to be as a part. Romanticism as an attitude has outlived the romantic movement. So-called Bohemianism was a continuation of the romantic courage to be as oneself. Bohemianism continued the romantic attack on the established bourgeoisie and its conformism. Both the romantic movement and its Bohemian continuation have decisively contributed to present-day Existentialism. However, Bohemianism and Existentialism have received elements of another movement in which the courage to be as oneself was pronounced naturalism. The word naturalism is used in many different ways. For our purpose it suffices to deal with that type of naturalism in which the individualistic form of the courage to be as oneself is effective. The phrase romantic naturalist seems to be a contradiction in terms. The self-transcendence of romantic imagination and the naturalistic self-restriction to the empirically given appear to be separated by a deep gap. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
However, naturalism means the identification of being with nature and the consequent rejection of the supernatural. This definition leaves the question of the nature of the natural wide open. Nature can be described mechanistically. It can be described organologically. It can be described in terms of necessary progressive integration or of creative evolution. It can be described as a system of laws or of structures as a mixture of both. Naturalism can take its pattern from the absolutely concrete, the individual self as we find it in mortals, or from the absolutely abstract, the mathematic equations which determine the character of power fields. All this and much more can be naturalism. However, not all of these types of naturalism are expressions of courage to be as oneself. Only if the individualistic pole in the structure of the natural is decisive can naturalism be romantic and amalgamate with Bohemianism and Existentialism. This is the case in the voluntaristic types of naturalism. (If nature (and for naturalism this means “being”) is seen as the creative expression of an unconscious will or as the objectivation of the will to power or as the product of the elan vital, then the center of will, the individual selves, are decisive for the movement of the whole. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
In individuals’ self-affirmation life affirms itself or negates itself. Even if the selves are subject to an ultimate cosmic destiny they determine their own being in freedom. A large section of American pragmatism belongs to this group. In spite of American conformism and its courage to be as a part, pragmatism shared many concepts with that perspective more widely known in Europe as the philosophy of life. Its ethical principle is growth, its educational method is self-affirmation of the individual self, its preferred concept is creativity. The pragmatist philosophers are not always aware of the fact that courage to create implies the courage to replace the old by the new—the new for which there are no norms and criteria, the new which is a risk and which, measured by the old, is incalculable. Their social conformity hides from them what in Europe was expressed openly and consciously. They do not realize that pragmatism in its logical consequence (if not restricted by Christian or humanistic conformity) leads to that courage to be as oneself which is proclaimed by the radical Existentialist. The pragmatist type of naturalism is in its character, though not in its intention, a follower of romantic individualism and a predecessor of Existentialist independentism. The nature of the undirected growth is not different from the nature of the will to power and of the elan vital. However, the naturalists themselves are different. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The European naturalists are consistent and self-destructive; the American naturalists are saved by happy inconsistency: they still accept the conformist courage to be as a part. One of the goals of significant selfhood is that all the players play together. When a person is living authentically, one of the things that comes through is that all one’s systems are “Go” and that they work in some sort of integrated, total fashion. It all sounds so mysterious, so mystical or magical. Is it? There may be nothing magical at all. It is living your authentic existence, being truly, fully, real-ly all that you are. Authentic being means being oneself, honestly, in one’s relation with one’s fellows. It means taking the first step at dropping pretenses, defenses, and duplicity. It means an end to play it cool, an end to using one’s behavior as a gambit designed to disarm the other fellow, to get one to reveal oneself before you disclose yourself to that individual. This invitation is fraught with risk, indeed, it may inspire terror in some. Yet, while some honesty with others (and thus with oneself) may yield scars, it is likely to be an effective preventative both of mental illness and of certain kinds of physical sickness. Honesty can be literally a health-insurance policy. Mental illness is not something that comes from being dishonest and alienated from your fullest experience of self; mental illness is being dishonest and alienate from self and others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
When you are split off from who you are and thus from others, this psychopathology (sickness of the psyche or behaving self). If you are playing false with yourself and if this causes you to play false with others, you are not effectively functioning, nor actualizing yourself. “Grow exceedingly in the knowledge of God; yea, do begin to keep his statues and commandments, and walk in truth and uprightness before him,” reports Helaman 6.34. And thus we see that the Spirit of the Lord will begin to withdraw from mortals, because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts. The self in conflict often displays behaviors that other people cannot predict, and may be alarmed by. Sometimes, the behavior takes the simple form of forgetfulness. At other times, it may resemble the anxiety-possessed behavior described in the various neurotic classifications. In a number of cases, the person acts out behaviors that resemble the stereotyped “crazy” behavior of those who are labeled psychotic. If the person living falsely, inauthentically, in continual self-alienation is labeled mentally ill, then what do we call the person who is functioning fully, experiencing maximally, living and loving in the most satisfying manner possible? The term authenticity describes the reality-oriented personal and social life of the healthy person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
Closely related to this sense of intellectual and moral conscience is another trait characteristic of the nineteenth century: the sense of pride and mastery. If we look today at the pictures of the nineteenth-century life, the moral with the beard, the tall silk hat and walking cane, we are easily struck by the ridiculous and negative aspect of nineteenth-century male pride—a man’s vanity and naïve belief in oneself as the highest accomplishment of nature and of history; but especially if we consider the absence of this trait in our own time, we can see the beneficial aspects of this pride. Mortals had the feeling of having put oneself into the saddle, so to speak, of having freed oneself from domination by natural forces, and for the first time in history having become their master. One had freed oneself from the shackles of medieval superstition, had even succeeded in the hundred years between 1814 and 1914 in creating one of the most peaceful periods history has ever known. One felt oneself to be an individual, subject only to the laws of reason, following only one’s own decisions. The exploitative and hording attitude caused human suffering and lack of respect for the dignity of mortals; it caused Europe to exploit Africa and Asia and her own working class ruthlessly without regard for human values. The other pathogenic phenomenon of the nineteenth century, the role or irrational authority and the need to submit to it, led to the repression of thoughts and feelings which were tabued by society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
The most obvious symptom was the repression of physical intimacy and all that was natural in the body, movements, dress, architectural style, and so on. This repression resulted, as Dr. Freud thought, in various forms of neurotic pathology. The courage to be as oneself in all these groups has the character of the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self in spite of the elements of nonbeing threatening it. The anxiety of fate is conquered by the self-affirmation of the individual as an infinitely significant microcosmic representation of the Universe. One mediates the power of being which are concentrated in one. One has them within oneself in knowledge and one transforms them in action. One directs the courage of one’s life, and one can stand tragedy and death in a heroic affect and a love for the Universe which one mirrors. Even the loneliness is not absolute loneliness because the contents of the Universe are in one. If we compare this kind of courage with that of the Stoics we find that the main point of difference is in the emphasis of the uniqueness of the individual self in the line of thought which starts in the Renaissance and is guided by the romantics to the present. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
In Stoicism it is the wisdom of the wise mortal which is essentially equal in everyone of which one’s courage to be arises. In the modern World it is the individual as individual. Behind this change is possessed the Christian valuation of the individual soul as eternally significant. However, it is not this doctrine which gives the courage to be to modern mortals but doctrines of the individual in one’s quality as mirror of the Universe. “His people easy to be entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity; and they were quick to hearken unto the Word of the Lord—yea, if my days could have been in those day, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my people,” reports Helaman 7.7-8. Enthusiasm for the Universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the Universe and for mortals as its center is alive. The anxiety of guilt is removed: the symbols of death, judgment, and hell are put aside. Everything is done to deprive them of their seriousness. The courage of self-affirmation will not be shaken by the anxiety of guilt and condemnation. In later romanticism another dimension of the anxiety of guilt and its conquest was opened up. The destructive trends in the human soul were discovered. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
The second period of the romantic movement, in philosophy as well as in poetry, broke away from the ideas of harmony which were decisive from the Renaissance to the classicists and early romantics. A kind of demonic realism was born, which was tremendously influential on Existentialism and depth of psychology. The courage to affirm oneself must include the courage to affirm one’s own demonic depth. This contradicted radically the moral conformism of the average Protestant and even of the average humanist. However, it was avidly accepted by the Bohemian and the romantic naturalists. The courage to take the anxiety of the demonic upon oneself in spite of its destructive and often despairing character was the form in which the anxiety of guilt was conquered. However, this was possible only because the personal quality of evil had been removed by the preceding development and could not be replaced by the cosmic evil, which is structural and not a matter of personal responsibility. The courage to take the anxiety of guilt upon oneself has become the courage to affirm the demonic trends within oneself. This could happen because the demonic was not considered unambiguously negative but was thought to be part of the creative power of being. The demonic as the ambiguous ground of the creative is a discovery of the later period of romanticism, which over the bridges of Bohemianism and naturalism was brought to the Existentialism of the 20th century. Its confirmation in scientific terms was depth psychology. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
In some respects all of these forms of individualistic courage to be are forerunners of the radicalism of the 20th century, in which the courage to be as oneself was brought to most powerful expressions in the Existentialist movement. The survey given shows that the courage to be as oneself is never completely separated from the other pole, the courage to be as a part; and even more, overcoming isolation and facing the danger of losing one’s World in the self-affirmation of oneself as an individual are a way toward something which transcends both self and World. Ideas like the microcosm mirroring the Universe, or the monad representing the World, or the individual will to power expressing the character of will to power in life itself—all these point to a solution which transcends the two types of the courage to be. We need to emphasize the necessity for abolishing exploitation and transforming the working person into an independent, free and respected human being. If economic suffering were abolished, and if the working people were free from the domination of the capitalist, all the beneficial achievement of the nineteenth century would come to their full fruition, while the vices would disappear. Complete freedom from irrational authorities will usher in a new millennium. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
The working class, instead of falling behind in the economic development of the whole society, should have an increasing share in national wealth, and it is a perfectly valid assumption that provided no major catastrophe occurs, there will, in about one or two generations, be no more marked poverty in the United States of America. Closely related to the increasing abolishment of economic suffering is the fact that the human and political situation of the worker has changed drastically. People can no longer be ordered around, fired, abuse, as one was one hundred years ago. Looked upon from the standards of a World Class Leader, we have achieved almost everything which seems to be necessary for a saner society, and indeed, may people who still think in terms of the past century are convinced that we continue to progress. Consequently they also believe that the only threat to further progress lies in authoritarian societies, like California which, with its ruthless economic exploitation of workers and businesses for the sake of quicker accumulation of capital and the ruthless political authority necessary for the continuation of exploitation, resembles in many ways the early form of Capitalism, where workers were forced to work and mistreated and not looked at as human. However, we are not in danger of becoming slaves anymore, but of becoming robots. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
There is no overt authority which intimidates us, but we are governed by the fear of the anonymous authority of conformity. We do not submit to anyone personally; we do not go through conflicts with authority, but we have also no convictions of our own, almost no individuality, almost no sense of self. Quite obviously, the diagnosis of our pathology cannot follow the lines of the nineteenth century. We have to recognize the specific pathological problems of our time in order to arrive at a vision of that which is necessary to save the Western World from increasing insanity. “Excuse me, if I right all my wrongs. Excuse me, if I give up on being strong. I have been running blind, weighed down by denial. Still you were there right beside me. Never thought I would have someone like you. Never thought you would be the one to save me. Now I am ready to believe you always. Say I am worthy and I can finally say I agree. How I try to defy?” reports RAM and Susana (Someone Like you). Obedience means that I have completely placed my trust in the atonement, and my obedience is immediately met by the delight of the supernatural grace of God. “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my finger for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me,” reports Psalm 144.1-2. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
It is painful work to get in step with God and to keep pace with him—it means getting your second wind spiritually. The individual person is merged into a personal oneness with God, and God’s stride and his power alone are exhibited. We have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants. “Dusk till dawn this is where we belong, waiting for the Sun. Night till day, this is what I would say, our light will not fade away. I cannot breathe, I am falling to my feet, you are that I believe. Stay with me. I cannot see the fire next to me because you are all that I believe,” reports John O’Callaghan featuring Deidre McLaughlin (Stay With Me). If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead. We may discover that there are ways to be spiritual that do not counter the soul’s needs for body, individuality, imagination, and exploration. Eventually we might find that all emotions, all human activities, and all spheres of life have deep roots in the mysteries of the soul, and therefore are holy. Still another way to be spiritual and soulful at the same time is to hear the words of formal religion as speaking to and about the soul. It further signals incarnation of the divine within moral life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
All Other Hearts I knew My Worthiness is All My Doubt—Conform My Soul as ‘t Were a Church
The Savage Garden—it is just a phrase I used to use for Earth in the old times when I did not believe in anything, when I believed the only laws were aesthetic laws. But I was young then and expecting further miracles. Before I knew we knew more of nothing, and nothing more. Sometimes I think of the phrase again when the night is like this, so accidentally beautiful. Capitalism is based on the principle that is to be found in all class societies: the use of mortal by mortal. Since the modern capitalist employs labor, the social and political form of this exploitation has changes; what has not changed is that the owner of capital uses other mortals for the purpose of his or her own profit. The basic concept of use has nothing to do with cruel, or not cruel, ways of human treatment, but with the fundamental fact that one mortal serves another for purposes which are not one’s own but those of the employer. The concept of use of mortal by mortal has nothing to do even with the question whether one mortal uses another, or uses oneself. The fact remains the same, that a mortal, a living human being, ceases to be an end in himself, and becomes the means for the economic interests of another mortal, or oneself, or of an impersonal giant, the economic machines. “For he truly spake many great things unto them, which were hard to be understood, save a mortal should inquire of the Lord; and they being hard in their hearts, therefore, they did not look unto the Lord as they ought,” 1 Nephi 15.3. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
There are obvious objections to the foregoing statements. One is that modern mortals are free to accept or to decline a contract, and therefore one is a voluntary participant in one’s social relation to the employer, and not a thing. However, this objection ignores the fact that in the first place one has no choice but to accept the existing conditions, and secondly, that even if one were not forced to accept these conditions, one would still be employed, that is, made use of for purposes not one’s own, but of the capital whose profit one serves. The other objection is that all social life, even in its most primitive form, requires a certain amount of social co-operation, and even discipline, and that certainly in the more complex form of industrial production, a person has to fulfill certain necessary and specialized functions. While this statement is quite true, it ignores the basic difference: in a society where no person has power over another, each person fulfills one’s functions on the basis of co-operation and mutuality. No one can command another person, except insofar as a relationship is based on mutual co-operation, on love, friendship or natural bonds. “Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you,” reports 1 Nephi 15.11. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
Actually we find this present in many situations in our society today: the normal co-operation of husband and wife in their family life is to a large extent not any more determined by the power of the husband to command his wife, as it existed in antiquated forms of patriarchal society, but on the principle of co-operation and mutuality. The same holds true for the relationship of friends, inasmuch as they perform certain services for each other and co-operate with each other. In these relationships no one would dare to think of commanding the other person; the only reason for expecting one’s help lies in the mutual feeling of love, friendship or simply human solidarity. The help of another person is secured by my active effort, as a human being, to elicit one’s love, friendship and sympathy. In the relationship of the employer to the employee, this is not the case. The employer has bought the services of the worker, and however human one’s treatment may be, one still commands one, not on a basis of mutuality, but on the basis of having bought one’s working time for so many hours a day. The use of mortal by mortal is expressive of the system of values underlying the capitalistic system. Capital, the dead past, employs labor—the living vitality and power of the present. In the capitalistic hierarchy of values, capital stands high.er than labor, amassed things higher than the manifestations of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
Capital employs labor, and not labor capital. The person who owns capital commands the person who only owns one’s life, human skill, vitality and creative productivity. Things are higher than mortals. The conflict between capital and labor is much more than the conflict between classes, more than their fight for a greater share of the social product. It is the conflict between two principles of value: that between the World of things, and their amassment, and the World of life and its productivity. Every time I insist on having my own rights, I hurt the Son of God, while in fact I can prevent Jesus from being hurt if I will endure the challenge myself. A disciple realized that it is one’s Lord’s honor that is at stake in one’s life, not one’s own honor. My life’s spiritual honor and duty is to fulfill my debt to Christ in relation to lost souls. Every tiny bit of my life that has value I owe to the redemption of Jesus Christ. Am I doing anything to enable Christ to bring his redemption into evident reality in the lives of others? “In the name of the Almighty God, I command you that ye touch me not, for I am filled with the power of God, even unto the consuming of my flesh; and whose shall lay his or her hands upon me shall wither even as a dried reed; and one shall be as naught before the power of God, for God shall smite that individual,” reports 1 Nephi 17.48. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Closely related to the problem of exploitation and use, although even more complicated, is the problem of authority in modern mortals. Any social system in which one group of the population is commanded by another, especially if the latter is a marginalized member of the population, must be based on a strong sense of authority, a sense which is increased in a strongly patriarchal society where the male gender is supposed to be superior to and in control of the female gender. Since the problem of authority is so crucial for our understanding of human relations in any kind of society, and since the attitude of authority has changed fundamentally from the past to the present, authority is not a quality one person has, in the sense that one has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to oneself. However, there is a fundamental difference between a kind of superiority-inferiority relation which can be called rational authority and one which may be described as inhibiting, or irrational authority. An example will show what I have in mind. The relationship between teacher and student that between slave owner and slave are both based on the superiority of the one over the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
The interest of teacher and pupil are compelled in the same direction. If the teacher succeeds in furthering the pupil, he or she is satisfied. If the teacher has failed to do so, the failure is the teacher problem and the pupil’s problem. The slave owner, on the other hand, wants to exploit the enslaved human being, which is why the call them salves. It is an effort to classify them as problem which is not even worthy of being. The slave owner wants to exploit the slave as much as possible; the more one gets out of the slave, the more the slave master is satisfied. At the same time, the slave seeks to defend as best he or she can one’s claims for a minimum of happiness. These interests are definitely antagonistic, as what is of advantage to the one is detrimental to the other. The superiority has a different function in both cases: in the first, it is the condition for helping of the person subjected to the authority; in the second, it is the condition for one’s exploitation. The dynamics of authority in these two types are different too: the more the student learns, the less wide is the gap between one and the teacher. One becomes more and more like the teacher. In other words, the rational authority relationship tends to dissolve itself. However, when the superiority serves as a basis for exploitation, the distance becomes intensified through its long duration. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
The psychological situation is different in each of these authority situations. In the first, elements of love, admiration, or gratitude are prevalent. The authority is at the same time an example with which one wants to identify one’s self partially or totally. In the second situation, resentment or hostility will arise against the exploiter, subordination to whom is against one’s own interests. However, often as in the case of a slave, one’s hatred would only lead to conflicts which would subject the slave to suffering without a chance of winning. Therefore, the tendency will usually be to repress the feeling of hatred and sometimes even to replace it by a feeling of blind admiration. This has two functions: to remove the painful and dangerous feeling of hatred, and to soften the feeling of humiliation. If the person who rules over me is so wonderful or perfect, then I should not be ashamed of obeying him or her. I cannot be one’s equal because he or she is so much stronger, wiser, better, and so on, than I am. As a result, in the inhibiting kind of authority, the element either of hatred or of irrational overestimation and admiration of the authority will tend to increase. In the rational kind of authority, the strength of the emotional ties will tend to decrease in direct proportion to the degree in which the person subjected to the authority becomes stronger and thereby more similar to the authority. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10
The difference between rational and inhibiting authority is only a relative one. Even in the relationship between slave and master there are elements of advantage for the slave. One gets a minimum of food and protection which at least enables one to work for the master. (Provided one does not get beat to death for not producing enough, or disabled to the point they cannot work and are deemed useless, at which point food and shelter and the luxury of life might cease.) On the other hand, it is only in an ideal relationship between teacher and the student that we find a complete lack of antagonism of interests. There are many gradations between these two extreme cases, as in the relationship of a factory worker with his or her boss, or a farmer’s son with his father, or a hausfrau with her husband. Nevertheless, although in reality the two types of authority are blended, they are essentially different, and an analysis of a concrete authority situation must always determine the specific weight of each kind of authority. The character of society a mixture of rational and irrational authority, with essentially a hierarchical blend, based on divine law and tradition, where the ownership of capital allows one to buy and thus command labor of those who do not, and the latter has to obey, under penalty of going on government relief or starvation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
One cannot deny that in America today, there is a certain blending between slavery and freedom, the new and the old hierarchical pattern. The state, especially in the monarchial form, cultivates the antiquated virtues of obedience and submission, and applies them to new contents and values. Obedience, int the middle class, is still one of the fundamental virtues and disobedience one of the elementary vices. “They were confounded and could not contend against me; neither durst they lay their hands upon me nor touch me with their fingers, even for the space of many days. Now they durst not do this lest they should wither before me, so powerful was the Spirit of God; and this it has wrong upon them. And it came to pass that the Lord declared unto me: Stretch forth thine hand again unto thy brethren, and they shall not wither before thee, but I will shock them, saith the Lord, and this will I do, that they may know that I am the Lord their God. And it came to pass that I stretched forth my hand unto my people, and they did not wither before me; but the Lord did shake them, even according to the word which he had spoken,” reports 1 Nephi 17.52-54. At the same time, however, rational authority had developed side by side with irrational authority. Since the Reformation and the Renaissance mortals had begun to rely on their own reason as a guide to action and value judgment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
The mortals felt proud to have convictions which were theirs, and they respected the authority of scientists, philosophers, historians, who helped them to form one’s own judgments and to be sure of one’s own conviction. The decision between true and false, right and wrong, was one of the utmost important and, indeed, both the moral and the intellectual conscience assumed a paramount place in the character structure of current mortals. One may not have applied the rules of one’s conscience to mortals of a different color or even of a different social class, yet to some extent one was determined by one’s sense of right and wrong, and at least by the repression of the awareness of wrong-doing, if one did succeed in avoiding wrong action. “May God arise, may his enemies be scattered; may his foes flee before him. As smoke is blown away by the wind, may you blow them away; as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God. However, may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful. Sing to God and praise to his name, extol him who rides on the clouds—his name is the LORD—and rejoice before him. A father to the fatherless, a defender of windows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a Sun-scorched land,” reports Psalm 68.1-6. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
There is nothing neutral about the soul. It is the possession of the source of life. Either we respond to what the soul presents in its fantasies and desires, or we suffer from this neglect of ourselves. The power of the soul can hurl a person into ecstasy or into depression. It can be creative or destructive, gentle or aggressive. “And the fire will never leave us though the path divides between us. You always had the strength to walk alone and the quiet hours would haunt you and the wilder winds, they called you, I almost had the strength to let you go. Why were you falling? Far, far away. I still remember you and those days could not get better. I keep it all, this will not fade, I will never let it. I know you gave it all so good, I cannot forget it. Still lost in you, on that day we will stay forever. Stay forever. And I know that time is speeding, experiences fleeting. I would give them all away to bring you home. Why were you falling? Far, far away. Forever lost in you and those days could not get better. I keep it all, this will not fade, I will never let it. I know you gave it all so good, I cannot forget it. Still lost in you, on that day we will stay forever. Forever lost in you…” reports Emma Hewitt (Still remember). Power incubates within the soul and then makes its influential move into life as the expression of the soul. If there is so soulfulness, then there is no true power, and if there is no power, then there can be no true soulfulness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Angels in the Early Morning are Guests in this Stupendous Place
I thought of God Incarnate, with whom I had spoken. I thought of all my doubts that any of it had been real, of all my suspicious that I was the mere pawn of spirits. While everybody believes oneself to act according to one’s own interest, many people are actually determined by the anonymous laws of the market and of the economic machines. The individual capitalist expands his or her enterprise not primarily because one wants to, but because one has to, because postponement of further expansion would mean regression. Actually as a business grows, one has to continue making it bigger, whether one wants to or not. In this function of the economic law which operates behind the backs of mortals and forces them to do things without giving them the freedom to decide, we see that it is not only the law of the market which has its own life and rules over mortals, but also the development of science and technique. For a number of reasons, the problems and organization of science today are such that a scientist does not choose one’s problems; the problems force themselves upon the scientist. One solves one problem, and the result is not that one is more secure or certain, but that ten other new problems open up in place of the single solved one. They force the scientist to solve them; one has to go ahead at an ever-quickening pace. The same holds true for industrial techniques. The pace of science forces the pace of techniques. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes mortals its appendix. If the wealth of society corresponded to the actual needs of all its members, there would be no problem of distributing it; each member could take from the social product as much as he or she likes, or needs, and there would be no need of regulation, except in the purely technical sense of distribution. However, aside from primitive societies, this condition has never existed up to now in human history. The needs were always greater than the sum total of the social product, and therefore a regulation had to be made on how to distribute it, how many and who should have the optimal satisfaction of their needs, and which classes had to be satisfied with less than they wanted. In most highly developed societies of the past, the decision was made essentially by force. Certain classes had the power to appropriate the best of the social product for themselves, and to assign to other classes the heavier and dirtier works and a smaller share of the product. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
Force was often implemented by social and religious tradition, which constituted such a strong psychic force within people that it often made the threat of physical force unnecessary. However, the modern market is a self-regulating mechanism of distribution, which makes it unnecessary to divide the social product according to an intended or traditional plan, and thus does away with the necessity of the use of force within society. Of course, the absence of force is more apparent than real. The worker who has to accept the wage rate offered to him or her on the labor market is forced to accept the market condition because one could not survive otherwise. Thus the freedom of the individual is largely illusory. One is aware of the fact that there is no outer force which compels one to enter into certain contracts; one is less aware of the laws of the market which operate behind one’s back as it were; hence one believes that one is free, when one is actually not. However, while this is so, the capitalist method of distribution by the market mechanism is better than any other method devised so far in a class society, because it is a basis for the relative political freedom of the individual which characterizes capitalism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15
The economic functioning of the market rests upon competition of many individuals who want to sell their commodities on the commodity market, as they want to sell their labor or services on labor and personality market. Everyone is struggling for the best places, even though only a few are chosen to attain them. In this scramble for success, the social and moral rules of human solidarity break down; the importance of life is in being first in a competitive race. Another factor which constitutes the capitalistic made of production is that in this system the aim of all economic activity is profit. Now around this profit motive of Capitalism, a great deal of calculated and uncalculated confusion has been created. We have been told—and rightly so—that all economic activity is meaningful only if it results in a profit, that is to say, if we gain more than we have spent in the act of production. To make a living, even the precapitalist artisan had to spend on raw material and the apprentice’s wages less than the price one charged for one’s product. In any society that supports industry, simple or complex, the value of the salable product must exceed the cost of production in order to provide capital needed for the replacement of machinery or other instruments for the development of increase of production. However, the question of the profitableness of production is not the issues. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
Our problem is that our motive for production is not social usefulness, not satisfaction in the work process, but the profit derived from investment. The usefulness of one’s product to the consumer need not interest the individual capitalist at all. This does not mean that the capitalist, psychologically speaking, is driven by an insatiable greed for money. This may or may not be so, but it is not essential for the capitalistic quently the capitalist’s motive in an earlier phase than it is now, when ownership and management are largely separated, and wen the aim of obtaining higher profits is subordinate to the wish for the ever-growing expansion and smooth running of an enterprise. Incomes can, under the present system, be quite apart from person effort or service. The owner of capital can earn without working. The essential human function of exchange of effort for income can become the abstracted manipulation of money for more money. This is most obvious in the case of the absentee owner of an industrial enterprise. It does not make any difference whether one owns the whole enterprise, or only a share of it. In each case one makes a profit from one’s capital and from the work of others without having to make any effort oneself. There have been many pious justifications for this state of affairs. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
It has been said that the profits were a payment for the risk one takes in one’s investment of capital, or for one’s self-depriving effort to save, which enabled one to accumulate the capital one can invest. However, it is hardly necessary to prove that these marginal factors do not alter the elementary fact that Capitalism permits the making of profits without personal effort and productive function. However, as far as those who do work and perform services, their incomes are not always in any reasonable correlation to the effort they make. One of the reasons is because the underevaluation of work, of human effort and skill. The other lies in the fact that as long as my gain is limited by the effort I make, my desire is limited. If, on the other hand, my income is not in proportion to my effort, there are no limitations to my desires, since their fulfillment is a matter of opportunities offered by certain market situations, and not dependent on my own capacities. Capitalism is supposed to truly be private Capitalism. Individuals see and seize new opportunities, act economically, sense new methods, are encouraged to acquire property. This pleasure in property, aside from competitiveness and profit seeking, is one of the fundamental aspects of the character of the middle and upper classes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Individualism is the self-affirmation of the individual self as individual self without regard to its participation in its World. As such it is the opposite of collectivism, the self-affirmation of the self as part of a lager whole without regard to its character as an individual self. Individualism has developed out of the bondage of primitive collectivism and medieval semicollectivism. Primitive collectivism was undermined by the experience of personal guilt and individual question-asking. Both were effective at the end of the ancient World and led to the radical nonconformism of the cynics and skeptics, to the moderate nonconformism of the Stoics, and to the attempt to reach a transcendent foundation for the courage to be in Stoicism, mysticism, and Christianity. All these motives were present in medieval semicollectiveism, which came to end like early collectivism with the experience of personal guilt and the analytic power of radical question-asking. However, it did not immediately lead to individualism. Protestantism, in spite of its emphasis on the individual conscience, was established as a strictly authoritarian and conformist system, similar to that of its adversary, the Roman Church of the Counter-reformation. There was no individualism in either of the great confessional groups. And there was only hidden individualism outside them, since they had drawn the individualistic trends of the Renaissance into themselves and adapted them to their ecclesiastical conformity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
This situation lasted for 150 years but no more. After this period, that of confessional orthodoxy, the personal element came again to the fore. Pietism and methodism re-emphasized personal guilt, personal experience, and individual perfection. They were not intended to deviate from ecclesiastical conformity, but unavoidably they did deviate; subjective piety become the bridge of the victorious reappearance of autonomous reason. Pietism was the bridge to Enlightenment. However, even the Enlightenment did not consider itself individualistic. One believed not in a conformity which is based on the power of reason in every individual. The principles of practical and theoretical reasons were supposed to be universal among mortals and able to create, with the help of research and education, a new conformity. The whole period believed in the principle of harmony—harmony being the law of the Universe according to which the activities of the individual, however individualistically conceived and performed, lead behind the back of the single actor to a harmonious whole, to a truth in which at least a large majority can agree, to a good in which more and more people can participate, to a conformity which is based on the free activity of every individual. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
The individual can be free without destroying the group. The function of the economy seem to confirm this view: that laws of the market produced, behind the backs of the competitors in the marker, the greatest possible amount of goods for everybody. However, what characterizes income distribution in Capitalism is the lack of balanced proportion between an individual’s effort and work and the social recognition accorded one—financial compensation. This disproportion would, in a less affluent society than ours, result in greater extremes of luxury and poverty than our standards of morals would tolerate. I am not stressing, however, the material effects of this disproportion, but its moral and psychological effects. In the past, the worker, or rather one’s labor, was a commodity to be bought by the owner of capital, not essentially different from any other commodity on the market, and it was used to its fullest capacity by the buyer. Since it has been bought for its proper price on the labor market, there was no sense of reciprocity, or of any obligation on the part of the owner of capital, beyond that of paying the wages. If hundreds of thousands of workers were without work and on the point of starvation, that was their bad luck, the result of their inferior talents, or simply a social and natural law, which could not be changed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Exploitation was not personal anymore, but it had become anonymous, as it were. It was the law of the market that condemned a mortal to work for starvation wages, rather than the intention or greed of any one individual. Nobody was responsible or guilty, nobody could change conditions either. One was dealing with the iron laws of society, or so it seemed. The alienation we feel regarding other people is bad enough. Alienation from ourselves is devasting. The crisis of insignificance is originally and functionally interwoven with intrapersonal alienation. Intrapersonal is not the same as interpersonal, which is what goes on between two or more people. Intrapersonal experiences are those which occur within one human being. We have talked of conflict, when two or more needs or motives are in contention. When this occurs, we may reach a stalemate in which neither need is met, or we may choose one over the other, or we may alternate from one motive to the other. In a few people, those whom psychiatrist call neurotics, the anxiety produced by conflicts reaches such a level that choice is out of the question. Not that the person has no choices, but the agony produced by anxiety is so great that one absolutely gives up any idea of making a choice; one abdicates one’s responsibility as a free person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Neurotics may freeze and do nothing. They may find the anxiety converted into any number of bodily disorders. Truly, this level of conflict in certain people is so crippling that they often resort to dropping out of their humanity. As with other self-defeating behaviors, including masochistic actions or relationships, wherein the person gains only when he or she loses, these are the actions of people who feel too much guilt to take advantage of their freedom. Often they become compulsive about the things they do; their behavior is behavior without a choice. The most severe of the self-defeating situations is what we call intrapersonal alienation. The self is in some degree of dis-integration. When this occurs, as it does to all of us at times, and in many of us all the time, the self is not reaching its fullest potential. The dis-integration of self occurs in varying degrees. A particularly troublesome feeling or thought may be shelved. It may be repressed more or less permanently. When it is blocked off, through one or another of the self-defeating behaviors, the individual functions at less than full potential. Like a remote-control car with a low battery, one is not operating at full capacity. Intrapersonal alienation occurs wen we do not know the full extent of our selfhood, or, if we do know, when we segregate parts of it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
People who segregate parts of themselves usually dislike themselves, in whole or part, and often make self-derogatory remarks. They are not trying to be modest or to fish for compliments; they really mean it. More often than not, they try to live through other people. An example of this is the father whose only satisfaction comes from seeing his children (usually a son) succeed in areas where he never could. Sports are often overly emphasized by fathers who are literally re-living life through their sons. Dis-integration is also present in the person who lets others live one’s life for them. If all sides of one were working together in a harmonious way, one might pay attention to other people’s advice, opinions, or judgment, but one would retain full command of one’s own life. This is the essence of self-actualizing living. However, too many of us live our lives on other people’s terms. We let others direct the courage of our lives and if we discover it, instead of taking the steering wheel again, we simply grumble about it and go on doing the same thing. People who seem to be watching their own behavior from the point of view of a spectator are not integrated within. They often speak of themselves in the second or third person and will describe Life, but not their own. It is as if the life of such a person were being lived, not by the individual. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
When people are disassociated from their own reality, they are not only other-directed, one is blocked off the active, spontaneous center of one’s own being, so that there is little or no will of one’s own being experienced. Alienation prevents disturbing self-awareness. The alienated patient often complains of being in a fog, but unconsciously one wants to stay in it. One welcomes self-anesthesia. Alienation, in the sense of conforming like an automaton, prevents one from the burden and the responsibility of commitment to oneself and one’s identity. It permits self-elimination. Alienation, in its most active form, is the rejection of being oneself and the attempt to become the other, the ideal self. It means escape from the hated self through self-idealization. When this war within goes on, the person often lives a dis-integrated or partial existence. Education showed that emphasis on the free development of the individual child does not reduce the chances of one becoming an active member of a conformist society. And the history of Protestantism confirmed the belief of the Reformers that the free encounter of everybody with the Bible can create an ecclesiastical conformity—in spite of individual and even denominational differences. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
The law of preestablished harmony means the monads of which all things consist, although they have no doors and windows that open toward each other, they participate in the same World which is present in each of them, whether it be dimly or clearly perceived. The problem of individualization and participation seemed to be solved philosophically as well as practically. Courage to be as oneself, as this is understood in the Enlightenment, is a courage in which individual self-affirmation includes participation in the universal, rational self-affirmation. Thus it is not the individual self as such which affirms itself but the individual self as such which affirms itself but the individual self as the bearer of reason. The courage to be as oneself is the courage to follow reason and to defy irrational authority. In this respect—but only in this respect—it is Neo-Stoicism. For the courage to be of the Enlightenment is not a resigned courage to be. It dares not only to face the vicissitudes of fate and the inescapability of death but o affirm itself as transforming reality according to the demands of reason. It is a fighting, daring courage. It conquers the threat of guilt by accepting errors, shortcomings, misdeeds in the individual as well as in social life as unavoidable and at the same time to be overcome by education. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
The courage to be as oneself within the atmosphere of Enlightenment is the courage to affirm oneself as a bridge from a lower to a higher state of rationality. It is obvious that this kind of courage to be must become conformist the moment its revolutionary attack on that which contradicts reason has ceased, namely in the victorious bourgeoisie. Strong faith in the Savior is submissively accepting of his will and timing in our lived—even if the outcome is not what we hoped for or wanted. As we confront our own trials and tribulations, we can plead with the Heavenly father, however. Not shrinking if much more important than surviving! God wants us to be able to accept bitter situations without becoming bitter. Do you take the time to discover each day how beautiful your life can be? How pleasant is it to plant a baby tree and watch it grow into a mature tree. With care it will surely become what it is destined to be, crowed with grace and beauty. Each day allows of to develop new and impressive character, more promise of beauty until we become what God has designed us to be. We are one of the noblest of God’s creations. His intent is that our lives will be gloriously beautiful regardless of what our circumstances are. As we are grateful and obedient, we can become all that God intends us to be. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Have You Got a Brook in Your Little Heart—The Heart I Cherish in My Own
It was a cacophony of minds filling me in on everything from the beginning. And the whole thing sent a little panic through my enormous brave soul. A problem that comes with living is a kind of conflict called alienation. It means that the person feels or is made to feel that he or she is totally other than people in his or her own groups. People feel that they are an alien in the same sense as non-naturalized residents in the United States of America are considered aliens by the American government. They are a physically present nonmember of the group. The term “alien” may also carry negative and discriminatory connotations. Alienation is more than isolation or separateness; it is estrangement. It carries with it the idea of detachment from ourselves and from others. Among the many possible definitions of the term “alienation,” it seems appropriate to limit them term alienation to mean an individual feeling or state of dissociation from self, from others, and from the World at large. Such states, although functions of the conditions that produce them, should not be confused with the conditions themselves. When you feel alienated it may be that you have chosen to elaborate parts of your total self that others cannot tolerate or live with. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
When it comes to alienation, you may, in other words, choose to express a particular aspect of yourself that puts distance, both spatial and social, between you and other people. Take the hero (or anti-hero, if you wish) of Supernatural’s Dean Winchester. He chose not to live like other people. He did not have the apple pie life everyone dreams of with a nice house, in a lace curtains suburb, two cars, a wife, two kids, great career, and a white picket fence. Dean would do so many things that where so radical and so different from society’s norms that when he was hunting monsters, he was at times so alone and apart from other people. He subsequently did not trust many people, including his own brother at times. Simply being different does not qualify one as an alien, however. The alienated feels that his or her differences makes a difference. The individual (or one’s group) adopts the attitude that one’s actions create a gap that is unbridgeable. Obviously either party can create this situation and can participate in the attitude. A person can so order one’s life, can so emphasize these dissociating aspects of self, that it will almost guarantee a schism. One may do this intentionally, either to thumb one’s nose at those one dislikes or to show how little one needs them or their approval. Many of us do this in little ways throughout our lives, yet the feeling of alienation is hardly ever there, or not for very long. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
We can create a divine between us and society out of spite, or to test our individuality, or simply as an experiment. As an example of the latter, a young lady in one of our classes deliberately tested the alienating process by using in class what most of her female classmates called “obscene” language. She wanted to see what it might take to condition alienation in them. At the end of a prearranged time, she told them what she had been doing, but a few of the ladies never quite forgave her! Sometimes the people in a group decide that the person’s self-expression is detestable or alien, and they create the attitude and the subsequent behavior. The alien can choose to go along with it and feel alienated simply because the group is expressing alienation or one can refuse to play the game and either change one’s behavior or leave the scene. An example of how the group can force the alienation: A young teacher decided to supplement her salary by writing fiction. She had talent and sold two novels to a firm that specialized in somewhat controversial fiction. She chose to write under her own name (since she felt that her selfhood included writing as well as teaching, and she saw nothing wrong with what she was doing). #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
The books were not best-sellers, but they were available on most newsstands in the city where she taught. The books were very frank and explicit in their language and were classified by many people as “obscene.” She protested that they were simply portrayals of real life as she had observed it, and, though none of the experiences she described had actually happened to her, she was capitalizing on the public’s states for sensational literature. Not only were parents and townspeople angry at her, but her fellow teachers began expressing their displeasure. She was avoided in the faculty lounge, in the lunch room, and even by close associates. Her fiancé assumed her to be a cheap opportunist and broke off the engagement. (She felt, however, that, in spire of his vehement denials, he believed she had done most of the things she had written about.) A group of townspeople and teachers succeeded in getting her fired. Though the young lady admitted she was taking advantage of the opportunities to sell sensational literature, she felt that she was also making social commentary with her stories. Whatever her motives, she chose to exhibit a part of her self that flew in the face of conventional morality. The group felt it necessary to alienate itself from the young woman and succeeded in communicating its attitude to her. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Alienation may have another very important aspect. A person may find it vitally necessary to split off from the group in order that one might survive as a person. Feelings of alienation and the rejection of others might well be the results of the way in which one does this. Our society may itself have become biologically dysfunctional, and some forms of schizophrenic alienation from the alienation of society may have a sociobiological function that we have not recognized. What we call schizophrenia is not a disease or sickness at all. It is a way of living that may be vital and necessary. One feels that the schizophrenic is a person who is extremely sensitive to the depersonalizing and fragmenting experiences of life and is going within to try to dramatize this fragmentation, this alienation to help bring the pieces back into their intended togetherness again: Perhaps we can retain the now old name, and read into it its etymological meaning: Schiz—“broken”; Phrenos—“soul” or “heart.” The schizophrenic in this sense is one who is brokenhearted. If we have the heart to let them, even broken hearts have been known to mend. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” reports 2 Corinthians 12.9. Schizophrenia, or any other so-called mental illness may be the step or process certain people take on their way to healthy functioning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
That is, a person may have to experience one’s own disorientation or sickness of soul before one can really know oneself fully. “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has declared, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you,’” reports Hebrews 13.5. Alienation, in whatever form, is a widespread and deeply painful experience. The courage to be as a part in the progress of the group to which one belongs, of this nation, of all humankind, is expresses in all specifically American philosophies: pragmatism, process philosophy, the ethics of growth, progressive education, and crusading in politics. However, this type of courage is not necessarily destroyed if the belief in progress is shaken, as it is today. Progress can mean two things. In every action in which something is produced beyond what was already given, a progress is made (pro-gress means going forward). In this sense action and the belief in progress are inseparable. The other meaning of progress is a universal, metaphysical law of progressive evolution, in which accumulation produces higher and higher forms and values. The existence of such a law cannot be proved. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Most processes show that gain and loss are balanced. Nevertheless the new gain is necessary, because otherwise all past gains would also be lost. The courage of participation in the productive process is not dependent on the metaphysical idea of progress. The courage to be as a part in the productive process takes anxiety in its three main forms into itself. The way in which it deals with the anxiety about fate as been described. This is especially remarkable in a highly competitive society in which the security of the individual is reduced to almost nothing. The anxiety conquered in the courage to be as a part in the productive process is considerable, because the threat of being excluded from such a participation by unemployment or the loss of an economic basis is what, above all, fate means today. Only in the light of this situation can the tremendous impact of the great crisis of the 1930’s on the American people, and the frequent loss of the courage to be in it, be understood. The anxiety about death is met in two ways. The reality of death is excluded from daily life to the highest possible degree. The dead are not allowed to show that they are dead; they are transformed into a mask of the living. The other and more important way of dealing with death is the belief in a continuation of life after death, called the immortality of the soul. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
The immortality of the soul is not a Christian and hardly a Platonic doctrine. Christianity speaks of the resurrection and eternal life, Platonism of a participation of the soul in the transtemporal sphere of essences. However, the modern idea of immortality means a continuous participation of the soul in the transtemporal sphere of essences. However, the modern idea of immortality means a continuous participation in the productive process—time and World without end. It is not the eternal rest of the individual in God but his unlimited contribution to the dynamics of the Universe that gives one the courage to face death. In this kind of hope, one can tell God is always in their picture, regardless of if you have scientific proof or not. God is understood as the productive process itself. “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand,” reports Isaiah 41.10. The anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness is potentially as great as the anxiety of fate and death. It is rooted in the nature of finite productivity. Although, as we have seen, the tool as a tool is not important but rather the tool as a result of human productivity, the question: for what? cannot be suppressed completely. It is silenced but always ready to come into the open. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
Today, we are witnessing a rise of this anxiety and a weakening of the courage to take it into itself. The anxiety of guilt and condemnation is deeply rooted in the American mind, first through the influence of puritanism, then trough the impact of the evangelical-pietistic movements. It is strong even if its religious foundation is undermined. However, in connection with the predominance of the courage to be as a part in the productive process it has changed its character. Guilt is produced by manifest shortcomings in adjustments to and achievements within the creative activities of society. It is the social group in which one participates productively that judges, forgives, and restores, after the adjustments have been made and the achievements have become visible. This is the reason for the existential insignificance of the experience of justification or forgiveness of sins in comparison with the striving for sanctification and the transformation of one’s own being as well as one’s World. A new beginning is demanded and attempted. This is the way in which the courage to be as a part of the productive process takes the anxiety of guilt into itself. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
Participation in the productive process demands conformity and adjustment to the ways of social production. This necessity became stronger the more uniform and comprehensive the methods of production became. Technical society grew into fixed patterns. Conformity in those matters which conserve the smooth functioning of the big machine of production and consumption increased with the increasing impact of the means of public communication. World political thinking, the struggle with collectivism, forced collectivist features on those who fought against them. This process is still going on and may lead to a strengthening of the conformist elements in the type of the courage to be as a part which is represented by America. Conformism might approximate collectivism, not so much in economic respects, and not too much in political respects, but very much in the pattern of daily life and thought. Whether this will happen or not, and if it does to what degree, is partly dependent on the power of resistance in those who represent the opposite pole of the courage to be, the courage to be as oneself. Since their criticism of the conformist and collectivist forms of the courage to be as part is a decisive element of their self-expression, it is worth looking into more deeply. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
We are extremely blessed to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives. It brings hope to a troubles World. Christ is the personal antidote we need to find peace in a World that is absolutely unfair. “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the World ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the World,” reports John 16.33. None of us makes it through this life without problems and challenges—and sometimes tragedies and misfortunes. After all, in a large part we are here to learn and grow from such events in our lives. We know that there are times when we will suffer, when we will grieve, and when we will be saddened. “Adam fell that mortals might be; and mortals are, that they might have joy,” reports 2 Nephi 2.25. We should be able to see joy in our entire life. Sometimes moments can be difficult, but many of us have had many successes over a lifetime and let that joy inspire you and carry you on until it is your time to shine again. “How might we have joy in our lives, despite all that we may face? Again from the scriptures: ‘Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you,’” reports Doctrine and Covenants 68.6. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Dedicated to Mrs. Bonnie Faye Todd and Ms. Crystal Faye Todd
No Cause to be Awake as My Best was Gone to Sleep and Morn a New Politeness Took and Failed to Wake them
Life cannot be understood in the light of merely contributing factors as a frontier situation, the need to amalgamate many nationalities, the long isolation from active World politics, the influence of religion and so on. In order to understand life one must ask: Which is the type of courage underlying certain features which have endured throughout history, how does it deal with the anxieties in human existence and how is it related to the manifestation of the courage to be as oneself? Broadly, one who leads a marginal existence lives on the borders of one group (the individual may be a nominal member) but practices the lifestyle of a different group. Visually a mortal may obviously be a member of the African American race but he or she lives, works and plays in an all-White environment (as do many African American children in suburbia). As a neighbor, co-worker, friend, one is often faced with a conflict of roles. In addition to having to decide whether one is a spokesperson for one group or the other, one may carry inside of oneself the tension of not fully knowing who he or she is, or of not liking who he or she is. Many young people are faced with the task of keeping the best of their heritage while moving into the present and future. The marginal person is often forced to sort among the various aspects of oneself and live out only those that are easiest. However, the conflicts can be devastating. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11
Present-day America has received, since the 1930’s, influences from Europe and Asia which represent extreme forms of the courage to be as oneself, like Existentialist literature and art, or attempts to overcome the anxiety of our period by different forms of transcendent courage. However, these influences are still limited to the intelligentsia and to people whose eyes have been opened by the impact of the World historical events to the questions asked by Existentialism. They have not reached the masses of people in any social group and they have not changed the basic trends of feeling and thought and the corresponding attitudes and institutions. On the contrary, the trends toward being as a part and toward affirming one’s being by participation in given structures of life are rapidly increasing. Conformity is growing, but it has not yet fully manifested. The economic system which has become dominant in the West since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is Capitalism. Common features of Capitalism are: the existence of politically and legally free people; the fact that free mortals (workers and employees) sell their labor to the owner of capital on the labor market, by contract; the existence of the commodity market as a mechanism by which prices are determined and the exchange of the social product is regulated; the principle that each individual acts with the aim of seeking profit for oneself, and yet that, by the competitive actions of many, the greatest advantage is supposed to accrue for all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11
While these features are common to Capitalism throughout the last few centuries, the changes within this period are as important as are the similarities. The technique and industry were in the beginning compared with the development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and at the same time the practices and ideas of medieval culture still had a considerable influence on the economic practices of this period. Thus it was supposed to be un-Christian and unethical for one merchant to try to lure customers from another by force of lower prices or any other inducements. If there were overgrown tradesmen who had more money than their competitors, and thus were not forced to use credit, bought their wares directly from the producer, transported them himself, instead of through a middleman, and sold them directly to the retailer, thus enabling the latter to sell the material for one penny cheaper per yard. The result of this whole method is only to enrich this covetous man, and to enable another person to buy his cloth a little cheaper, a very small advantage which is in no relation to the damage done by the businessman. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11
We find similar prohibitions against underselling in ordinances in Germany and France throughout the eighteenth century. It is well known how skeptical people were in that period toward new machines, inasmuch as they threatened to take work away from mortals. Machines were considered the pernicious enemy of labor because they would diminish the number of workers. The various attitudes just mentioned are based on principles which had determine the life of mortals for many centuries. Most important of all was the principle that society and economy exist for mortals, and not mortals for them. If it hurt the group within the society, no economic progress was supposed to be healthy that could do such a thing. Needless to say this concept was closely related to traditionalist thoughts in so much as the traditional social balance was to be preserved, and any disturbance was believed to be harmful. By transforming the courage to accept fate passively into an active wrestling with fate, it actually prepared the way of courage in America. In the symbolism of Renaissance art fate is represented as the wind blowing on the sails of a vessel, while mortals stand at the steering wheel and determines the direction as much as it can be determined under the given conditions. Mortals try to actualize all their potentialities; and their potentialities are inexhaustible. For mortals are the microcosm, in whom all cosmic forces are potentially present, and who participates in all sphere and strata of the Universe. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11
Through mortals the Universe continues the creative process which first has produced one as the aim and the center of creation. Now mortals have to shape their World and themselves, according to the productive powers given to them. In humans, nature comes to its fulfillment, it is taken into their knowledge and their transforming technical activity. In the visual arts, nature is drawn into the human sphere and mortals are posited in nature, and both are shown in their ultimate possibilities of beauty. The bearer of this creative process is the individual who, as an individual, is a unique representative of the Universe. Most important is the creative individual, the genius, in whom, the unconscious creativity of mortals breaks into the consciousness of mortals like Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo da Vinci, Giordano Bruno, Shaftesbury, Sarah Winchester, William Randolph Hearst, Goethe, Juila Morgan, Harriet Tubman, Schelling were all inspired by this idea of a participation in the creative process of the Universe. In these people enthusiasm and rationality were untied. Their courage was both the courage to be as oneself and the courage to be as a part. The doctrine of the individual as the microcosmic participant in the creative process of the macrocosm presented them with the possibility of this synthesis. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11
Through God’s compassion, kindness, and love, we will all receive more than we deserve, more than we can ever earn, and more than we can ever hope for. We believe in truth, justice, and mercy and that good will win in the end. However, in this fallen World, things are not always fair or equal. For some, this is a difficult concept to swallow. At times, greater faith is necessary to maintain course and perspective. Most of us experience some measure of what is called the furnace of affliction. Though the justice and mercy of a loving Father in Heaven, the refinement and sanctification possible through challenges can help us achieve what God desires us to become. However, when a person is not rewarded for their efforts, on someone suffers from infirmary, the think that life is not fair. As adults our sense of fairness gets offended when we perceive the way people in power seem to get away with things. Why should some people be born into affluence, while some are born into poverty? Why should some people be healthier, prettier or more charismatic than others? The World has never been fair. Our lives might not look like the way we imagine they should be. “My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. God hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. God has confounded mine enemies, unto the causing them to quake before me,” 2 Nephi 4.20-12. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11
Mortal’s productivity moves from potentiality to actuality in such a way that everything actualized has potentialities for further actualization. This is the basic structure of progress. In parts of the ancient World, some people see the movement from potentiality to actuality as vertical, going from the lower to higher forms of being. In modern progressivism the movement from potentiality to actuality is horizontal, temporal, futuristic. And this is the main form in which the self-affirmation of modern Western humanity manifested itself. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility,” reports 2 Nephi 2.11. It was courage, for it had to take into itself an anxiety which grew with the growing knowledge of the Universe and our World within it. The Earth had been thrown out of the center of the World by Copernicus and Galileo. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11
It had become small, and in spite of the heroic affect which Giordano Bruno divided into the infinity of the Universe a feeling of being lost in the ocean of cosmic bodies and among the unbreakable rules of their motion crept into the hearts of many. The courage of the modern period was not simple optimism. It had to take into itself the deep anxiety of nonbeing in a Universe without limits and without a humanly understandable meaning. This anxiety could be taken into the courage but it could not be removed, and it came to the surface any time when the courage was weakened. This is the decisive source of the courage to be as a part in the creative process of nature and history, as it developed in Western civilization and, most conspicuously, in the New World. However, it underwent many changes before it turned into the conformistic type of the courage to be as a part which characterize present-day American system. The cosmic enthusiasm of the Renaissance vanished under the influence of Protestantism and rationalism, and when it reappeared in the classic-romantic movements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries it was not able to gain much influence in industrial society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11
The synthesis between individuality and participation, based on the cosmic enthusiasm, was dissolved. A permanent tension developed between the courage to be as oneself as it was implied in Renaissance individualism and the courage to be as a part as it was implied in Renaissance Universalism. Extreme forms of liberalism were challenged by reactionary attempts to re-establish a medieval collectivism or by attempts to produce a new organic society. Liberalism and democracy could clash in two ways: liberalism could undermine the democratic control of society or democracy could become tyrannical and a transition to totalitarian collectivism. Besides these dynamic and violent movements, a more static and unaggressive development could take place: the rise of a democratic conformity which restrains all extreme forms of the courage to be as oneself without destroying the liberal elements that distinguish it from collectivism. This was, above all, the way of Great Britain. The tension between liberalism and democracy also explains many traits behind the American democratic conformism. However, behind all these changes remained one thing, the courage to be as part in the productive process of history. And this is what makes the present-day American courage one of the great types of the courage to be as a part. Its self-affirmation is the affirmation of oneself as a participant in the creative development of humankind. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11
There is something astonishing in the American courage for an observer who comes from Europe: although mostly symbolized in the early pioneers it is present today in the large majority of people. A person many have experienced a tragedy, a destructive fate, the breakdown of convictions, even guilt and momentary despair: one feels neither destroyed nor meaningless nor condemned nor without hope. When the Roman Stoic experienced the same catastrophes, they took them with the courage of resignation. The typical American, after one has lost the foundations of one’s existence, works for new foundations. This is true of the individual and it is true of the nation as a whole. One can make experiments because an experimental failure does not mean discouragement. The productive process in which one is a participant naturally includes risks, failures, catastrophes. However, they do not undermine courage. “Do you supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make use of the means which the Lord has provided for us?” reports Alma 60.21. This means that it is the productive act itself in which the power and the significance of being is present. This is a partial answer to a question often asked by foreign observers, especially if they are theologians: the question For What? #RandolphHarris 10 of 11
What is the end of all the magnificent means provided by the productive acidity of American society? Have not the means swallowed the ends, and does not the unrestricted production of means indicate the absence of ends? Even many born Americans are today inclined to answer the last question affirmatively. However, there is more involved in the production of means. It is not the tools and gadgets that are the telos, the inner aim of production; it is the production itself. The means are more than means; they are felt as creations, as symbols of the infinite possibilities implied in mortal’s productivity. Being—itself is essentially production itself. The way in which the originally religious word creative is applied without hesitation by Christian, and non-Christian, alike to mortal’s productive activities indicates that the creative process of history is felt as divine. As such it includes the courage to be as a part of it. “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of the Lord’s throne; love and faithfulness go before you. Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD. They rejoice in your name all day long; and they exult in your righteousness” reports Psalm 89.14-16. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11
Not Knowing When the Dawn Will Come I Opened Every Door so Heaven Would Look Upon Us
I wrapped myself in comforting phantasms and envisioned bowers of love, places of Divine safety foreordained beyond good and evil. In reaction to the predominance of the courage to be as oneself in modern Western history, movements of a neocollectivist character has arisen: fascism, Nazism, and communism. It is all an attempt to put a leader or a group above God and dedicate oneself to the mission of the authority figure or the group. America is a Capitalistic country, but we currently have democrats who cannot seem to respect the laws and government of the land. They feel that they have taken the only right way in which to reach their own fulfillment. If these democrats affirm themselves by affirming the collective in which they participate, they receive themselves back from the collective, filled and fulfilled by it. They give much of what belongs to their individual self, perhaps its existence as a particular being in time and space, but these liberals receive more because their true being is enclosed in the being of the group. In surrendering themselves to the cause of the collective liberals surrender that in them which is not included in the self-affirmation of the collective; and this they do not deem worthy of affirmation. In this way the anxiety of the individual nonbeing is transformed into anxiety about the collective, and anxiety about the collective is conquered by the courage to affirm oneself through participation in the collective. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15
As in every human being the anxiety of fate and death is present in the convinced Communist, which many democrats are becoming. No being can accept its own nonbeing without a negative reaction. The terror of a totalitarian democratic state would be meaningless without the possibility of producing terror in its subjects, and they are doing this by threatening to vanquish law enforcement and criticizing branches of government who are defending us and also passing laws to prevent branches of law enforcement from protecting us, and at the same time legalizing drugs and letting dangerous criminals out of jail early. This is fear is also reinforced with the threat of open boarders, and people fear that their safety is being compromised and the ways of the Wild, Wild, West may be becoming back where it is everyone for themselves because there will be no one there to protect the, no privacy, no laws, and that their personal property will be liquidated for the collective as well as their wages renegotiated to the point where doctors are making the same wages as the cashier at the local Steak N Shake. In some countries, doctors are working for free and being paid as little as $8 USD per hour because of budget problems. Through the participation in the communist type of government he liberals are trying to form, one affirms that which may become destructive fate or even cause the death for oneself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15
A more penetrating analysis shows the following structure in the democratic plan: Participation is partial identity, partial nonidentity. Fate and death may hurt or destroy part of oneself that is not identical with the collective in which one participates. However, there is another part according to the partial identity of participation. And this other part is neither hurt nor destroyed by the demands and actions of the whole. It transcends fate and death. It is eternal in the sense in which the collective is considered to be eternal, namely as an essential manifestation of being universal. All this need not be conscious in the members of the collective. However, it is implicit in their emotions and actions as they replace God with their leader and this moment, this Earth is all they have. Therefore, they are infinitely concerned about the fulfillment of the group. And from this concern they derive their courage to be. However, the term eternal and immortal should not be confused with finite. Immortal is the soul, but not yet the body and that would the body would go on living indefinitely. Eternal is living forever with God, leaving this planet and the body behind and having the power to create our own Worlds. #RandolpHarris 3 of 15
Finite is what we currently are. Our physical bodies can only live for so long. There is no idea of the individual mortality in old and new collectvism. The collective in which one participates replaces individual immortality. One the other hand, it is not a resignation to annihilation—otherwise no courage to be would be possible—but it is something above both immortality and annihilation; it is the participation in something which transcends death, namely the collective, and through it, in being-itself. One who is in this position feels in the moment of the sacrifice of one’s life that one is taken into the life of the collective and through it into the life of the Universe as an integral element of it, even if not as a particular being. The liberal political party has become a serious alternative to Christianity, and the anxiety of fate and death is taken into the courage to be as a part. The meaning of life for them is the meaning of the collective. Even those who live as victims of the terror at the lowest level of the social hierarchy do not doubt the validity of the democratic principles. What happens to them is a problem of fate and demands the courage to overcome the anxiety of fate and death and not the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness. This is one of the reasons for the expulsion and prohibition of most of the modern forms of expression in many developed nations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15
There have been some benefits from communism in the arts and literature, but it not a system most Americans want to participate in. However, the democrats are using the immigration debacle to make their party look humane, when all they want is to get sympathy and votes and enforce their communist rule, where the people have no say. And it is not their person sin that produces anxiety of guilt, anything they do is seen as necessary means to gain power. The collective, in this respect, replaces for themselves the God of judgment, repentance, punishment, and forgiveness. To the collective they accept judgment and punishment. To it they direct their desire for forgiveness and their promise of self-transformation. If one is accepted back by it, their guilt is overcome and a new courage to be is possible. These most striking features in the communist way of life can hardly be understood if one does not go down to their ontological roots and their existential power in a system which is based on the courage to be as a part. “The Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the World that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain,” reports Helaman 6.17. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15
Mental health cannot be discussed meaningfully as an abstract quality of abstract people. If we are to discuss now the state of mental health in contemporary Western mortals, and if we are to consider what factors in one’s mode of life make for in-sanity and what others are conducive to sanity, we have to study the influence of the specific conditions of our mode of production and of our social and political organization on the nature of mortals; we have to arrive at such a picture of the personality of the average mortal living and working under these conditions. Only if we can arrive at such a picture of the social character, tentative and incomplete as it may be, do we have a basis on which to judge the mental health and sanity of modern mortals. What is mean by social character? I refer in this concept to the nucleus of the character structure which is shared by most members of the same culture in contradistinction to the individual character in which people belong to the same culture differ from each other. The concept of social character is not a statistical concept in the sense that it is simply the sum total of character traits to be found in the majority of people in a given culture. It can be understood only in reference to the function of the social character which we shall now proceed to discuss. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15
Each society is structuralized and operates in certain ways which are necessitated by a number of objective conditions. These conditions include methods of production and distribution which in turn depend on raw materials, industrial techniques, climate, size of population, and political and geographic factors, cultural traditions and influences to which society is exposed. These is no society in general, but only specific social structures which operate in different and ascertainable ways. Although these social structures do change in the course of historical development, they are relatively fixed at any given historical period, and society can exist only by operating within the framework of it particular structure. The members of the society and/or the various classes or status groups within it have to behave in such a way as to be able to function in the sense required by the social system. It is the function of the social character to shape the energies of the members of society in such a way that their behavior is not a matter of conscious decision as to whether or not to follow the social pattern, but one wanting to act as they have to act and at the same time finding gratification in acting according to the requirements of the culture. In other words, it is the social character’s function to mold and channel human energy within a given society for the purpose of the continued functioning of this society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15
Modern, industrial society, for instance, could not have attained its ends had it not harnessed the energy of free mortals for work in an unprecedented degree. Mortals had to be molded into a person who was eager to spend most of their energy for the purpose of work, who acquired discipline, particularly orderliness and punctuality, to a degree unknown in most other cultures. It would not have sufficed if each individual had to make up one’s mind consciously every day that one wanted to work, to be on time, etcetera, since any such conscious deliberation would lead to many more exceptions than smooth functioning of society can afford. Nor would threat and force have sufficed as a motive, since the highly differentiated tasks in modern industrial society can in the long run only be the work of free mortals and not of forced labor. The necessity for work, for punctuality and orderliness had to be transformed into an inner drive for these aims. This means that society had to produce a social character in which these strivings were inherent. “Yea, O God, and thou wast merciful unto me when I did cry unto thee in my field; when I did cry unto thee in my prayer, and thou didst hear me. And again, O God, when I did turn to my house thou didst hear me in prayer. Yea, O God, thou hast been merciful unto me, and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations,” reports Alma 33.5-6 and 9. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15
The genesis of the social character cannot be understood by referring to one single cause but by understanding the interaction of sociological and ideological factors. Inasmuch as economic factors are less easily changeable, they have a certain predominance in this interplay. This does not mean that the drive for material gain is the only or even the most powerful motivating force in mortals. It does mean that the individual and society are primarily concerned with the task of survival, and that only when survival is secured can they proceed to the satisfaction of other imperative human needs. The task of survival implies that mortals have to produce, that is, one has to secure the minimum of food and shelter necessary for survival, ad the tools needed for even the most rudimentary process of production. The method of production in turn determines the social relations existing in a given society. It determines the mode of practice in life. However, religious, political and philosophical ideas are not rooted in the social character, they in turn also determine, systematize and stabilize the social character. “See that ye take care of these sacred things, yea, see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober,” reports Alma 37.47. #RandolphHarris 9 of 15
Let me state again, in speaking of the socioeconomic structure of society as molding mortal’s character, we speak only of one pole in the interconnection between social organization and mortal. The other pole to be considered is mortal’s nature, molding in the social conditions in which one lives. The social process can be understood only if we start out with the knowledge of the reality of mortals, one’s psychic properties as well as one’s physiological ones, and if we examine the interaction between the nature of humans and the nature of the external conditions under which one lives and which one has to master if one is to survive. While it is true that mortals can adapt themselves to almost any conditions, one is not a blank sheet of paper on which culture writes its text. Needs like striving for happiness, harmony, love and freedom are inherent in one’s nature. They are also dynamic factors in the historical process which, it frustrated, tend to arouse psychic reactions, ultimately creating the very conditions suited to the original strivings. As long as the objective conditions of the society and the culture remain stable, the social character has a predominantly stabilizing function. If the external conditions change in such a way that they do not fit any more with the traditional social character, a lag arises which often changes the function of character into an element of disintegration instream of stabilization, into dynamite instead of a social mortar, as it were. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15
Provided this concept of the genesis and function of the social character is correct, we are confronted with a puzzling problem. Is not the assumption that the character structure is molded by the role which the individual has to play in one’s culture contradicted by the assumption that a person’s character is molded in one’s childhood? Can both views pretend to be true in view of the fact that the child in one’s early years of life has comparatively little contact with society as such? This question is not as difficult to answer as it may seem at first glance. We must differentiate between the factors which are responsible for the particular contents of the social character and the methods by which the social character is produced. The structure of society and the function of the individual in the social structure may be considered to determine the content of the social character. The family on the other hand may be considered to be the psychic agency of society, the institution which has the function of transmitting the requirements of society to the growing child. The family fulfills this function in two ways. First, and this is the most important factor, by the influence the character of the parents has on the character formation of the growing child. Since the character of most parents is an expression of the social character, they transmit in this way the essential features of the socially desirable character structure to the child. The parents’ love and happiness are communicated to the child as well as their anxiety or hostility. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15
In addition to the character of the parents, the methods of childhood training which are customary in a culture also have the function of molding the character of the child in a socially desirable direction. There are various methods and techniques of child training which can fulfill the same end, and on the other hand there can be methods which seem identical but which nevertheless are different because of the character structure of those who practice these methods. By focusing on methods of child training, we can never explain the social character. Methods of child training are significant only as a mechanism of transmission, and they can be understood correctly if we understand first what kinds of personalities are desirable and necessary in any given culture. The problem, then, of the socioeconomic conditions in modern industrial society which create the personality of modern Western mortals and are responsible for the disturbances in one’s mental health require an understanding of those elements specific to the capitalistic mode of production, of an acquisitive society in an industrial age. Sketchy and elementary as such a description by noneconomist must necessarily be, I hope it is nevertheless sufficient to form the basis for the following analysis of the social character of mortals in present-day Western society. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15
Our individual accomplishments, opinions, and contributions enable us to know our own unique identity and to take pleasure in feeling that we are significant member of the human family. However, at times, differences in the way we act, look, dress, or think can separate us from those around us. The young person who want to repudiate his group identities can go to the extremes of grab and speech that show the World that he does not want to be just another one of the crowd, another manipulable warm body. Since society needs solidarity and conformity to get its work done, people tend to react to the nonconformer in a number of different ways. There can be the hostile, resentful reactions that were illustrated in the climax of the great film of 2001, Romeo Must Die. Here, two major families of relatively conforming parties are competing for land it starts a war, especially when their child starting dating. Sometimes we simply point the finger of scorn: “Why do you not shape up, you weirdo?” When are you going to rejoin the human race?” This attempt may not be so much to get them to conform as to make them feel contemptible, lowly. Often, the reaction is exile, driving the nonconformers away. They can be figuratively ridden out of town on a rail, or literally made to feel that their presence is noxious and that they would be doing everyone a favor by moving on. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15
There are, of course, other ways, but the overall pattern is one of separating the nonconformer from the conforming group. It seems that may people living conforming, comfortable, not too differentiated lives are ill at ease, awkward, uncomfortable, or even angry with those who choose to live differently. Often these nonconformers live differently because they are trying to experience more of their total selfhood than the larger group is willing to risk. There is a variety of reactions on the part of the nonconformers, too. Many of them choose to drop out, to live apart from the larger group. They set up housekeeping in solitary camps, abandoned cars, or communes, or they drift from place to place, disdaining to take on the way of life of those they feel are only experiencing themselves partially. Naturally, not all the drop-outs are in the category of self-actualizers, but an increasing number of young people do feel that this is the only way to grow. Again, knowing who the true hippie or hipster is and who the commercializers or opportunist are is a matter of becoming personally acquainted with them. Separateness is not an emotional illness per se. It is a conscious choice on the part of the separated or a conscious movement on the part of the larger group. It consists of creating separate and different living spaces for each of them. It may be an opportunity for the separated one to grow in selfhood, or it may lead to marginality. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15
However, seeking and receiving the acceptance of the Lord will lead to the knowledge that we are chosen and blessed by him. The feeling of being accepted by someone we love is a basic human need. Being accepted by good people motivates us. It increases our sense of self-worth and self-confidence. Those who cannot find acceptance from desirable sources often seek it elsewhere. They may look at people who are not interested in their well-being. They may attach themselves to false friends and do questionable things to try to receive the acknowledgment they are seeking. They may seek acceptance by wearing a particular brand of clothing to generate a feeling of belonging or status. For some, striving for a role or a position of prominence can also be a way of seeking acceptance. They may define their worth by a position they hold or a status they obtain. Seeking acceptance from the wrong sources or for incorrect reasons puts us on a dangerous path—one that is likely to lead us astray and even to destruction. Instead of feeling cherished and self-confident, we will eventually feel abandoned and inferior. Therefore, see that you look to God and live. The ultimate source of empowerment and lasting acceptance is our Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ. They know us. They love us. They do not acceptance of because of our title or position. They do not look at our status. They look into our hearts and accept us for who we are and what we are striving to become. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15
Not with a Club the Heart is Broken, Nor with a Stone—I think that Earth Seems so to those in Heaven!
Oh, and it is the same old beat with you, Erich, you Devil, you want to do it, you want to, you want to see it, you greedy little beast, you cannot give her over to the Angels and you know they are waiting! You know the God who can sanctify her suffering has purified her an will forgive her last cries. Mental health is to be determined objectively and society has both a furthering and a distorting influence on mortals, contradicts not only the relativistic view, discussed in the past, but two other views which I want to discuss now. One, decidedly the most popular one today, wants to make us believe that contemporary Western society and more especially, the American way of life corresponds to the deepest needs of human nature and that adjustments to this way of life means mental health and maturity. Social psychology, instead of being a tool for the criticism of society, thus becomes the apologist for the status quo. The concept of maturity and mental health in this view, corresponds to the desirable attitude of a worker or employee in industry or business. Maturity is the ability to stick to a job, the capacity to give more on any job than is asked for, reliability, persistence to carry out a plan regardless of the difficulties, the ability to work with other people under organization and authority, the ability to make decisions, a will to life, flexibility, independence, and tolerance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Maturity is the virtues of a good worker, employee or soldier in the big social organizations of our time; they are the qualities which are usually mentioned in advertisements for a junior executive. To one, and many others who think like one, maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life. “And now my beloved beings, I had said these things unto you that I might awaken you to a sense of your duty to God, that ye may walk blameless before him, that ye may walk after the holy order of God, after which you have been received,” reports Alma 7.22. If you remain true, you will get the sign that God is with you. When you come to your wits’ end and feel inclined to panic—do not! Stand true to God, and he will bring out his truth in a way that will make your life an expression of worship. Put into practice what you have learned. Make a determination to trust in God. “The house of the LORD God is to be here,” reports 1 Chronicles 22.1. If you have always prided yourself on your sensitivity to the needs of others, you may find resistance when you adopt toughness. Sometimes when people look at it, it is like someone turned on the Christmas lights, it makes them giddy and full of joy. Will you be accepted? #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
Maturity is the same as adjustment to our society, without ever raising the question whether this adjustment is to a healthy or a pathological way of conducting one’s life. However, in contrast to this view is the one which runs from Dr. Freud, and which assumes a basic and unalterable contradiction between human nature and society, a contradiction between human nature and society, a contradiction which follows from the alleged asocial nature of mortals. For Dr. Freud, mortals are driven by two biologically rooted impulses: the craving for sexual pleasure, and for destruction. The aim of one’s sexual desire is complete sexual freedom, that is, unlimited access to all women and men one might find desirable. Some mortals discovered by experience that sexual (genital) love affords them their greatest gratification, so that it becomes in affect the prototype of all happiness to him or her. These types of people must have been impelled to seek their happiness further along the path of sexual relations, to make genital erotism the central point of one’s life. Primitive humans have yet to cope with no, or exceedingly few restrictions to the satisfaction of those basic desires. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
Primitive mortals can give vent to their aggression, and there are few limitations to the satisfaction of one’s sexual impulses. In actual fact, most primitive mortals knew nothing of any restrictions on their instincts, some do not even “feel” that they have instincts. Civilized humans have exchanged some part of their changes of happiness for a measure of security. The happy savage’s aggressiveness has two sources: one, the innate striving for destruction (death instinct) and the other the frustration of one’s instinctual desires, imposed upon him or her by society. While mortals may channel part of one’s aggression against oneself, through the Super-Ego, and while a minority can sublimate their sexual desire into love of humanity, aggressiveness remains ineradicable. Mortals will always compete with, and attack each other, if not for material things, then for the prerogatives in sexual relationships, which must arouse the strongest rancor and most violent enmity among men and women who are otherwise equal. Let us suppose this were also to be removed by instituting complete liberty in sexual life, so that the family, the germ-cell of culture, ceased to exist; one could not, it is true, foresee the new paths on which cultural development might then proceed, but one thing one would be bound to expect and that the ineffable feature of human nature would follow wherever it led. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
Since for Dr. Freud love is in its essence sexual desire, he is compelled to assume a contradiction between love and social cohesion. Love, according to him, is by its very nature egotistical and antisocial, and the sense of solidarity and humanly love are not primary feelings rooted in mortal’s nature, but aim-inhibited sexual desires. One the basis of his concept of mortals, that of their inherent wish for unlimited sexual satisfaction, and of his destructiveness, Dr. Freud must arrive at a picture of the necessary conflict between civilization and mental health and happiness. Primitive mortals are healthy and happy because one is not frustrated in one’s basic instincts, but one lacks the blessings of culture. Civilized humans are more secure, enjoy art and science, but they are bound to be neurotic because of the continued frustration of one’s instincts, enforced by civilization. For Dr. Freud, social life and civilization are essentially in contrast to the needs of human nature as he sees it, and mortals are confronted with the tragic alternative between happiness based on the unrestricted satisfaction of one’s instincts, and security and cultural achievements based on instinctual frustration, hence conducive to neurosis and all other forms of mental sickness. Civilization, to Dr. Freud, is the product of instinctual frustration and thus the cause of mental illness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Dr. Freud’s concept of human nature as being essentially competitive (and asocial) is the same as we find it in most authors who believe that the characteristics. Dr. Freud’s theory of the competitive struggles for survival. It can also be translated into the sphere of economy. There are basically two types of people, the homo sexual is and the homo economicus. One is after sex, the other is after money. Both the economic mortal and the sexual mortal are convenient fabrications whose alleged nature—isolated, asocial, greedy and competitive—makes Capitalism appear as the system which corresponds perfectly to human nature, and places it beyond the reach of criticism. The necessary conflict between human nature and society, imply the defense of contemporary society and they both are one-sided distortions. Furthermore, most ignore the fact that society is only in conflict with the asocial aspects of mortals, partly produced by itself, but often also with one’s most valuable human qualities, which is suppresses rather than furthers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
An objective examination of the relation between society and human nature must consider both the furthering and the inhibiting impact of society on humans, taking into account the nature of mortals and the needs stemming from it. The neglected pathogenic function of modern society needs to be highlighted. Many of the self-defeating behaviors are motivated by conscious needs. For instance, there appear to be people all around us who have a strong dislike for themselves. In each of us there may be a tinge of dislike for some aspect of our self: freckles, hair, teeth, vocabulary, color, accent. However,most of us manage to combine our dislike of parts of ourselves with very good feelings about the rest of the package. A few people, though, manage to reach a point where they entertain active hatred for their entire beings. They manage to pull off some of the greatest self-defeating stunts since the six hundred marched into the Valley of Death in the Crimean War! Some of these people do it with alcohol, using it precisely because they know it will put them into a state in which they will commit self-defeating or losing behavior. They drink to get courage or strength enough to hurt themselves. There are many who do the same with drugs of various kinds. Again, this is not to dispute the physiological factors of addiction or habituation. It is simply to emphasize that even before the physiological hook gets into some people, they hook themselves onto a drug or habit that will inevitably bring them down. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
An example of the conscious needs that motivate self-defeating behavior is dependency. Some people refuse to take their medicine because they like or need to be dependent on their doctors or they need their family’s concerns. Others get themselves in trouble with authorities because they need to keep themselves tied to their parents or spouses; they build a bond of trouble-rescue-restriction-release-trouble, a cycle that repeats itself week after month after year in some cases. Why? It is a bit too simple to say that the needs are always entirely conscious or even always entirely unconscious.Just as our physiques are three-dimensional, our complexities encompass behaviors that have horizontal, vertical, and depth dimensions as well. Add to this the dimensions that we call time and space and you have a model of human behavior that cannot be sketched on a flat piece of paper. Therefore, we must keep in mind the person, who will play more roles in one’s life, but—like an actor—the mortal is one person and all one’s roles are the individual, too. This multi-dimensioned person is each of us. Mixed in with all the motivations we have described as being universal are the ones that are unique to each of us. There is, therefore, no one answer to the “why?” of the behavior, whether it is the behavior of one or many. It may be instructive, but only instructive, to see what may cause actions in particular cases. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
If a mortal has a strong need to enter into complicated situations from which one cannot extricate oneself, we may uncover some of the reasons why, but only some of them. If you do something, even after an authority figure has told you to stop, changes are that among your individually unique needs is the need to engage in whatever destructive behavior you have been warned to stop, apparently this need is stronger than your need to stay out of danger. Some people engage in bad behavior because they feel a strong need to be punished. They feel that they can only be satisfied or happy when they are being pushed out or put into a situation where they are in some sort of danger of losing out. When these types of people win or achieve something, they feel and empty, hollow sort of triumph. Only when these individuals have guilt so ingrained in their being are punishing themselves or being punished can they admit to feelings of satisfaction. It is hard for guilt given people to admit this to friends. Not even their wives or husbands have ever heard them say these things, but their spouses notice over the years that they only seem completely happy and at ease when they are being pressured, when they are driving themselves to take on unnecessary extra work. It seemed to one woman that her husband was “trying to kill himself,” with his overly emotional and wild criminal behaviors. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Dr. Freud thought we each have an instinctive death wish. We do not find the evidence for this to be either conclusive or impressive. However, we know that many people learn to deal with their guilt feelings or their negative self-concepts by punishing themselves or by being punished. Without using the term as a diagnosis, this behavior is often called masochism. A person who is still doing something dangerous, even after being warned not to, is a symbol of all the things one does that one has been told one should not do. One is almost totally absorbed by and concerned with guilt. The diagnosis of potential death and danger us almost like a priestly issue of penance: this is what one must undergo to purge oneself of one’s guilt. Some people are begging to be punished because they want to get their just desserts, which could even be death, for being the bad person they are. “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing,” reports 1 Chronicles 21.24. This long example, we repeat, deals only with one person. It is not meant to explain all people who engage in risky behaviors or careers, all compulsive people, or to condemn all teachings about guilt. It is, however, instructive. Guilt, as experienced by most of us, is the feeling we have when we have let ourselves down, when we have not lived up to our own expectations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
As such, it is a good motivator: guilt enables us to shift our gears and try a different speed or direction in our behavior. We should feel guilt for committing certain social indiscretions or violations of necessary and expected behaviors. If I step on the foot a woman by accident, both my love for people and my social responsibility will produce guilt feelings. Hopefully, I will be a more careful walker in the future. However, if I tore up my feet, sold my shoes, and swore never to go near people again, I would probably be labeled neurotic—given to extreme guilt reactions. When anxiety and other strong emotions produce fears or self-defeating responses in us, we are experiencing a form of neurosis. This particular problem in living is quite common in the lives of most of us. Each of us at times, precisely because we view our many facets as separate, lets this imagined separateness become virtually real. As the gaps in our thinking about our selves grow, so the gaps and distortions really grow in our everyday behavior. It we imagine that we have a good self and a bad self, any attempt to emphasize the one we want or need to emphasize exaggerates our behaviors in that direction, almost as if we were to say: “See? That other part of me does not even exist!” #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
Of course it exists, It is just as real and as important apart of your total self as any other part. However, it is only a part. However,it is only a part. It is so interwoven and inextricably tied in with all the other facets that often you do not know which one is which. That in itself is not bad, either. Rather than trying to single out which part is which, one would be much better off simply accepting and living with the entire package. However, this is so simple to say and so difficult to do. We are encouraged by our society’s values, by its mores, by so many things, to live only partially. Some of the negative consequences of such splitting up are separateness, marginality, and alienation. “There is a God, and he created all things, both the Heavens and the Earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon,” reports 2 Nephi 2.14. As children of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity and power of independent action. Endowed with agency, we are agents, and we primarily are to act and not merely be acted upon—especially as we seek learning by study and also by faith. As gospel learners, we should be doers of the word, and not just hearers only. Our hearts are open to the influence of the Holy Ghost as we properly exercise agency and act in accordance with correct principles—and we thereby invite God’s teachings and testifying power. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
Sun Goes Down and Her Voice Among the Aisles Incites Timid Prayer Willing Silence Everywhere
You are a mocking little thing. Do you like to fight? Fighting with mortals is no fun because it is no fair. The concepts of carousel of mental health follows from the very conditions of human existence and it is the same for mortals in all ages and all cultures. Mental health is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from incestuous ties to clan and soil, by a sense of identity based on one’s experience of self as the subject and agent of one’s powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the development of objectivity and reason. This concept of mental health coincides essentially with the norms postulated by the great spiritual teachers of the human race. This coincidence appears to some modern psychologists to be proof that our psychological premises are not scientific but philosophic or religious ideals. They find it difficult, apparently, to draw the conclusion that the great teachings of all cultures were based on rational insight into the nature of mortals, on the conditions for one’s full development. This latter conclusion seems also to be more in line with the face that in the most diverse places of this globe, at different periods of history, the awakened ones have preached the same norms, with none, or with little influence from one upon another. Ikhnaton, Moses, Confucius, Lao-tse, Buddha, Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus have postulated the same norms for human life, with only small and insignificant differences. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12
Mental health is not physical, but it is about the total human personality in its interaction with the World, nature and morals; it is the human practice of life as it results from the conditions of human existence. To understand a living being, one has to take the action of mortals and their interaction with their fellow humans and wit nature as the basic empirical datum for the study of a real being. Our concept of mental health leads into a theoretical difficulty if we consider the concept of human evolution. There is reason to assume that the history of mortals, hundreds of thousands of years ago, starts out with a truly primitive culture, where mortal’s reason has not developed beyond the most rudimentary beginnings, where one’s frame of orientation as little relation to reality and truth as we now know it. However, should we speak of these primitive mortals as lacking in mental health, when they are simply lacking in qualities which only further evolution could give them? Indeed, one answer could be given to this question which open up an easy solution; this answer is based in the obvious analogy between the evolution of the human race, and the evolution of the individual. “Now these mysteries are not yet fully made known unto me; therefore I shall forbear,” reports Alma 37. 11. #RandolphHarris 2 of 12
If an adult had the attitude and orientation of a one-moth-old child, we would certainly classify that individual as unusual. For the one-month-old baby, however, the same attitude of sleeping all day, laughing and acting cute, crying at night when they want attention, food, or a nappy change is normal and healthy, because it corresponds to the stage of psychic development for the point in life. The mental sickness of the adult, then, can be characterized as a fixation or regression to an orientation which belongs to a former evolutionary state, and which is not adequate any more, considering the state of development the person should have reached. And when someone is in a state of regression, there is no question to it. It is similar, for example, to a girl sixteen years of age, who suddenly starts acting and talking like she is possessed by a five-year-old girl and doing things like having a tea party with a set of dolls and speaking like she is younger than she is. However, in regression, she has no idea of her age because of her mind trying to protect itself by taking her to another era, she is basically unconscious and unaware of her biological age. And until she is able to work through the trauma, she will not return to he normal state of development. #RandolphHarris 3 of 12
In the same way one could say that the human race, like the infant, starts out with a primitive orientation, which correspond to the adequate state of human evolution; while one would call sick those fixations or regressions which represent earlier states of development after the human race has already passed through them. Attractive as such a solution is, it does not take into account one fact. The child one-month-of age has not yet the basis for a completely mature attitude. Therefore, one may not under normal circumstances think, feel or act like a mature adult. Mortals, on the contrary, for hundreds of thousands of years, have had all the organic equipment for maturity; their brain, bodily co-ordination, physical strength have not changed in all that time. One’s evolution depended entirely on one’s ability to transmit knowledge to future generations, and thus to accumulate it. Human evolution is the result of cultural development, and not of an organic change. The infant of the most primitive culture, put into a highly developed culture, would develop like other children in this culture, because the only factor determining one’s development is the cultural factor. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12
In other words, while the child who is one month of age may not have spiritual maturity of an adult—whatever the cultural conditions are—any mortal from the primitive stage on, could have the perfection of mortals at the peak of one’s evolution provided one was given the cultural conditions for such maturity. It follows that to speak of primitive, incestuous, unreasonable mortals, as being in a normal evolutionary phase is different from making the same statement about the infant. Yet, on the other hand, the development of culture is a necessary condition for human development. Thus, there does not seem to be a completely satisfactory answer to this problem; from one standpoint we may speak of a lack in mental health; from another standpoint we may speak of an early phase in development. However, the difficulty is great only if we deal with the problem in its most general form; as soon as we come to the more concrete problems of our time, we find the problem much less complicated. We have reached a state of individuation in which only the fully developed mature personality can make fruitful use of freedom; if the individual has not developed one’s reason and one’s capacity for love, one is incapable of bearing the burden of freedom and individuality, and tries to escape into artificial ties which give one a sense of belonging and rootedness. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12
Any regression today from freedom into artificial rootedness in state of race is a sign of mental illness, since such regression does not correspond to the state of evolution already reached and results in unquestionably pathological phenomena. However, the unconscious mechanisms for protecting personality are essential; they help maintain a balance that enables us to make a sane way through life. Yet, sometimes the mechanism is weighty enough to upset the balance in unusual ways. Consider the follow case: A student enters a psychology class, consciously setting out to do a good job,learn a lot, and get a very good grade in the course. He has the tools: a good head (brain), lots of motivation, and a fair background. He gets good grades in classroom discussion and on his papers. However, on exams, he constantly gets F’s (denotes failure to comprehend the material). In his consternation, he comes to visit the professor. “What is this?” He asks both himself and the instructor. “I knew this stuff. I understand everything you are talking about. Your lectures are clear and understandable. The book is no problem. I can read and write well. I do not do this in other classes. What gives?” #RandolphHarris 6 of 12
The instructor and the student begin talking about the student’s home life, his motivations, his goals, and dreams. After a few weeks, a startling thing is unveiled: the student admits that he really dislikes his father. The father is a tyrant, unyielding and unresponsive to the student. The instructor tries something risky: he asks the student if there is anything about him—the instructor—that reminds the boy of his father. “No, of course not!” the boy begins. Then, he smiles. “Except….He is about the same height. He is very self-confident, like you are. Hey! There is a hecka lot about you that reminds me of my old man!” The young man has acquired a rather strong dislike for all authority figure because of the strong negative feelings he has for his father. He goes on to admit that he hates policemen and judges, he hated his commanding officer in the Army, and he has generalized this dislike to some of his male teachers. As it turns out, the young man continued to do poorly in this particular class. At the suggestion of the instructor, he entered into psychotherapy with a psychologist in his home country. Though he continued to have trouble with exams in this professor’s class, he managed to work out an arrangement with the teacher whereby exams were done in a different matter. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12
After working with the professors, the student got better grades than he might have otherwise. However, what particular problem did the exam represent? The student later told the instructor that he felt the exams represented a power struggle between the students and the instructors. His hostility toward his father was such a source of concern and guilt to him that he did everything he could to minimize competition. He felt that if he lost the competition in exam-taking to the instructor, he would be doing some sort of penance for his hostility. Regardless of whether we speak of mental health or of the mature development of the human race, the concept of mental health or of maturity is an objective one, arrived at by the examination of the human situation and the human necessities and needs stemming from it. It follows that mental health cannot be defined in terms of the adjustments of the individual to one’s society, but, on the contrary, that it must be defined in terms of the adjustment of society to the needs of mortals, of its role in furthering or hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure of society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12
A healthy society furthers mortal’s capacity to love their fellow living beings and other organic and inorganic life. Another goal for a healthy society is to work creatively, to develop one’s reason and objectivity, to have a sense of self which is based on the experience of one’s own personal powers. An unhealthy society is one which creates mutual hostility, distrust, which transforms mortals into an instrument of use and exploitation for others, which deprives one of a sense of self, except inasmuch as one submits to others or becomes an automation. Society can have both functions; it can further mortal’s healthy development, and it can hinder it; in fact most societies do both, and the question is only to what degree and in what direction their beneficial and negative influence is exercised. Two things happened in the ancient World which separate medieval collectivism definitively from primitive collectivism. One was the discovery of personal guilt—called by the prophets guilt before God: the decisive step to the personalization of religion and culture. The other was the beginning of autonomous questions-asking in Greek philosophy, the decisive step to the problematization of culture and religion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12
Both elements, culture and religion, were transmitted to the medieval nations by the Church. With them went the anxiety of doubt and meaninglessness. As in later antiquity could have led to a situation in which the courage to be as oneself was necessary. However, the Church gave an antidote against the threat of anxiety and despair, namely itself, its traditions, its sacraments, its education, and its authority. The anxiety of guilt was taken into the courage to be as part of the sacramental community. The anxiety of doubt was taken into the courage to be as a part of the community in which revelation and reason are united. In this way the medieval courage to be was, in spite of its difference from primitive collectivism, the courage to be as a part in the powerful participation of the universal. Some people believed in the self-respect of the individual as self-affirmation as the follower of a feudal lord or a member of guild or as the student in an academic corporation or as a bearer of a special function like that of a craft or a trade or a profession. The tension created by this situation is theoretically expressed in the attack of nominalism on medieval realism and the permanent conflict between them. Nominalism attributes ultimate reality to the individual and would have much earlier than it actually did to a dissolution of the medieval system of participation if the immensely strengthened authority of the Church had not delayed it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12
In religious practice the same tension was expressed in the duality of the sacraments of the mass and of penance. The former mediated the objective power of salvation in which everybody was supposed to participate, if possible by being present at its daily performance. In consequence of this universal participation guilt and grace were felt not only as personal but also as communal. The punishment of the sinner had representative character representative character in such a way that the whole community suffered with one. And the liberation of the sinner from punishment on Earth and in purgatory was partly dependent on the representative holiness of the saints and the love of those who made sacrifices for one’s liberation. Nothing is more characteristic of the medieval system of participation than this mutual representation. The courage to be as a part and to take upon oneself the anxieties of nonbeing is embodied in medieval institutions as it was in primitive forms of life. However, medieval semi collectivism came to an end when the anticollectivist pole, represented by the sacrament of penance, came to the fore. The principle that only contrition, the personal and total acceptance of judgment and grace, can make the objective sacraments effective was impelling toward reduction and even exclusion of the objective element, of representation and participation. “And now, it has hitherto been wisdom in God that these things should be preserved; for behold, they have enlarged the memory of his people,” reports Alma 37.8 #RandolphHarris 11 of 12
In the act of contrition everybody stands alone before God; and it was hard for the Church to mediate this element with the objective one. Finally it proved impossible and the system disintegrated. At the same time the nominalistic tradition became powerful and liberated itself from the heteronomy of the Church. In Reformation and Renaissance the medieval courage to be as apart, its semicollectvist system, came to an end, and developments started which brought the question of the courage to be as oneself to the fore. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. When feelings of anxiety and inferiority surface, we can get at the roots of the problems, not just the symptoms. Hearing and understanding the feelings of those we love makes them feel loved. It helps us as parents adjust our behavior to deal with them more effectively. “And we never took the time to see where we were going. We were only passing by and we never questioned why; the river keeps flowing; the beauty of the ride. If I could all you for a day just to hear the words you would, I would,” Colours by Emma Hewitt. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12
I Felt a Clearing in My Mind as if My Brain Had Split—God’s Residence is Next to Mine!
The fact that mortals have reason and imagination leads not only to the necessity for having a sense of one’s own identity, but also for orienting oneself in the World intellectually. This need can be compared when the child can walk by oneself, touch and handle things, knowing what they are. However, when the ability to walk and to speak has been acquired, only the first step in the direction of orientation has been taken. Mortals find themselves surrounded by many puzzling phenomena and, having reason, one has to make sense of them, has to put them in some context which one can understand and which permits one to deal with them in one’s thoughts. The further one’s reason develops, the more adequate becomes one’s system of orientation, that is, the more it approximates reality. However, even if a person’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, it satisfies one’s need for some picture which is meaningful to one. Whether one believes in the power of a totem animal, in a rain god, or in the superiority and destiny of one’s own race, one’s need for some frame of orientation is satisfied. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
Quite obviously, the picture of the World which one has depends on the development of one’s reason and of one’s knowledge. Although biologically the brain capacity of the human race has remained the same for thousands of generations, it takes a long evolutionary process to arrive at objectivity, that is, to acquire the faculty to see the World, nature, other persons and oneself as they are, and not distorted by desires and fears. The more mortals develop this objectivity, the more one is in touch with reality, the more one matures, the better can one can create a human World in which one is at home. Reason is mortal’s faculty for grasping the World by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is mortal’s ability to manipulate the World with the help of thought. Reason is mortal’s instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is mortal’s instrument for manipulating the World more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the terrestrial aspect of mortal. Reason is a faculty which must be practiced, in order to develop, and it is indivisible. By this I mean that the faculty for objectivity refers to the knowledge of nature as well as to the knowledge of mortals, of society and of oneself. If one lives in illusions about one sector of life, one’s capacity for reason is restricted or damaged, and this the use of reason is inhibited with regard to all other sectors. #RandolpHarris 2 of 8
Reason in this respect is like love. Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the World with which humans are confronted. The need for a frame of orientation exists on two levels; the first and the more fundamental need is to have some frame or orientation, regardless of whether it is true or false. Unless mortal have such a subjectively satisfactory frame of orientation, one cannot live sanely. On the second level the need is to be in touch with reality by reason, to grasp the World objectively. However, the necessity to develop one’s reason is not as immediate as that to develop some frame of orientation, since what is at stake for mortals in the latter case is one’s happiness and serenity, and not one’s sanity. This become very clear if we study the function of rationalization. However unreasonable or immoral an action may be, mortals have an insuperable urge to rationalize it, this is, to prove to oneself and to others that one’s action is determined by reason, common sense, or at least conventional morality. One has little more difficulty in acting irrationally, but it is almost impossible for one not to give one’s action the appearance of reasonable motivation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
If mortals were only a disembodied intellect, one’s aim would be achieved by a comprehensive thought system. However, since one is an entity endowed with a body as well as a mind, one has to react to the dichotomy of one’s existence not only in thinking but in the total process of living, in one’s feelings and actions. Hence any satisfying system of orientation contains not only intellectual elements but elements of feeling and sensing which are expressed in the relationship to an object of devotion. The answers given to mortal’s need for a system of orientation and an object of devotion differ widely both in content and in form. There are primitive systems such as animals and totemism in which natural objects or ancestors represent answers to mortal’s quest for meaning. There are nontheistic systems like Buddhism, which are usually called religion although in their original form there is no concept of God. There are purely philosophical systems, like Stoicism, and there are monotheistic religious systems which give an answer to mortal’s quest for meaning in reference to this concept of God. However, whatever their contents, they all respond to mortal’s need to have not only some thought system, but also an object of devotion which gives meaning to one’s existence and to one’s position in the World. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
Only the analysis of the various forms of religion can show which answers are better and which are worse solutions to mortal’s quest for meaning and devotion, better or worse always considered from the standpoint of mortal’s nature and one’s development. Th courage to be as a part is the courage to affirm one’s own being by participation. One participates in the World to which one belongs and from which one is at the same time separated. However, participating in the World becomes real through participation in those sections are actual with which one is partially identical. The more self-relatedness a being has the more it is able, according to the polar structure of reality, to participate. Mortals as the completely centered being or as a person can participate in everything, but one participates through that section of the World which makes one a person. Only in the continuous encounters with other persons does the person become and remain a person. The place of this encounter is the community. Mortal’s participation in nature is direct, insofar as one is a definite part of nature through one’s bodily existence. One’s participation in nature is indirect and mediate through the community insofar as one transcends nature by knowing and shaping it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
Without language there are no universals; without universals no transcending of nature and no relation to it as nature. However, language is communal, not individual. The section of reality in which one participates immediately is the community to which one participates immediately is the community to which one belongs. Though it and only through it participation in the World as a whole and in all its parts is mediated. Therefore, one who has the courage to be as a part has the courage to affirm oneself as a part of the community to which one participates. One’s self-affirmation is a part of the self-affirmation of the social groups which constitute the society to which one belongs. This seems to imply that there is a collective and not only an individual self-affirmation, and that the collective self-affirmation is threatened by nonbeing, producing collective anxiety, which is met by collective courage. One could say that the subject of this anxiety and this courage is a we-self as against the egoselves who parts of it are. However, such an enlargement of the meaning of “self” must be rejected. Self-hood is self-centeredness. Yet there is no center in a group in the sense in which exists in a person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
There may be a central power, a king, a queen, a president, an emperor, an empress, or a dictator. One may be able to impose his or her will on the group. However, it is not the group which decides if he or she decides, though the group may follow. Therefore it is neither adequate to speak of a we-self nor useful to employ the terms collective anxiety and collective courage. When describing the three periods of anxiety, we pointed out that masses of people were overtaken by a special type of anxiety-producing situation and because outbreaks of anxiety are always contagious. There is no collective anxiety save an anxiety which has been overtaken many or all members of a group and has been intensified or changed by becoming universal. The same is true of what is wrongly called collective courage. There is no entity we-self as the subject of courage. There are selves who participate in a group and whose character is partly determined by this participation. The assumed we-self is a common quality of ego-selves within a group. The courage to be as a part is like all forms of courage, a quality of individual selves. A collectivist society is one in which the existence and life of the individual are determined by the existence and institutions of the group. In collectivist societies the courage of the individua is the courage to be as a part. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
Looking at so-collective primitive societies one finds typical forms of anxiety and typical institutions in which courage expresses itself. The individual members of the group develop equal anxieties and fears. And they use the same methods of developing courage and fortitude which are prescribed by traditions and institutions. This courage is the courage which every member of the group is supposed to have. In many tribes the courage to take pain upon oneself is the test of full membership in the group, and the courage to take death upon oneself is a lasting test in the life of most groups. The courage of one who stands these tests is the courage to be as a part. One affirms oneself through the group in which one participates. The potential anxiety of losing oneself in the group is not actualizes, because the identification with the group is complete. I wish I was one of those saints. Maybe that is why I had to write this chapter. However, I am not a saint. And that did not even take five minutes for you to know it, so do not complain. It is just that I cannot forget my passion to be officially canonized. “My God hath been support; he hath led me through mine afflictions s in the wilderness; and he hath prescribed me upon the water of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even consuming my flesh. He hath confounded mine enemies, unto the causing them to quake before me,” reports 2 Nephi. 420-23. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
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After Dinner Light for Flowers and Let the Music Go to Sweeten Your Heart
There are so many things I am not free to tell. Mortals were not the Virgin; they were alone, facing a severe and strict God whose mercy one could obtain only by an act of complete surrender. The beneficial aspect showed itself in the increasing spirit of rationality and objectivity and in the growth of individual and social conscience. The flowering of science in our day is one of the most impressive manifestations of rational thought thee human race has ever produced. Chinese scientist He Jiankui delivered the World’s first genetically edited babies. The twin girls have been born with deoxyribonucleic acid (a self-replicating material present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information) altered to make them resistant to human immunodeficiency virus. This is a groundbreaking move because these are the first so-called designer babies. Human equality, of the sacredness of life, of all mortal’s right to share in the fruits of nature, found expression in the ideas of natural law, humanism, enlightenment philosophy and the objectives of forming a perfection Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings to Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14
Common to all these ideas is the concept that all mortals are children of Mother Earth and have a right to be nourished by her, and to enjoy happiness without having to prove this right by the achievement of any particular status. The humanity of all people implies that they are all the sons and daughters of the same mother, who have an unalienable right to love and happiness. However, the average person today obtains one’s sense of identity from belonging to a nation, rather than from being the son or daughter of man. Many people think that this fixation is warped, while others understand it. These people judge others from other lands with different criteria than the member of their own clan. Their feelings toward the stranger are not considered fair by all. Those who are not familiar by bonds and soil (expressed by common language, customs, food, song, etc.) are looked upon with suspicion, and paranoid delusions about them can spring up at the slightest provocation. The person who has not freed oneself from the oaths to blood and soil is not yet fully born as a human being; one’s capacity for love and reason are not fully developed; one does not experience one’s self nor one’s fellow mortals in their—and one’s own—human reality. However, expecting people to obey the laws is totally reasonable. “Perceive the words of understanding,” reports Proverbs 1.2. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14
Nationalism and Patriotism is considered a cult because people put their own nation above others, and base this foundation on truth and justice with a loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with its power over other nations. The national feeling can be seen in the reaction to the violations of clan symbols, a reaction which is very different from that to the violation of religious or moral symbols. Let us picture a person who takes the flag of one’s country to a street of one of the cities of the Western World, and tramples on it in view of other people. One would be lucky not to be lynched. Almost everybody would feel a sense of furious indignation, which hardly permits of any objective thought. The person who desecrated the flag would have done something unspeakable; one would have committed a crime which is not one crime among others, but the crime, the one unforgivable and unpardonable. Not quite as drastic, but nevertheless qualitatively the same would be the reason of the person who says, “I do not love my country,” or, in the case of war, “I do not care for my country’s victory.” Such a sentence is areal sacrilege, and a person saying it becomes a monster, an outlaw in the feelings of one’s fellow people. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14
In order to understand the particular quality of the feeling aroused by people not being loyal to their country, we may compare this reaction to one which would occur if a person got up and said, “I am in favor of killing all mentally ill people, or all poor people; I am in favor of starting a war in order to conquer South America.” Indeed, most people would feel that this was an unethical, inhuman opinion. However, the crucial point is that the particular feeling of an uncontrollable deep-seated indignation and rage would not occur. Such an opinion is just bad, but it is not a sacrilege, it is not an attack against the sacred. Even if a person should not speak disparagingly of God, one would hardly arouse the same feeling of indignation as against the crime, against the sacrilege which is the violation of the symbols of the country. It is easy to rationalize the reaction to a violation of the national symbols by saying that a person who does not respect one’s country shows a lack of human solidarity and of social feeling; but is this not also true of the person who advocates war, or the killing of innocent people, or who exploits others of one’s own advantage? Undoubtedly, lack of social responsibility and of human solidarity, as are the other acts mentioned here, but the reaction to the violation of the flag is fundamentally different from the reaction to the denial of social responsibility in all other aspects. The one object is sacred, a symbol of clan worship; the others are not. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14
Only when humans succeed in developing one’s reason and love further than one has done so far, only when one can build a World based on human solidarity and justice, only when one can feel rooted in the experience of universal humanity, will one have found a new, human form of rootedness, will one have transformed this World into a truly human home. Ontological principles have a polar character according to the basic polar structure of being, that of self and World. The first polar elements in individualization and participation. Their bearing on the problem of courage is obvious, if courage is defined as self-affirmation age is obvious, if courage is defined as the self-affirmation of being in spite of nonbeing. If we ask: What is the subject of this self-affirmation, we must answer: the individual self which participates in the World, i.e. the structural Universe of being. Mortal’s self-affirmation has two sides which are distinguishable but not separable: one is the affirmation of the self as a self; that is of separated, self-centered,individualized, incomparable, free, self-determining self. This is what one affirms in every act of self-affirmation. This is what one defends against nonbeing and affirms courageously by taking nonbeing upon oneself. The threatened loss of its is the essence of anxiety, and the awareness of concrete threats to it is the essence of fear. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14
Ontological self-affirmation precedes all differences of metaphysical, ethical, or religious definition of the self. Ontological self-affirmation is neither natural nor spiritual, neither good nor evil, neither immanent nor transcendent. These differences are possible only because of the underlying ontological self-affirmation of the self as self. In the same way the concepts which characterize the individual self are possessed below the differences of valuation: separation is not estrangement, self-centeredness is not selfishness, self-determination is not sinfulness. They are structural descriptions and the condition of both love and hate, condemnation and salvation. It is time to end the bad theological usage of jumping with moral indignation om every work in which the syllable “self” appears. Even moral indignation would not exist without a centered self and ontological self-affirmation. The subject of self-affirmation is the centered self. As centered self it is an individualized self. It can be destroyed but it cannot be divided: each of its parts has the mark of this and no other self. Nor can it be exchanged: its self-affirmation is directed to itself as this unique,unrepeatable, and irreplaceable individual. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14
The theological assertion that every human soul has an infinite value is a consequence of the ontological self-affirmation as an indivisible, unexchangeable self. It can be called the courage to be oneself. However, the self is self only because it as a World, a structured Universe, to which it belongs and from which it is separated at the same time. Self and the World are correlated, and so are individualization and participation. For this is just what participation means: being part of something from which one is, at the same time, separated. Literally, participation means taking part. This can be used in a threefold sense. It can be used in the sense of sharing, as for instance, sharing a room; or in the sense of having in common, the participation of the individual in the universal; or it can be used in the sense of being a part, for instance of a political movement. In all these cases participation is a partial identity and a partial non-identity. A part of a whole is not identical with the whole to which it belongs. However, the whole is what it is only with the part. The relation of the body and its limbs is the most obvious example. The self is part of the World which it has as its World. The World would not be what it is without this individual self. One says that somebody is identified with a moment. This participation makes one’s being and the being of the movement partly the same. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14
To understand the highly dialectical nature of participation it is necessary to think in terms of power instead of in terms of things. The partial identity of definitely separated things cannot be shared by all its citizens, and in an outstanding way by its rulers. Its power is partly their power, although its power transcends their power and their power transcends its power. The identity of participation is an identity in the power of being. In this sense the power of being of the individual self is partly identical with the power of beings of one’s World, and conversely. For the concepts of self-affirmation and courage this means that the self-affirmation of the self as an individual self always includes the affirmation of the self as an individual self always includes the affirmation of the power of being in which the self participates. The self affirms itself as participant in the power of a group, of a movement, of essences, of power of being as such. Self-affirmation, if it is done in spite of the threat of nonbeing, is the courage to be. However, it is not the courage to be as oneself, it is the courage to be as a part. The phrase “courage to be as a part” presents a difficulty. While it obviously demands courage to be as oneself, the will to be as a part seems to express the lack of courage, namely the desire to live under the protection of a larger whole. Not courage but weakness seems to induce us to affirm our selves as a part. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14
However, being as a part points to the fact that self-affirmation necessarily includes the affirmation of oneself as participant, and that this side of our self-affirmation is threatened by nonbeing as much as the other side, the affirmation of the self as an individual self. We are threatened not only with losing our individual selves but also with losing participation in our World. Therefore self-affirmation as a part requires courage as much as does self-affirmation as oneself. It is one courage which takes a double threat of nonbeing into itself. The courage to be is essentially always the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself, in interdependence. The courage to be as a part is an integral element of the courage to be as oneself, and the courage to be as oneself is an integral element of the courage to be as a part. However, under the conditions of human finitude and estrangement that which is essentially united becomes existentially split. The courage to be as a part separates itself from unity with the courage to be as oneself, and conversely; and both disintegrate in their isolation. The anxiety they had taken into themselves is unloosed and becomes destructive. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14
Our perception of a situation determines the feeling we experience. “This day we perceive that the Lord is among us,” reports Josh 22.31. Competing needs, feelings, hungers, attitudes, and ideas fill our life’s experiences with conflicts. These add to both the grandeur and the misery of human life. One day you may experience enough of these conflicts, piled on top of each other to make you shout out: “Enough! I have had enough. I want to simplify! I must clear away the cobwebs, the entanglements, the complexities. I must get back to a simple, easily lived existence.” So you will stop doing certain things, resign from a few responsibilities, drop out of a few entanglement, give up a few unnecessary friends, enemies, tasks, pleasures. The pity is that this scarcely untangles or simplifies the picture. Your life is all the things you have experienced and will usually continue to be all these things, plus the decision you make to simplify! Take the following situation as an example: Randy, 20, earns a better-than-comfortable income, has been married eight years, has two healthy children. He likes his work, though it does not excite, stimulate, or satisfy him. He keeps to it because he needs the money, the security, and the idea that he is steadily employed and rising. However, he feels gnawing frustrations. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14
Randy decides one day to quit the job, take his family to a simpler part of the country, where job pressures and societal pressures are reduced. He moved from the hustle-and-bustle of Manhattan to the relative leisure of a small farming town in Sacramento. His skills get him a job, though the salary is one third that of his Manhattan salary. His home is smaller, and is wife, Erin, must take on new skills. His children have some difficulty adjusting to the new climate, social and cultural pattern, and a school where both are in the same classroom, with children younger and older. The new job is less challenging, but Randy is determined to believe that he has at last found “Utopia.” He refuses to complain and chides his wife and children when they grumble or long for their previous life. After six months, the family moves back to Manhattan.When asked by his friends to explain his moves, Randy chuckles and says he guesses he is not cut out for rural life. Randy had come to accept, at leas to feel “at home” in a very complex urban environment. He had a job that suited his aptitudes, but it failed to meet some of his other needs. His restlessness was a byproduct of his feeling that something was missing from his life. The decision to move was based on several things, particularly a desire to get un-stuck from what he perceived to be an entangling lifestyle. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14
Randy also found that he had rather enjoyed the urban entanglements, or at least that he had had some part to play in these patterns.In the Sacramento rural community he felt very unimportant, unneeded. Add tot his the strain on his family which was relayed back to him and you see some of the difficulty in his situation. Randy had the objectivity to see that maybe the restlessness and dissatisfaction were in him, not in the home or job. He sought vocational guidance and together he and the counselor looked at the various needs he had and found a job better suited to meet those needs. Do you remember how good it felt the last time you were recognized for your work? Research proves that appreciation is not only the number one thing employees declare their boss could do t inspire great work from them, but it also shows that is must be given in timely fashion. However, receiving praise for your hard work long after the result of your work can be considered offensive by many employees. Yes, this means that when we do something great at work, we expect a timely response. It is important to understand that you hold the power, the words, and the giddy-up to cheer people up along the way—by giving them instant gratification. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14
We also live in a society where too many people are trying to combat bullying and bad vibes by being nice to people and paying compliments that they do not really mean. For example, people often say, “I appreciate you,” just for you someone saying hello, thanking them or following the rules, but it is kind of an empty comment because these are things we are meant to do. So, if you have people in your life who are going out of their way for you, be sure to show them that they really are appreciated. And also, be willing to accept gifts, it is a way of bonding and showing people who much you care. They want you to have things that you will cherish and when you look at them you will be filled with good memories. When people are gone,they want you to have something to remember them by. “No power of influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness,and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 121.41-42. We always know when Jesus is at work because he produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14
Everyone faces hard things: the death of a loved one,divorce, a wayward child, illness, trials of faith, a lost job, or any other difficulty. To help us travel and triumph over our hard times with such glimpses of eternity, we must face hard things, first, by forgiving others and, second, by giving ourselves to Heavenly Father. Forgiving those who may have caused our hard things and reconciling ourselves to the will of God can be very difficult. It can hurt must when our hard thing is caused by a family member, a close friend, or even ourselves. The Lord needs you to look like, sound like a true disciple of Jesus Christ. That can be a hard thing, yet, we can do it—with joy. As we face hard things in the Lord’s way, may we lift up our heads and rejoice. At this sacred opportunity to testify to the World, our Savior lives and guides us. Lesson taught through the traditions we establish in our homes, though small and simple, are increasingly important in today’s World. We are urged to make our home sanctuaries of faith. It is an effort driven by our faith—our belief that one day the seeds sown in their youth will take root and begin to sprout and grow. The power of the Savior’s gospel to transform and bless us flows from discerning and applying the interrelatedness of its doctrine, principles, and practices. The Holy Ghost will enlighten each of us as we consider our increased responsibilities as individuals and families to our time and enhance our lives. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14
Randolph Harris II International Institute 