Randolph Harris II International

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The Greatest Miracles of Genius Breed Doubt as Well as Faith About the Labyrinth in His Soul of Love!

On some bright essence could I lean, and lull myself to immortality. We are not really pacifists, we are just nonviolent soldiers. As long as you feel insecure, you have no real capacity to face other men and women in that skill of communication which more than any other skill requires freedom from tension. By communication I did not of course mean only intellectual conversation but the whole aesthetic of emotional relations; when one first begins to examine one’s experience, one will find most of their delights in natural things, and this will facilitate the ability to chiefly reckon each day’s catch of happiness in terms of one’s relationships with others. While we go about our day being able to work or study, we should think continually of others who are denied that happiness by their material circumstances or their health. One brilliant Summer morning at Gunsbach, during the Whitsuntide holidays—it was in 1896—there came to me, as I awoke, the thought that I must not accept this happiness as a matter of course, but must give me something in return for it. Proceeding to think the matter out at once with calm deliberation, while the birds were singing outside, I settled with myself before I got up, that I would consider myself justified in living till I was thirty for the science and art, in order to devote myself from that time forward to the direct service of humanity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

Many a time already I had tried to settle what meaning lay hidden for me in the saying of Jesus! “Whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel shall save it.” Now the answer was found. In addition to the outward, I now had inward happiness. What would be the character of the activities thus planned for the future was not yet clear to me. I left it to circumstances to guide me. One thing only was certain, that is must be directly human service, however inconspicuous the sphere of it. Those who are so favoured as to be able to embark on a course of free personal activity must accept this good fortune in a spirit of humility. They must often think of those who, though willing and capable, were never in a position to do the same thing. And as a rule they must temper their own strong determination with humility. They are almost always destined to have to seek and wait till they find a road open for the activity they long for. Happy are those to whom the years of work are allotted in richer measure than those of seeking and waiting. Happy those who in the end are able to give themselves really and completely! #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

I have often recognized that the need to do something special was born of a restless spirit. Such persons want to dedicate themselves to larger tasks because those that lay nearest do not satisfy them. Often, too, it was evident that they had been brought to their decisions by quite secondary considerations. Only a person who can find a value in every sort of activity and devote oneself to each one with full consciousness of duty, has the inward right to take as one’s object some extraordinary activity instead of that which falls to one’s lot naturally. Only a person who feels one’s preference to be as a matter of course, not something out of the ordinary, and who has not thought of heroism, but just recognizes a duty undertaken with sober enthusiasm, is capable of becoming a spiritual adventurer such as the World needs. There are no heroes of action: only heroes of renunciation and suffering. Of such there are plenty. However, few of them are known, and even these not to the crowd, but to the few. My thirtieth birthday, I spent like the man in the parable who desiring to build a tower, first count the cost whether he have wherewith to complete it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

Several times, indeed, it was my experience that my appeal to the act of obedience which Jesus’ command of love may under special circumstances call for, brought upon me an accusation of conceit, although I had, in fact, been obliged to do violence to my feelings to employ this belief at all. In general, how much I suffered through so many people assuming a right to tear open all the doors and shutters of my inner self! As a rule, too, it was of no use allowing them, in spite of my repugnance, to have a glimpse of the thoughts which had given birth to my resolution. They thought there must be something behind it all, and guessed at disappointment as the slow growth of y reputation. For this there was no ground at all, seeing that I have received, even as a young man, such recognition as others usually get only after a whole life of toil and struggle. Unfortunate love experiences were also alleged as the reason for my decision. I felt as a real kindness the action of persons who made no attempt to dig their fists into my heart, but regarded me as a precocious young man, not quite right in one’s head, and treated me correspondingly with affectionate mockery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

However, only one, who thanks to his own ability or the devotion of friends is in Worldly matters a free man, can venture nowadays o take the path of independent activity. This consciousness cannot be got from another human by transfer (although its presence in one may be felt by sensitivity) but only by one’s own hard toil. The right action done in the wrong way becomes wrong in itself. Although it is right to look towards a teacher for guidance and inspiration throughout the course of one’s quest, it is wrong to become over-dependent on that teacher. People approach the saint-type primarily to get what is called in India a darshan. This may be variously translated as a glimpse, a spoken blessing, a sight, a view, an initiation, or a silent benediction. One is a phenomenon and they stand at a distance to gaze at one, to admire one, or to be overwhelmed with awe by one. The few minutes or days or weeks or months or years taken up—the duration is immaterial for extension in time does not change the nature of the happening—leave the devotee with the same character, the same consciousness that one had before the meeting. Its service is to portray the goal, not to being one nearer to perfection in any way. The delusion that the longer they stay with one the farther they travel on the road to perfection remains a delusion still. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

The darshan leaves them with their weakness and faults, their egoism and animality untouched. The work of getting rid of these things is theirs to undertake and no darshan-magic can be substitute for it. The belief that a self-actualized person will do for one once and for all what in the end one has to do for oneself belongs to the untutored masses and the sectarian mystic circles. Only the self-deceived or the charlatanic will offer to save you. All others will offer only to guide you. You must labour for yourselves. It is the common way to demand entry into enlightenment through someone else. This renders it needful to make clear that nobody, not even the best of the self-actualized, can possibly pass on and there are not many with that capacity. Even in such cases, one’s disciples must work diligently and win it themselves. The service of a spiritual director in correcting errors, providing instruction, stimulating aspiration, and fostering intuition are immense; but they are only a prelude to the services a student must render to oneself. Those who leave their spiritual future totally in the hands of their guide, lose the years which could be spent in developing themselves. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

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It is not enough to receive a teaching from someone else. The truth of the teaching must be tested by personal experience, the worth of it should be measured by personal knowledge. Of all the will for the ideal which exists in humankind only a small part can be manifested in action. All the rest is destined to realize itself in unseen effects, which represent, however, a value exceeding a thousandfold and more that of the activity which attracts the notice of the World. Its relation to the latter is like that of the deep sea to the waves which stir its surface. The hidden forces of goodness are embodied in those persons who carry on as a secondary pursuit the immediate personal service which they cannot make their lifework. The lot of the many is to have as a profession, for the earning of their living and the satisfaction of society’s claim on them, a more or less soulless labour in which they can give out little of nothing of their human qualities, because in that labour they have to be little better than human machines. Yet no one finds oneself in the position of having no possible opportunity of giving oneself to others as a human being. The problem produced by the fact of labour being today so thoroughly organized, specialized, and mechanized depends only in part for its solution on society’s not merely removing the conditions thus produced, but doing its very best to guard the rights of human personality. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

What is even more important is that sufferers shall not simply bow to their fate, but shall try with all their energy to asset their human personality amid their unfavourable conditions by spiritual activity. Anyone can recuse one’s human life, in spite of one’s professional life, who seizes every opportunity of being a human by means of personal action, however unpretending, for the good of fellow humans who need the help of a fellow human. Such a person enlists in the service of the spiritual and good. No fate can prevent a human from giving to others this direct human service side by side with one’s lifework. If so much of such service remains unrealized, it is because the opportunities are missed. It is the guide’s duty to hold up a gasolier on a dark path but the disciple must decide for oneself the speed and distance of the journey along that path. No command is laid upon one, for it is one who must estimate the strength within one and the opportunity without. One is given full freedom in making one’s decision. It is unfortunately the case that many emotionally unstable persons are attracted to mysticism, with the result that they spend years with their dreams of magical achievement but do nothing to convert those dreams into realities, or else flit from one dream to another. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

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That everyone shall exert oneself in that state of life in which one is placed, to practice true humanity toward one’s fellow humans, on that depends the future of humankind. Enormous values come to nothing every moment through the missing of opportunities, but the values which do get turned into will and deed mean wealth which must not be undervalued. Our humanity is by no means so materialistic as foolish talk is continually asserting it to be. Judging by what I have learned about men and women, I am convinced that there is far more in them of idealist will power than ever comes to the surface of the World. Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount compared to that which flows underground, so the idealism which becomes visible is small in amount compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts, underground waters to the surface: humankind is waiting and longing for such as can do that. If the student responds sufficiently to the hints given one or the counsel bestowed on one, the teacher will be encouraged to go father. The uneasiness which many feel in the teacher’s presence is partly caused by the fact that there are negative qualities in themselves which are not present in the teacher. However, partly it is also caused by their miscomprehension of one’s character. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

The righteous teacher does not attempt to criticize, judge, or condemn them, nor to approve or disapprove of them. One accepts that this is not one’s business for one accepts that evolution has made them what they are, both the good and bad in them. To this extent their uneasiness is unnecessary. The freedom to be who one deeply is strikes an especially resonant chord in underrepresented and marginalized communities. A primary concern of existential psychotherapy is the relationship among freedom, limitation, and choice. The daily question for many people, even the rich and famous is: “With whom can I be myself?” The dangers are real. Physical safety, economic security, and acceptance by others are threatened. And hiding one aspect of the self affects other dimensions of the self, such as self-esteem, creativity, and the ability to love. Even for those who appear to be comfortable with who they are, the issue goes deeper. It saddens and angers people that they cannot talk to people about their lives or express who they really are because they are around people who expect them to always be kind and understanding, so people have to create these carefully mastered personalities, but it may not reflect their full character. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

Repressed individuals even go as far as to make statement which have been carefully crafted to make people feel better. Many individuals cannot just change the subject; this is their life. As a result, people who are repressed turn to long term celibacy so they are able to fully embody who they are since they cannot express their full humanness. Therapeutic work concerning the freedom to express oneself and therapeutic work touching on identity issues are mutually reinforcing. As people gain a greater sense of self and possibilities, they also learn to accept themselves; as they learn to accept themselves, they become increasingly more able to express all of who they are and to experience a widening sense of possibilities. One lady, Katrina, who had developed an inflammatory condition had to totally change her life. Doctor’s noticed that when she was under stress, the condition would flare up and recommended a lifestyle change because something was wrong in her environment. The young woman had to go to cognitive therapy, go on medication for the inflammation, end her romantic relationship and become celibate for years, she even quit her job, and moved. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

While undergoing this life style change, the lady also made the decision not to receive any financial support from her parents. The general physician overseeing her general healthy needs, noticed as the woman became more responsible for herself, this enforced her sense of freedom to express who she truly was and her health had started improving after three years of celibacy. She learned to “check in” with herself—not merely to think about particular issues but to resonate to them, to experience them kinesthetically. She learned did not simply run from her problems, she learned to counter her constriction and productively regenerate her life. This inspired her to become response-able—personally, socially, and spiritually. Spiritual discipline is an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and His Kingdom. In any human endeavour, repetitive exercise and practice bring skill and excellence. Sometimes a particular activity is good because it accomplishes a specific result. If it produces a base hit, swinging a baseball bat is good. However, that same activity can also be done, not for the result alone, but for the training it offers. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

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A person can repeatedly swing a bat in a batting cage for the purpose of training, and not to increase one’s output of base hits. And other good results can follow from such training besides the one usually or normally intended; for example, regular trips to a batting cage can get a person in good overall condition besides helping one get base hits. The same thing is true of study. We often correctly approach study specifically for some direct end—preparing a lesson or learning a topic covered in a book. However, study should also be approached as a set of training activities, as spiritual and intellectual exercises. Study is a discipline that strengthens the mind and enriches the soul. Sometimes I study a book for the sheer value of engaging my intellect in a stretching, strenuous activity. As other times, I read to help myself cultivate the intellectual virtues that will bring one closer to God. Seen as discipline, study becomes a means of building my character, ingraining habits of thought and reflection, and reinforcing my own soul the value of the life of the mind. We study, then, not simply to gain knowledge about the topic of study, but as a broader spiritual discipline. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

By way of application, it is important to read books from time to time as a form of spiritual discipline and intellectual exercise, even if the topic of the book does not address one of your immediate, felt needs. If all you do is read simple books or those that overemphasize stories or practical application, you will never learn to think of yourself as a mature Christian, nor will you develop a trained mind. Peace if the rest of will that results from assurance about how things will turn out. It is always a form of active engagement with good, plus assurance that things will turn out well. “I am at peace about it,” we say, and this means I am no longer striving, inwardly or outwardly, to save some outcome dear to me or to avoid one that I reject. I have released whatever is at issues and am no longer even putting “body English” or “spin” on it or inwardly gritting my teeth. Of course everyone is at peace about some things, one hopes, but few have peace in general, and fewer still have peace that reaches their body and its automatic responses to such a depth that it does not live in a covert state of alarm. Ultimately it will be by one’s own efforts alone that one uncovers the wisdom and beauty one is seeking—and which are even now within one. Such efforts, in order to be successful, must be courageous and continuous. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

Repeated failures should serve only to stimulate deeper determination. In the end each seeker has to become one’s own teacher by putting all one’s experience, one’s beliefs, one’s ideas, to the test. Most people carry heavy burdens of care, and usually about the things that are most important in life: what will happen to their loved ones, their finances, health, death, their physical appearance or what others think of them, the future of society, their standing before God and their eternal destiny. To be at peace with God and others (family, neighbours, and coworkers) is a great attainment and depends on graces far beyond ourselves as well as on our own efforts. That is also true of being at peace with oneself. Peace with God comes only from acceptance of one’s gift of life in His Son. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God,” reports Romans 5.1-2. We are then assured of the outcome of our life and are no longer trying to justify ourselves before God or others. We have accepted that we are not righteous or even totally competent and that we cannot be so on our own. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

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We have laid down the burden of justifying ourselves before God and are learning not to justify ourselves before humans. This is the pace that grows from within us. It is possible to being this truth within the mind’s sight and within the will’s reach as long as we do our own work. Whoever offers one a free redemption plays God. Form those around me I must simply assume grace and mercy, not that I will get what I deserve. I am a beggar on my way through the World. Justice is not enough for my needs, and I could not stand it if I got it. When others do not extend the grace and mercy I need, I have to draw on the grace and mercy I need, I have to draw on the abundance of it in God. “Who is this that is condemning me?” I remind myself, “Jesus even died for me, was raised from the dead, and is now standing up for me before God,” reports Romans 8.34. Assurance of this allows me to “seek peace and pursue it,” reports 1 Peter 3.11, no matter who is involved, and to “pursue peace with all humans,” reports Hebrews 12.14. That includes all our family members and coworkers! Even in case where, though no fault of my own, there must be a struggle between me and others, there does not have to be a struggle within me. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourself. Try to become like the master. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

I may have to resist others, for some good reason, but even so I do not have to make things come out right. I am not the one in control of outcomes. I do not have to hate those whose course of action I resist, or even get mad at them, and so I can always be at peace within myself as well as toward them. Although the truth of our intellect is caused by the thing, yet it is not necessary that truth should be there primarily, any more than that health should be primarily in medicine, rather than in the animal: for the virtue of medicine, and not its health, is the cause of health, for here the agent is not univocal. In the same way, the being of the thing, not its truth, is the cause of the truth in the intellect. Hence, a fact or a word is true from the fact that a thing is, not because a thing is true. “And now it came to pass that in the sixteenth year from the coming of Christ, Lachoneus, the governor of the land, received an epistle from the leader and the governor of this band of robbers; and these were the words which were written saying: Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write tis epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

“Yea, ye do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god, in the defence of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so. And it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus, that ye should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command, who do now at this time stand in their arms, and do await with great anxiety for the word—God own upon the Nephites and destroy them. And I, knowing of their unconquerable spirit, having proved them in the field of battle, and knowing you because of the many wrongs which ye have done unto them, therefore if they should come down against you they would visit you with utter destruction. Therefore I have written this epistle, sealing it with mine own hand, feeling for your welfare, because of your firmness in that which ye believe to be right, and your noble spirit in the field of battle. Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

“Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance. And behold, I swear unto you, if ye will do this, with an oath, ye shall not be destroyed; but if ye will not do this, I swear unto you with an oath, that on the morrow month I will command that my armies shall come down against you, and they shall not stay their hand and shall spare not, but shall slay you, and shall let fall the sword upon you even until ye shall become extinct. And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us. And I write this epistle unto you, Lachoeus, and I hope that ye will deliver up your lands and your possessions, without the shedding of blood, that this my people may recover their rights and government, who have dissented away from you because of your wickedness in retaining from them their rights of government, and except ye do this, I will avenge their wrongs. I am Giddianhi. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

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“And now it came to pass when Lachoneus received this epistle he was exceedingly astonished, because of the boldness of Giddianhi demanding the possession of the land of the Nephites, and also of the threatening the people and avenging the wrongs of those that had received no wrong, save it were they had wronged themselves by dissenting away unto those wicked and abominable robbers. Now behold, this Lachoneus, the governor, was a just man, and could not be frightened by the demands and the threatenings of a robber; therefore he did not hearken to the epistle of Giddianhi, the governor of the robbers, but he did cause that his people should cry unto the Lord for strength against the time that the robbers should come down against them. Yea, he sent a proclamation among all the people, that they should gather together their women, and their children, their flocks and their herds, and all their substance, save it were their land, unto one place. And he caused that fortifications should be built round about them, and the strength thereof should be exceedingly great. And he caused that armies, both of the Nephites and of the Lamanites, or of all them who were numbered among the Nephites, should be placed as guards round about to watch them, and to guard them from the robbers day and night. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

“Yea, he said unto them: As the Lord liveth, except ye repent of all your iniquities, and cry unto the Lord, ye will in nowise be delivered out of the hands of those Gadianton robbers. And so great and marvelous were the words and prophecies of Lachoneus that they did cause fear to come upon all the people; and they did exert themselves in their might to do according to the words of Lachoneus. And it came to pass that Lachoneus did appoint chief captains over all the armies of the Nephites, to command them at the time that the robbers should come down out of the wilderness against them. Now the chiefest among all the chief captains and the great commander of all the armies of the Nephites was appointed, and his name was Gididdoni. Now it was the custom among all the Nephites to appoint for their chief captains, (save it were in their times of wickedness) some one that the bad spirit of revelation and also prophecy; therefore, this Gididdoni was a great prophet among them, as also was the chief judge. Now the people said unto Gidgiddoni: Pray unto the Lord, and let us go up upon the mountains and into the wilderness, that we may fall upon the mountains and into the wilderness, that we may fall upon the robbers and destroy them in their own lands. However, Gidgiddoni saith unto them: The Lord forbid; for if we should go up against them the Lord would deliver us into their hands; therefore we will prepare ourselves in the center of our lands, and we will gather all our armies together, and we will not go against them, but we will wait till they shall come against us. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

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“Therefore, as the Lord liveth, if we do this he will deliver them into our hands. And it came to pass in the seventeenth year, in the latter end of the year, the proclamation of Lachoneus had gone forth throughout all the face of the land, and they had taken their horses, and their chariots, and their cattle, and all their flocks, and their herds, and their grain, and all their substance, and did march forth by thousands and by tens of thousands, until they had all gone forth to the place which had been appointed that they should gather themselves together, to defend themselves against their enemies. And the land which was appointed was the land of Zarahemla, and the land which was between the land Zarahemla and the land Bountiful, yea, to the line which was between the land Bountiful and the land Desolation. And there were a great many thousand people who were called Nephites, who did gather themselves together in this land. Now Lachoneus did cause that they should gather themselves together in this land. Now Lachoneus did cause that they should gather themselves together in the and southward, because of the great curse which was upon the land northward. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

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“And they did fortify themselves against their enemies; and they did dwell in one land, and in one body, and they did fear the words which had been spoken by Lachoneus, insomuch that they did put up their prayers unto the Lord their God, that he would deliver them in the time that their enemies should come down against them to battle. And they were exceedingly sorrowful because of their enemies. And Giddiddoni did cause that they should make weapons of war of every kind, and they should be strong with armour, and with shields, and with bucklers, after the manner of his instruction,” reports 3 Nephi 3.1-26. On the ring of the World, God is dancing. In His bright robe, He is dancing. Young and handsome and strong, God is dancing. Bringer of vision, God is dancing. Dance, Sun King, into the Sky, please being the day to those who wait for you. As the Sun rises, I face His glory, grateful that the darkness has come to an end. Though darkness is sacred, its soothing a gift, I am a human, a creature of light. So I face you in thankfulness and greet your return with praises and prayer and the honour that is due you. O Lord and Saviour Christ, Who camest not to strive nor cry, but to let Thy words fall as the drops that water the Earth; please grant all who contend for the Faith once delivered, never to injure it by clamour and impatience. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

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However, teach them to speak Thy precious Truth in love, so to present it that it may be loved, and that humans may see in it Thy goodness and Thy beauty; Who livest as the Way, the Truth and the Life. Truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is; and things according as they have being conformable to an intellect. This to be the greatest degree found in God. For His being is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect, and He Himself is His own existence and act of understanding. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and first truth. Although the divine intellect there is neither composition nor division, yet in His simple act of intelligence He judges of all things and knows all things complex; and thus there is truth in His intellect. O God, the Sovereign Good of the soul, Who requirest the hearts of all Thy children; please deliver us from all sloth in Thy work, all coldness in Thy cause; and please grant us by looking unto Thee to rekindle our Love, and by waiting upon Thee to renew our strength; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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Stand a Little Less Between Me and the Sun for this is the Movement of Redeeming Love!

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If you watch a game, it is fun. If you play it, it is recreation. If you work at it, it is golf. We become live as we take, knowingly, full responsibility for our own life and as we stop blaming circumstance. Freedom for most people of the World means “freedom from” the absence of malice or pain or suppression. However, the freedom that God means when He deals with us goes one step further. God means “freedom to”—the freedom to act in the dignity of our own choice. What then does it mean to be free? Freedom means to have matured to the full knowledge of our dangerously many responsibilities as a human being. We have learned that everything we do, and even say or think, has consequences. We realize that too long we have believed that we were the victims of circumstances. In the Gospel of John, 8.32 it reports the following, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” As we open our hearts to the message of God’s truth, as it was restored in our time, we begin to understand why there was, and still is, so much misery, pain, suffering, and even starvation. Our nation’s future direction now hangs in the balance; we are living in a time of crucial choices—both conscious and unconscious—that will determine our fate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

The rights to freedom of thought and speech, the right to advocate any point of view which one believe—these freedoms are not highly regarded today. Even universities, where these freedoms are of the essence, often refuse to permit speakers to appear because their views are opposed by some influential group. And it is not only administrators who limit these freedoms, but faculty and students as well. Lies, deceit, criminal invasion of privacy, flouting of the law, surveillance and imprisonment of dissenters—all these have been tools used to control the populace and to hold power over persons. We have to be careful because incarcerating the young will keep them out of the adult World. High office now goes preponderantly to humans of wealth so that of our one hundred senators, supposedly representing the people, 50 percent of them are millionaires. To make people obey the law, it is important for them to feel they are a par of an ongoing, purposeful process. People are more likely to obey the law when they understand that each individual has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We cannot allow “Dysamerica,” to become popular since it is utterly opposed to the goals, ideals, and political structure embodied in the Constitution. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

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Youth must also be taught not only to be loving, but also to be proud to be Americans so they do not become “Dysamerican.” Many social historians, economists, and forecasters agree that the disillusionment with democracy is growing, and they see it coming to fruition in the future that a controlled society is inevitable. Belief in the worth of the free person is not something that can be extinguished even by all the modern technological devices—bugging of conversations, use of “mental hospitals” to recondition behaviour, and all the rest. Nothing can extinguish the human organism’s drive to be itself—to actualize itself in individual and creative ways. Trust and courage are standards to emulate. Equality and justice are inviolable concepts. Authority should be guided by reason and tempered by fairness. There is a realization that if we are to live in a human context, there must be an ability to establish intimate, communicative, personal bonds with others in a very short space of time. They must be able to leave these close relationships behind, without excessive conflict or mourning. Every social revolution is preceded by, or brings with it, a change in the perception of the World or a change in the perception of the possible or both. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

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In the same dimension as we are learning to accept the revealed truth in our own life, our faith in the living Son of God will grow, and therefore we will receive spiritual gifts of heretofore unknown capacity. We will learn that nothing is impossible for those who believe in Jesus Christ. False bondages will be loosened. Narrow thinking born in tragedies of false traditions will disappear. The more our understanding of the vastness and the completeness of the plan of salvation is developing, the more we see ourselves in smallness, in our incompleteness. And seeing ourselves in that humility, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, will let us understand and finally accept this most sacred covenant with our Heavenly Father. Freedom means that we have the potential of making wrong choices. Wrong choices have their merciless consequences, and when they are not stopped and corrected they lead us into misery and pain. Wrong choices, if not corrected, will lead us to the ultimate possible disaster in each person’s life: to become separated from our Heavenly Father in the World to come. When we have received this life-enabling message, we begin to understand that in our earlier life we were like a football player standing in the middle of the field, totally depressed because we did not know the purpose of the game. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

We did not know which team we belong to, and we did not even know who was our coach. Only in the awareness of the restored gospel, our game plan become clear, and we comprehend that Jesus Christ and His restored Church and priesthood are the only way for us to succeed in our Earthly experience. Jesus Christ wants to empower our lives, according to our own righteous choices, to that dimension that, through our faith and our doings, the circumstances whose prisoners we were in the past will eventually change. Love, if it is truly love, implies that in any problem or dilemma we shall be led by a spiritual instinct. For, where love is, there is the Holy Spirit, who knows all, and who guides us in the strait path. Love is able to rise above the law; it does not follow, but lead, the law. The conscience of the mystics, enlightened by God’s illuminations, may be called a transmoral conscience. It does not need to be told what law is. For consciously or not, it fulfills the law. For in the concrete situation of the Christian who is totally committed to God, love never contradicts the law: it fulfills it. Love invents the law if the law is not explicitly known, and what it invents always corresponds to the law, because both have the Holy Spirit as their inspirer. The morel law of nature or of revelation cannot contradict the true love of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

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The true love of God always desires to follow the moral law. However, every teacher knows that correct behaviour does not come spontaneously. Even love has to be taught. Even when one really loves them, one must learn to respect and understand others. Even for one who is totally dedicated to another, it is not east to respect the secret of that person. When it stated that “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” The Old Testament agree with common sense. Christ did not abolish the law; he fulfilled it. Love likewise does not seek to be freed from laws, but to fulfill them. Love soars above the law only to subject itself to the law again. Love is free, and it freely longs for obedience. As soon as we speak of obedience, we must ask, Obedience to what? In the realm of ethics, obedience can only be to objective standards, that is, to laws. The law is not strange to man. It is natural law. It represents his true nature from which he is estranged. Every ethical commandment is an expression of man’s essential relation to himself, to others and to the Universe. Undeserved grace of God has raised to full spiritual freedom. Most of us are theonomous only at times, when we rise above our average. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Our ethics, then, is a mixture: heteronomy, when we obey the law for no other reason than that is it’s the law; autonomy, when we escape the law and go on our own, experimenting with temptation and sin; theonomy, when we perceive that there is a higher realm, to which we obscurely aspire. In this World, theonomy can only be achieved by way of obedience. To behave ethically, in this view, is to be ultimately concerned about the connection of our actions with essential Godmanhood. The Christ is eternal Godmanhood, the essence of man paradoxically appearing under the conditions of existence. All humans have aspired to this revelation; they have longed for an escape from the dilemma of an existence which is never adequate to its essence. Their religions have attempted to find a way out of the human labyrinth. The Messiah, the Christ, the Servant of Yahweh, the Prophet to come, the Son of Man, the Son of God, are some of the representations of this ideal messenger of salvation. The Christian faith consists in believing that this messenger has come, Christ is eternal Godmanhood, is in Jesus Christ the man; and that Jesus was the manifestation of the Christ. The coming of Jesus the Christ is a totally gratuitous event, unanticipated by the human mind and irreducible to general categories. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

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Our goodness is not ours, it is God’s. Christ is perfect goodness, and so he is perfectly God. We are good because God lives in us by grace; and Jesus was perfect goodness because God was perfectly in him, so perfectly that Jesus was God. Wherever the New Bing appears, salvation is achieved. The coming of the Christ is such a breakthrough of the New Bing. Other can be thought of or hoped for. This particular manifestation of the New Bing is the norm of Christianity because it is the greatest manifestation that has ever been perceived. Of all the messianic titles, Jesus claimed the title of the Man more definitely than any other. In 1 Corinthians 15.45-47, in Romans 5.12, and in Philippians 2.5-11, St Paul developed the idea of the Man and identified “the Heavenly Man,” “the second Adam,” “the second Man,” with the concrete man Jesus. The Man is from Heaven. He is spiritual, as contrasted with the first Adam, who was Earthly. He appeared on Earth as Jesus of Nazareth. These, and other texts of the New Testament, impose the following conclusion: The early Church initiated a Christology in which Jesus was considered to be the incarnation of preexisting celestial Man. Christology is built on the concept “Man.” The Man, the “celestial Man,” is equal with God. Christology takes this as a scriptural basis and describes the Thee Persons as the Father, the Man, the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

In examining the meaning of “the Man,” it might follow the patristic line of thought according to which man’s essence is to be the image, the eikon, of God. The second Person, the Man-God, is the perfect Image of the Father, of whom he is eternally born. It is precisely that which makes him the preexistent Man. To be a man on Earth consists in being destined to imitate this Man, in being created an image of God. All men are types of this eternal Archetype, of the Image of the Father, of the Man. The two natures, divine and human, of Christ can also be called the two humanities of Jesus: the divine Humanity, which is God himself, the Exemplar of all images of God; and the creaturely humanity, in whose shape the divine Humanity appeared on Earth at a given moment in history. These two are one—one “person” in the Chalcedonian language—by way of exemplarity: the creaturely humanity of Jesus is the perfect created likeness of the divine Man. We should not speak of Jesus as two men, but as two humanities—divine and human—in one man, the pre-existent divine Man. The integrity of the creaturely humanity assumed by the eternal Man, in all things like his brethren. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

The Exemplar itself is, eternally so, divine and yet human the divine Man. Eternal Godmanhood is made possible by the Scriptures themselves and by the early tradition of the Church. It may be achieved in complete fidelity to the normative Councils of the early Church. Jesus is the divine Man and appeared in the midst of creaturely mankind, a brother among brothers. Jesus the Christ is the Saviour. Jesus the Christ is the mediator in all things. The Son of God, to whom alone belong the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. “If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us,” reports 1 John 4.12. The first great commandment makes it possible to fulfill the commandment: love of neighbour as oneself. And loving others under God will ensure that we are loved by others. For to the others in our community of love, we are the “other” who they love because they love and are loved by God. The fellowship of Christ’s apprentices in kingdom living is a community of love. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all humans will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” reports John 13.34-35. This is the movement in the process of redeeming love. Christ chose his twelve apostles not only because they were naturally and extremely religious men but also because they were loyal enough and brave enough to live and die for their master. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

Here, then, is the full accounts of the movements of love in our lives: We are loved by God who is love, and in turn we love him, and others through him, who in turn love us through him. Thus is love made perfect or complete. And “perfect love casts out fear,” reports 1 John 4.18. That is, those who live in the fulfillment of God’s redemptive love in human life will no longer experience fear. “Fear involves torment,” John notes, and torment is incompatible with living in the full cycle of love (1 John 4.18). We live in the community of goodwill from a competent God. Now, as St Augustine saw long ago, the opposite of love is pride. Love eliminates pride because its will for the god of the other nullifies our arrogant presumption hat we should get our way. We are concerned for the good of others and assured that our good is take care of without self-will. Thus pride and fear and their dreadful offspring no longer rules our life as long becomes complete in us. This eagerness to become a disciple and learn truth is the first necessary qualification. Without it nothing can be done; with it everything will come naturally in automatic response from God. One must supply faith and loyalty, obedience and practice, along with the aspiration which brings us closer to the Lord. If we hear the master’s words with joy, that is one indication that we are ready. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

When we entrust ourselves to the Lord’s care, we should cultivate patience and not seek immediate results. However, it is not necessary to display frenzied fervour in order to be a devoted disciple. If we feel personally humiliated or become hysterically tearful because God did not respond when we expected, we are not only suffering needlessly, but will remain long puzzled. Our humility will always be met by kindness and our frankness by equal frankness. The seeker who has found the path proper and are in affinity with God’s commandments should waste no more time in the experimental investigations of other paths, other teachings, and other teachers. If one is to get full benefit of our fellowship, we must remain absolutely loyal. As one’s tender, newly regenerated soul begins to grow close to Christ, one will begin to care deeply about ideas in these areas. Preserve and clear away some of the cobwebs that cover vast regions of one’s mental attic. Nothing that is worth doing id pleasurable or easy in the early stages of learning how to do it. However, through regular practice, patient endurance, and proper mentoring, skills emerge and habits are formed that enable a good person to be good at the activity in focus. This is clearly the case in learning to play gold, hit a baseball, or read in completely new areas of study. It is n less true of becoming a deep, careful thinker in general. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

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If we are to love God adequately with the mind, then the mind must be exercised regularly, trained to acquire certain habits of thought, and filled with an increasingly rich set of distinctions and categories. There is n simple way to do this, and it would be presumptuous to attempt to describe fully how to develop a mature mind in one essay. A mature person has a tightly integrated, well-ordered soul. A carefully developed mind is a crucial part of a well-ordered soul. A mind that is learning to function well is both part of and made possible by an overall life that is skillfully lived. You cannot learn to use your mind well for Christ’s sake by just reading a logic book or taking more adult education courses. You must order your general lifestyle in such a way that a maturing intellect emerges as part of that lifestyle. If you want to develop a Christian mind, you must intend to order your overall form of life to make this possible. You cannot just read a book or two and add this to a lifestyle otherwise indifferent to the intellect. Moreover, learning to be a careful Christian thinker results in an entire way of being present in the World.  What a person spends time learning will affect the way that person sees, hears, thinks, and behaves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

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A trained lawyer actually hears things on the evening news, see things in the newspaper, and approaches conversations with others in ways that would be unavailable to one if one had gone into psychology or business. A person with a well-developed lawyer-type mind will have a distinctive way of being present in the World. This is also true of a person who is cultivating a careful Christian mind. That person will be present to the World in a distinctively Christian intellectual way. One will notice certain things others miss, read things (for example, theology, church history) others eschew, and so forth. To develop a Christian mind skillfully, one must want to be a certain sort of person badly enough that one is willing to pay the price for ordering one’s lifestyle appropriately. Of course, some Christians are called to a vocation of being a Christian intellectual in one way or another—a Christian philosopher or New Testament scholar, for example. This requires a more intense, focused ordering of one’s life than is needed for those without this calling. However, every believer, regardless of vocational calling, needs to cultivate a Christian mind. A life so ordered to facilitate intellectual growth is characterized by a certain set of virtues that makes such growth possible. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

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A virtue is a skill, a habit, an ingrained disposition to act, think, or feel in certain way. Virtues are those good parts of one’s character that make a person excellent at life in general. As with any skill (for example, learning to swing a golf club), a virtue become ingrained in my personality, and thus a part of my very nature, through repetition, practice, and training. If I want to develop the virtue of compassion, I must regularly practice acts of mercy, self-sacrifice, and kindness. Knowing what these virtues are will give one something specific at which to aim in one’s efforts to cultivate one’s mind. Certain virtues are especially relevant to the development of an intellectual life. Moreover, these virtues are not isolated from each other. They are deeply interrelated. Growth in one virtue can assist maturity in another skill and vice versa. If one wants a maturing Christian mind, one will need to cultivate these virtues through regular practice. If in the beginning one is to cast one’s net so widely as to search for truth in every corner, in the middle of one’s course one is to narrow one’s World until one has no ear for anyone else but the voice of God. Only so can concentration be achieved. In the beginning, width; in the middle, depth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

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Virtue of wisdom contains truth seeking, honesty, and wisdom. Even if it is not the truth we want to hear, the Christian mind is committed to seeking and finding the truth. The Christian seeks to know and do the truth. In fact, in a certain sense the believer’s commitment to the truth is even more basic than one’s dedication to the Christian faith in general or some doctrinal position in particular: If one came to believe that Christianity or some doctrinal belief were false, then one would ought to give up the belief in question. By way of application, even if we do not like the way they express their views, we should earn to listen to what our critics say about us. Even if it was expressed angrily and inappropriately, a wife or husband should try to get at the truth of a spouse’s criticisms. Practice this in all areas of your life to cultivate the habit of wanting the truth. Few are ready to pay the entrance fee of lifelong loyalty and steadfast service which are demanded, for this payment must be made in actual practice and not in lip movements alone. Even when understanding cannot keep pace, we must be able to trust and walk unwaveringly at our spouses’ side, and our fine loyalty should shine out like Sirius in the sky. Loyalty is the quality which will endear one most to a loved one. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

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 The Quest will become inseparable from the happiness one seeks, so devotion to God will become inseparable from the salvation upon which happiness depends. Why should this be so is one of the mysterious workings of Destiny which can only be illuminate when and if it be possible to illuminate the Earth sacred covenant. In this freedom that we have received in our time, through our understanding of God’s divine plan for us, we stand in our full responsibility. Let us always stay close to the loving, caring hand of our Redeemer, and our Saviour to find safety and joy. I say this in deep humility. “And now, it came to pass that there were many who heard the words of Samuel, the Lamanite, which he spake upon the walls of the city. And as many as believed on his word went forth and sought for Nephi; and when they had come forth and found him they confessed unto him their sins and denied not, desiring that they might be baptized unto the Lord. However, as many as there were who did not believe in the words of Samuel were angry with him; and they cast stones at him upon the wall, and also many short arrows at him as he stood upon the wall; but the Spirit of the Lord was with him, insomuch that they could not hit him with their stones neither with their arrows. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

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“Now when they saw that they could not hit him, there were many more who did believe on his words, insomuch that they went away unto Nephi to be baptized. For behold, Nephi was baptizing, and prophesying, and preaching, crying repentance unto the people, showing signs of wonders, working miracles among the people, that they might know that the Christ must shortly come—telling them of the things which must shortly come, that that might know and remember at the time of their coming that they had been made known unto them beforehand, to the intent that they might believe; therefore as many as believed on the word of Samuel went forth unto him to be baptized, for they came repenting and confessing their sins. However, they more part of them did not believe in the words of Samuel; therefore when they saw that they could not hit him with their stone and their arrows, they cried unto their captains, saying: Take this fellow and bind him, for behold he hath a devil; and because of the power of the devil which is in him we cannot hit him with our stones and our arrows; therefore take him and bind hi, and away with him. And as they went forth to lay their hands on him, behold, he did cast himself down from the wall, and did flee out of their lands, yea, even unto his own country, and began to preach and to prophesy among his own people. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

“And behold, he was never heard of more among the Nephites; and thus were the affairs of the people. And thus ended the eighty and sixth year of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended also the eighty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, the more part of the people remaining in their pride and wickedness, and the lesser part walking more circumspectly before God. And these were the conditions also, in the eighty and eighth year of the reign of the judges. And there was but a little alteration in the affairs of the people, save it were the people began to be more hardened in iniquity, and do more and more of that which was contrary to the commandments of God, in the eighty and ninth year of the reign of the judges. However, it came to pass in the ninetieth year of the reign of the judges, there were great signs given unto the people, and wonders; and the words of the prophets began to be fulfilled. And Angels did appear unto men, wise men, and did declare unto them glad tidings of great joy; thus in this year the scriptures began to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, the people began to harden their hearts, all save it were the most believing part of them, both of the Nephites and also of the Lamanites, and began to depend upon their own strength and upon their own wisdom saying: #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“Some thing they may have guessed right, among so many; but behold, we know that all these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass, of which have been spoken. And they began to reason and to contend among themselves, saying: That it is not reasonable that such a being as a Christ shall come; if so, and he be the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and of Earth, as it has been spoken, why will he not show himself unto us as well as unto them who shall be at Jerusalem? Yea, why will he not show himself in this land as well as in the land of Jerusalem? However, behold, we know that this is a wicked tradition, which has been handed down unto us by our fathers, to cause us that we should believe in some great and marvelous thing which should come to pass, but not among us, but in a land which is far distant, a long which we know not; therefore they can keep us in ignorance, for we cannot witness without own eyes that they are true. And they will, by the cunning and the mysterious arts of the evil one, work some great mystery which we cannot understand, which will keep us down to be servants to their words, and also servants unto them, for we depend upon them to teach us the word; and thus will they keep us in ignorance if we will yield ourselves unto them, all the days of our lives. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

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“And many more thing did the people imagine up in their hearts, which were foolish and vain; and they were much disturbed, for Satan did stir them up to do iniquity continually; yea, he did go about spreading rumors and contentions upon the face of the land, that he might harden the hearts of the people against that which should come. And notwithstanding the signs and the wonders which were wrought among the people of the Lord, and the many miracles which they did, Satan did get great hold upon the hearts of the people upon all the face of the land. And thus ended the ninetieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended the book of Helaman, according to the record of Helaman and his sons,” reports Helaman 16.1-25. Come, spirits of the Lord, and bless my life. We will live our lives together from now on, you living in me. God, please guide our ways and balance opposites. May we use the blessings you have given us well for your purposes. O Almighty God, from Whom every good prayer cometh, and Who pourest out on all who desire it the Spirit of grace and supplications; please deliver us, when we draw nigh to Thee, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind; that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship Thee in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

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O God, Who makest us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious Resurrection of Thy Son our Lord; please vouchsafe us this day such a blessing though Thy worship, that the days which follow it may be spent in Thy favour; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, Who by triumphing over the powers of darkness, didst prepare our place in the New Jerusalem; please grant us, who have this say given thanks for Thy resurrection, to praise Thee in that City whereof Thou art the Light; where with the Father we are taken into His heart and profit by lessons of the past and remain resolutely devoted to Him. Our inner affinity with God is so personal, so intimate, so deeply felt, that no one else can take the place of the Lord. We seek not counsel from anyone other than God. O Lord Jesus Christ, Who art the Truth Incarnate and the Teacher of the faithful; please let Thy Spirit overshadow us in reading Thy Word, and conform our thoughts to Thy Revelation; that learning of Thee with honest heart, we may be rooted and built up in Thee who livest genuinely and teachers us reverence and obedience, love and respect. There is none higher than God, He guides humans out of illusion into reality. It is not wrong therefore to give His office great reverence and Himself great devotion. Our spiritual debt to God is unpayable. This is because that which directs us is more important in the end than anything else. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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The Average Human Does Not Even Dare to Ask Oneself Whether the Emperor Wear Clothes!

What passes for a culture in my head is really a bunch of commercials. The intuitive idea of justice as fairness is to think of the first principles of justice as themselves the object of an original agreement in a suitably defined initial situation. These principles are those which rational persons concerned to advance their interests would accept in this position of equality to settle the basic terms of their association. It must be shown, then, that the two principles of justice are the solution for the problem of choice presented by the original position. In order to do this, one must establish that, given the circumstances of the parties, and their knowledge, beliefs, and interest, an agreement on these principles is the best way for each person to secure one’s ends in view of the alternative available. Now obviously no one can obtain everything one wants; the mere existence of other persons prevents this. The absolutely best for any human is that everyone else should join with one in furthering one’s conception of the good whatever it turns out to be. Or failing this, that all others are required to act justly but that one is authorized to exempt oneself as one pleases. Since other persons will never agree to such terms of association these forms of egoism would be rejected. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

The first principle of justice guarantees the right of each person to have the most extensive basic liberty compatible with the liberty of others. The second principle states that social and economic positions are to be to everyone’s advantage and open to all. These two principles of justice seem to be a reasonable proposal. In fact, I should like to show that these principles are everyone’s best reply, so to speak, to the corresponding demands of the others. In this sense, the choice of this conception of justice is the unique solution to the problem set by the original position. By arguing in this way one follows a procedure familiar in social theory. That is, a simplified situation is described in which rational individuals with certain ends and related to each other in certain ways are to choose among various courses of action in view of the knowledge of the circumstances. What these individuals will do is then derived by strictly deductive reasoning from these assumptions about their beliefs and interests, their situation and the options open to them. Their conduct is, in the phrase of Vilfredo Pareto (an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, and philosopher) the resultant of obstacles. In the theory of price, for example, the equilibrium of competitive markets is thought of as arising when many individuals each advancing one’s own interests gives way to each other what they can best part with in return for what they most desire. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Equilibrium is the result of agreements freely struck between willing traders. For each person it is the best situation that one can reach by free exchange consistent with the right and freedom of others to further their interests in the same way. It is for this reason that this state of affairs is an equilibrium, one that will persist in the absence of further changes in the circumstances. No one has any incentive to alter it. If a departure from this situation sets in motion tendencies which restore it, the equilibrium is stable. Of course, the fact that a situation is one of equilibrium, even a stable one, does not entail that it is right or just. It only means that given human’s estimate of their position, they act effectively to preserve it. Clearly a balance of hatred and hostility may be a stable equilibrium; each many think that any feasible change will be worse. The best that each can do for oneself may be a condition of lesser injustice rather than of greater good. The moral assessment of equilibrium situations depends upon the background circumstances which determine them. It is at this point that the conception of the original position embodies features peculiar to moral theory. For while the theory of price, say, tries to account for the movements of the market by assumptions about the actual tendencies at work, the philosophically favoured interpretation of the initial situation incorporates conditions which it is thought reasonable to impose on the choice of principles. By contrast with social theory, the aim is to characterize this situation so that the principles that would be chosen, whatever they turn out to be, are acceptable from a moral point of view. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The original position is defined in such a way that it is a status quo in which any agreements reached are fair. It is a state of affairs in which the parties are equally represented as moral persons and the outcome is not condition by arbitrary contingencies or the relative balance of social forces. Thus justice as fairness is able to use the idea of pure procedural justice from the beginning. It is clear, then, that the original position is a purely hypothetical situation. Nothing resembling it need ever take place, although we can by deliberately following the constraints it expresses simulate the reflections of the parties. The conception of the original position is not intended to explain human conduct except insofar as it tries to account for our moral judgments and helps to explain our having a sense of justice. Justice as fairness is a theory of our moral sentiments as manifested by our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. These sentiments presumably affect our thought and action to some degree. So while the conception of the original position is part of the theory of conduct, it does not follow at all that there are actual situations that resemble it. What is necessary is that the principles that would be accepted play the requisite part in our moral reasoning and conduct. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

The acceptance of these principles is not conjectured as a psychological law or probability. Ideally anyway, I should like to show that their acknowledgement is the only choice consistent with the full description of the original position. The argument aims eventually to be strictly deductive. To be sure, the persons in the original position have a certain psychology, since various assumptions are made about their beliefs and interests. These assumptions appear along with other premises in the description of this initial situation. However, clearly arguments from such premises can be fully deductive, as theories in politics and economics attest. We should strive for a kind of moral geometry with all the rigor which this name connotes. Unhappily the reasoning I shall give will fall far short of this, since it is highly intuitive throughout. Yet it is essential to have in mind the ideal one would like to achieve. There are many possible interpretations of the initial situation. This conception varies depending upon how the contracting parties are conceived, upon what their beliefs and interests are said to be, upon which alternatives are available to them, and so on. In this sense, there are many different contract theories. Justice as fairness is but one of these. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

However, the question of justification is settled, as far as it can be, by showing that there is one interpretation of the initial situation which best expresses the conditions that are widely thought reasonable to impose on the choice of principles yet which, at the same time, leads to a conception that characterizes our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. This most favoured, or standard, interpretation I shall refer to as the original position. We may conjecture that for each traditional conception of justice there exists an interpretation of the initial situation in which its principles are the preferred solution. Thus, for example, there are interpretations that lead to the classical as well as the average principle of utility. These variations of the initial situation will be mentioned as we go along. The procedure of contract theories provides, then, a general analytic method for the comparative study of conceptions of justice. One tries to set out the different conditions embodied in the contractual situation in which their principles would be chosen. In this way one formulates the various underlying assumptions on which these conceptions seem to depend. However, if one interpretation is philosophically most favoured, and if its principles characterize our considered judgments, we have a procedure for justification as well. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

We cannot know at first whether such an interpretation exist, but at least we know what to look for. The popular picture of animal aggressiveness has been largely influenced by the concept of territorialism. The general public has been left with the implication that humans are dominated by an instinct for defense of their territory, inherited from one’s animal ancestors. This instinct is supposed to be one of the main sources of animal and human aggressiveness. Analogies are easily drawn, and the facile idea appeals to many that war is caused by the power of this same instinct. The idea, however, is quite erroneous for a number of reasons. In the first place there are many animal species for whom the concept of territoriality does not apply. Territoriality occurs only in higher animals such as the vertebrates and arthropods and even there in a spotty fashion. Still, the so-called territorial defense may be, after all, merely a fancy name for the reaction patterns to strangers, flavoured with anthropomorphism and nineteenth century Darwinism. Further and more systematic experimental explorations are necessary to decide this issue. It seems certain territories are selected mainly on the basis of properties to which the animals react innately. This makes all animals of the same species, or at least of the same population, select the same general type of habit. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

However, the personal binding of a male to its own territory—a particular representative of the species’ breeding habitat—is the result of a learning process. In the description of primates we have seen how often there is an overlap of territory. If the observation of apes teaches us anything, it is that various groups of primates are quite tolerant and flexible with regard to their territory and simply do not offer a picture that would permit the analogy to a society, jealousy guarding its frontiers and forcibly preventing the entry of any “foreigner.” The assumption that territorialism is the basis for human aggressiveness is erroneous for still another reason. Defense of territory has the function of avoiding the serious fighting that would become necessary if the territory were invaded to such an extent as to generate crowding. Actually the threat behaviour in which territorial aggression manifests itself if the instinctively patterned way of upholding spatial equilibrium and peace. The instinctive equipment of the animal has the function that legal arrangements have in humans. Hence the instinct become obsolete when other symbolic ways are available to mark a territory and to warn: no trespassing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

It is also worth keeping in mind that, as we shall see later, most wars start for the purposes of gaining advantages of various kinds and not in defense against a threat to one’s territory—except in the ideology of the war makers.  Equally wrong impressions exist popularly about concept of dominance. In many species, but by no means in all, one finds that the group is organized hierarchically. The strongest male takes precedence in food, pleasures of the flesh, and grooming over other males on lower orders of the hierarchy. (One has more rarely drawn a parallel from this hierarchy to the “instinctive” roots for dictatorship than one has from territorialism to patriotism, although the logic would be the same. The reason for this different treatment lies probably in that it is less popular to construct an instinctive basis for dictatorship than for “patriotism.”) However, dominance, like territorialism, by no means exists in all animals and, again, not regularly in the vertebrates and mammals. With regard to dominance among the nonhuman primates we find a great difference between some of the monkey species like the baboons and macaques, in whom one finds rather well-developed and strict hierarchal systems, and the apes with whom dominance patters are much less strong. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Of mountain gorillas definite dominance inter-actions were observed 110 times. Dominance was most frequently asserted along narrow trails, when one animal claimed the right of way, or in the choice of sitting place, when the dominant animal supplanted the subordinate one. Gorillas showed their dominance with a minimum of actions. Usually an animal low in the rank order simply moved out of the way at the mere approach or brief stare of a high-ranking one. The most frequently noted gesture involving a bodily contact was a light tap with the back of the hand of a dominant individual against the body of a subordinate one. Although there was some evidence of differences in status between individual chimpanzees, dominance interactions formed a minute fraction of the observed chimpanzee behaviour. There was no evidence of a linear hierarchy of dominance among males or females; there were no observations of exclusive rights to receptive females; and there were no permanent leaders of groups. However, in a study of baboons, circumstantial evidence suggests that hierarchical behaviour is associated with environmental stress of various kinds and under stress it is the lower-ranking animal which first shows physiological symptoms (lower disease resistance, for example). #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

If it is subordinate behaviour that determines rank (rather than dominant behaviour as usually assumed), the stress factor can be seen as directly affecting all animals to difference degrees dependent on their construction, producing physiological and behavioral (submitting behaviour) changes at the same time, the latter in turn giving rise to a hierarchal social organization. The hierarchy appears to be maintained chiefly by subordinates’ behaviour pattern, and by the low—rather than the high-ranking animals. However, in the study of chimpanzees, we express some strong reservations. The view taken here is that dominance and subordination are simply conventional designations for the fact that chimpanzees often stand in the relationship to each other of intimidator and intimidated. Naturally, we would expect the larger, stronger, more boisterous, and more aggressive animals in any group (being intimidating to almost everyone else) to display a kind of generalized dominance status. Presumably this accounts for the fact that in the wild, mature males are generally dominant over adult females, and they, in turn, are dominant over adolescents and juveniles. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Apart from this observation, however, there is no indication that chimpanzee groups as a whole are organized hierarchically; not is there any convincing evidence of an autonomous drive for social supremacy. Chimpanzees are willful, impulsive, and greedy, certainly a sufficient basis for the development of dominance and subordination, without the participation od specialized social motives and needs. Dominance and subordination can thus be regarded as the natural by-product of social intercourse, and but one facet of the relationship between two individuals. For dominances, as far as it exists, the same comment applies which I have made with regard to territorialism. It functions to give peace and coherence to the group and to prevent friction that could lead to serious fighting. Human substitutes agreements, etiquette, and laws for the missing instinct. Animal dominance has been widely interpreted as a fierce “bossiness” of the leader who enjoys having power over the rest of the group. It is true that among monkeys, for instance, the authority of the leader is often based on the fear one engenders in the other. However, among the apes, as for instance the chimpanzee, it is often not fear of the retaliatory power of the strongest animal, but one’s competence in leading the group which establishes one’s authority. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

As an example of this, mentioned earlier, it was reported about an old chimpanzee who retained his leadership because of his experience and wisdom, in spite of the fact that he was physically weak. He is what the youth refer to as an OG (original gangster), someone who was tough and strong and dominant in his youth and was to be feared, who is now greatly respected because he has a reputation for being someone to admire. Nevertheless, some of these OG’s can still tango with the strongest youth. Whatever the role of dominance in animals is, it seems to be pretty clear that the dominant animal must constantly merit one’s role—that is to say, show one’s greater physical strength, wisdom, energy, or whatever it is that makes one accepted as a leader. A very ingenious experiment with monkeys suggests that is the dominant animal loses one’s distinguishing qualities even momentarily, one’s commanding role ends. In human history, when dominance becomes institutionalized and no longer a function of personal competence as is still the case in many primitive societies, it is not necessary for the leader to be in constant possession of one’s outstanding qualities, in fact it is not even necessary that one has them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The social system conditions people to see in title, the uniform, or whatever else it may be, the proof that the leader is competent, and as long as these symbols, supported by the whole system, are present, the average human does not even dare to ask oneself whether the emperor wear clothes. If human actions can be traced up, by a necessary chain, to the Deity, they can never be criminal; on account of the infinite perfection of that Being, from whom they are derived, and who can intend nothing but what is altogether good and laudable. Or, if they be criminal, we must retract the attribute of perfection, which we ascribe to the Deity, and must acknowledge one to be the ultimate author of guilt and moral turpitude in all His creatures. In ever period of its existence, there is an instructive and inspiring progression from an initial faith in God through Christ, with an accompanying initial hope, to a subsequent or higher-level hope that does not disappoint. The apostle Paul wrote this way because, in the progression of our experience, the Holy Spirit pours out into our own hearts the kind love God has. This important message needs to be studied in depth for any adequate understanding of spiritual formation in the Christian tradition, especially as it concerns feelings. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The initial faith Christ gives us our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. This is the new birth into Christ’s kingdom. It puts an end to the war between me and God that has gone on most of my life and surrounds me with God’s gracious actions. Now, become of Christ’s death for me and his continuing graces, I know that God is good, and I am thrilled with the hope that God’s goodness and greatness will serve as the basis of my own existence as well as of everything else. Thus, we exult in hope of the glory of God. However, this opens the path for transformation of our character. I am also thrilled about my tribulations! I know that they will prove God’s power and faithfulness in love to me, and to trust him in all things becomes my settled character. Therefore we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation beings perseverance; and perseverance, proven character. However, Godly character now brings about a different quality of hope. Character is a mater of our entire personality and life, which has now been transformed by the process of perseverance under God. Hope therefore now pervades our life as a whole. And this new and pervasive hope—which is an outgrowth of our initial hope of the glory of God, but now covers our entire life—does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Those ills, under which we labour, are, in reality, goods to the Universe; and to an enlarged view, which can comprehend the whole system of nature, every event becomes an object of joy and exultation. The characters, which engage our approbation, are chiefly such as contribute to the peace and security of human society; as the characters, which excite blame, are chiefly such as tend to public detriment and disturbance. The World is full of obscurities and perplexities, and we must not focus on difficulties because our enquiries with launch us into a boundless ocean of doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction! “And thus we can behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of humans; yes, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him. Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocs and their herds, and in gold, and in sliver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of the enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of one’s people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One—yea, and this because of their ease, and the exceedingly great prosperity. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

“And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yes, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him. O how foolish, and how vain, and how evil, and how devilish, and how quick to do iniquity, and how slow to do good, are the children of humans; yea, how quick to hearken unto the words of the evil one, and to set their hearts upon the vain things of the World! Yea, how quick to be lifted up in pride; yea, how quick to boast, and do all manner of that which is iniquity; and how slow are they to remember the Lord their God, and to give ear unto his counsels, yea, how slow to walk in wisdom’s paths! Behold, they do not desire that the Lord their God, who hath created them, should rule and reign over them; notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them, they do set at naught his counsels, and they do set at naught his counsels, and they will not that he should be their guide. O how great is the nothingness of the children of humans; yea, even they are less than the dust of the Earth. For behold the dust of the Earth moveth hither and thither, to the dividing asunder, at the command of our great and everlasting God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

“Yea, behold at his voice do the hills and the mountains tremble and quake. And by the power of his voice they are broken up, and become smooth, yea, even like unto a valley. Yea, by the power f his voice doth the whole Earth shake; yea, by the power of his voice do the foundations rock, even to the very center. Yea, and if he say unto the Earth—Move—it is moved. Yea, if he say unto the Earth—Thou shalt go back, that it lengthen out the day for many hours—it is done; and thus, according to his word the Earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto humans that the Sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the Earth that moveth and not the Sun. And behold, also, if he say unto the waters of the great deep—Be thou dried up—it is done. Behold, if he say unto this mountain—Be thou raised up, and come over and fall upon that city, that it be buried up—behold it is done. And behold, if a human hide up a treasure in the Earth, and the Lord shall say—Let it be accursed, because of the iniquity of one who hath hid it up—behold, it shall be accursed. And if the Lord shall say—Be thou accursed, that no human shall find thee from this time henceforth and forever—behold, no human getteth it henceforth and forever. And behold, if the Lord shall say unto a human—Because of thine iniquities, thou shalt be accursed forever—it shall be done. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

“And if the Lord shall say—Because of thine iniquities thou shalt be cut off from my presence—he will cause that is shall be so. And wo unto one to whom God shall say this, for it shall be unto one that will do iniquity, and one cannot be saved; therefore, for this cause, that humans might be saved, hath repentance been declared. Therefore, blessed are they who will repent and hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God; for these are they that shall be saved. And may God grant, in his great fulness, that humans might be brought unto repentance and good works, that they might be restored unto grace for grace, according to their works. And I would that all humans might be saved. However, we read that in the great and last day there are some who shall be cast out, yea, who shall be cast off from the presence of the Lord; yea, who shall be consigned to a state of endless misery, fulfilling the words which say: They that have done good shall have everlasting life; and they that have done evil shall have everlasting damnation. And thus it is. Amen,” reports Helaman 12.1-26. O God, merciful Father, Who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, as this race is set before us, please cast the light of Thy true to brighten our path. Thou hast ordained strength to protect our souls from assault and pain. Please keep us, we beseech Thee on the way of Thy commandments. May we so faithfully serve three. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

May we show forth our thankfulness in all things and may our service be to perfect freedom. For Whom to serve is to reign, as Thee protects us from perils and dangers, from snares. In Thy true religion Thou hast blessed us with Godliness and continual kindness as Thee support us in all dangers, for it is by Thy help we may overcome the things which we suffer for our sins. Who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful humans, for Who makest the minds of faithful humans to be of one will. Please nourish us with all goodness. May we not be brought into the temptations of the World, the flesh and the devil, for infections of sin are of the devil. I am setting a place at my table for God. Blessed One, please come eat with me! I am setting a place at my table for God of my household. Blessed One, please come eat with me. I am setting a place at my table for the Ancestors, Blessed one, please come eat with me! I am setting a place at my table for the Holy Ghost, blessed One, please come eat with me. God of Earth and Sky, please eat with me, be my guest. I invite the Holy Ones to my table. Please come; sit with me, eat and drink with me. I offer you the hospitality of my home. You are always welcome here. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Prayers over food and drink are a special type of thanksgiving prayer. The connection between them is shown quite strongly in the North American Harvest festivals that have been given the name “Thanksgiving.” We should thank God and the food. Our eating is a constant reminder of one of the central mysteries of the connection between life—and our Heavenly Father. Our life depends on God, he provides us with our food, so we should be thankful, it is only proper. Thanksgiving is a special day because eating together draws people together, and thanking God brings us closer to Him. We sit down to the table of God where the company of Heaven meets, and we share with them our food. Blessed ones, please be our dining companions! May God’s great name be blessed forever. May Jesus Christ be blessed forever. Exalted and honoured be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him. May the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be acceptable unto their Father in Heaven. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and for all Israel. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us and unto all Israel; and ye say, Amen. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Give Me a Laundry-List and I Will Set it to Music!

Chemistry is applied theology. In order to actualize our potentialities, in order to become fully human and completely ourselves, we must not merely think; we must also permit ourselves to be thoughts. Both the historical record of creative thought and the laboratory report of its appearance today, indicate clearly that creative intelligence can spring from the mind that is not strained to its highest pitch, but is utterly ease. Our is a civilization in which vast numbers of children and adults are so chronically bored that they have to resort during their leisure hours to a regimen of non-stop distractions. Any method which promises to make life seem enjoyable and the commonplaces of everyday experience more interesting should be welcomed as a major contribution to culture and morality. It is most certainly very difficult, perhaps quite impossible, to serve two gods simultaneously—to pursue the most sordid interests while aspiring to realize the highest ideals. This is obvious. Only a little less obvious, however, is the fact that it is very hard, perhaps quite impossible, to serve God wile failing to make the best of both Worlds—of all the World of which, as human beings, we are the inhabitants. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

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Rightness as fairness is to be understood as a replacement for existing conceptions There is no necessity to say that sameness of meaning holds between the word “right” (and its relatives) in its ordinary use and the more elaborate locutions needed to express this ideal contractarian concept of right. If the theory of justice as fairness, or more generally of rightness as fairness, fits our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium, and if it enables us to say all that on due examination we want to say, then it provides a way of eliminating customary phrases in favour of other expressions. So understood one may think of justice as fairness and rightness as fairness as providing a definition or explication of the concepts of justice and right. we are not to gain from the cooperative labours of others without doing our fair share. The two principles of justice guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. These two principles of justice define what is a fair share in the case of institutions belonging to the basic structure. So if these arrangements are just, each person receives a fair share wen all (one’s self included) do their part. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

Further, the content of obligation is always defined by an institution or practice the rules of which specify what it is that one is required to do. And, obligations are normally owed to definite individuals, namely, those who are cooperating together to maintain the arrangement in question. As an example illustrating these features, consider the political act of running for and (if successful) holding public office in a constitutional regime. This act gives rise to the obligation to fulfill the duties of office, and these duties not as moral duties but as takes of responsibilities assigned to certain institutional positions. It is nevertheless the case that one may have a moral reason (one based on a moral principle) for discharging these duties, as when one is bound to do so by the principle of fairness. Also, one assumes public office is obligated to one’s fellow citizens whose trust and confidence one has sough and with whom one is cooperating and running a democratic society. Similarly, we assume obligations when we marry as well as when we accept positions of judicial, administrative, or others authority. We acquire obligations by promising and by tacit understandings, and even when we join a game, namely, the obligation to play by the rules and to be a good sport. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

All of these obligations are, I believe, covered by the principle of fairness. There are two important cases though that are somewhat problematical, namely, political obligation as it applies to the average citizens, rather than, say, to those who hold office, and the obligation to keep promises. In the first case it is not clear what is the requisite binding action or who has performed it. There is, I believe, no political obligation, strictly speaking, for citizens generally. Psychologically, humans are highly educated products of the twenty-first century civilization, chained, in a state of uneasy and hostile symbiosis, to a disturbingly dynamic unconscious, a wild phantasy and an unpredictable id—and yet capable of falling in love, writing string quartets, and having mystical experiences. They feel pride. They are proud to be members of a community where there is so much caring and concern for others, a caring that is broader and more sensitive than one individual is capable of. However, at times people are so frustrated with life because they work so hard and are tired and do not realize that they are burnt out and need a vacation that it can make them wonder if coming to the community is worth it. However, the other reaction they have is much stronger. People watch with awe the birth pangs of something new in the World. And their earlier state of mind returns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

If humanity can live together without destroying one another, can live together with a caring concern for the full development of each person, can live together in the richness of diversity instead of the sterility of conformity, then we may have found a truth with many, many implications. Some people themselves are painfully confused, uncertain where they stand or who they really are. To provide themselves with a recognizable identity, a niche in the scheme of things that they can call “home,” they will give assent to the unlikeliest dogmas, conform to the most absurd and even harmful rules of thought, feeling, and conduct, put on the most extravagant fancy dress and identify themselves with masks that bear almost no resemblance to the faces they cover. The inhabitants of all these personal ideologies must somehow learn to make the best of the community in an ability to discover anything that is approximately true and Earthshaking as revolutionary power. And I believe we are making some such discovery. So there is hope that some of the overwhelming World issues may be touched, in ways we cannot even dream of now, by what we are doing. However, a good education may be defined as one which helps the boys and girls subjected to it make the best of all the Worlds in which, as human beings, they are compelled, willy-nilly, to live. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

An education that prepares them to make the best of only one of their Worlds, or of only a few of them, is inadequate. Mens sana in corpore sano (a Latin phrase, which means “a healthy mind in a healthy body”) is an ancient educational ideal and a very good one. Unfortunately, good ideals are never enough. Unless they are accompanied by full instructions regarding the methods by which they maybe realized, they are almost useless. Hell is paved with good intentions, and whole periods of history have been made hideous or grotesque by enthusiastic idealists who failed to elaborate the means whereby their lofty aspirations might be effectively, and above all harmlessly, implemented. Just how good is modern education? How successful is it in helping young people to make the best of all the Worlds which they all have to live in? At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in other schools where similar problems have arisen, the answer to this question has found expression in a renewed interest in the humanities. Excessive scientific specialization is tempered by courses in philosophy, history, literature, and social studies. All this is excellent so far as it does. However, does it go far enough? #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

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Do courses in the humanities provide a sufficient antidote for excessive scientific and technical specialization? Do they, in the terminology we have been using, help youth to make the best of a substantially greater number of their Worlds? Our natural duties are to help one another when one is in need or jeopardy, provided that ne can do so without excessive risk or loss to oneself; the duty not to harm or injure another; and the duty not to cause unnecessary suffering. The first duty is a positive duty, the duty of mutual assistance. We have a duty to do something good for one another. Whereas the last two duties are negative in that they require us not to do something that is bad. The distinction between positive and negative duties is intuitively clear in many cases, but often gives way. Now in contrast with obligations, it is characteristic of natural duties that they apply to us without regard to our voluntary acts. Moreover, they have no necessary connection with institutions or social practices; their content is not, in general, defined by the rules of these arrangements. Thus we have a natural duty not to be cruel, and a duty to help another, whether or not we have committed ourselves to these actions. It is no defense or excuse to say that we have made no promise not to be cruel or vindictive, or to come to another’s assistance. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

Indeed, a promise not to kill, for example, is normally ludicrously redundant, and the suggestion that it establishes a moral requirement where none already exited is mistaken. Such a promise is in order, if it ever is so, only when for special reasons one has the right to kill, perhaps in a situation arising in a just war. Another further feature of natural duties is that they hold between persons irrespective of their institutional relationships; they obtain between all as equal moral persons. In this sense the natural duties are owed not only to definite individuals, say to those cooperating together in a particular social arrangement, but to persons generally. This feature in particular suggests the propriety of the adjective “natural.” One aim of the law of nations is to assure the recognition of these duties in the conduct of states. This is especially important in constraining the means used in war, assuming that, in certain circumstances anyway, wars of self-defense are justified. From the standpoint of justice as fairness, a fundamental natural duty is the duty of justice. This duty requires us to support and to comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us. It also constrains us to further just arrangements not yet established, at least when this can be done without too much cost to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

Thus is the basic structure of society is just, or as just as it is reasonable to expect in the circumstances, everyone has a natural duty to do one’s part in the existing scheme. Each is bound to these institutions independent of one’s voluntary acts, performative or otherwise. Thus even though the principles of natural duty are derived from a contractarian point of view, they do not presuppose an act of consent, express or tacit, or indeed any voluntary act, in order to apply. The principles that hold for individuals, just as the principles for institutions, are those that would be acknowledged in the original position. These principles are understood as the outcome of a hypothetical agreement. If their formulation shows that no binding action, consensual or otherwise, is a presupposition of their application, then they apply unconditionally. The reason why obligations depend upon voluntary acts is given by the second part of the principle of fairness which states this condition. It has nothing to do with the contractual nature of justice as fairness. In fact, once the full set of principles, a complete conception of right, is on hand, we can simply forget about the conception of original position and apply these principles as we would any others. There is nothing inconsistent, or even surprising, in the fact that justice as fairness allows unconditional principles. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

It suffices to show that the parties in the original position would agree to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold unconditionally. The same principle of fairness may establish a bond to existing just arrangements, the obligations covered by it can support a tie already present that derives from the natural duty of justice. Thus a person may have both a natural duty and an obligation to comply with an institution and to do one’s part. The thing to observe here is that there are several ways in which one may be bound to political institutions. For the most part the natural duty of justice is the more fundamental, since it binds citizens generally and requires no voluntary acts in order to apply. The principle of fairness, on the other hand, binds only those who assume public office, say, or those who, being better situated, have advanced their aims within the system. There is, then, another sense of noblesse oblige: namely, that those who are more privileged are likely to acquire obligations trying them even more strongly to a just scheme. I shall say very little about the other kind or principles for individuals. For while permissions are not an unimportant class of actions, I must limit the discussion to the theory of social justice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

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It may be observed, though, that once all the principles defining requirements are chosen, no further acknowledgments are necessary to define permissions. This is so because permissions are those acts which we are at liberty both to do and not to do. They are acts which violate no obligation or natural duty. In studying permissions one wishes to single out those that they significant from a moral point of view and to explain their relation to duties and obligations. Many such actions are morally indifferent or trivial. However, among the permissions is the interesting class of supererogatory actions. These are acts of benevolence and mercy, of heroism and self-sacrifice. It is good to do these actions but it is not one’s duty or obligation. Supererogatory acts are not required, though normally they would be were it not for the loss or risk involved for the agent oneself. A person who does a supererogatory act does not invoke the exemption which the natural duties allow. For while we have a natural duty to bring about a great good, say, if we can do so relatively easily, we are released from this duty when the cost to ourselves is considerable. Supererogatory acts arise questions of first importance for ethical theory. For example, it seems offhand that the classical utilitarian view cannot account for them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

It would appear that we are bound to perform actions which bring about a greater good for others whatever the cost to ourselves provided that thus sum of advantages altogether exceeds that of other acts open to us. There is nothing corresponding to the exemptions included in the formulation of the natural duties. Thus some of the actions which justice as fairness counts as supererogatory may be required by the utility principle. I shall not, however, pursue this matter further. Supererogatory acts are mentioned here for the sake of completeness. Children should be taught that words are indispensable but also can be fatal—the only begetters of all civilization, all science, all consistency of high purpose, all angelic goodness, and the only begetters are the same time of all superstition, all collective madness and stupidity, all worse-then-bestial diabolism, all the dismal historical succession of crimes in the name of God, King, Queen, Nation, Party, Doctrines, Beliefs. Never before, thanks to the techniques of mass communication, have so many listeners been so completely at the mercy of so few speakers. Never have misused words—those hideously efficient tools of all the tyrants, war-mongers, persecutors, and heresy-hunters—been so widely and so disastrously influential as they are today. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Generals, clergymen, advertisers, and the rulers of totalitarian states—all have good reasons for disliking the idea of universal education in the rational use of language. To the military, clerical, propagandist, and authoritarian mind such training seems (and rightly seems) profoundly subversive. To those who think that liberty is a good thing, and who hope that it may some day become possible for more people to realize more of their desirable potentialities in a society fit for free, fully human individuals to live in, a thorough education in the nature of language, in its uses and abuses, seems indispensable. Whether in fact the mounting pressures of overpopulation and overorganization in a World still enthusiastically dedicated to nationalistic idolatry will permit this kind of subversive linguistic education to be adopted by even more democratic nations remains to be seen. Make the body capable of doing many things, this will help you to perfect the mind and come to the intellectual love of God. Education is desirable and indeed, if the child is to grow into a fully human being, absolutely necessary. The detailed curriculum for an education in what maybe called the nonverbal humanities has still to be worked out. Humanities is a process that should be started in the kindergarten and continued through all the years of school and college—and thereafter, as self-education, throughout the rest of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

Education is to life in general—an indispensable condition for any kind of improvement. School children need to learn a kind of internal awareness that can lead to a creative conscious control. All our mental processes depend upon perception. Inadequate perceiving results in poor thinking, inappropriate feeling, diminished interest in and enjoyment of life. Systematic training of perception should be an essential element in all education. Awareness has to be assigned to each special significance and value for the human being who aspires to make the bet of both Worlds and so, by teaching one’s psychophysical organism to do many things to perfect the mind and come to the intellectual love of God. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing humans, more for the sake and evident purpose of talking to one and teaching one, than in any of her other works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There is not a moment in any day of our lives in which nature is no producing (in the sky) scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working always upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

We never attend to the sky, we never make it a subject of thought. We look upon it….only as a succession of monotonous and meaningless accident, too common or too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness of a glance of admiration. Who, among the chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow Sunbeam that came out f the south and smote their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? All has passed unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, if even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary. A habit of wise passiveness in relation to the everyday drama of the clouds and mist and Sunshine can become a source of endless pleasures. However, most of the products of our educational system prefer Westerns and alcohol. In the United States of America, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are constitutionally guaranteed. However, if life hardly seems worth living, if liberty is used for subhuman purposes, if the pursuers of happiness know nothing about the nature of their quarry or the elementary techniques of hunting, these constitutional rights will not be very meaningful. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

An education in that wise passiveness recommended by the saints and the poets, by all who have lived fully and worked creatively, might help us to transform the papers promises of a democratic constitution into concrete contemporary fact. The mentally ill are the victims of their phantasy, and even more or less normal people find themselves tempted into folly, or inhibited from behaving as they know they ought to behave, by what goes on in the superreal but unrealistic World of their imagination. How can we make the best of this odd, alien, almost autonomous Universe that we carry about with us inside our skulls? Truth lives, proverbially, at the bottom of a well, and wells are often muddy. No genuinely scientific investigator has any right to be squeamish about anything. Made the worst of, our imagination will destroy us; made the best of, it can be used to break up long-established habits of undesirable feeling, to dissipate obsessive fears, to provide symbolic outlets for anger and fictional amends for real frustrations. In the course of the last three thousand years how many sermons have been preached, how many homilies delivered and commands roared out, how many promises of Heaven and threats of hell-fire solemnly pronounced, how many good-conduct prizes awarded and how many immature buttocks lacerated with whips and canes? #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

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And what has been the result of all this incalculable sum of moralistic words, and of the rewards and savage punishments by which the verbiage has been accompanied? The result has been history—the successive generations of human beings comporting themselves virtuously and rationally enough for the race to survive, but badly enough and madly enough for it to be unceasingly in trouble. Can we do better in the future than we are doing today, or than our fathers did in the past? Can we develop methods more effective than pious talks and Pavlovian conditioning? Moral equivalents must be found not only for war but also for delinquency, family squabbles, bullying, puritanical censoriousness, and all the assorted beastliness of daily life. Hope is anticipation of good not yet here, or as yet “unseen.” It is of course inseparable from joy. Sometimes the good in question is just deliverance from evil, which is here. Then “we are saved by hope,” (Romans 8.24), and “we rejoice in hope,” (Romans 12.12), because “if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it,” (Romans 8.25). That eager anticipation strengthens us to stay faithful to God and to stay on the path of what is right. One of the remarkable changes brought by Jesus and his people into the ancient World concerned the elevation of hope into a primary virtue. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

Hope was not well regarded by the Greco-Roman World. It was thought of as a desperation measure. And whole, according to the myth of Pandora’s box, it may be all we have left with which to endure the agonies of life, it must be grimly held in check or it will give rise to vain expectations that only cause more misery. Christ, by contrast, brings solid hope for humanity. Clearly, then, hope also is closely related to faith. Faith is confidence grounded in reality, not a wild, desperate “leap.” It is, as Hebrews 11.1 says, substance, and evidence, or poof, not—as contemporary translations usually have it—subjective psychological states such as “being such of” or “having a conviction of.” Rather, faith sees the reality of the unseen or invisible, and it includes a readiness to act as if the good anticipated in hope were already in hand because of the reality of God (compare 2 Corinthians 4.17-18). One that believes dare trust God for the morrow, and is not more solicitous for the next year than one is for that which is past. No one worries about what was going to happen last year. Accordingly, Moses “left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king,” reports Hebrews 11.27. Egypt and its king were in the realm of “the seen.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

Moses was able to disregard them to stick with his goal because he saw the One who is invisible but none the less real for that. For one endured, as seeing Him who is unseen” (Hebrews 11.27). That is faith as the Bible portrays it. “And now it came to pass in the seventy and second year of the reign of the judges that the contentions did increase, insomuch that there were wars throughout all the land among all the people of Nephi. And it was this secret band of robbers who did carry on this work of destruction and wickedness. And this war did last all that year; and in the seventy and third years it did also last. And it came to pass that in this years Nephi did cry unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, do not suffer that this people shall be destroyed by the sword; but O Lord, rather let there be a famine in the land, to stir them up in remembrance of the Lord their God, and perhaps they will repent and turn unto tee. And so it was done, according to the words of Nephi. And there was a great famine upon the land, among all the people of Nephi. And thus in the seventy and fourth year the famine did continue, and the work of destruction did cease by the sword but became sore by famine. And this work of destruction did also continue in the seventy and fifth year. For the Earth was smitten that it was dry, and did not yield forth grain in the season of grain. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And the whole Earth was smitten, even among the Nephites, so that they were smitten that they did perish by thousands in the more wicked parts of the land. And it came to pass that the people saw that they were about to perish by famine, and they began to remember the Lord their God; and they began to remember the words of Nephi. And the people began to plead with their chief judges and their leaders, that they would say unto Nephi: Behold, we know that thou art a man of God, and therefore cry unto the Lord our God that he turned away from us this famine, lest all the words which thou hast spoken concerning our destruction be fulfilled. And it came to pass that the judges did say unto Nephi, according to the words which had been desired. And it came to pass that the people had repented and did humble themselves in sackcloth, he cried: again unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, behold this people repenteth; and they have swept away the band of Gadiantion from amongst them insomuch that they have become extinct, and they have concealed their secret plans in the Earth. Now, O Lord, because of this their humility wilt thou turn away thine anger, and let thine anger be appeased in the destruction of those wicked humans whom thou hast already destroyed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

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“O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, yea, thy fierce anger, and cause that this famine may cease in this land. O Lord, wilt thou hearken unto me, and cause that it may be done according to my words, and send forth rain upon the face of the Earth, that she may bring forth her fruit, and her grain in the season of grain. O Lord, thou didst hearken unto my words when I said, Let there be a famine, that the pestilence of the sword might cease; and I know that thou wilt, even at this time, hearken unto my words, for thou sadist that: If this people repent I will spare them. Yea, O Lord, and thou seest that they have repented, because of the famine and the pestilence and destruction which has come unto them. And now, O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, and try again if they will serve thee? And if so, O Lord, thou canst bless them according to thy words which thou hast said. And it came to pass that in the seventy and sixth year the Lord did turn away his anger from the people, and caused that rain should fall upon the Earth, insomuch that it did bring forth her fruit in the season of her fruit. And it came to pass that it did bring forth her grain in the season of her grain. And behold, the people did rejoice and glorify God, and the whole face of the land was filled with rejoicing; and they did no more seek to destroy Nephi, but they did esteem him as a great prophet, and a man of God, having great power and authority given unto him from God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“And behold, Lehi, his brother, was not a whit behind him as to things pertaining to righteousness. And thus it did come to pass that the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land, and began to build up their waste places, and began to multiply and spread, even until they did cover the whole face of the land, both on the northward and on the southward, from the sea west to the sea east. And it came to pass that the seventy and sixth year did end in peace. And the seventy and seventh year began in peace; and the church did spread throughout the face of all the land; and the more part of the people, both the Nephites and the Lamanites, did belong to the church; and they did have exceedingly great peace in the land; and this ended the seventy and seventh year. And also they had peace in the seventy and eighty years, save it were a few contentions concerning the points of doctrine which had been laid down by the prophets. And in the seventy and ninth year there began to be much strife. However, it came to pass that Nephi and Lehi, and many of the brethren who knew concerning the true points of doctrine, having many revelations daily, therefore they did preach unto the people, insomuch that they did put an end to their strife in that same year. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And it came to pass that in the eightieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, there were a certain number of the people of Nephi, there were a certain number of the dissenters from the people of Nephi, who had some years before gone over unto the Lamanites, and taken upon themselves the name of Lamanites, and also a certain number who were real descendants of the Lamanites, being stirred up to anger by them, or by those dissenters, therefore they commenced a war with their brethren. And they did commit murder and plunder; and then they would retreat back into the mountains, and into the wilderness and secret places, hiding themselves that they could not be discovered, receiving daily an addition to their numbers, inasmuch as there were dissenters that went forth unto them. And thus in time, yea, even in the space of not many years, they became an exceedingly great band of robbers; and they did search out all the secret plans of Gadianton; and thus they became robbers of Gadianton. Now behold, these robbers did make great havoc, yea, even great destruction among the people of the Lamanites. And it came to pass that it was expedient that there should be a stop put to this work of destruction; therefore they sent an army of strong humans into the wilderness and upon the mountains to search out this band of robbers, and to destroy them. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

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“However, behold, it came to pass that in that same year they were driven back even into their own lands. And thus ended the eightieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pas in the commencement of the eighty and first year they did go forth again against this band of robbers, and did destroy many; and they were also visited with much destruction. And they were again obliged to return out of the wilderness and out of the mountains unto their own lands, because of the exceeding greatness of the numbers of those robbers who infested the mountains and the wilderness. And it came to pass that thus ended this year. And the robbers did still increase and wax strong, insomuch that they did defy the whole armies of the Nephites, and also of the Lamanites; and they did cause great fear to come unto the people upon all the face of land. Yea, for they did visit many parts of the land, and did do great destruction unto them; yea, did kill many, and did carry away others captive into the wilderness, yea, and more especially their women and their children. Now this great evil, which came unto the people because of their iniquity, did stir them up again in remembrance of the Lord their God. And thus ended the eighty and first year of the reign of the judges. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

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“And in the eighty and second year they began again to forget the Lord their God. And in the eighty and third year they began to wax strong in iniquity. And in the eighty and fourth year they did not mend their ways. And it came to pass in the eighty and fifth year they did wax stronger and stronger in their pride, and in their wickedness; and thus they were ripening again for destruction. And thus ended the eighty and fifth year,” reports Helaman 11.1-38. I am praying to God of Heaven, may the Earth be blessed with a sweet smell and bring Him to mind, to give Him the best of what I have, as is only His proper share. Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest. Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and grant our portion in Thy Torah. Please give us abundantly of Thy goodness and make us rejoice in Thy salvation. Purify our hearts to serve Thee in truth. In Thy loving favour, O Lord our God, grant that Thy holy Sabbath be our joyous heritage, and may Israel who sanctifies Thy name, rest thereon. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who hallowest the Sabbath. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the World which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life f all the house of Israel, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25


Cresleigh Homes

When planning #MillsStation Residence 1, we did not *just* create an open floor plan—we incorporated windows, lighting, and slanted ceilings to maximize light and space in this room! This charming home is 1,932 square feet, three bedrooms, two bathroom, and a home hub, which could function as a den, playroom, fourth bedroom, office or formal dining room. There is also a private backyard and a two car garage.

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We have two move-in ready homes with this floor plan at Homes Sites 17 & 77! Take a virtual tour of this home on our website. Link in bio. 🏡 https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/move-in-ready-home-site-77/

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This home is designed with Universal Design concepts meaning that its well equipped for life’s transitions and aging in place. Learn more about this unique feature by speaking with a sales associate today!

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Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!

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We Have No More Right to Consume Happiness without Producing it than to Consume Wealth without Producing it!

The truth is something you stumble into when you think you are going some place else. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. The basic principle underlying initiation rituals: “if I had to suffer so much pain and humiliation to get into this club, it must be a wonderful organization. To tame the savageness of humans and make gentle the life of this World is a prayer for our country and for our people. To suggest that we say a prayer for our country and our people is to acknowledge error—the fault that lies within Americans and must not be ascribed to alien, un-American influences. Nearly 50 percent of American between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than 33 percent consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.” When they were young People used to know more, not less, about geography because classroom lessons were still fresh in their minds. And 90 percent of students have no idea of the locations of four countries intimately linked to American interest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

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The United States of America’s education system is not preparing young people for an increasingly global future. Cultural literacy is a desirable trait for a candidate in a presidential election. Many youths used to grow up and dream of being president, so that means we need to do a better job of preparing them. To raise questions about an individual’s intellectual qualifications carries more weight than anything else one can say about a person. One crucial qualification to determine if a person is competent is their intellectual ability to distinguish, in times of crises and on the daily basis, between worthwhile and worthless opinions. One of the major concerns about those who have proven themselves competent is the corruption of intellectuals by power than the potential corruption of government policy by intellectuals whom on one had elected. Many Americans rely on television as their only source of information for whatever they know about influences on government policy. At some point a devourer always overreaches oneself, like the witch or gain in folk tales who tries to drink up the sea and bursts, or like the vacuum monster in Yellow Submarine who ultimately devours himself and disappears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

As it stands, 66 percent of Americans cannot name three branches of government or come up with the name of a single Supreme Court justice. Americans who get their news primarily from television rather the newspaper know much less about the judicial system than newspaper readers. Furthermore, 66 percent of newspaper readers, but only 40 percent of television news watchers, know hat the primary mission of the Supreme Court is to interpret the United States Constitution. When people are ignorant of the high court’s constitutional mandate, it is much easier to convince them that justices are supposed to reflect public opinion—and that something has gone wrong when a court hands down a decision that contradicts popular wisdom. More than 50 percent of adults do not even know that there are nine Supreme Court justices. About half of adults—but just about 41 percent of teenagers—can name the three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial). Only 25 percent of adult—but 20 percent of teenagers—know that there are one hundred U.S. senators. The vast majority of both adults and teens have no idea of when or by whom the Constitution was written (James Madison in 1787). Among teenagers, nearly 98 percent cannot name the Chief Justice of the United States (John G. Roberts). #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

We are still operating under the illusions that all Americans are playing by the same rules. This is our civic present and, if nothing is done to stem the rising tide of ignorance among the young, our even more disturbing civic future is doomed. So long as our society had a common point of moral reference there was a tendency for conflict to be resolved by compromise, and this comprise had a moral as well as practical basis. People no longer learn anything for the mistakes of others, instead they repeat them and expect a good outcome. However, the enemy is too dangerous to give them the benefit of the doubt; their crimes require emergency measures. Change must therefore affect the motivational roots of a society or it is not change at all. When the mind of the country is taught to aim at low objects, it eats upon itself.  Despite the steady rise in the formal educational level of the population, so many Americans seems to know less and less. Technology, our servant, has also become our master, as the information highway—potentially the greatest tool for the diffusion of learning ever devised—has, for too many, become a highway to the far-flung regions of junk thought. At times like this, people must be willing to consider ideas, and even makes changes in behaviour, that they generally preferred to avoid. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

To seize the moment, Americans must recognize that we are living though an overarching crises and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think. Such a recognition has to come from ordinary citizens as well as their elected representative, from nonintellectuals and intellectuals alike. The first essential step is negative: we must give up the delusion that technology can supply the fix for a condition that, however much it is abetted by our new machines, is essentially nontechnological. That some children from affluent homes can pass undemanding standardized tests does not mean that they are learning what citizens of a functional democracy need to know. The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy. However, reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe it can do it again. Americans must consider their behaviour from a different perspective. The job of higher education is not to instruct students in popular culture but to expose them to something better. Genuine intellectuals—we need to hear more, not less, from reality-based intellectual about all of the social problems that have been exacerbated by people ignorance—that is, all social problems. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

If we persist in our efforts and finally attack the dysfunction of the system at its motivational roots, we may indeed be successful. In any case, there is n such thing as “compromise”: we are either strong enough to lever the train onto a new track or it stays on the old one or it is derailed. Everything rests on the assumption that the World does not contain the wherewithal to satisfy the needs of its human inhabitants. From this it follows that people must compete with one another for these scarce resources—lie, swindle, steal, and kill, if necessary. These basic assumptions create the danger of a “war of all against all.” I do not believe that our society can long continue on its old premises without destroying itself and everything else. Nor do I believe it can contain or rest the gathering forces of change without committing suicide in the process. The nation’s memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America’s best mind. Intellectuals must be willing to step up and bring their knowledge, instead of a lust for power, to the public square; for educators devoted to teaching and learning rather than to the latest fads in pop psychology. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25

None of these suggestions address the core problem created by the media—the pacifiers of the mind that permeate our homes, schools, and politics. These is little evidence to indicate that Americans have either the desire or the will to lessen their dependency on the easy satisfaction held out by the video and digital World. The old culture turned the volume down on emotional experience in order to concentrate on its dreams of glory, but the new culture has turned it up again. Too much stimulation makes the carrot hard to see. Good taste is a taste for carrots. Happy babies must learn early that the beautiful things in life are not free. It is unrealistic o expect people simply to turn off their television sets, computers, or smart phones, because infotainment addiction resembles compulsive eating rather than alcoholism or smoking: alcohol and nicotine can be eliminated, but both food and the media supply essential nutrients as well as nonessential junk.  If this is truly the new American dream for the upbringing of future generations, it is painful to think about what the cultural landscape will look like a generation from now. If there is not enough resources to go around, then those who have more will use structural inequality to find ways to prolong their advantage, and even legitimate it though various devices. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

The law itself, although philosophically committed to equality, is fundamentally a social device for maintaining structured systems of inequality (defining as crimes, for example, only those of theft and violence in which lower class persons engage). However, when White collar criminals steal from people, it is glorified and they usually receive less prison time, and people are less likely to kill them in their process of breaking the law because they have more money and are deemed more valuable by society. It is still considered permissible, for example, to kill someone who is stealing your property under certain conditions. This is especially true if that person is without property oneself—a wealthy kleptomaniac (in contrast to a poor looter) would probably be worth a murder trial if killed while stealing. A more trivial example can be found in the handing of noise controls. Police are called to prevent distraction by the joyous noises of laughter and song, but not to stop the harsh and abrasive roar of power saws, leaf blowers operating at illegal hours, air hammers, power mowers, snow blowers, and other baneful machines. However, do not burn your fireplace on a bad air quality day, even if you cannot afford to run the heater and need to use your fireplace, you will be fined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

The rich and the poor have always been with us to some degree. However, there is a new culture that has emerged. What is significant about the new culture is that they do not necessarily care about the causes they represent, they do not even care that whatever cause they are taking up is a new trend, they are rejecting the foundation of American culture altogether. They are much given to acing out grandiose fantasies of taking society by storm, through achievement of wealth, power, and fame. Like so many of the more successful nineteenth century utopian communities (Oneida and Amana, for example), the puritans became corrupted by involvement in successful economic enterprise and the communal aspect was eroded away—another example of system being destroyed by what it attempts to ignore. Just as a plane needs to be fixed in space by at least one more pint than the two necessary to a line, so any complementary schism needs an additional referent in order to avert mutual destruction. This has usually been popularly recognized in any situation where civil warfare threatens in either the individual or social dimension. It frequently takes an external enemy to bring the individual together with oneself, to reunite the quarreling family, to being the nation together, to restructure the idea. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

However, it is not necessary that the “third force” be negative and threatening; a common goal can unite the split group or individual. And in fact that is the essential aspect even under negative pressure. The chaos and lack of discipline is what we are most afraid of confronting and that is what we are most anxious and insecure that we have ourselves created. If society remains in a state of internecine warfare, it will bring either the group or the individual to its own destruction long before its time. In our fear of burning the candle at both ends we burn it in the middle and thus fall apart sooner. One would not have neurosis if the things fought against were not sufficiently nourished by one’s environment to enable in the first place. If we were perfect, if we had the exclusive solution, there would be no anxiety, no doubt, no disease. However, in fact, there has always been something else left to be desires and in an expanding Universe one would have to have colossal conceit, superhuman knowledge and experience, to ever not feel that something remains unexplored in this Universe. Every art, every science, every system has at one time or another found itself unnecessarily limited by its own conceit and has admitted its humility or has perished. This is as much a hard fact of experience as any “hard fact” in any field of endeavour. There is little reason to believe that this state of affairs will ever change. #Randolphharris 10 of 25

For a new culture pattern does not emerge out of nothing—the seed must already be there, like the magic tricks of wizards and witches in folklore, who can make an ocean out of a drop of water, a palace out of a stone, a forest out of a blade of grass, but nothing out of nothing. Our homes are furnished as if we intended to spend the rest of our lives in them, instead of moving every few years. This perhaps represents merely a kind of technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological failure to adapt. Should Americans ever settle down, however, they will find little to do in the ways of readjusting their household furnishing habits. Much of the new culture is implicitly and explicitly “neotenous” in a cultural sense: behaviour, values, and life-styles formerly seen as appropriate only to childhood are being retained into adulthood as a counterforce to the old culture. When the system as it stands is no longer viable, however, the mechanism must be exposed for the swindle that it is; otherwise the needed radical changes will be rendered ineffectual. They key to the mechanism is the powerful human reluctance to admit that an achieved goal was not worth the unpleasant experience required to achieve it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

You tell me it is the institution, you had better free your mind instead. However, what is all the freed minds are in jail? I am afraid there are no quick solutions to the problem of the empty self, and we cannot simplify its impact on the Christian mind. The battle here will be won or lost in the area of habits. Admit the problem. First, we must admit that this is a problem and we need to inform others about it. We do ourselves or our God no good if we hide from the fact that the empty self threatens all of us. Any movement that brings about lasting changes begins with conscious raising. Start talking to your Christian friends about the value of the Christian mind. Mention the empty self in your Saturday or Sunday school class, your home Bible study, and so on. Talk to your children about developing their intellectual abilities for the service of Christ and His people. Before a problem can be solved, it must be carefully defined and clearly acknowledged. Choose to be different. Second, at some point we need to make a fundamental decision that we will be different no matter what the cost. We Christians simply must admit that we have allowed our culture to squeeze us into its mold. We must stand against the culture (including inappropriate tendencies in the evangelical subculture), resist the empty self, and eschew the intellectual flabbiness that goes along with it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

Motivation is key here. I am no expert on motivation, but I do have one piece of advice, derived from several decades of ministry: Expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree and let yourself be motivated to excel intellectually by the exposure. Listen to talk shows, read the editorial page, and walk around a local university and look at bulletin boards or read the student newspaper. Get into discussion with people at work with whom you differ. The point is to spend time around those who do not simply reinforce your own ways of looking at things. There are two advantages to this. For one thing, we can learn from our critics. For another, such exposure can move us to realize just how serious the war of ideas really is and how inadequately prepared we are to engage in that contest. Change your routine. Third, for one week, note two things on a sheet of paper. First, observe your energy rhythms. When is your energy at a low point during that day and when is it vigorous? Second, note what you tend to do when you tend to do when you get home from work or just after you have finished eating dinner. Often, when our energy is low or when we get home from work or finish dinner, we go into a passive mode and turn on the television. If a person learns to limit television watching and spends more time getting physical exercise, I believe that an intellectual life is easier to develop. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

I do not think I have to defend limiting television watching in this regard, but what about exercise? If you are in good shape, your mind becomes more alert and you have more energy to be proactive. I tell my graduate students that if they want to get the most out of the intellectual opportunities of graduate school, then they must learn to use low-energy times, or moments like after work or diner, as occasions to engage in physical exercise. Try something. After dinner go for a walk instead of turning on the TV. When you get back, sit down for thirty minutes to an hour and read an intellectually challenging book. The important thing here is to get out of passive ruts, especially those passive couch hamburger moments, and replace old habits with the new ones that create energy to read, reflect, and be more proactive. Develop patience and endurance. Fourth, learn how to duffer and develop patient endurance. A life of intellectual cultivation takes effort. And it can be painful. The mind is like a muscle: it needs to be stretched beyond itself. I often read books that are a little over my head so I can develop my intellectual strength. Also, it often takes time to work through an important topic with sufficient care and attention. One needs to take a long-term perspective toward reading and study. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

However, such a perspective will require endurance in staying put in a chair, with pen in hand, long enough to read deeply and widely. This requires a spirit of quietness and an absence of distraction. If you are fidgety and have to get up every fifteen minutes, you must get control of yourself. And gaining such control will require self-denial, suffering, and endurance. The intellectual life is both a means to and a result of a life of discipline, self-control, and endurance. The best way to develop these traits is to practice the spiritual disciplines, especially solitude and fasting. Through solitude, I am learning to be quiet, alone, and focused. Through fasting, I am learning to say no to immediate gratification and bodily distraction and control of myself. The spiritual disciplines can facilitate endurance, patience, discipline, and self-control—virtue that constitute the soil in which the cultivation of the Christian mind takes place. Develop a good vocabulary. Fifth, keep a dictionary handy and get in the habit of looking up words that you do not understand. The development of a good vocabulary is an important tool in the cultivation of the Christian mind. The ubiquitous and egregious (look them up!) avoidance of the dictionary today is no help to the person who wishes to love God with one’s mind. Set some intellectual goals. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

It is important for you to set some study goals on a yearly basis. I suggest you team up with another person in your church who has similar study interest and commit yourselves to mutually accountable reading program, like Reese’s Book Club, for example. For six years now, I have met every Friday morning for breakfast with a study partner. My friend and I read books in philosophy, psychology, contemporary culture, spiritual formation, and so on. We meet to discuss our reading. Also, we subscribe to important Christian periodicals (for example, Christian Today) and regularly browse in secular and Christian bookstores. We come together and share our discoveries each week, and our times together are rich! Find a plan that works for you and just do it! Sometimes one of our friends or loved ones have become a spiritual paralytic. The affliction or trial one has undergone has virtually immobilized the person spiritually. One is unable to help oneself. Not only that, but the spiritual “mat” one is lying on—that is, faith in God and trust in His promises—is no more than the equivalent of a thin, straw-filled mattress. If you try to encourage one through Scripture, one will look at you blankly and tell you Scripture just does not mean anything to one anymore. One has tried to claim God’s promises, but nothing “works.” God just is not there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

This person has become an awkward, heavy spiritual burden. You cannot pray with one, you can only pray for one. However, just as the paralytic’s friends persisted until they brought him to Jesus, so we too must persist in bringing this person to the throne of grace until God heals one spiritually. Of course, the spiritual paralytic is an extreme case. More often than not, the person to whom we are called to be a minister of grace can still go to the throne of grace oneself. However, we are still called to really around that person in prayer. God can, and often does, answer our individual prayers, but the general tenor of Scripture is that God desires we support each other in prayer. Beyond prayer, we must in some way receive permission to be a minister of grace to the person in need. One of the best ways we can do this is to demonstrate that we care. The first thing the person requiring grace needs from you is the assurance and demonstration that you care. We want to help that person come to the place where one can cast that hurt on God, truly believing God does care. So often, though, our perception of other people’s care. If we see care demonstrated in our friends, it is easier for us to believe God cares. If should not be this way; we should not gauge the care of God by the care of fallible, sinful human beings. However, we do. And often, God wants us to be the tangible evidence of His care. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

How can we demonstrate that we care? Obviously the first thing we must do is to make contact. If you live in the same city, invite the person to lunch or coffee, or in some way establish personal contact. Based on my own experience after the death of my first wife, and confirmed by several friends who have lost loved ones, this is where we so often fail each other. Apparently because we feel awkward and do not know what to say, we do not say anything. In fact, we may even avoid the hurting person. One friend, whose wife died some months after mine, said to me, “William, where are my friends?” Another told me of someone, who was one of his best friends, avoiding him after the death of a child. If you have failed to make contact back you did not know what to day, allow me to offer a suggestion. Just tell the person, “I know you must be hurting badly, and I do not know what to say, but I just want you to know I care.” Then, if appropriate you could add, “If it would help, I would like to have lunch [or whatever] with you, and just listen to you. I would like to know how you are really doing.” Above all, do not ask the person merely in passing at church or somewhere else “How are you doing?” Though you may not intend this, it communicates to the hurting person that you are expecting the typical cultural response, “Oh, just fine!” Speaking as one who has “been there,” this is taken as more of an indication that you do not care than that you do. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

When you have demonstrated to the other person that you do care—be sensitive to determine when the other person believes this—you can begin to ask gently probing questions, such as, “How are you and God getting alone during this time?” “Are you able to get any comfort from the Scriptures, or are they just dead to you right now?” Ask questions in a way that communicates you will not be shocked by negative answers. “And now it came to pass in the forty and third year of the reign of the judges, there was no contention among the people of Nephi save it were a little pride which was in the church, which did cause some little dissensions among the people, which affairs were settled in the ending of the forty and third year. And there was no contention among the people in the forty and fourth year; neither was there much contention in the forty and fifth year. And it came to pass in the forty and sixth, yea, there was much contention and many dissensions; in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land. And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

“And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even the did spread forth int all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. And now no part of the land wad desolate, save it were for timbers; but because of the greatness of the destruction of the people who had before inhabited the land it was called desolate. And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole Earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east. And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“And it came to pass as timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward, they did send forth much by the way of shipping. And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement. And it came to pass that there were many of the people of Ammon, who were Lamanites by birth, did also go forth into this land. And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them. However, behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work. However, behold, there are many books and many records of every kind, and they have kept chiefly by the Nephites. And they have been handed down from one generation to another by the Nephites, even until they have fallen into transgression and have been murdered, plundered, and hunted, and driven forth, and slain, and scattered upon the face of the Earth, and mixed with the Lamanites until they are no more called the Nephites, becoming wicked, and wild, and ferocious, yea, even becoming Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

“And now I return again to mine account; therefore, what I have spoken had passed after there had been great contentions, and disturbances, and wars, and dissensions, among the people of Nephi. The forty and sixth year of the reign of the judges ended; and it came to pass that there was still great contention in the land, yea, even in the forty and seventh year, and also in the forty and eighth year. Nevertheless Helaman did fill the judgment-seat with justice and equity; yea, he did observe to keep the statues, and the judgments, and the commandments of God; and he did do that which was right in the sight of God continually; and he did walk after the ways of his father, insomuch that he did prosper in the land. And it came to pass that he had two sons. He gave unto the eldest the name of Nephi, and unto the youngest, the name of Lehi. And they began to grow up unto the Lord. And it came to pass that the wars and contentions began to cease, in small degree, among the people of the Nephites, in latter end of the forty and eighth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass in the forty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, there was continual peace established in the land, all save it were the secret combinations which Gadianton the robber had established in the more settled parts of the land, which at the time were not known unto those who were at the head of government; therefore they were not destroyed out of the land. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And it came to pass that in this same yea there was exceedingly great prosperity in the church, insomuch that there were thousands who did join themselves unto the church and were baptized unto repentance. And so great was the prosperity of the church, and so many the blessings which were poured out upon the people, that even the high priests and the teachers were themselves astonished beyond measure. And it came to pass that the work of the Lord did prosper unto the baptizing and uniting to the church of God, any souls, yea, even tends of thousands. Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his hoy name. Yea, this we see that the gate of Heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the humans of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—and land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of Heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“And in this year there was continual rejoicing in the and of Zarahemla, and in all the regions round about, even in the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And it came to pass that there was peace and exceedingly great joy in the remainder of the forty and ninth year; yea, and also there was continual peace and great joy in the fiftieth year of the reign of the judges. And in the fifty and first year of the reign of the judges there was peace also, save it were the pride which began t enter into the church—not into the church of God, but into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the church of God—and they were lifted up in pride, even to the persecution of many of their brethren. Now his was a great evil, which did cause the more humble part of the people to suffer great persecutions, and to wade through much affliction. Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification of their hearts unto God. And it came to pass that the fifty and second year ended in peace also, save it were the exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people; and it was because of their prosperity in the land; and it did grow upon them from day to day. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

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“And it came to pass in the fifty and third year of the reign of the judges, Helaman died, and his eldest son Nephi began to reign in his stead. And it came to pass that he did fill the judgment-seat with justice and equity; yea, he did keep the commandments of God, and did walk in the ways of his father,” reports Helaman 3.1-37. Earth’s king blessings to you, bless us. Ocean father blessing to you, bless us. Star’s breath blessings to you, bless us. Heart’s rest blessings to you, bless us. Life’s lover blessings to you, bless us. Strong teacher blessings to you, bless us. God of the sky blessings to you, bless us. Love’s source blessings to you, bless us. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy King. Thou hast sanctified the seventh day unto Thy name, marking the end of the creation of Heaven and Earth; Thou didst bless it above all days, hallowing it above all seasons; as it is written in Thy Torah: The Heaven and the Earth were finished, and all their host. And on the seventh day God had finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because He rested thereon from all His work which God created and made. Our God and God of our fathers, accept our rest. Sanctify us through Thy commandments, and grant our portion in Thy Torah. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

Winchester Mystery House

What a great weekend of Self-Guided Mansion tours at the Winchester Mystery House! Do you enjoy the Self-Guided experience?

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Celebrate Hallowe’en all month long! Get your tickets now Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com

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Memory is More Incredible than Ink for it is a Wise Father who Knows His Own Child!

The generation gap is just another way of saying that the younger generation makes overt what is covert in the older generation; the child expresses openly what the parents represses. The mass media with the use of television ( “The Most Effective Devil in America,” is telling you a vision) has flooded out local boundaries and forced the total society into a dim awareness of what it is like to live in fear. It is not so much the increase in violence that upsets middle-class Americans as the democratization of violence: the less affluent and underrepresented have become less willing to serve as specialized victims of violence from a political agenda (“legally”) and each other (illegally). The same point can be made about crimes against property, given the well-known class bias in our legal system. Since the ways in which the affluent steal from the less affluent are rarely defined as crimes (when executives of a major corporation were jailed for a few days some years ago for stealing millions of dollars from the public through antitrust violations many people were shocked that respectable humans could be treated in such a rude fashion) rising property crimes rates may only reflect an increase in the democratization of larceny, a result attributable in part to the success of the mass media in convincing the less affluent that only the possession of various products can satisfy their various social, pleasures of the flesh, and moral requirements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25

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Leaving aside these more likely to be considered violent when they have political overtones. Our nation has never known a time without serious urban riots—usually about some kind of economic or social injustice—but it was only when they began to have a political thrust and to attack business districts that the concerns about the rioting began to grow. The same relationship holds true for the college campus. It is not violence as such but its political aims that arouse concern. The same people who assail the violence of campus radicals are quite happy to regale listeners with tales of their own (apolitical) childhood pranks—pranks that would bring a jail sentence if committed today. College students on many campuses have rioted annually for generations, and the injuries and vandalism resulting from such riots have often far exceeded that produced by protests. Yet these apolitical riots have always been considered venial. The difference is that student pranks and riots in the past attacked authority but accepted it. The protests of today confront authority and question it. Thus although no violence at all may occur, those toward whom the protest is directed may feel that violence has been done to them. The disruption of ordinary daily patterns and assumptions are experienced as a kind of psychological violence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25

Consider what happens when a defective traffic light fails to change from red to green. The line of cars grows and restlessness increases. At some point someone decides that the symbol of order is in fact in disorder and either goes through the red light or begins to honk one’s hor. As soon as one goes through, the others all follow suit. The initiator in this situation is engaging in a kind of civil disobedience. One is challenging the specific rule about red lights in terms of a broader understanding which says that the purpose of traffic laws is to regulate traffic not to disrupt it. Yet because the situation has no real political significance the incidence carries no threat or violent connotation. We live in a society in which cruelties inflicted upon humanity can be exposed in every living room through mass media or on Facebook and Twitter. We discuss and debate constantly the appearance of any instance anywhere in the World of inhumane treatment of one person by another, but we still do not always get the full story. Nonetheless, we stress that every human life, even corporations, are beings of value. We live, in short, in modern, secure, civilized World, in which a single isolated act of violence is a calamity, an outrage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25

Yet, innocent people still have their characters and beings terminated by the most barbarous means possible and shows no qualms about it. These techniques are a bit reminiscent of the dunking stool used in earlier centuries to test potential witches: if the person was not a witch the individual would drown—if one did not drown thus proved one was a witch and one was burned to death. The energy required to avoid even the most obvious forms of exploitation by commercial enterprises in our society would not permit the individual to lead a normal active life. Like Looking-glass Country, it takes all the running one can do to stay in the same place. Powerlessness has always been the common lot of most of humankind. However, the more we attempt to solve problems through increased autonomy the more we find ourselves at the mercy of these mysterious, impersonal, and remote mechanisms that we have ourselves created. Their indifference is a reflection of our own. All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability since: effective adaptation to the environment requires both modification and consolidation of existing reposes; social integration depends both upon the preservation and upon the periodic dissolution of existing structural differentiation; and personal happiness rest upon both familiarity and novelty in everyday life. Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25

We talk of technology as the servant of humans, but it is a servant that now dominates the households, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the major conveniences offered by social media could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say, “You cannot stop progress,” and shuffle back inside. We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler who governs our state or city whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch that individual carefully, hang on to one’s every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a Winchester Rifle, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25

We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions—because it is a means to some other means—not because it achieves an ultimate end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The much-vaunted “freedom” of American life is thus an illusion, one which underlies the sense of spuriousness so many Americans feel about their basic institutions. We are free to do only what we are told, and we are “told” not by a human master but by a mechanical construction. However, how can we be the salves of technology—is not technology merely an extension of, a creation of, ourselves? This is only metaphorically true. The forces to which we submit so abjectly were not generated by ourselves but by our ancestors—what we create will in turn rule our progeny. It takes a certain amount of time for the social effects of technological change to make their appearance, by which time a generation has usually passed. Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated with the notion of being able to create material objects just by imagining them, and have built novels, stories, and films around the idea. Actually, it is merely an exaggeration of what normally takes place. Technology is materialized fantasy. We are ruled today by the material manifestations of the fantasies of previous generations. #RanolphHarris 6 of 25

We treat technology as if it were a fierce patriarch—we are deferential, submissive, and alert to its demands. Perhaps, that is why men dominate the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California USA, and in Shenzhen, a city in south China’s Guangdong province known as the “Silicon Valley of China.” (The Silicon Valley of China has gradually become a global hardware center and hub for scientific and technological advances, where skyscrapers appear commonplace and the population has surged past 13 million.)  We feel spasms of hatred toward technology, and continually make fun of it but we do little to challenge the rule. People who develop technology, like Wolfgang Egger who is a World-famous Germany car designer, reports, “to have this opportunity to create something like this [an electric car] from nothing is a big challenge that I need.” That is the main reason why he joined the Chinese car manufacturer BYD three years ago. Technology has inherited the fantasy of the authoritarian father. Furthermore, since the technological environment that rules, frustrates, and manipulates us is a materialization of the wished of our forefathers, it is quite reasonable to say that technology is the authoritarian father in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25

The American father can be a good-natured humble man in the home precisely because he is so ruthless toward the nonhuman environment, leveling, uprooting, filling in, building up, tearing down, blowing up, tunneling under. This ruthlessness affects his children only indirectly, as the deranged environment afflicts the eyes, ears, nose, and nervous system of the next generation. However, it affects them nonetheless. Through this impersonal intermediary we inflict our will upon our children, and punish them for our generous indulgence—our child-oriented, self-sacrificing behaviour. It I small wonder that the myth of the punitive patriarch stays alive. From this viewpoint, then, delegating to technology the role of punitive patriarch is another example of the first process we described: the tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict by compartmentalization and a false illusion of autonomy—to place impersonal mechanisms between and around people and imagine that we have created a self-governing paradise. It is a kind of savage joke in its parental form. We say: “Look, I am an easy-going, good-natured, affectionate father. I behave in a democratic manner and treat you like a person, never pulling rank. As to all those roads and wires and social media and clones and machines and bombs and complex bureaucratic institutions out there, do not concern yourself about them—this is my department.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 25

However, when the child grows up one discovers the fraud. One learns that one is a slave to his father’s unconscious and unplanned whims—that the area of withheld power was crucial. The child becomes angry and rebels, saying, “You were not what you pretended, and I cannot be what you encouraged me to be.” The child attacks “the system” and authority everywhere, trying to find the source of the deception, and using techniques that reflect one’s commitment to what one’s father deceived one into thinking one was—a person. However, by this time one has also learned the system of avoiding conflict through impersonal mechanism and is ready to inflict the same deception on one’s own children. We love and indulge our children, and would never dream of hurting them. If they are poisoned, bombed, gassed, burned, or whatever, it is surely not our fault, since we do not even know how to manipulate those objects. The danger comes from outside. Perhaps long ago we did something to deliver them into these impersonal hands, but we have forgotten, and in any case it is not our responsibility. Technology, in other words, is our plains sorcerer. Because Americans have submitted so passively to the havoc wreaked by technological change, they have had to convince themselves that their obsequiousness is right and good and appropriate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25

Any challenge to the technological-over-social priority threatens to expose the fact that Americans has lost their adulthood and their capacity to control their environment. So long as the priority is unchallenged and unmentioned, the human surrender involved need not be confronted. However, youth is increasingly saying: “What about the people? Why have you abdicated your birthright to hardware?” It is a humiliating question, and humiliating questions tend to be answered with blows. Furthermore, the social changes wrought by technological change are so vast and shattering and we are kept so off-balance by them that the desire for independent social change (that is, change produced by human needs rather than technology) appears not as a solution and the assumption of control, but as still another disruptive force. It is like the inhabitants of an occupied country, who say to their militants, “do not fight the enemy, it will just bring more massive retaliation down upon us. Attack your own family.” The predominant feeling is that there is more change than anybody can tolerate already, so how can anyone ever consider a radical reevaluation of the whole system. I felt sure that it was just a public-relations problem that only needed a public-relations solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25

I do not give a damn how it is done; do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further lies and unauthorized disclosures. I do not want excuses. I want results…whatever the cost. It became necessary for Americans to express themselves on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality. The association of highbrow culture with vaporous idealism and lowbrow culture with self-interested practicality exemplified the widespread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as noneintellectuals, of the idea that devotion to the life of the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies of everyday life. The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better oneself. Many uneducated people cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door from the 1920s well into the 1980s were often purchased through an installment plan by parents who had never owned a book but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children with information about the World that had been absent from their own upbringing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25

Remnants of earnest middlebrows striving today among various communities, but the larger edifice of middlebrow culture, which once encompassed Americans of many social classes as well as ethnic and racial backgrounds, has collapsed. The disintegration and denigration of the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave of anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion of highbrows and eggheads that have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part of the American psyche. What has been lost is an alterative to mass popular culture, imbibed unconsciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that surround us all. What has been lost is the culture of effort. Middlebrow culture was, above all, a reading culture. In the 1950s, to be raised in a middlebrow family meant that there were books, magazines, newspapers in the house and that everyone old enough to read had a library card. Some schools in Sacramento, California would even pause for fifteen minutes a day for reading time, where students could read whatever they wanted, as long as it was a book, it was appropriate, and educational. If much of the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample room for growth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25

People had books clubs, much like Reese Witherspoon has popularized, where people select a book each month, read it and talk about. And people who live in segregated communities were taught to learn to appreciate masterpieces like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many more, and to make sure that no one could segregate one’s mind. Still, 25 percent of American high school biology teachers still believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. American ideal of self-education is a distinct era of self-help, and people placed far more emphasis on improving personality and public image and the mind like never before. However, “civilized” is still defined by the gatekeeps of greatness on the installment plan. Many people want to make it into the “Fat Man’s” class which was dubbed that for the size of their pocketbooks. We want everything to be cheap and high quality, but do not look at the value and utility it provides, and then complain about how little we get paid. Our parents, grandparents, and maybe for some of you, great grandparents had it a lot harder than we do today. We hear about how inexpensive everything used to be, but do not take inflation into account. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25

In 1952, a great book cost $249.95, in 2020 dollars that is $2,470.21. Imagine what a luxury a book was back then. In fact, reading books was a status symbol because the proved to the World that one was the sort of person who did read and who could afford the price of a book. People like Reese Witherspoon is doing an excellent job trying to get Americans back into reading books. When a celebrity is seen doing anything, it becomes a trend and what could be a more productive trend than getting people to expand their minds. The possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and the ability to recalls facts before an audience of millions, could provide both fame and fortune. When being smart become a trend, imagine how much better off our society will be, how much productive our children will be. They will learn the root of what it takes to have fun and know they have to study and work hard to earn the money it takes to have fun. Because, as one gets older, fun gets more expensive. Getting a day off from school and watching TV is no longer fun, but having the ability to legally buy new cars and houses and take vacations and decorate your own private home is fun. Having privacy and dignity in your own environment is fun. Being able to relocate or explore the World when you want to is fun. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25

 An aspect of the Christian work ethic is enthusiasm. “Whatever you do,” Paul told the Colossians, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans,” reports Colossians 3.23. To the Romans Pail admonished, “Never be lacking in seal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” reports Romans 12.11. It is natural—actually quite easy—to be enthusiastic if your work is prominent, but less natural the more hidden it is, as the conductor of a great symphony orchestra once reveled when asked which was the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered. “We can get plenty of first violinists. However, to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm—that is a problem!” And so it is. However, actually, doing one’s work with enthusiasm, even if hidden, plays for an audience far greater than that of the most famous symphony orchestras or World champion sports teams! If we could be really see this, our enthusiasm would never flag. However, it can still be hard to reason with some people. Their very mind has been taken over by one or more feelings and is made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs. It is a fearful condition from which some people never escape. We have noted how thoughts generate feelings. If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25

As humans, we can unknowingly become slaves to technology, or feelings and so man other things. Here, for example, is a woman (it could have just as well have been a man) who has taken in the thought that she has been treated unfairly for years in her marriage and her job. Rather than sensibly addressing the circumstances or just turning her mind away from this thought, she receives it and broods over it—for years—developing a tremendous sense of injustice and outrage, which she also welcomes and cultivates with the assistance of sympathetic friends. The “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12.15) gradually spreads over her whole personality, seeping deeply into her body and soul. It becomes something you can see in her bodily motions and actions and hear oozing through the language she uses. It affects her capacity to see what is actually going on around her, to realize what she is actually doing, and to think thoroughly and consistently. She is in the prison of resentment, though she thinks she is perhaps for the first time acting freely. Beyond the individual level, poisonous emotions and sensations often take over entire social groups, blinding them and impelling them on terrible courses of destruction. This is nearly always what has happened in cases where repression of ethnic groups or genocide occurs. Thus, to the onlooker the participants (the tyrants) seem to be deaf, blind, and insane—which, in a sense, they are. They, too, are imprisoned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25

Feelings can be successfully reasoned with, can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in one who has not trained oneself, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from one’s own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feeling becomes impervious to fact and reason. I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong! One’s feelings of righteousness does not mean one is right and actually should alert one to be very cautious and humble. Those who are wise will, accordingly, never allow themselves, if they can help it, to get in a position where they feel too deeply about any human matter. They will never willingly choose to allow feeling to govern them. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25

We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all. “And it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land, who was Pahoran, and these are the words which he wrote saying: Behold, I direct mine epistle to Pahoran, in the city of Zarahemla, who is the chief judge and the governor over the land, and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by the way of condemnation; for behold, ye yourselves know that we have been appointed to gather together humans, and arm them with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war of every kind, and send forth against the Lamanites, in whatsoever part they should come into out land. And now behold, I say unto you that myself, and also my men, and also Helaman and his men, have suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind. However, behold, were this all we had suffered we would not murmur nor complain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25

“However, behold, great has been the slaughter among our people; yea, thousands have fallen by the sword, while it might have otherwise been if ye had rendered unto our armies sufficient strength and succor for them. Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea, while they are murdering thousands of your brethren—yea, even they who have looked up to you for protection, yea, have placed you in a situation that ye might have sent armies unto them, to have strengthened them, and have saved thousands of them from falling by the sword. However, behold, this is not all—ye have withheld your provisions from them, insomuch that many have fought and bled out their lives because of their great desires which they had for the welfare of this people; yea, and this they have done when they were abut to perish with hunger, because of your exceedingly great neglect towards them. And now, my beloved brethren—for ye ought to have stirred yourselves more diligently for the welfare and the freedom of this people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25

 “However, behold, ye have neglected them insomuch that the blood of thousands shall come upon your heads for vengeance; yea, for known unto God were all their cries, and all their sufferings—behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness? I say unto you, if ye have supposed in vain; for I say unto you, there are many who have fallen by the sword; and behold it is to your condemnation; for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God. And now behold, I say unto you, I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people, because of their exceeding slothfulness, yea, even the slothfulness of our government, and their exceedingly great neglect towards their brethren, yea, towards those who have been slain. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25

“For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our hear, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us. Yea, had it not been for the war which broken out among ourselves; yea, were it not for these king-men, who caused so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, at the time we were contending among ourselves, if we had united our strength as we hitherto have done; yea, had it not been for the desire of power and authority which those king-men had over us; had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and untied with us, and gone forth against our enemies, instead of taking up their swords against us, which was the cause of so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies, for it would have been done, according to the fulfilling of his word. However, behold, now the Lamanites are coming upon us, taking possession of our lands, and they are murdering our people with the sword, yea, our women and our children, and also carrying them away captive, causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions, and this because of the great wickedness of those who are seeking for power and authority, yea, even those king-men. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25

However, why should I say much concerning this matter? For we know not but what ye yourselves are seeking for authority. We know not but what ye are also traitors to your country. Or is it that ye have neglected us because ye are in the heart of our country and ye are surrounded by security, that ye do not cause food to be sent unto us, and also humans to strengthen our armies? Have ye forgotten in the commandments of the Lord your God? Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies? Or do ye supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make us of the means which the Lord has provided for us? Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye supposed that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25

“And now, expect ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and humans unto us, and also unto Helaman, that he may support those parts of our country which he had regained, and that we may also recover the remainder of our possession in these parts, behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first cleansed our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government. And expect ye grant mine epistle, and come out and show unto me a true spirit of freedom, and stive to strengthen and fortify our armies, and great unto them food a part of my freemen to maintain this part of our land, and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them—and this because of their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulation—and I will come unto you, and if there be any among you that has a desire for freedom, yes, if there be even a spark of freedom remaining, behold I will stir up insurrections among you, even until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct. Yea, behold I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear; and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country, and it is because of your iniquity that we have suffered much loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25

“Behold, I wait for assistance from your; and except ye do administer unto our relief, behold, I come unto you, even in the land of Zarahemla, and smite you with the sword, insomuch that ye can have no more power to impede the progress of this people in the cause of our freedom. For behold, the Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities to destroy his righteous people. Behold, can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites, when it is the tradition of their fathers that has caused their hatred, yea, and it has been redoubled by those who have dissented from us, while your iniquity is for the cause of your love of glory and the vain things of the World? Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet. Behold, the Lord saith unto me: If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them. And now behold, I, Moroni, am constrained, according to the covenant which I have made to keep the commandments of my God; therefore I would that ye should adhere to the word of God, and send speedily unto me of your provisions and of your men, and also to Helaman. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25

“And behold, if ye will not do this I come unto you speedily; for behold, God will not suffer that we should perish with hunger; therefore he will give unto us of your food, even if it must be by the sword. Now see that ye fulfill the word of God. Behold, I am Moroni, your chief captain. I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honour of the World, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country. And thus I close mine epistle,” reports Alma 60.1-36. A lion protecting His young, you rage when aroused. Nothing stands before You, no troubles can resist You, no enemies defeat You. A roaring in the distance announces your arrival, scattering the dealers of cares. You shake the Earth beneath their feet, upsetting all the plans. “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontless between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.16-21. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25

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Lives Have Been Elevated and Lives Have Been Cast Down by Human Speech!

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Life is an answered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of the question. All laws being founded on rewards and punishments, it is supposed as a fundamental principle, that these motives have a regular and uniform influence on the mind, and both produce the god and prevent the evil actions. We may give to this influence what name we please; but, as it is usually conjoined with the action, it must be esteemed a cause, and be looked upon as an instance of that necessity, which we would here establish. The only proper object of hatred or vengeance, is a person or creature, endowed with thought and consciousness; and when any criminal or injurious actions excite that passion, it is only by their relation to the person, or connexion with one. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some case in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to one’s honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil. The actions themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: However, the person is not answerable for them; and as they proceeded from nothing in one, that is durable and constant, and leave nothing of that nature behind them, it is impossible one can, upon their account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

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According to the principle, therefore, which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a human is as pure and untainted, after having committed the most horrid crime, as at the first moment of one’s birth, nor is one’s character any wise concerned in one’s actions; since they are not derived from it, and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other. Humans are not blamed for such actions, as they perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Humans are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditatly, than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause of principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but by asserting, that actions render a person criminal, merely as they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an alteration of these principles, they cease to be just proofs, they likewise cease to be criminal. However, expect upon the doctrine of necessity, they never were just proofs, and consequently never were criminal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

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When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain than an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. We believe that our actions are subject to our own will, on most occasions; and imagine we believe, that the will itself is subject to nothing, because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we believe, that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself, even on that side, on which it did not settle. This image, or faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been completed into the thing itself; because, should that be denied, we find, upon a second trial, that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of showing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; and even where one cannot, one concludes in general, that one might, were one perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition. Now this is the very essence of necessity, according to the foregoing doctrine. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

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It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. I have endeavoured to explain and prove this proposition, and have expressed my hopes, that, by a proper application of it, humans many reach a greater clearness and precision in philosophical reasoning, than that they have hitherto been able to attain. Complex ideas may, perhaps, be well known by definition, which is nothing but an enumeration of those parts or simple ideas, that compose them. However, when we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas, and find still some ambiguity and obscurity; what resources are we then possessed of? By what invention can we throw light upon these ideas, and render them altogether precise and determinate to our intellectual view? Procedure the impressions or original, sentiments, from which these ideas are copied. These impressions are all strong and sensible. They admit not of ambiguity. They are not only places in a full light themselves, but many throws light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

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And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the object of our enquiry. To be fully acquainted, therefore, with the idea of power of necessary connexion, let us examine its impression; and in order to find the impression with greater certainty, let us search for it in all the courses, from which it may possible be derived. It may be said, that we are every moment conscious of internal power; while we feel, that, by the simple command of our will, we can move the organs of our body, or direct the faculties of our mind. An act of volition produces motion in our limbs, or raises a new idea in our imagination. This influence of the will we know by consciousness. Hence we acquire the idea of power or energy; and are certain, that we ourselves and all other intelligent beings are possessed of power. This idea, then, is an idea of reflection, since it arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and on the command which is exercised by will, both over the organs of the body and faculties of the soul. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

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This influence, we may observe, is a fact, which, like all other natural events, can be known only by experience, and can never be foreseen from any apparent energy or power in the cause, which connects it with the effect, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. The motion f our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious. However, the means, by which this effected; the energy, by which the will performs so extraordinary an operation; of this we are so far from being immediately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent enquiry. For first; is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension. However, if by conscious we perceived any power or energy in the will, we must know the secret union of the soul and body, and the nature of both these substances; by which the one is able to operate, in so many instances, upon the other. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

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However, consciousness never deceives. Consequently, we are ever conscious any power. We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable. Interest in the truth is at the heart of our conversation. Our word “conversation” derives from the same Latin root as “conversion” does, and the possibility of a conversation, of a “turning around,” is always inherent in any true conversation, for when we converse we take part in a game in which exchange, not victory, is the goal, an intellectual game in which no one stars and everyone wins. So much for the preliminaries. We are witnessing the quiet demise of the art of letter writing. Can we still rescue the art of conversation? I fear we cannot, and I find that—to put it mildly—a great pity. I would even go a step further and call it a dreadful shame, for it is symptomatic of a defect in our culture that is no only regrettable but may also prove lethal. Perhaps I can put what I mean this way: We find ourselves giving more and more of our time and energy to things that have a point, that produce results. And when all is said and done, what are those results? Money, perhaps, or fame or a promotion. We hardly ever consider doing something any more that has no purpose. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

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We have forgotten that it is possible, even desirable and, above all, pleasurable to do something without a specific goal in mind. One of life’s greatest pleasures is to make use of our powers not to attain a goal but for the sake of an activity itself. Take love, for example. Love has no purpose, though many people might say: Of course it does! It is love, they say, that enables us to satisfy our pleasures of the flesh, marry, have children, and live a normal, middle-class or upper middle-class life. That is the purpose of love. And that is why love is so rare these days, love without goals, love in which the only thing of importance is that act of loving itself. In this kind of love it is being and not consuming that plays the key role. It is human self-expression, the full play of our human capacities. However, in a culture like ours, which is exclusively oriented to external goals like success, production, and consumption, we can easily lose sight of that kind of love. It fades so far into the distance that we can hardly even imagine it as a reality any more. Conversation has become either a commodity or a way of doing battle If the conversational battle takes place in the presence of a large audience, then it assumes the quality of a gladiatorial contest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

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The participants go for each other’s throats, and each one tries to destroy the other. Or they converse merely to show how clever or superior they are. Or they converse to prove to themselves that they are in the right once again. Conversation is a way of demonstrating to themselves that what they happen to think is indeed correct. They go into conversation determined not to admit any new thoughts into their minds. They have their opinion. Each knows what the other will say. Let me give you a little example of what I mean. Suppose two people are on their way home together, two colleagues of mine, two psychoanalysts, and one of them says, “I am kind of tired.” And the other replies, “Me, too.” Now that many sound like a rather banal exchange, but it is not necessarily, for if these two people do the same kind of work, then they know just what the other’s tiredness is like, and so they have engaged in genuine, human communication: “We are both tired, and we have each let the other know how tired we are.” That is much more of a conversation than when two intellectuals start throwing big words around in a discussion of the latest theory about this or that. They are simply holding two separate monologues and do not touch each other at all. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

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The art of conversation and joy in conversation (conversation in the sense of being open, being together, usually takes verbal form, but it can also take the form of movement in dancing; there are many ways to converse)—these things will become possible again only if major changes take place in our culture, that is, only if we can rid ourselves of our monomaniacal, goal-oriented way of life. We need to cultivate attitudes that recognize the expression and full realization of human potential as the only worthwhile goals in life. To put it in the simplest possible terms: What matters is being as opposed to having, to just using and consuming and getting ahead. We have much more free time than we used to have (in many cases, as a society people have more leisure time, but a minority of the people have no free time at all), and therefore more opportunity for conversation. However, the more the external circumstances of our lives encourage it, the less internal inclination toward it we seem to have. There is too much that interferes with that being together that keeps a community sane and healthy; there are too many gadgets and Facebook and machines that get in our way. It seems that a very specific and pervasive attitude prevents us from engaging in what we have been calling “conversation” here. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

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And now with COVID-19, people are afraid to talk to each other, they will not hug each other nor shake hands, they are prohibited by law from going to church or the hair salon, and schools. Many people can no longer gather in large groups, even in their own homes, so society is becoming anti-social out of fear and the fear is being enforced by state and local governments in the forms of fines, jail time, and other penalties. However, even before COVID-19 was instilling fear in society, I think we could even say that many people (probably the great majority) are afraid of being left alone with each other without some plan of action, without a radio, or Smart TV, without a subject to discuss, without an agenda. They are afraid and feel totally lost. They have no idea what to say to each other. I do not know if this is holds true in Germany or Japan or China, but in the United States of America it is customary never to invite a single individual or just one other couple to your home. You always have to have more guests, because it can be embarrassing if you are only four. In a small company you have to work hard to keep things from being boring, unless you plan to play all your old Motown records. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

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If you have a party of six, you still will not have any real conversation, but you will at least avoid painful lulls in the chatter. Somebody will always have something to say. When one person runs out of subjects, someone else can step in. It is a kind of double concert. The music never stops, but no real conversation takes. Place. Victorian times where different, houses were sectioned off into many rooms and often times had a front parlor, near the foyer, to great guest, and another parlor in the back of the house for family. People also had intimate and meaning conversations because traveling was more complicated and communication in general was. So the Victorians enjoyed their intimate gathers and their conversations were as deep as diary entries. In modern times, homes are built for entertainment. The many of the homes have an open concept, which allows for connection of the main living areas and there is even an upstairs lobby in many of the new homes where people can gather out in the open. Many of the new homes made by Cresleigh are designed for entertainment, multi-generational living, spaces where people can come together and communicate in groups. However, in modern times, I suspect a lot of people think that if a form of entertainment does not cost anything it cannot be very satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

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Industry propaganda has trained us all to think that happiness comes from objects that we can buy, and very few of us are ready to believe any more that we can live and live very happily without all that stuff. That is a great change from the last, as we have discussed. One hundred and fifty years ago people bought very few things for their entertainment, even people with comfortable middle-class incomes. There was no radio, or Smart TV; there were no cars and no Facebook. However, there was conversation. People even built séance rooms to converse with “spirits.” Of course, if you look upon conversation as a means of “diversion,” hen your conversation will be mere twaddle. Real conversation does not “divert.” It requires concentration, a gather of our powers, not a scattering of them. If a person is not alive within oneself, then one’s conversation cannot be very lively either. However, if they were not afraid to step out of themselves, to show who they really are, to cast off the crutches they think they need to keep from tumbling down to nothingness, if they were not afraid to be alone with themselves and others, there are many people who could be much livelier. The power or energy by which this is effected, like that in other natural events, is unknown and inconceivable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

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 We are conscious of a power or energy in our own minds, when, by an act or command of our will, we raise up a new idea, fix the mind to the contemplation of it, turn it on all sides, and at last dismiss I for some other idea, when we think that we have surveyed it with sufficient accuracy. When we know a power, we know that very circumstance in the cause, by which it is enabled to produce the effect: For these are supposed to be synonymous. We must, therefore, know both the cause and effect, and the relation between them. However, we do not pretend to be acquitted with the nature of the human soul and the nature of an idea, or the aptitude of the one to produce the other. This is a real creation; a production of something out of nothing; Which implies a power so great, that may seem, at first sight, beyond the reach of any being, less than infinite. At least it must be owned, that such a power is not felt, nor known, nor even conceivable by the mind. We only feel the event, namely, the existence of an idea, consequent to a command of the will: But the manner, in which this operation is performed; the power, by which it is produced; is entirely beyond our comprehension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

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The command of the mind over itself is limited, as well as its command over the body; and these limits are not known by reason, or any acquaintance with the nature of cause and effect; but only experience and observation, as in all other natural events and in the operation of external objects. Our authority over our sentiments and passions is much weaker than that over our ideas; and even the latter authority is circumscribed within very narrow boundaries. Will any one pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these boundaries, or show why the power is deficient in one case not in another. This self-command is very different at different ties. A human in health possesses more of it, than one languishing with sickness. We are more master of our thought in the morning than in the evening: Fasting, than after a full meal. Can we give any reason for these variations, except experience? Where then is the power, of which we pretend to be conscious? Is there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible? #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

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Volition is surely an act of the mind, with which we are sufficiently acquainted. Reflect upon it. Consider it on all sides. Do you find anything in it like this creative power, by which it raises from nothing a new idea, and with a kind of FIAT, imitates the omnipotence of its Maker, if I may be allowed so to speak, who called forth into existence all the various scenes of nature? So far from being conscious of this energy in the will, it requires as certain experience, as that of which we are possessed, to convince us, that such extraordinary effects do ever result from a simple act of volition. The tongue, so tiny, is immensely powerful. Four reporters, good old body, having a few beers in a Denver bar in 1899, provided the specious spark that ignited the infamous Boxer Rebellion. The tongue is indeed mightier than generals and their armies. It can fuel our lives so they become fiery furnaces, or it can cool our lives with the soothing wind of the Spirit. It can be forged by Hell, or it can be a tool of Heaven. Offered to God on the altar, the tongue has awesome power for god. It can proclaim the life-changing message of salvation: “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who good news!’” reports Romans 10.14-15. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

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The tongue has power for sanctification as we share God’s Word: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth,” reports John 17.17. It has power for healing: “For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflict on the outside, fears within. However, God, who comforts the downcast, comforts us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so that my joy was greater than ever,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.5-7. The tongue has power for worship: “Though Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name,” reports Hebrews 13.15. Humans, it is up to us. No sweat, no sanctification! First, we must ask God t cauterize our lips, confessing as Isaiah did, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” reports Isaiah 6.5. Then we need to submit to the cleansing touch: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘who shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me,’” reports Isaiah 6.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

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Isaiah’s outline as a spiritual exercise, performed with all one’s heart, will work wonders in our lives. Let us all do this today! In conjunction, there must also be an ongoing prayerfulness regarding the use of our tongues—regular, detailed prayer. This, coupled with the first step, will work a spiritual miracle. We must also resolve to discipline ourselves regarding the use of the tongue, making solemn resolutions such as the following: to perpetually and loving speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4.15). To refrain from being party to or a conduit for gossip (Proverbs 16.28; 17.9; 26.20). To refrain from insincere flatter (Proverbs 26.28). To refrain from running down another (James 4.11). To refrain from degrading humour (Ephesians 5.4). To refrain from sarcasm (Proverbs 26.24-25). To memorize Scriptures which teacher the proper use of the tongue (speech). Human, discipline your tongue for the purpose of Godliness! “Who keeps the tongue doth keep one’s soul.” A flaming spear out of the chaos Dear Lord in Heaven, come to your people and be a skillful hand against the chaos. God, please come to your people and be a mind keenly ordered amidst the chaos. God, please come to your people as a faithful protector through all the chaos. God, please come to your people as we are lost in the expanse of limitless space containing infinite numbers of stars but filled with emptiness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

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We cast ourselves into your measureless darkness, confident that you will come if only we wait. Though the night may be long, we will still wait for you, God, offering our patience in sacrifice to win your presence. “And now, my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the restoration of which has been spoken; for behold, some have wrestled the scriptures, and have gone far astray because of this thing. And I perceive that thy mind has been worried also concerning this thing. However, behold, I will explain it unto thee. I say unto thee, my son, that the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of humans should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself. And it is requisite with the justice of God that humans should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good. And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

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Therefore, all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other—the one raised to happiness according to one’s desires of happiness, or good according to one’s desires of good; and the other to evil according to one’s desires of evil; for as one has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall one have one’s reward of evil when the night cometh. And so it is on the other hand. If one hath repented of one’s sins, and desired righteousness until the end of one’s days, even so one shall be rewarded unto righteousness. These are they that are redeemed of the Lord; yea, these are they that are taken out, that are delivered from that endless night of darkness; and thus they stand or fall; for behold, they are their own judges, whether to do good or do evil. Now, the decrees of God are unalterable; therefore, the way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved. And now behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

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“Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness. And now, my son, all humans that are, in a carnal state, are in he gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; they are without God in the World, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God; therefore, they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness. And now behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature? O, my son, this is not the case; but the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful. Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and you shall have good rewarded unto you again. For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored; therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner, and justifieth one not at all,” reports Alma 41.1-15.  #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Cresleigh Homes

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Time to explore more #CresleighHomes! Our blog today takes a look at #Bluffs, the cul-de-sac community located at #PlumasRanch! Click the link in our bio to give it a read. 👍 https://cresleigh.com/blog/

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On the edge of sight I can see a wonder: The Lord in all His glory. If I send swift thoughts racing after Him, I cannot overtake Him; His careful steps keep ahead of my impetuous racing. I call out to God: “Father, for the sake of the one who loves you, I beg you to stop.” He comes to a halt and I can approach. God says, “If you had done that first, it would have been better.” I remember, and call to God in love, and wait for Him to stop for me. May God, who pressed out, is life, is power, may God whose roaring calls us to the ritual, to drink, may God, granting gifts, filling us with immortality, may God, King of the Universe, be praised in His prayer. May God, hear me, come to join me in this rite. May my words draw God hither.

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The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth is Certainly Quite Inadequate!

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God has never explained to humans the secret of physical birth—then why should we hesitate to accept the birth of the spiritual human? Both come from God. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any human have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

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“However, if the Spirit of one that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, one that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we say, Abba, Father. The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God…Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And one that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is in the mind of the spirit, because one maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God,” reports Romans 8.1-16, 26-27. This sounds difficult to our modern ears, strange and almost unintelligible. Words like “spirit” and “flesh,” “sin” and “law,” “life” and “death,” in their various combinations, appear to us as philosophical abstractions, rather than as concrete descriptions of Christian experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

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For Paul, however, they express the most real and the most concrete experience of his life. This eighth chapter of his letter to the Christians in Rome is like a hymn praising, in ecstatic words, the new reality which has appeared to him, which was revealed in history and had transformed his whole existence. Paul calls this new being “Christ,” in so far as it has first become visible in Jesus the Christ. And he calls it “Spirit,” in so far as it is a reality in the spirit of every Christian, and in the spirit which constitutes the assembly of Christians in every place and time. Both names designate the same reality. Christ is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. A Christian is one who participates in this new reality, that is, one who has the Spirit. “If any human have not the Spirit of Christ, one is none of one’s life.” To be a Christian means to have the Spirit, and any description of Christianity must be a description of the manifestations of the Spirit. Let us follow the description that Paul gives us of the Spirit; and let us compare our own experience with it. In so doing we may discover both how far away we are from the experience of Paul, and, at the same time, how similar our experience is to his. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

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These strange words of his may reveal more to us about our lives than anything our contemporaries may think and write about the nature of humans, their lives, and this destiny. “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” These words imply that our spirit is unable to give us such assurance. Our spirit, that is, our natural mind, our though, our will, our emotions, the whole of our interior life, cannot give us the certainty that we are the children of God. This does not mean that Paul depreciates human nature and spirit. On the contrary in speaking of our spirit, he acknowledges the creativity of humans, their similarity to God Who is Spirit, their ability to be free oneself, and to liberate all nature, from vanity and the bondage of corruption by one’s own liberation. “For we are also his offspring,” he told the Athenians in his famous speech on the Areopagus, thus confirming their own philosophers. Paul thinks as highly of humans as any modern could do. A famous Renaissance philosopher describes, in lyrical words, the position of humans at the center of nature, one’s infinity and creativity, the unity and fulfillment in one of all natural powers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

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Paul would agree. However, Paul knew something more than the Greek philosophers knew, something which the Renaissance philosophers had forgotten, namely, that human spirit is bound to human flesh, and that human flesh is hostile to God. “Human flesh” does not mean human body. Human’s body, according to Paul, can become a temple of the Spirit. However, “human flesh” means the natural human inclinations, human’s desires, their needs, their way of thinking, the aim of their will, the character of their feeling, in so far as it is separated from the Spirit and is hostile to it. “Flesh” is the distortion of human nature, the abuse of its creativity—the abuse, first of all, f its infinity, in the service of its unlimited desire and its unlimited will to power. This desire, of which we know something through recent psychology, and this will to power, of which we have learned much from modern sociology, are rooted in our individual existence in time and space, in body and flesh. This is what Paul calls the power of distorted flesh. He describes the will of flesh with a profundity which cannot be equalled. “The carnal mind (mind of the flesh) is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

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If we receive a law which we must acknowledge and which, on the other hand, we cannot fulfill, our soul inevitably develops hatred against one who has given the law. The father, being the representative of the law which stands against the child’s desire, necessarily becomes the object of the unconscious hate, which may become conscious and may appear with tremendous force. If the law against its unordered and unrestricted desire were felt by the child to be arbitrary and unjustified, this would not be so. However, it is felt to be justified. It has become part of the child’s “super-ego,” as recent psychology would say; or, in the language of traditional ethics, it has become a demand of one’s conscious. Because the law given by the father is good, and the child cannot help recognizing this, and therefore because the law is inescapable, the child must hate the father; for he seems to be the cause of the torturing split in the child’s soul. That is the situation of humans before God. The natural human hates God and regards Him as the enemy, because He represents for humans the law which one cannot reach, against which one struggles, and which at the same time, one must acknowledge as good and true. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

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There is no difference, at this point, between the theist and the atheist. Atheism is only a form of enmity against God, namely, that God Who represents the law, and, with the law, the split and the despair and the meaninglessness of our existence. The atheist as well as the theist hates to be confronted with what one ought to be, with the ultimate meaning and good which one cannot deny and yet which one cannot reach. The atheist gives other names to God, Whom one hates, but one cannot escape Him, any more than one can escape one’s hatred of Him. This is the reason Paul does not say: “Our own spirit witnesses to us that we are the children of God.” Our own spirit only witnesses that we are his enemies! Always when Christianity speaks of God and of our loving God in our daily life, it should remember that. The majesty of God is challenged, when we make Him the loving Father before we have recognized Him as the condemning law, Whom we hate in the depths of our hearts. “The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” Something new has come, a new reality, a new being, a Spirit distinguished from our spirit, yet able to make itself understood to our spirit, beyond us and yet in us. The whole message of Christianity is contained in this statement. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

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Christianity overcomes law and despair by the certainty that we are the children of God. There is nothing higher than this. For although we are in the flesh and under the law and in the cleavage of our existence, we are, at the same time, in the Spirit and in the fulfillment and unity with the ultimate meaning of our life. This paradox, for Paul, is the astonishing and, humanly speaking, the incredible content of Christianity. This certainty gave him the impulse to preach his message to the whole World, and to conquer it. It gave him the power to break with his caste and his nation, and to take upon himself an abundant among of suffering and struggle, and finally, martyrdom. Christ has overcome the law, the system of command which makes us slaves because we cannot escape it, and which throws us into despair because it makes us enemies of our own destiny and our own ultimate good. Having this certainty that we are the children of God means, for Paul, “having the Spirit.” Out of this certainty follows everything that makes Christian existence what it is. First of all, it gives us the power to cry, “Abba, Father!” that is the power to pray the Lord’s prayer. Only one who has the Spirit has the power to say “Father” to God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

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The mind plays an important role in determining what a person is able to see, will, feel, and desire. If this is true, then intellectual development can pay rich dividends in the changes that result in one’s other faculties. In order to focus our thoughts about this topic, let us consider the mind’s role in the process of seeing. Philosophers distinguish three different kinds of seeing. Consider an ordinary case of seeing a dog. First, there is simple seeing: having the dog directly present to you in your visual field and noticing the dog. You do not need to have a concept of what a dog is to see one. For example, a little child could see a dog without having a concept of what a dog is supposed to be. In fact, you do not even need to be thinking about a dog to see it. I could see a dog while looking out my window as I ponder the topic of this essay. Even though I would not be thinking about the dog, I could still see it and, later, recall from memory the dog’s colour. In simple seeing, a person sees merely by means of the soul’s faculty of sight. Second, there is seeing as. Here I see an object as being something or other. I may see the dog as a dog. I may even see the dog as a cat if the lighting is poor and I have been led to believe that only cats, but no dogs, live in the area. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

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I can see the dog as my neighbour’s favourite pet. An act of seeing as involves classifying the object of sight as an example of a mental concept, and concepts are located in the mind. Thus, an act of seeing as requires both the faculties of sight and mind working together. When I see a dog as a dog, I must have some concept of what it is to be a dog and apply this concept to the object I am seeing. I could not see a dog as a dog the first time I saw one since I would not have the relevant concept yet. Likewise, to see a dog as my neighbour’s favourite pet, I need the concept of a neighbour, a pet, and being a favourite. Third, there is seeing that. Here one judges with the mind that some perceptual belief is true. If I see that the dog is my neighbour’s favourite pet, I judge that this belief is true of the object I am seeing. If I merely see the dog as my neighbour’s favourite pet, I do not really have to think this is true. I may just be playing with different concept in my mind. I may be thinking, What would it be like to see his dog as my neighbour’s favourite pet? even though I do not think it really is. A developed mind helps us see, but how? Simple seeing only involves the faculty of sight. However, seeing as and seeing that involves the mind. This is why the more one knows, the more one can see. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

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A doctor and I can look at the same skin condition (a case of simple seeing), but he observes more than I do because his mind is filled with medical concepts and beliefs I do not have, which enable him or her to notice things I fail to observe. One can see the sore as a basal cell or as a squamous cell carcinoma—that is, he or she can look at the skin area in both ways to be in a position to look for the right things, so that one can identify it, or “see it as,” a basal cell. I cannot do this because my mind lacks the relevant intellectual categories the doctor possesses. I can stare at the same sore all day long and not see what the doctor sees. Consider another example. Last week the news covered a march on Washington in favour of children’s rights. A congresswoman made the following argument: “Governments should honour children’s rights. Therefore, just as the government should vouchsafe a child’s right not to be molested and stalked, so it should do so for a child’s right to government-sponsored day care.” Now, what is wrong with this argument as it stands? Do you see what I see in this piece of reasoning? If I pace a mental distinction in your mind, it may help your seeing: the distinction between negative and positive rights. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

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A negative right is a right to be protected from some sort of harm. Negative rights place a duty on the government to keep others from doing something to me. A positive right is a right to have something provided for me. Positive rights place a duty on the government to force others (for instance by taxation) to do something for me. For example, if health care is a negative right, the government must see to it that I can get whatever health care I can afford by my own labour unhindered by unfair limitations based on race, creed, or gender. However, if health care is a positive right, the government has a duty to raise the taxes sufficient to provide me with health care. In the congresswoman’s argument about children’s rights, she fails to make this distinction. Moreover, many people believe that New Testament teaching on the state implies that it is responsible for protecting negative rights, not for providing positive ones. The issue here is not that these people (conservatives) are correct in this regard (though I think they). The issue is that, for a long time, the distinction between negative and positive rights has been recognized, and many informed political philosophers have raised arguments against positive rights. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

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This conflict means that a person cannot simply assert that because the government should guard a child’s negative right to be protected against abuse, it is also the government’s duty to provide day care for children. A person could read the congresswoman’s statement several times and not see this issue is he or she did not have the intellectual concepts and beliefs already in mind. This example illustrates the way knowledge helps one see things unavailable to one who has not developed his or her intellect in the relevant area of study. We often read the Bible, hear the news, listen to a sermon, or talk to friends, yet we do not get much out of it. One central reason for this may be our lack of knowledge and intellectual growth. The more you know, the more you see and hear because your mind brings more to the task of “seeing as” or “seeing that.” In fact, the more you know about extrabiblical matters, the more you will see in the Bible. Why? Because you will see distinctions in the Bible or connections between Scripture and an issues in another area of life that would not be possible without the concepts and categories placed in the mind’s structure by gaining the relevant knowledge in those extrabiblical areas of thought. Thus, general intellectual development can enrich life and contribute to Bible study and spiritual formation. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

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There is a closely related reason why intellectual development can enhance spiritual development: The mind forms habits and falls into ruts. One day at a chapel meeting, a missions professor showed a film clip of a foreign culture unfamiliar to most of us. He asked us to write down everything we noticed. He then showed the clip a second time and asked us to repeat the exercise. Everyone in the chapel meeting compared his or her first and second lists and, in every cause, they were virtually identical! The professor’s lesson: our minds get into ruts in which we tend to look for things we have already seen in order to validate our earlier perceptions. We seldom look at things from entirely fresh perspectives! If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we get into ruts in our thinking and develop habits of thought that can grow stale after a while. This is where renewing the mind comes in. A life of study can give us a constant source of new categories and beliefs that will lead to fresh new insights and stave off intellectual boredom. Many people become bored with Bible precisely because their overall intellectual growth is stagnant. They cannot get new insights from Scripture because they bring the same old categories to Bible study and look to validate their old habits of thought. How does the mind interact with other parts of the person? Space forbids me to develop in depth the mind’s role in shaping our willing feeling, and desiring. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

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However, it should be easy to apply our discussion of the mind’s role in seeing to these other areas of human functioning. If I do not know what or how it works, I cannot choose to do something. If I do not believe it is good, valuable, and desirable, I cannot desire something. If my thoughts and beliefs about someone run in the opposite direction, I cannot feel tender toward that person. It is true that the other faculties of the soul affect the mind too. And an overall strategy for personal growth should work on developing and integrating every facet of human personality under Christ’s lordship. Still, I think the mind stands out for special emphasis because it is so neglected today by many Christians. The contemporary Christian mind is starved, and as a result we have small, impoverished souls. The hierarchy of basic needs is prepotent to the metaneeds. Basic needs and metaneeds are in the same hierarchical-integration, id est, on the same continuum, in the same realm of discourse. They have the same basic characteristic of being “needed” (necessary, good for the person) in the sense that their deprivation produces “illness” and diminution, and that their “ingestion” fosters growth toward full humanness, toward greater happiness and joy, toward psychological “success,” toward more peak-experiences, and in general toward living more often at the level of being. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

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That is, the metaneeds are all biologically desirable, and all foster biological success. And yet, they are also different in definable ways. First of all, it is clear that the whole hierarchy of the basic needs is prepotent to the metaneeds, or, to say it in another way, the metaneeds are postpotent (less urgent or demanding, weaker) to the basic needs. I intend this as a generalized statistical statement because I find some single individuals in whom a special-talent or a unique sensitivity makes truth or beauty or goodness, for that single person, more important and more pressing than some basic need. Secondly, the basic needs can be called deficiency-needs, having the various characteristics already described for deficiency-needs, while the metaneeds seems rather to have the special characteristics described for “growth-motivations.” The metaneeds are equally potent among themselves on the average—id est, I cannot detect a generalized hierarchy of prepotency. However, in any given individual, they may be and often are hierarchically arranged according to idiosyncratic talents and constitutional differences. The metaneeds (or B-values, or B-facts) so far as I can many out are not arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency, but seem, all of the, to be equally potent on the average. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

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Another way of saying this, a phrasing that is useful for other purposes, is that each individual seems to have one’s own priorities or hierarchy or prepotency, in accordance with one’s own talents temperament skills, capacities, et cetera. Beauty is more important than truth to one person, but for one’s brother it may be the other way about with equal statistical likelihood. It looks as if any intrinsic or B-value is fully defined by most or all of the other B-values. Perhaps they form a unity of some sort, with each specific B-value being simply the whole seen from another angle. That is, truth, to be fully and completely defined, must be beautiful, good, perfect, just, simple, orderly, lawful, alive, comprehensive, unitary, dichotomy-transcending, effortless, and amusing. (The formula, “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” is certainly quite inadequate.) Beauty, fully defined, must be true, good perfect, alive, simple, et cetera. He it is who appears suddenly; he does not give me time to prepare. And how would I prepare, anyway, against one such as him? Nothing can withstand him, if that be his wish: he is the unconquered one, the victor, inexorably advancing. Lord of Radiance, I wait for you. I will not resist. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

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Come like a blasting wind; even then I will be here with mind open before you, even then I will be here with heart open before you, even then I will be here with hands open before you, awaiting your arrival. “Now it came to pass that after Amulek had made an end of these words, they withdraw themselves from the multitude and came over int the land in Jershon. Yea, and the rest of the brethren, after they had preached the word unto the Zoramites, also came over into the land of Jershon. And it came to pass that after the more popular part of the Zoramites had consulted together concerning the words which had been preached unto them, they were angry because of the word, for it did destroy their craft; therefore they would not hearken unto the words. And they sent and gathered together throughout all the land all the people, and consulted with them concerning the words which had been spoken. Now their rulers and their priests and their teachers did not let the people know concerning their desires; therefore they found out privily the minds of all the people. And it came to pass that after they had found out the minds of all the people, those who were in favour of the words which had been spoken by Alma and his brethren were cast out of the land; and they were many; and they came over also into the land of Jershon. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

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“And it came to pass that Alma and his brethren did minister unto them. Now the people of the Zoramites were angry with the people of Ammon who were in Jershon, and the chief ruler of the Zoramites, being a very wicked man, sent over unto the people of Ammon desiring them that they should cast out of their land all those who came over from them into their land. And he breathed out many threatenings against them. And now the people of Ammon did not fear their words; therefore they did not cast them out, but they did receive all the poor of the Zoramites that came over unto them; and they did nourish them, and did clothe them, and did give unto them lands for their inheritance; and they did administer unto them according to their wants. Now this did stir up the Zoramites to anger against the people of Ammon, and they began to mix with the Lamanites and to stir them up also to anger against them. And thus the Zoramites and the Lamanites began to make preparations for war against the people of Ammon, and also against the Nephites. And thus ended the seventeenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

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And the people of Ammon departed out of the land of Jershon, and came over into the land of Melek, and gave place in the land of Melek, and gave place in the land of Jershon for the armies of the Nephites, that they might content with the armies of the Lamanites and the armies of the Zoramites; and thus commenced a war betwixt the Lamanites and the Nephites, in the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And the people of Ammon departed out of the land of Jershon, and came over into the land of Melek, and gave place in the land of Jershon for the armies of the Nephites, that they might contend with the armies of the Zoramites; and thus commenced a war betwixt the Lamanites and the Nephites, in the eighteenth year of the reign or the judges; and an account shall be given of their war hereafter. And Alma, and Ammon, and their brethren, and also the two sons of Alma returned to the land of Zarahemla, after having been instruments in the hands of God of brining many of the Zoramites to repentance; and as many as were brought to repentance were driven out of their land; but they have lands for their inheritance in the land of Jershon, and they have taken up arms to defend themselves, and their wives, and children, and their lands. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

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“Now Alma, being grieved for the iniquity of his people, yea for the wars, and the bloodsheds, and the contentions which were among them; and having been to declare the word, or sent to declare the word, among all the people in every city; and seeing that the hearts of the people began to wax hard, and that they began to be offended because of the strictness of the word, his heart was exceedingly sorrowful. Therefore, he caused that his sons should be gathered together, that he might give unto them every one his charge, separately, concerning the things pertaining unto righteousness. And we have an account of his commandments, which he gave unto them according to his own record,” reports Alma 35.1-17. You who created light, both human and divine. You accompanied by angels and the Holy Ghost: both powerful and spiritual. You who sit upon the threshold: both in and out. You are the Lord of Heavens and Earth, to you I pray. I am here, Lord, beneath your over-reaching dome, calling to you from the World so far below you. I send my words up to you, building a road on which you might descend. See them there, glowing in the air, the straight road leading to me. Come to me, I ask, guiding yourself by my prayer, come without error, and without delay, to me. Between us there is a bond, strengthened by the thread of my prayer. Come to me, who worship you. Come, answer my prayer. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Cresleigh Homes

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Buying a home can be a confusing experience for many. Today’s blog tackles closing costs: what are they, and what can you do to make the process go as smoothly as possible. Check it out at the link in bio! https://cresleigh.com/blog/

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Tell me, Lord what your message is for me. I have tried to decide for some time just what it is that you have to teach me. Now, at the end of my resources, I finally do what I should have done first: ask yourself. Please speak to me, Lord, and I will listen. https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/residence-4/virtual-tour/

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#CresleighHomes

The Fate of Unborn Millions Will Now Depend, Under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this Nation!

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I am not of your World. I have spent all my life in prison when I was a child. I was an orphan and too ugly to be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set free. I am Earth. I am pro-eternal life and I want us all to end up in Heaven together someday. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. If both rich and poor are giving up life itself and yet both are deeply dissatisfied, even suffering, they will never feel paid enough for their lot in life: what has gone on is not a trade or exchange, but a sacrifice. Social and structural institutions including Law, economy, government/state, family, communities and community organizations, and social groups, among others, provide the space in which we institute popular, secular, religious, and personal notions of justice. Governance and Law are often bureaucracies and institutions that are formed to represent and uphold particular notions on justice. It is, therefore, not coincidental that much civil disobedience is aimed at these state institutions. Often, these institutions support, constrict, and conflict with personal ideologies about justice. Just as with ideas about political and social institutions, theorists of justice have grappled with many ways that economies both reinforce oppression and domination, as well as liberation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24

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Justice is not just the province of states or institutions or structures, but rather a feature of our everyday lives. We live with justice, and contend with the question of justice. With each act of kindness, compassion, love, caring, and empathy, we create and regenerate these in our everyday lives with others. The study of justice is misleading because rather than focusing on justice we frequent are forced to engage with the study of injustice instead. Justice is not so much a problem to be “solved” as it is a set of questions or issues that we live with and struggle with. By providing you with a vision of the World that has many intersecting, overlapping forms of domination and oppressions, we often raise more questions than we can answer, but we encourage further inquiry with the many visions of justice. It is a fact of great analytic importance that life is complicated. That life is complicated may seem a banal formulation of the obvious, but it is actually a significant theory. Dimension dealing with power relations that characterize any society are never as transparently clear as the names we give to them suggest. Power can be invisible, it can be fantastic, it can be dull and routine, it can be grand and obvious. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24

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Power can reach you by a pay check being deposited in your bank account, it can speak the language of your own thoughts and desires. It can feel like a remote control, it can exhilarate like liberation. It can travel through time and it can drown you in the present. It is dense and superficial, it can cause bodily injury, and it can injury you without seemingly ever touching you. It causes dreams to live and dreams to die. It is systematic and it is particularistic. We can and must can it by names like racism, for example, but also we need to understand that power arrives in forms that can range from blatant supremacy of one’s culture, formal education, the decision to buy a home, or it can even be life being looked at without fear. Our ability to speak is just one aspect of the evolutionary drive to create a more accurate World in our heads. Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. Complex personhood means that all people, albeit in specific forms, are beset by contradiction, remember and forget, and recognize and misrecognize themselves and others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24

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Complex personhood means that people suffer graciously and selfishly too, get stuck in what symptomizes their troubles and also transform themselves. Complex personhood means that even those who haunt the dominant society are haunted too by things they sometimes have names for and sometimes do not. Complex personhood means that groups of people will act together, that they will vehemently disagree with and sometimes harm each other, and that they do both at the same time and expect the rest of us to figure it our for ourselves, intervening and withdrawing as the situation requires. At the very least, complex personhood is about conferring the respect on others that comes from presuming that life and people’s lives are straightforward and full of enormously complex meaning. Understanding that life is complex may allow us to see deep into the heart and soul of American life and culture, to track events, stories, anonymous and history-making actions to their destiny, to the point where we might catch a glimpse of the vast networking of society and imagine otherwise. Civilization can be defined at once by the basic questions it asks and by those it does not ask. We should not give some real thought to the possibility of reforming our technology in the directions of smallness, simplicity, and nonviolence.  #RandolphHarris 4 of 24

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Most significantly theoretical thinking and intellectual largesse are the activities most denied to those who are powerless. Denied because the powerless are not presumed to posses the “mind” that could produce generalizable imaginations for all of us; denied because the division between mental and manual labour takes all kinds of forms, including this one; denied because this privilege belongs to those to whom the institutions of higher learning belong. The denial, in itself, would be reason enough for me to agree that, at the very least, it is an act of historical reparation to invite some folks to spend a lot of time doing what is often considered “useless” intellectual work. Of course, you see I do not think it is useless, but its economy of use is a different and not necessarily tied to immediate service work for others. One of the goals of the society I would rather live in consists in making available to all the pleasures (and challenges and the range of other emotions and outcomes) of thinking, of learning, of reading aimlessly of “wasting” your time by filling your head with “useless stuff,” as I was always described to be as a kid. Why? Because knowledge in its own right, of all kinds, is a great gift of culture and something too long hoarded and manipulated and forcibly withheld from people. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24

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Giving away knowledge without having to earn it seems like a good idea to me. However, it has been frowned upon because if people do not earn the knowledge, they may misuse it. A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred people with guns. I shall think of intuitionism in a more general way than is customary: namely, as the doctrine that there is an irreducible family of first principles which have to be weighed against one another by asking ourselves which balance, in our considered judgment, is the most just. Once we reach a certain level of generality, the intuitionist maintains that there exist no higher-order constructive criteria for determining the proper emphasis for the competing principles of justice. While the complexity of the moral facts requires a number of distinct principles, there is no single standard that account for them or assigns them their weights. Intuitionist theories, then, have two features: first, they consist of a plurality of first principles which may conflict to give contrary directives in particular types of cases; and second, they include no explicit method, no priority rules, for weighing these principles against one another: we are simply to strike a balance by intuition, by what seems to us most nearly right. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24

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Or if there are priority rules, these are thought to be more or less trivial and of no substantial assistance in reaching a judgement. Various other contentions are commonly associated with intuitionism, for example, that the concepts of the right and the good are unanalyzable, that moral principles when suitably formulated express self-evident propositions about legitimate moral claims, and so on. However, I shall leave these matters aside. These characteristic epistemological doctrines are not a necessary part of intuitionism as I understand it. If we were to speak of intuitionism in this broad sense as pluralism, perhaps it would be better. Still, s conception of justice can be pluralistic without requiring us to weigh its principles by intuition. It may contain the requisite priority rules. To emphasize the direct appeal to our considered judgment in the balancing of principles, it seems appropriate to think of intuitionism in this more general fashion. How far such a view is committed to certain epistemological theories is a separate question. Now so understood, there are many kinds of intuitionism. Not only are our everyday notions of this type but so perhaps are most philosophical doctrines. One way of distinguishing between intuitionist views is by the level of generality of their principles. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24

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Common sense intuitionism takes the form of groups of rather specific precepts, each group applying to a particular problem of justice. There is a group of precepts which applies to the question of fair wages, another to that of taxation, still another to punishment, and so on. In arriving at the notion of a fair wage, say, we are to balance somehow various competing criteria, for example, the claims of skill, training, effort, responsibility, and hazards of the job, as well as to make some allowance for need. No one presumably would decide by any one of these precepts alone, and some compromise between them must be struck. The determination of wages by existing institutions also represents, in effect, a particular weighting of these claims. This weighting, however, is normally influenced by the demands of different social interests and so by relative positions of power and influence. It may not, therefore, conform to any one’s conception of a fair wage. This is particularly likely to be true since persons with different interests are likely to stress the criteria which advance their ends. Those with more ability and education are prone to emphasize the claims of skill and training, whereas those lacking these advantages urge the claim of need. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24

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However, not only are our everyday ideas of justice influenced by our own situation, they are also strongly coloured by custom and current expectations. And by what criteria are we to judge the justice of custom itself and the legitimacy of these expectations? To reach some measure of understanding and agreement which goes beyond a mere de facto resolution of competing interests and a reliance on existing conventions and established expectations, it is necessary to move to amore general scheme for determining the balance of precepts, or at least for confining it within narrower limits. Thus we can consider the problems of justice by reference to certain end of social policy. Yet this approach also is likely to rely on intuition, since it normally takes the form of balancing various economic and social objectives. For example, suppose that allocative efficiency, full employment, a larger national income, and its more equal distribution are accepted as social ends. Then, given the desired weighting of these aims, and the existing institutional setup, the precepts of fair wages, just taxation, and so on will receive their due emphasis. In order to achieve greater efficiency and equity, one may follow a policy which has the effect of stressing skill and effort in the payment of wages, leaving the precept of need to be handled in some other fashion, perhaps by welfare transfers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24

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An intuitionism of social ends provides a basis for deciding whether the determination of fair wages makes sense in view of the taxes to be imposed. How we weigh the precepts in one group is adjusted to how we weigh them in another. In this way we have managed to introduce a certain coherence in our judgments of justice; we have moved beyond the narrow de facto compromise of interests to a wider view. Of course we are still left with an appeal to intuition in the balancing of the higher order ends of policy themselves. Different weightings for these are not by any means trivial variations but often correspond to profoundly opposed political convictions. The principles of philosophical conceptions are of the most general kind. Not only are they intended to account for the ends of social policy, but the emphasis assigned to these principles should correspondingly determine the balance of these ends. For purposes of illustration, let us discuss a rather simply yet familiar conception based on the aggregative-distributive dichotomy. It has two principles: the basic structure of society is to be designed first to produce the most good in the sense of the greatest net balance of satisfaction, and second to distribute satisfactions equally. Both principles have, of course, ceteris paribus clauses. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24

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The first principle, the principle of utility, acts in this case as a standard of efficiency, urging us to produce as large a total as we can, other things equal; whereas the second principle serves as a standard of justice constraining the pursuit of aggregate well-being and evening out of the distribution of advantages. This conception is intuitionist because no priority rule is provided for determining how these two principles are to be balanced against each other. Widely different weights are consistent with accepting these principles. No doubt it is natural to make certain assumptions about how most people would in fact balance them. For one thing, at different combinations of total satisfaction and degrees of equality, we presumably would give these principles different weights. For example, if there is a large total satisfaction but it is unequally distributed, we would probably think it more urgent to increase equality than if the large aggregate well-being were already rather evenly shared. This can be put more formally by using the economist’s device of indifference curves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24

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 Assume that we can measure the extent to which particular arrangements of the basic structure satisfy these principles; and represent total satisfaction on the positive X-axis and equality on the positive Y-axis. (The latter may be supposed to have an upper bound at perfect equality.) The extent to which an arrangement of the basic structure fulfills these principles can now be represented by a point in the plane. Now clearly a point which is northeast of another is better arrangement: it is superior on both counts. For example, the point B: is better than the point A in figure 1. Indifference curves are formed by connecting points judged equally just. Thus curve I in figure 1 consists of the points rated equally with point A which lies on that curve; curve II consists of the points ranked along with point B, and so on. We may assume that these curves slope downward to the right and also that they do not intersect, otherwise the judgment they represent would be inconsistent. The slope of the curve at any point expresses the relative weights of equality and total satisfaction at the combination the point represents; the changing slope along an indifference curve shows how the relative urgency of the principles shifts as they are more or less satisfied. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24

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Thus, moving along either of the indifference curves in figure 1, we see that as equality decreases a larger and larger increase in the sum of satisfactions is required to compensate for a further decrease in equality. Moreover, very different weightings are consistent with these principles. Let figure 2 represent the judgments of two different persons. The solid lines depict the judgments of the one who gives a relatively strong weight to total welfare. Thus while the first person ranks arrangement D equal with C, the second judges D superior. This conception of justice imposes no limitations on what are the correct weightings; and therefore it allows different persons to arrive at a different balance of principles. Nevertheless such an intuitionist conception, it is were to fit our considered judgments on reflection, would be by no means without importance. At least would single out the criteria which are significant, the apparent axes, so to speak, of our considered judgments of social justice. The intuitionists hopes that once these axes, or principles, are identified, humans will in fact balance them more or less similarly, at least when they are impartial and not moved by an excessive attention to their own interests. Or if this is not so, then at least they can agree to some scheme whereby their assignment of weights can be compromised. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24

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It is essential to observe that the intuitionist does not deny that we can describe how we balance competing principles, or how any one human does so, supposing that we weigh them differently. The intuitionists grants the possibility that these weights can be depicted by indifference curves. Knowing the description of these weight, the judgments which will be made can be foreseen. In this sense these judgments have a consistent and definite structure. Of course, it may be claimed that in the assignment of weights we are guided, without being aware of it, by certain further standards or by how best to realize a certain end. Perhaps the weights we assign are those which would result if we were to apply these standards or to pursue this end. Admittedly any given balancing of principles is subjects to interpretation in this way. However, the intuitionist claims that, in fact, there is no such interpretation. One contends that there exists no expressible ethical conception which underlies these weights. A geometrical figure or a mathematical function may describe them, but there are no constructive moral criteria that establish their reasonableness. Intuitionism holds that in our judgments of socials justice we must eventually reach a plurality of first principles in regard to which we can only say that it seems to us more correct to balance them this way rather than that. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24

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Now there is nothing intrinsically irrational about this intuitionist doctrine. Indeed, it may be true. We cannot take for granted that there must be a complete derivation of our judgments of social justice from recognizable ethical principles. The intuitionist believes to the contrary that the complexity of the moral facts defines our efforts to give a full account to our judgments and necessitates a plurality of competing principles. One contends that attempts to go beyond these principles either reduce to triviality, as when it is said that social justice is to give every human one’s due, or else lead to falsehood and oversimplification, as when one settles everything by the principle of utility. The only way therefore to dispute intuitionism is to set forth the recognizably ethical criteria that account for the weights which, in our considered judgments, we think appropriate to give to the plurality of principles. A refutation of intuitionism consists in presenting the short of constructive criteria that are said not to exist. To be sure, the notion of a recognizably ethical principle is vague, although it is easy to give many examples drawn from tradition and common sense. However, it is pointless to discuss this matter in the abstract. The intuitionist and one’s critic will have to settle this question once the latter has put forward one’s more systematic account. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24

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It may be asked whether intuitionistic theories are teleological or deontological. They may be of either kind, and any ethical view is bound to rely on intuition to some degree at many points. For example, one could maintain, as Moore did, that personal affection and human understanding, the creation and the contemplation of beauty, and gaining and appreciation of knowledge are the chief good things, along with pleasure. And one might also maintain (as Moore did not) that these are the sole intrinsic goods. Since these values are specified independently from the right, we have a teleological theory of a perfectionist type if the right is defined as maximizing the good. Yet in estimating what yields the most good, the theory may hold that these values have to be balanced against each other by intuition: it may say that there are no substantive criteria for guidance here. Often, however, intuitionist theories are deontological. In the definitive presentation of Ross, the distribution of good things according to moral worth (distributive justice) is included among the goods to be advanced; and while the principle to produce the most good ranks as a first principle, it is but one such principle which must be balanced by intuition against the claims of the other prima facie principles. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24

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The distinctive feature, then, of intuitionistic views is not their being teleological or deontological, but the especially prominent place that they give to the appeal to our intuitive capacities unguided by constructive and recognizably ethical criteria. Intuitionism denies that there exists any useful and explicit solution to the priority problem. The full definition of the person or of human nature must then include intrinsic values, as part of human nature. If we then try to define the deepest, most authentic, most constitutionally based aspects of the real self, of the indemnity, or of the authentic person, we find that in order to be comprehensive we must include not only the person’s constitution and temperament, not only anatomy, psychology, neurology, and endocrinology, not only one’s capacities, one’s biological style, not only one’s basic instinctoid needs, but also the  B-values, which are also one’s B-values. These intrinsic values are instinctoid in nature, id est, they are needed (a) to avoid illness and (b) to achieve fullest humanness or growth. The “illnesses” resulting from deprivation of intrinsic values (metaneeds) we may call metapathologies. The “highest” values, the spiritual life, the highest aspirations of humankind are therefore proper subjects for scientific study and research. They are in the World of nature. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24

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These “illnesses” (which come from deprivation of the B-values or metaneeds or B-facts) are new and have not yet been described as such id est, as pathologies, except unwittingly, or by implication, or in a very general and inclusive way, not yet teased apart into researchable form. In general they have been discussed through the centuries by religionists, historians, and philosophers under the rubric of spiritual or religious shortcomings, rather than by physicians, scientists, or psychologists under the rubric of psychiatric or psychological or biological “illnesses” or stuntings or diminutions. To some extent also there is some overlap with sociological and political disturbances, “social pathologies,” and the like. I will call these “illnesses” (or, better, diminutions of humanness) “metapathologies” and define them as the consequences of deprivation of the B-values either in general or of specific B-values. The metapathologies of the affluent and indulged young come partly from deprivation of intrinsic values, frustrated “idealism,” from disillusionment with a society they see (mistakenly) motivated only by lower or animal material needs. My hypothesis is that this behaviour can be a fusion of continued search for something to believe in, combined with anger at being disappointed. (I sometimes see in a particular young man total despair or hopelessness about even the existence of such values.) #RandolphHarris 18 of 24

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Of course, this frustrated idealism and occasional hopelessness is partially due to the influence and ubiquity of stupidly limited theories of motivation all over the World. Leaving aside behaviouristic and positivistic theories—or rather non-theories—as simple refusals even to see the problem, id est, a kind of psychoanalytic denial. Then what is available to the idealistic young man and woman? Not only does the whole of official nineteenth-century science and orthodox academic psychology offer one nothing, but also the major motivation theories by which most humans live can lead one only to depression or cynicism. The Freudians, at least in their official writings (though not in good therapeutic practice), are still reductionistic about all higher human values. The deepest and most real motivations are seen to be dangerous and nasty, while the highest human values and virtues are essentially fake, being not what they seem to be, but camouflaged versions of the “deep, dark, and dirty.” Our social scientist are just as disappointing in the main. A total cultural determinism is still the official, orthodox doctrine of many or most of the sociologists and anthropologists. This doctrine not only denies intrinsic higher motivations, but comes perilously close sometimes to denying “human nature” itself. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24

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The economists, not only in the West but also in the East, are essentially materialist. We must say harshly of the “science” of economics that it is generally the skilled, exact, technological application of a total false theory of human needs and values, a theory which recognizes only the existence of lower needs or material needs. How could young people not be disappointed and disillusioned? What else could be the result of getting all the material and animal gratifications and then not being happy, as they were led to expect, not only by the theorists, but also by the conventional wisdom of parents and teachers, and the insistent gray lies of the advertisers? What happens the to the “eternal verities”? to the ultimate truths? Most sections of society agree in handing them over to the churches and to dogmatic, institutionalized, conventionalized religious organizations. However, this is also a denial of high human nature! It says in effect that the youngster who is looking for something will definitely not find it in human nature itself. One must look for ultimates to a non-human, non-natural source, a source which is definitely mistrusted or rejected altogether by many intelligent young people today. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24

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“Now after Alma had spoken these words, they are sent forth unto him desiring to know whether they could believe in one God, that they might obtain this fruit of which he had spoken, or how they should plant the seed, or the word of which he had spoken, which he said must be planted in their hearts; or in what manner they should begin to exercise their faith. And Alma said unto them: Behold, ye have said that ye could not worship your God because ye are cast out of your synagogues. However, behold, I say unto you, if ye suppose that ye cannot worship God, ye do greatly err, and ye ought to search the scriptures; if ye supposed that they have taught you this, ye do not understand them. Do ye remember to have read what Zenos, the prophet of the old, has said concerning prayer or worship? For he said: Thou art merciful, O God, for thou hast heard my prayer, even when I was in the wilderness; yea, thou wast merciful when I prayed concerning those who were mine enemies, and thou didst turn them to me. 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. And when I did turn unto my closet, O Lord, and prayed unto thee, thou didst hear me. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24

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“Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children when they cry unto thee, to be heard of thee and not of humans, and thou wilt hear them. Yea, O God, thou hast been merciful unto me, and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations. Yea, and thou hast also heard me when I have been cast out and have been despised by mine enemies; yea, thou didst hear my cries, and wast angry with mine enemies, and thou didst visit them in thine anger with speedy destruction. And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy; for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son. And now Alma said unto them: Do ye believe what Zenos said; for, behold he said: Thou hast turned away thy judgments because of thy Son. Now behold, my brethren, I would ask if ye have read the scriptures? If ye have, how can ye disbelieve on the Son of God? For it is no written that Zenos alone spake of these things—for behold, he said: Thou angry, O Lord, with this people, because they will not understand thy mercies which though hast bestowed upon them because of thy Son. And now, my brethren, ye see that a second prophet of old has testified of the Son of God, an because the people would not understand this words they stoned him to death. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24

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“However, behold, this is no all; these are not the only ones who have spoken concerning the son of God. Behold, he was spoken of by Moses; yea, and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live. And many did look and live. However, few understood the meaning of those things, and this because of the hardness of their hearts. However, there were many who were hardened that they would not look, therefore they perished. Now the reason they would not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them. O my brethren, if ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes that ye might be healed, would ye not behold quickly, or would ye rather harden your hearts in unbelief, and be slothful, that ye would not cast about your eyes, that might perish? If so, who shall come upon you; but if not so, then cast about your eyes, and begin to believe in the Son of God, that we will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins; and that he shall rise again from the dead, which shall bring to pass the resurrection, that all humans shall stand before him, to be judged at the last and judgment day, according to their works. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24

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“And now, my brethren, I desire that ye shall plant this word in your hearts, and as it beginneth to swell even so nourish it by your faith. And behold, it will become a tree, springing up in you unto everlasting life. And then may God grant unto you that your burdens may be light, through the joy of his Son. And even all this can ye do if ye will. Amen,” reports Alma 33.1-23. I call to the Holy Ones with open hands asking that they come, that they grant me their presence. Mighty and Shining One, worthy of worship, I stand before you with welcoming words. Come to me that we might feast together again. With this small flame I send a message—it is my burning beacon fire. May you see it, Shining Ones, and draw near to me. Filled with holy power of God send to those they love I rise up in ecstasy, taken by them to the Land of Blessings. Fill me, carry me, lift me in glory; welcome me to your home. I pour out this libation to you, as has been done since ancient times. Come and accept your due. Can you hear my prayers as they go up in your honour? I am the one who wait for you, praising you, even in your absence. Do not withhold yourself from me, from one who brings you gifts, from one who awaits you patiently. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24

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Find Out What Happens and Why it Matters—This Generation Has a Rendezvous With Destiny!

A jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. Music is the glue which has kept this generation from falling apart in the face of incredible adult blindness and ignorance and evilness. It is the new educational system for reform and the medium for revolution. Being an entertainer, especially in times like these, is really a public service. I care about life, but, too, I care about Justice. If I cannot have both, then I choose Justice. I care about life, but then are things that I care about more than life. For that reason, I will not seek life improperly. It has seemed to many philosophers, and it appears to be supported by the convictions of common sense, that we distinguish as a matter of principle between the claims of liberty and right on the one had and the desirability of increasing aggregate social welfare on the other; and that we give a certain priority, if not absolute weight, to the former. Each member of society is thought to have an inviolability founded on justice or, as some say, on natural right, which even the welfare of everyone else cannot override. Justice denies that loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. The reasoning which balances the gains and losses of different persons as if they were one person is excluded. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

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Therefore in a just society the basic liberties are taken for granted and the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. Justice as fairness attempts to account for these common sense convictions concerning the priority of justice by showing that they are the consequence of principles which would be chosen in the original position. These judgments reflect the rational preferences and the initial equality of the contacting parties. Although the utilitarian recognizes that, strictly speaking, one’s doctrine conflicts with these sentiments of justice, one maintains that common sense precepts of justice and notions of natural right have but a subordinate validity as secondary rules; they arise from the fact that under the conditions of civilized society there is great social utility in following them for the most part and in permitting violations only under exceptional circumstances. Even the excessive zeal which we are apt to affirm these precepts and to appeal to these rights is itself granted a certain usefulness, since it counterbalances a natural human tendency to violate them in ways not sanctioned by utility. Once we understand this, the apparent disparity between the utilitarian principle and the strength of these persuasions of justice is no longer difficult. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

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Thus while the contract doctrine accepts our convictions about the priority of justice as on the whole sound, utilitarianism seeks to account for them as a socially useful illusion. A second contrast is that whereas the utilitarian extends to society the principle of choice for one human, justice as fairness, being a contract view, assumes that the principles of social choice, and so the principles of justice, are themselves the object of an original agreement. There is no reason to suppose that the principles which should regulate an association of humans is simply an extension of the principle of choice for one human. On the contrary: if we assume that the correct regulative principle for anything depends on the nature of that thing, and that the plurality of distinct persons with separate systems of ends is an essential feature of human societies, we should not expect the principles of social choice to be utilitarian. To be sure, it has not been shown by anything said so far that the parties in the original position would not choose the principle of utility to define the terms of social cooperation. This is a difficult question which we shall examine later on. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

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It is perfectly possible, from all that one knows at this point, that some form of the principle of utility would be adopted, and therefore that contract theory leads eventually to a deeper and more roundabout justification of utilitarianism. In fact a derivation of this kind is sometimes suggested by Betham and Edgeworth, although it is not developed by them in any systematic way and to my knowledge it is not found in Sidgwick. For the present I shall simply assume that the persons in the original position would reject the utility principle and that they would adopt instead, for the kinds of reasons previously sketched, the two principles of justice already mentioned. In any case, from the standpoint of contract theory one cannot arrive at a principle of social choice merely by extending the principle of rational prudence to the system of desires constructed by the impartial spectator. To do this is not to take seriously the plurality and distinctness of individuals, nor to recognize as the basic of justice that to which humans would consent. Here we may not a curious anomaly. It is customary to think of utilitarianism as individualistic, and certainly there are good reasons for this. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

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The utilitarians were strong defenders of liberty and freedom of thought, and they held that the good of society is constituted by the advantages enjoyed by individuals. Yet utilitarianism is not individualistic, at least when arrived at by the more natural courses of reflection, in that by conflating all systems of desires, it applies to society the principle of choice for one human. And thus we see that the second contrast is related to the first, since it is this conflation, and the principle based upon it, which subjects the rights secured by justice to the calculus of social interests. The last contrast that I shall mention now is that utilitarianism is a teleological theory whereas justice as fairness is not. By definition, then, the latter is a deontological theory, one that either does not specify the good independently from the right, or does not interpret the right as maximizing the good. (It should be noted that deontological theories are defined as non-teleological ones, not as views that characterize the rightness of institutions and acts independently from their consequences. All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy.) #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

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Justice as fairness is a deontological theory in the second way. For if it is assumed that the persons in the original position would choose a principle of equal liberty and restrict economic and social inequalities to those in everyone’s interests, there is no reason to think that just institutions will maximize the good. (Here I suppose with utilitarianism that the good is defined as the satisfaction of rational desire.) Of course, it is not impossible that the most good is produced but it would be a coincidence. The question of attaining the greatest new balance of satisfaction never arises in justice as fairness; this maximum principle is not used at all. There is a further point in this connection. In utilitarianism the satisfaction of any desire has some value in itself which must be taken into account in deciding what is right. In calculating the greatest balance of satisfaction it does not matter, expect indirectly, what the desires are for. We are to arrange institutions so as to obtain the greatest sum of satisfactions; we ask no questions about their source or quality but only how their satisfaction would affect the total of well-being. Social welfare depends directly and solely upon the levels of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the individuals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

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Thus if humans take a certain pleasure in discriminating against one another, in subjecting others to a lesser liberty as a means of enhancing their self-respect, then the satisfaction of these desires must be weighed in our deliberations according to their intensity, or whatever, along with other desires. If society decides to deny them fulfillment, or to suppress them, it is because they tend to be socially destructive and a greater welfare can be achieved in other ways. In justice as fairness, on the other hand, persons accept in advance a principle of equal liberty and they do this without a knowledge of their more particular ends. They implicitly agree, therefore, to conform their conceptions of their good to what the principles of justice require, or at least not press claims which directly violate them. An individual who finds that one enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that one has no claim whatever to this enjoyment. The pleasure one takes in other’s deprivations is wrong in itself: it is a satisfaction which requires the violation of a principle to which one would agree in the original position. The principles of right, and so of justice, put limits on which satisfactions have value; they impose restrictions on what are reasonable conceptions of one’s good. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23

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In drawing up plans and in deciding on aspirations humans are to take these constraints into account. Hence in justice as fairness one does not take human’s propensities and inclinations as given, whatever they are, and then seek the best way to fulfill them. Rather, their desires and aspirations are restricted from the outset by the principles of justice which specify the boundaries that human’s systems of ends must respect. We can express this by saying that in justice as fairness the concept of right is prior to that of good. A just social system defines the scope within which individuals must develop their aims, and it provides a framework of rights and opportunities and the means of satisfaction within and by the use of which these ends maybe equitably pursued. The priority of justice is accounted for, in part, by holding that the interests requiring the violation of justice have no value. Having no merit in the first place, they cannot override its claims. This priority of the right over the good in justice as fairness turns out to be a central feature of the conception. It imposes certain criteria on the design of the basic structure as a whole; these arrangements must not tend to generate propensities and attitudes contrary to the two principles of justice (that is, to certain principles which are given from the first a definite content) and they must ensure that just institutions are stable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

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Thus certain initial bounds are placed upon what is good and what forms of character are morally worthy, and so upon what kinds of persons people should be. Now any theory of justice will set up some limits of this kind, namely, those that are required if its first principles are to be satisfied given the circumstances. Utilitarianism excludes those desires and propensities which if encouraged or permitted would, in view of the situation, lead to a lesser net balance of satisfaction. However, this restriction is largely formal, and in the absence of fairly detailed knowledge of the circumstances it does not give much indication of what these desires and propensities are. This is not, by itself, an objection to utilitarianism. It is simply a feature of utilitarian doctrines that it relies very heavily upon the natural facts and contingencies of human life in determining what forms of moral character are to be encouraged in a just society. The moral ideal of justice as fairness is more deeply embedded in the first principles of the ethical theory. This is characteristic of natural rights views (the contractarian tradition) in comparison with the theory of utility. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

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In setting forth these contrasts between justice as fairness and utilitarianism, I have had in mind only the classical doctrine. This is the view of Bentham and Sidgwick and of the utilitarian economists Edgeworth and Pigou. The kind of utilitarianism espoused by Hume would not serve my purpose; indeed, it is not strictly speaking utilitarian. In his well-known arguments against Locke’s contract theory, for example, Hume maintains that the principles of fidelity and allegiance both have the same foundation in utility, and therefore that nothing is gained from basing political obligation on an original contract. Locke’s doctrine represents, for Hume, an unnecessary shuffle: one might as well appeal directly to utility. However, all Hume seems to mean by utility is the general interests and necessities of society. The principles of fidelity and allegiance derive from utility in the sense that the maintenance of the social order is impossible unless these principles are generally respected. However, then Hume assumes that each human stands to gain, as judged by one’s long-term advantage, when law and government conform to the precepts founded on utility. No mention is made of the gains of some outweighing the disadvantages of others. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

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For Hume, then, utility seems to be identical with some form of the common good; institutions satisfy its demands when they are to everyone’s interests, at least in the long run. Now if this interpretation of Hume is correct, there is offhand no conflict with the priority of justice and no incompatibility with Locke’s contract doctrine. For the role of equal rights in Locke is precisely to ensure that the only permissible departures from the state of nature are those which respect these rights and serve the common interest. It is clear that all the transformations from the state of nature which Locke approves of satisfy this condition and are such that rational humans concerned to advance their ends could consent to them in a state of equality. Hume nowhere disputes the propriety of these constraints. His critique of Locke’s contract doctrine never denies, or even seems to recognize, its fundamental contention. The merit of the classical view as formulated by Bentham, Edgeworth, and Sidgwick is that it clearly recognizes what is at stake, namely the relative priority of the principles of justice and of the rights derived from these principles. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

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The question is whether the imposition of disadvantages on a few can be outweighed by a greater sum of advantages enjoyed by others; or whether the weight of justice requires an equal liberty for all and permits only those economic and social inequalities which are to each person’s interest. Implicit in the contrasts between classical utilitarianism and justice as fairness is a difference in the underlying conceptions of society. In the one we think of a well-ordered society as a scheme of cooperation for reciprocal advantage regulated by principles which persons would choose in an initial situation that is fair, in the other as the efficient administration of social resources to maximize the satisfaction of the system of desire constructed by the impartial spectator from the many individual systems of desires accepted as given. The comparison with classical utilitarianism in its more natural derivation brings out this contrast. B-values are not needs in the same sense that food, shelter, or companionship are. B-values are “metaneeds” and that indicates that they are the ultimate level of needs. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

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There is a distinction between ordinary need motivation and the motives of self-actualizing people, which is called metamotivation. Metamotivation is characterized by expressive rather than coping behaviour and is associated by B-values. The values of self-actualizing people include truth, goodness, beauty, wholeness or the transcendence of dichotomies, aliveness or spontaneity, uniqueness, perfection, completion, justice and order, simplicity, richness or totality, effortlessness, playfulness or humour, and self-sufficiency or autonomy. B-values are found at the end of so many different investigative roads, that the suspicion arises that there is something in common between these different paths, exempli gratia, education, art, religion, psychotherapy, peak-experiences, science, mathematics, et cetera. If this turns out to be so, we may perhaps add as another road to final values, the “cause,” the mission, the vocation, that is to say, the “work” of self-actualizing people. This introjection means that the self has enlarged to include aspects of the World and that therefore the distinction between self and not-self (outside, other) has been transcended. These B-value or metamotives are not longer only intrapsychic or organismic. They are equally inner and outer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

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The metaneeds, insofar as they are inner, and the requiredness of all that is outside the person move toward becoming indistinguishable, that is, toward fusion. Certainly simple selfishness is transcended here and has to be defined at higher levels. For instance, we know that it is possible for a person to get more pleasure (selfish? Unselfish?) out of food through having one’s child eat it than through eating it with one’s own mouth. One’s self has enlarged enough to include one’s child. Hurt one’s child and you hurt him. Clearly the self can no loner be identified with the biological entity which is applied with blood from his heart along his blood vessels. They psychological self can obviously be bigger than its own body. There are other important consequences of this incorporation of values into the self. For instance, you can love justice and truth in the World or in a person out there. You can be made happier as your friends move toward truth and justice, and sadder as they move away from it. This is easy to understand. However, supposing you see yourself moving successfully toward truth, justice, beauty, and virtue? Then of course you may find that, in a peculiar kind of detachment and objectivity toward oneself, for which our culture has no place, you will be loving and admiring yourself, in the kind of healthy self-love that many Christians experience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

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You can respect yourself, admire yourself, take tender care of yourself, reward yourself, feel virtuous, love-worthy, respect-worthy. You may then treat yourself with the responsibility and otherness that, for instance, a pregnant woman does, whose self now has to be defined to include not-self. So also may a person with a great talent protect it and oneself as if one were a carrier of something which is simultaneously oneself and not oneself. One may become one’s own guardian, so to speak. Less evolved persons seems to use their work more often for achieving gratification of lower basic needs, of neurotic needs, as a means to an end, out of habit, or as a response to cultural expectations, et cetera. However, it is probable that these are differences of degree. Perhaps all human beings are (potentially) metamotivated to a degree. The conventional categories of career, profession, or work may serve as channels of many other kinds of motivations, not to mention sheer habit or convention or functional autonomy. They may satisfy or seek vainly to satisfy any or all of the basic needs as well as various neurotic needs. They may be a channel for “acting out” or for “defensive” activities as well as for real gratifications. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

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All these various habits, determinants, motives, and metamotives are acing simultaneously in a very complex pattern which is centered more toward one kind of motivation or determinedness than the others. This is to say that the most highly developed persons we know are metamotivated to a much higher degree, and are basic-need-motivated to a lesser degree than average or diminished people are. Hail to you, mighty One of Heaven from ancient times till now your splendor endures. We, your children, call out to you again; as in the childhood of our race, we acknowledge our debts. God of light and love, we praise you. Not forgetting one, not leaving any out, we send our prayers to all of you. Listen to our words; you will find them sweet. Your children pray to you here. Sitting in anticipation of their coming, I open my mind to make their way smooth. May God hear what I say and answer me, blessing me with His presence. “And it came to pass that they did go forth, and began to preach the word of God unto the people, entering into their synagogues, and into their houses; yea, and even they did preach the word in their streets. And it came to pass that after much labour among them, they began to have success among the poor class of people; for behold, they were cast out of the synagogues because of the coarseness of their apparel. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

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“Therefore they were not permitted to enter into their synagogues to worship God, being esteemed by their brethren as dross; therefore they were poor as to things of the World; and also they were poor in heart. Now, as Alma was teaching and speaking unto the people upon the hill Onidah, here came a great multitude unto him, who were those of whom we have been speaking, of whom were poor in heart, because of their poverty as to the things of the World. And they came unto Alma; and the one who was the foremost among them said unto him; Behold, what shall these my brethren do, for they are despised of all humans because of their poverty, yea, and more especially by our priests; for they have cast us out of our synagogues which we have laboured abundantly to build with our own hands; and they have exceeding poverty; and we have no place to worship our God; and behold, what shall we do? And now when Alma heard this, he turned him about, his face immediately towards him, and he beheld with great joy; for he beheld with great joy; for he beheld that their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in a preparation to hear the word. Therefore he did say no more to the other multitude; but he stretched forth his hand, and cried unto those whom he beheld, who were truly penitent, and said unto them: I behold that ye are lowly in heart; and if so, blessed are ye. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

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“Behold thy brother hath said, What shall we do?—for we are cast out of our synagogues, that we cannot worship our God. Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only? And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week? I say unto you, it is well that ye are cast out of your synagogues, that ye may be humble, and that ye may learn wisdom; for it is necessary that ye should learn wisdom; for it is because that ye are cast out, that ye are despised of your brethren because of your exceeding poverty, that ye are brought to a lowliness of heart; for ye are necessarily brought to be humble. And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a human sometimes, if one is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and one that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved. And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word? Yea, one that truly humbleth oneself, and pepenteth of one’s sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

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“Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is one that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe. Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from Heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe. Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a human knoweth a thing one hath no cause to believe, for one knoweth it. And now, how much more cursed is one that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than one that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into transgression? Now of his thing ye must judge. Behold, I say unto you, that it is on the one hand even as it is on the other; and it shall be unto every human according to one’s work And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true. And now, behold, I say unto you, and I would that ye should remember, that God is merciful unto all who believe on his name; therefore he desireth, in the first place, that ye should believe, yea, even on his word. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

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“And now, he imparteth his word by angels unto humans, yea, not only men but women also. Now this is not all; little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned. And now, my beloved brethren, as ye have desired to know of me what ye shall do because ye are afflicted and cast out—now I do not desire that ye should suppose that I mean to judge you only according to that which is true. For I do no mean that ye all of you have been compelled to humble yourselves; for I verily believe that there are some among you who would humble themselves, let them be in whatsoever circumstances they might. Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge. However, behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in your, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

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 “Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me. Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge. However, behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and begineth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you. Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness. Therefore, if a seed growth it is good, but if it growth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

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“And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good. And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; ad this is because you know, for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and you, Yea, because it is light; and whatsoever is light, is good, because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good; and now behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge perfect? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither must ye lay aside your faith, for ye have only exercised your faith to plant the seed that ye might try the experiment to know if the seed was good. And behold, as the tree begineth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, ad bring forth fruit. However, if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the Sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

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“Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof. And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life. However, if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst. Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience, and long-suffering, waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you,” reports Alma 32.1-43. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23

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Please accept my hospitality, Holy Ones; by my guests at this feast. Renew the ancient bonds, continually recreated. As I give, so will you, for that is how true friends act. Great company of God, I welcome you. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-riverside-at-plumas-ranch/

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